MILITARY MOVEMENTS.
When a remnant of Stillman’s men returned to Dixon after an exciting
ride of twenty-four miles from Stillman’s Run, they reported that they
had been attacked by thousands of Indians and that all the rest of the
army had been massacred. The exaggerated report set a few of the men
who had not been with Stillman, keen to fight; but it instilled into
most of them a sense of home-sickness, and many of them requested to be
excused from duty. Gen. Taylor immediately reported the situation to
Gen. Atkinson, at Ottawa, and the latter ordered Generals Whiteside and
Harney, who were in command of some United States regulars, to pursue
the Indians.
When the troops arrived at Stillman’s Run they found the bodies of
thirteen soldiers and most of the deserted commissary which had
included a barrel of whiskey that Black Hawk emptied on the ground.
Black Hawk destroyed the wagons and everything else that could not be
carried away, excepting a few boats that belonged to the Indians which
were left on the river bank.
As a matter of fact Black Hawk had only forty warriors with him at the
time of the attack on him by Stillman’s men, while Stillman had about
three hundred men. At the time of the attack many of Stillman’s men
were under the influence of liquor and most of them in such a state
of insubordination that they paid no attention to the orders of their
officers. Thus they rushed into the camp of Black Hawk, and, as each
was acting independently, it was but a short time until the Indians by
their shots and yells had the militia scared crazy and on the run.[20]
[20] The Black Hawk War, Stevens, 133, 137.
On May 22nd, in accordance with Gen. Anderson’s order, Gen. Whiteside
took up and followed the Indian trail for thirty-six miles along the
Kishwaukee and the Sycamore; but when the high prairie was reached, the
Indians scattered so in all directions that the troops were unable to
track them further, and the army proceeded to the Fox River and down
that stream to Ottawa, where it arrived on May 27th.
On the day that the girls passed a few miles to the east, the United
States troops found on the Sycamore, articles belonging to the Indians
who committed the massacre at Davis Settlement, among which were three
scalps. Perhaps it was fortunate for the girls that Gen. Whiteside
had not discovered and attacked the Indians, because under such
circumstances the Indians might have murdered them.
Among the troops under Gen. Whiteside was the company in which Captain
Abraham Lincoln, subsequently the great president of the United States,
served. Probably the girls had not yet heard of him, who, if he had
known of their predicament, might have ended their captivity on that
day.
During the march up the Sycamore, an old Pottawatomie Indian came
into camp, tired and hungry, with a letter of safe conduct, signed by
Gen. Lewis Cass. Some of the men declared the letter was a forgery,
and that the Indian was a spy and should be put to death. When the
soldiers threatened the poor fellow, Capt. Lincoln stepped forward and
said that he would shoot any man who would assault the Indian.[21] It
can be readily seen how a man of Lincoln’s bravery and superior mental
resources, might have freed the girls without injury to them.
[21] The Black Hawk War, 285.