Rock County, Wisconsin - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 3 of those read), 1908 (part 1 of 11)

Chapter with an unread heading (no. 3 of those read)

The history of Rock county properly begins with that of the earth beneath us, for the kind of a country that is ours by nature has largely determined its later growth and prosperity. It was eagerly sought by a superior class of settlers and promptly developed growing communities partly because it was, as one pioneer said, "a natural paradise."

The surface of Wisconsin is an open book to those who can read the signs of nature and the various kinds and layers of rock, laid slantingly one over another from south to north, tell the story of the earth's changes at this region as plainly as if the record had been printed in letters. Our state is not mountainous nor monotonously level but intermediate between these two extremes. Situated between three notable depressions, Lake Superior on the north, Lake Michigan on the east and the Mississippi valley on the west, it slopes generally from north to south and slightly to the east and west from a central swell of land. The surface is that of a low dome, the highest point, about 1,800 feet above the sea, being near the line of northern Michigan between the headwaters of the Montreal and Brule rivers; the southeast and southwest sides showing a gentle decline towards the south side or base, where our county is situated and is, at the state line, about 600 feet above sea level. The physical history of Wisconsin, as recorded in its various layers of rock, shows that in some remote period when even the Rocky Mountains had not emerged from the ocean, this part of the continent also was beneath its surface. For unknown ages our territory was a shallow arm of the sea, which by constant washing against shores farther north and with the help of other forms of erosion, deposited beneath its waters great masses of sediment thousands of feet in thickness. These deposits were nearly horizontal and became hardened into sandstone, shale and other forms of sedimentary rock.

At the next stage of time and apparently because the cooling of the earth's crust caused contraction and a wrinkled surface, some tremendous pressure from beneath, accompanied by the escape of heat, swelled up these deposits, crumpling them, solidifying and crystallizing them and, raising them above the surface of the ocean, produced here an island, the first appearance of Wisconsin. That island was largely composed of granite, gneiss, syenite and other hard crystalline rocks and, from the extent of those rocks as exposed, seems to have occupied what is now the north central part of our state and a part of upper Michigan, extending also into Minnesota. All the rest of the state as well as most of the United States was still under water but slowly rising. That island must originally have been higher than the present surface, because the ten or eleven different layers of rock in Wisconsin, as now exposed, stand highly inclined from north to south and we see only their edges, the tops of the folds of which they were once a part having been worn off. Through untold ages there had to be successive periods of the wearing away and depositing of material on the bed of this shallow sea, and successive stages of slow elevation and solidifying of this sea bottom before the complicated stone foundations of our state and county were laid. The carbonaceous matter in some of the rocks shows that there was early marine vegetation, and the successive strata of limestone evidently resulted from shell fish, extracting lime from the sea water and building that lime into their shells, which would ultimately be deposited in the mud of the sea bottom. The accumulation from these sources through unknown ages gave rise to a series of shales, sandstones and limestones whose combined thickness is several thousand feet.

A period of special upheaval and earth heat changed the shales to slates or schists and the carbonaceous matter in part to graphite and associated with these deposits extensive beds of iron ore. The strata were much twisted and folded (as appears most plainly at Negaunee and Ishpeming in upper Michigan), and our Wisconsin island with its adjacent ocean beds was further elevated and its extent enlarged. The Penokee iron range in Ashland county belongs to that most ancient time and its upturned edge, forming a bold rampart for sixty miles across the country, is our nearest approach to a mountain range. Still farther north through openings in the earth's crust melted rock seems to have been poured out in many different eruptions, which spread over an area about 300 miles east and west by 100 miles north and south. Between some of these tremendous outbursts there were such long intervals of time that the ocean waves then wore down this new rock into sand, granite and clay, which became hardened into sandstone and conglomerate beds, the whole series of which is several miles in thickness. This is the rock of the copper regions. The native copper and silver there was not thrown up suddenly in a melted form, as once supposed, but was deposited in veins or deeply reaching cracks in the solid rock by chemical action.

