Massacre at Bad Axe

 killed from the artillery from the steamboat U.S.S. Warrior

In the spring of 1832 a band of Sac and Fox Indians following the warrior Black Hawk crossed the Mississippi River, moving eastward from present-day Iowa to their ancestral lands in northern Illinois' Rock River valley. The Indians disputed the 1804 treaty that had seemingly ceded these lands to the United States, and found that they could not live among unfriendly tribes and poor farm lands west of the Mississippi.

In 1832 Black Hawk was invited to live in a village of Winnebago Indians led by his good friend White Cloud. Crossing the Mississippi with 400 braves and their families, Black Hawk caused mass hysteria. Although Black Hawk and his braves bothered no one, Governor John Reynolds called out the Militia. Among the 1600 men who volunteered to fight was a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

The Winnebagos and other tribes in the area, fearing the militia, refused to let Black Hawk stay.  Black Hawk and his followers soon found that their presence caused an uproar in Illinois. State militia and federal troops quickly massed to destroy them. After several encounters in which the two parties' inability to communicate with one another prevented Black Hawks only hope lay in out running the soldiers and he raced to the Mississippi. When he arrived at the river he found his way blocked by an American steamship loaded with troops and artillery. 

 Through failed attempts at communication and Black Hawk's intended surrender, he led his band on a desperate flight across central and western Wisconsin. Black Hawk tried to surrender and sent two warriors under a white flag to the ship. The ship's captain did not understand the request and opened fire on the Sauk. Black Hawk and his followers were trapped. Hoping to retreat to the Mississippi's western banks, the Sac and Fox instead found themselves trapped on its eastern shore near Bad Axe, Wisconsin. American troops attacked their camp from the east, and hostile Sioux, long the enemies of the Sac and Fox and aligned with the U.S. Government, waited for them across the river. To make matters worse, the steamboat U.S.S. Warrior, a privately owned craft chartered by the U.S. Army for a mission to the Sioux, came upon the unfolding conflict. Patrolling the Mississippi's channel, the Warrior's artillery piece subjected Indians, from men attempting to cross the Mississippi on rafts to women swimming with children on their backs, to fatal fire.

Black Hawk tried to surrender and sent two warriors under a white flag to the ship. The ship's captain did not understand the request and opened fire on the Sauk. Black Hawk and his followers were trapped.  August 2, 1832, the soldiers caught up with the Sauk. In what became known as the Bad Axe Massacre, the soldiers killed dozens of the Sauk including women, children and the elderly. Those who made it across the Mississippi were killed by the Sioux, who had joined the Americans. Of the 500 Sauk with Black Hawk, only about 150 survived. The Black Hawk war, now virtually over, had cost the lives of 72 whites and between 450 and 600 Native Americans.

In the end, the massacre at Bad Axe decimated the small band of Sac and Fox and ended the brief conflict known as the Black Hawk War.

Black Hawk was one of the survivors. He was eventually forced to surrender with his friend, White Cloud, of the Winnebago's. The were sent to the east and were paraded through the eastern cities like captured animals. The public , however, greeted him, "as a brave, romantic symbol of the wild frontier and treated him like a hero.

Black Hawk later was returned to Iowa. In the last few months of his life he found himself the object of admiration among Iowa settlers. He was often invited to the territorial capital to attend sessions of the legislature. His last public appearance was July 4, 1837.

Black Hawk died in his lodge on October 3, 1837. His wife Singing Bird survived him. In his last public appearance he said: " A few summers ago, I was fighting against you. I did wrong, perhaps, but that is past. It is buried. Let it be forgotten. Rock river was beautiful country. I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. It is yours now. Keep it as we did."

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