After that Arch^an or very old age came another long period, in which the sea wore down the rock again. At the north side of this Wisconsin island, on the margin of what is now Lake Superior, but which seems then to have been a part of the primeval ocean, the water, acting on copper and iron bearing rocks, produced a red sand, which became the red standstone of that region. On the south shore of our island the wave action, spent mainly on quartzites and granites, produced a light colored sand and sandstone. This deposit, at least a thousand feet thick, occupies a broad, irregular belt, extending east and west across the state, being widest in the central part and bordering the original island area on the south like a rude crescent. It slopes gently south from the original core of the state, underlies all the later formations and may be reached at any point in southern Wisconsin by boring to a depth which can easily be calculated because of the regular dip of that stratum. The water from the northern half of the state continually soaking into this porous rock makes it a water-bearing formation, an unfailing source for artesian wells and pure water. The artesian well on the old fair grounds just east of Janesville secured a full supply of water from this rock. The flowing well in the valley from which the city of Janesville gets its present water supply draws from the same formation at a depth of 1,0G0 feet. (That well, on the fair grounds, was sunk to the depth of 1,033 feet, of which 350 feet is drift material and the lower part, G83 feet, is Potsdam sandstone. The water did not rise to the surface, but required pumping.) The interbcdded layers of limestone and shale, by supplying strata impervious to water, make this rock also a source of many springs.

The accumulation of this layer of Potsdam sandstone was followed without marked disturbance by a long continued deposit of magnesian limestone rock, varying from fifty to 250 feet in thickness on account of changes of level in the upper surface. Then after yet other ages the wash of that ancient ocean formed and laid down silicious sand, which hardened into rock, filling up the valleys in the under limestone and leveling the whole surface. This formation also is water-bearing and supplies several artesian fountains.

Some unknown change in ocean conditions then led to the deposit of a layer about 120 feet thick of limestone, alternating with clay, which became shale. This Trenton limestone, so called, contains many of the most ancient fossils, and also, in southwest Wisconsin, zinc and lead. The deposit of limestone continued with some changed conditions, which built on that yellowish Trenton limestone a bed, 250 feet thick, of a light gray, somewhat crystalline stone called Gelena because it contains much galena or sulphide of lead. This deposit occupied the southwestern part of the area of our state and a broad north and south belt in east central Wisconsin.

By this time our geologic island had considerably increased in size and the southern part of Wisconsin, including our county, was now above the ocean, !for a time.

Then followed a slow deposit of clay with some shell material, resulting in various colored beds of clay and shale, in some places 200 feet thick. The fossils in this shale show that it was formed ages before the coal measures. A knowledge of this fact would have saved the costly labors of some who have dug into this shale in the hope of finding coal, which, it may be remarked, does not occur in any Wisconsin rock. One promoter, indeed, once reported that he had found coal within the bounds of Rock county, but the coal came from his shaft in assorted sizes, indicating a mine that was too good to be true.

The next age was that of the deposit of iron ore in fine particles like fiax seed, in various basins, notably along what is called Iron ridge, where the deposit is twenty feet thick, also at Hartford and Depere and Black River Falls. This age was followed by our island's greatest era of limestone formation, in which were laid down beds nearly 800 feet thick. For the accumulation of such a deposit from the shells and secretions of marine life long ages of time must have been required, beyond our comprehension. Much of this Niagara limestone (so called because the same formation is found at Niagara falls) was built up with the skeletons of the minute coral, with mollusks like oyster shells and with those stone lilies, called Crinoids, really sea animals, which left a limestone skeleton that was like a water lily on its stem. The very ancient three lobed crustaceans called Trilobites, also abounded, and the formation was like that of reefs near the surface of the ocean. This we know because the coral does not live very many feet below the surface. This limestone occupies a broad belt next to and west of Lake Michigan. Near Milwaukee on Mud creek and near Waubeka in Ozaukee county is found a thin-bedded slaty limestone, which is supposed to represent that somewhat later age, called Lower Helderberg. This closed the Silurian age of the earth, so called because these formations were first observed near the home of those ancient Britons, the Silures, in Wales. During this age there had been no great disturbance of the earth's surface here. Our Wisconsin island was gradually emerging from the ocean and increasing its size by concentric belts of limestone, sandstone and shale. This region of the earth's crust slowly bulged up enough to bring about all of the territory of our state above the ocean. Then at

Next came the Devonian era, or age of fishes. After an unknown period of time, during which the upper Silurian and lower Devonian strata, as found elsewhere, were formed, the eastern margin of our island was again submerged and a deposit of magnesian limestone mingled with silicious material laid down there, w^hich reveals the fact that this part of the world then came into a new life-era. Before this age there had been all kinds of shell fish in these shallow seas, but apparently nothing with a backbone. This cement rock, however, belonging to the Hamilton age of the great Devonian period, contains various remains of that lowest class of vertebrates, fishes. The original deposit seems to have been much worn away and that part which remains occupies only a limited area on the lake shore immediately north of Milwaukee, extending inland about half a dozen miles. There is enough of it, however, to mark the geologic time of day. At the close of this Hamilton period our land rose again, the ocean retired southward and there are no signs that it ever again covered any part of our state. Rock county was at last permanently dry land. The rock foundations were all laid.

This preliminary history of the rock foundation of our state appears thus quite plain and regularly progressive. Starting with a north central island of the most ancient crystalline rock, layer upon layer of stony material was piled around it quite regularly on the south side, adding belt after belt to the growing margin until, as the whole was gradually lifted up, the increasing island extended far beyond the limits of our state and became part of the rising continent.

Then followed the coal making period when this northern zone had a warmer climate and tropical forests waved over Illinois and Pennsylvania and the other carboniferous regions and when, through long ages of alternate advance and retreat of the ocean, successive layers of coal and the coal rocks were formed, but not here in Wisconsin. Next came the age of reptiles, when gigantic dinosaurs and other now extinct monsters lived in the central part of our continent, but none of them here, so far as any record shows. After all that spending of centuries followed the Tertiary age, when the general surface of the earth by slow stages at last approached a condition suitable for the habitation of man. Through all these three eras our AYisconsin island appears to have kept its old level, experiencing no further radical change except from erosion. Wind and rain and river, frost and heat and the chemical elements, acting through the long centuries of such unmeasured duration, however, would file away the outcropping layers of rock and must have worn the surface into an old age of jagged roughness, as yet utterly unfit for human occupancy.

Then followed the glacial period, that great ice age, nearest to the time of man, and AVisconsin was in it. Indeed, to the mighty ploughing and harrowing which this region then received is largely due its present beauty, fitness and fertility. The vast ice sheet, which then covered the northern part of our continent (as all Greenland is covered today), moved slowly and irresistibly southward, reaching over the northern half of this state. That gigantic ice mass, shod with boulders, acted like a mighty gang plow, ploughing and planing down all the rough places and pushing the broken material into the hollows; it polished and grooved the solid rock, carried along southward the rolled and rounded, erratic fragments called boulders, and when melting spread still farther south over our state the finer material composed of pebbles, sand and clay. Lines engraved on the rocks show that three great glaciers were at work here. One enormous mass of ice ploughed along the bed of Lake Michigan; another immense ice stream pushed southwest through the trough of Lake Superior and down Minnesota, while a third glacier ploughed out Green bay and the valley of Rock river, leaving the southwest corner of our state apparently untouched, and in its former rough condition. Then for some reason as conjectural and unknown as that which caused the ice age, North America began to steadily grow warmer and warmer. Those great glaciers or ice masses melted backwards (as the glaciers of Switzerland and Alaska are doing today), leaving the rock and earth material they had been carrying heaped promiscuously over the surface, giving it new hills and valleys. In this process, how long continued no one knows, there seem to have been many halts and slight advances of the ice for a time and then larger retreats through at least four great eras, so that the broken fragments of rock, called "drift," were occasionally pushed up into high ridges along the southern edge of the ice field. That remarkable range of hills called the Kettle range, which winds east and west across the surface of our state, was produced in this way. It is a historic mark of the south edge of the glacier and a sign that the ice remained there for a long time until some new and comparatively sudden change of climate melted the glacier rapidly and caused a new stage of its retreat. The water flowing under the ice, and more or less confined by it, scooped out in the rock, and other surface material beneath, troughs and hollows, which are now the beds of our unnumbered lakes and ponds. (There are more of these spring water lakelets in Wisconsin, especially in the southeastern part of the state, than in any other part of the globe, of equal area.) This superabundance of pure water, by absorbing deleterious gases tends to purify the air and is one cause of our especially healthful climate.

The melting of so much glacial ice produced vast torrents of water flowing southward. From the Lake Michigan glacier a mighty stream was the manifest force, which carved out what is now the valley of the Illinois river. Lesser streams dug out the valley of the Wisconsin and that of our Rock river. About this time seems to have occurred a depression of the continent north of us, for that land during the glacial age must plainly have been much higher than it is now. This depression apparently marks the origin or at least the present shape of the great lakes, and their change of drainage from southwest to northeast. The level of the lakes occasionally changed so that their waters advanced somewhat upon the adjacent shores and deposited that red clay that borders Lakes JMichigan and Superior and occupies the Green Bay valley as far up as to near Fond du Lac, but the general level of our state remained unchanged.

All this ploughing and harrowing of our territory by glaciers and their subsequent melting left the surface roughly smoothed out and covered with a sheet of boulders, pebbles, gravel, sand and clay, somewhat unevenly distributed. In general, however, the ice and water flowing south dropped the heavier masses first and then the lighter, spreading over the lower part of the state those great beds of gravel, clay and sand which characterize our county and have helped make it fertile and easily habitable. Then storm and frost and the other erosive forces, which are still at work, through another age of time harrowed the surface yet more finely and prepared it for the growths of our present vegetation. With the land permanently raised above the ocean and a suitable and settled climate, came, finally, those trees and plants and grasses, whose decayed remains, slowly accumulating through ages, became the rich soil of southern Wisconsin and prepared this region for occupancy by the later animals and by man.

The whole eastern half of Rock county was once a great glacial valley, from 300 to 400 feet deep, such as may now be seen from the Northwestern railway train as it approaches Devil 's lake, Wisconsin, from the south, that great valley having been but partly filled. In the later geologic time our Rock county valley was completely filled with boulders, pebbles, gravel, clay and sand, and fertile earth formed on the surface of the drift. Back and forth over this surface Rock river and Turtle creek have cut their respective channels until finally the river has worn its way to the limestone ledges at the west edge of the old chasm and the Turtle is still changing its channel back and forth along the eastern side of that old valley. Under this surface water is constantly percolating through the drift material from the Turtle valley towards and into the bed of Rock river, feeding it with innumerable springs. In a large group of these springs is sunk the ample well, which from only about forty or fifty feet below the surface, supplies the east side of Beloit with this naturally filtered drinking water, famous for its purity and healthfulness. W. F. B.

Ancient Occupants The Picture Mound Builders And Later Indian

The first human occupants of this region of whom we have any record were the effigy mound-builders. They deserve notice because they have left us a definite history of themselves, not carved on stone like the ancient Egyptian or the Aztec, not impressed on clay tablets like the Assyrian nor written on perishable materials like the accounts of later nations; but built in the form of large, significant and enduring mounds on the surface of the country. Those mounds do not give a record of dates or any historic narrative, but they do reveal the occupations and interests of that ancient people and something of what they believed and did not believe.

As ancient historic earthworks are found most abundantly along the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, it has been inferred that the people who made them came from the South and were at some later age driven back or exterminated by those somewhat similar races, whom we know as the Indians.

Wisconsin, however, was the especial home of the picture mound builders, especially the southern half of our state, as there are no effigy mounds north of the Fox river. This region of Rock county also was evidently, for these first families, a favorite location. Within our state the ancient mounds of different kinds already reported number about 2,000.

Doctor I. A. Lapham maintained that there were four successive periods of aboriginal and Indian occupation here: 1. The effigy mound builders. 2. The people who made the long mounds and large garden beds. 3. The builders of the round and conical burial mounds. 4. Those who made corn hills, the later Indians, who have been seen and noted here since 1634. At Lake Koshkonong the ground still shows signs of six successive periods of occupation. First, that of the effigy mound builders; second, that of the long mound builders; third, the Indian village period of the Foxes and Winnebagoes; fourth, the period of the Indian trader and the blacksmith ; fifth, the period of the invading American general, Atkinson, and his army; sixth, the American settlers.

A really historic map of Rock county, for which the labors of our AVisconsin Antiquarian Society, especially those of Mr. George A. West and H. F. Skavlem are now preparing the way, should include the location and detailed shape of all the effigy, long and round mounds, permanent garden plats and burial mounds ; the old Indian trails, one from Beloit across the prairie to Delavan lake, one from Rockton through Beloit (or Turtle) up the Rock on the east side to the Janesville region and a similar trail on the west side of Rock river ; also the trail from that Black Hawk grove just east of Janesville, to the west side of Lake Koshkonong and then across a group of effigies north towards the four lakes or Madison region. It should also locate the route of General Atkinson when he pursued Black Hawk through this region of east Beloit and Janesville to the east side of Lake Koshkonong ; and then after adding the old wagon roads and trading posts, might give besides the section lines, city and town sites, the rivers and modern railroad lines.

That the effigy builders were more ancient than the makers of the garden beds and round mounds appears from the fact that some of these corn hills and garden beds have been made on the top of the ancient effigies, showing that the later people had no regard for the sacred character of those totems of the earlier races.

Another proof of the priority and antiquity of the picture mound builders is found in the fact that, while the later Indian inhabitants of Wisconsin had an abundance of copper implements, these are very rarely found in the effigy mounds. The typical relic of the aborigines of our state is the stone axe, of which so many beautiful specimens are shown in our state Historical Library Museum at Madison and in the notable Logan

The emblematic mounds also are generally flatter and lower than the round burial mounds, the former being apparently more worn down with age.

Immediately north of the astronomical observatory of Beloit college is a symmetrical turtle mound about thirty feet long, facing west, and there is another turtle mound on a hill threequarters of a mile southeast of this. A couple of rods west of the interurban road and two miles north of Beloit, besides several groups of long and animal mounds, there is a beautiful bear or buffalo mound, sixty-four feet long, the animal being represented as lying on his left side facing south, with the feet toward the river. In our county there are also effigies of the catamount, buffalo, fox, squirrel, beaver, goose and eagle. These effigy mounds represent animals and birds, which were evidently then found in this region. They indicate first that the mound builders, like the Indians known to us, were a race of hunters and agriculturists. That they attached superstitious importance to at least some of these mounds is also suggested by their proximity to village sites, as though conveying in some way protection ; and is further suggested by the very large size of some of the mounds and by their conventionally extended lengths. The celebrated man mound near Baraboo (four miles northeast) is 214 feet long and forty-eight feet wide across the shoulders, and may represent the Dakotan god, Hekoya; the wings of an eagle mound on the east side of Lake Koshkonong have a spread of 250 feet; the tail of a panther mound on the west bank of that lake is extended 360 feet. A squirrel effigy on ground (formerly Governor Farwell's) adjoining the insane asylum at Madison, represents the animal sitting erect, about thirty feet long ; but the tail of this effigy, measured along its curves, extends some 300 feet.

The Indians known to us believed in a future existence and therefore buried with their dead warriors weapons, ornaments, implements and other possessions, the presence of which with the remains was supposed to be of use to the departed spirit. That these moiyad builders had no such belief Dr. Lapham con- eluded because such personal possessions are not found in the burial places ascribed to them. And further, as art requires for its development both time, unity of effort and peaceful opportunities, these artistic picture mounds plainly tell us that this southern part of Wisconsin was once occupied by an industrious and united people, like our Indians, but peaceful among themselves and for a long time comparatively undisturbed by enemies. (As corn is a tropical plant and the mound builders came from the south, it is possible that they first brought that valuable product to this locality.)

The long mounds, occurring elsewhere, but most common in southern "Wisconsin, seem to belong to a later race but have not yet been satisfactorily explained. The theory of Rev. Stephen D. Peet, the distinguished editor of the "Antiquarian," that the long parallel mounds were game drives, is not accepted by Wisconsin scholars. These mounds are usually straight, of equal height and width throughout, from one to five feet high, about ten feet wide and from fifty to a thousand feet long. They are found associated in groups with effigy and conical mounds, sometimes with the latter alone. Some of them are wholly solitary and located on high ridges as at Gotham, Richland county, Wisconsin ; others cross each other in the form of an X or an opened pair of scissors.

That they were not defensive works is manifest from their location and arrangement, and excavation has shown that they were not burial mounds. The finding of fireplaces near the surface on a few of the long mounds has caused some to consider them long house-sites for one large clan or fraternity. About the year 1700 A. D. La Harpe wrote that "the cabins of the Indians along the Yazoo river were dispersed over the country upon mounds of earth made with their own hands." A Spanish record published in 1723 says that the Florida Indians erected elevations for their villages. "The natives constructed mounds of earth, the top of each being capable of containing ten to twenty houses."

The mounds raised to be occupied by lodges seem to have had a variety of shapes, often quite extended. Those long mounds in the Beloit college grounds and along the river road about two miles north of Beloit may have been formed for that object. The question about them is not yet fully answered.

The round mounds, however, some of them being of historically recent origin, are proved by excavations to have been mostly burial mounds. It is now generally concluded that these mounds were made by the Indians historically known to us or by their ancestors.

The remarkable crowding of many different Indian races or families into this region of Wisconsin, not long before the French explorers came, was due to influences widely separated and far distant from each other. In the distant west the dreaded Sioux or Dakota Indians, extending their forays eastward, drove many weaker bands across the Mississippi from the west. 1^ a similar process the growing power and far-reaching war expeditions of the dreaded Iroquois or Five Nations of the Mohawk valley led weaker tribes like the Hurons in Canada and also the Illinois and Pottawatomies and Miamis south of the lakes to flee westward and seek safety in this region.

Among the Algonquin tribes near Lake St. John in Canada was one, whose totem or tribal emblem was the fox, called in their native tongue, Watagamie. Hence their name, Watagamie, in French, Reynards; in English, Foxes. These fled to the west with another tribe, their kindred by many marriages and by similar language and customs, called the Sauks, who left their name to the great bay of Lake Huron, Saukenong (Saginaw). Both tribes passed beyond the Huron to Lake Michigan and so into the region west of it. Part of the Foxes and Sauks settled along Green Bay, some of them being called Musquakees, from the "Red Banks" where they lived, ultimately passed up the Fox river to the Wisconsin and controlled that portage. Another branch going south along Lake Michigan to the Chicago river and the Desplaines and further inland settled along that other Fox river, which still bears their name and controlled the ]3ortage across between Lake Michigan and the head waters of the Illinois river. Before them the Ottawas, Menomonees and Ojibways or Chippewas had also come into this region and the latter tribe had conquered and were holding the country immediately south of Lake Superior. Winnebagoes also, who were of the Dakota stock, had come from the northwest and were living about Green Bay as well as in the lead regions at the southwest near the Mississippi. There were also Mascoutins, Kiekapoos and Miami, all apparently driven to this region in the effort to escape powerful foes.

When in 1634 Jean Nicolet, leaving Quebec in New France, by a voyage of a thousand miles along the Great Lakes in a birch bark canoe reached Green bay, he found there Winnebagoes (meaning "]\Ien of the salt water," because they claimed to have formerly lived near the sea), and going up on the Fox river, visited the Mascoutins, or men of fire, so called by the French because they periodically burned over large surfaces of the country with prairie fires, who seemed to live in peace with the Foxes. Thence going south he found apparently in this region and further south the Illinois, and so in 1635 returned to Quebec. In the year 1658 two French adventurers, Radisson, on his third voyage among Indians, and Groseilliers, traversed Lake Huron and, after a fight between Hurons and Iroquois on one of the Manitoulin islands, saw the dead eaten and living captives burned with fire. Going westward to Green bay they spent a winter with the Pottawattomies, who were then living in that region, and found them abundantly supplied with game of all kinds, fish and corn. In 1659 they visited the Mascoutins and there heard of the strong Sioux and also of the Crees, who in summer lived by the shore of that "salt water" in the north (Hudson's bay).

The Mascoutins seem to have guided them to the Wisconsin river, which Radisson called "the forked river," grand, wide and deep and comparable to our own great river, the St. Lawrence, says a description made at the time of his reports. They returned along the southern shore of Lake Superior and by the Ottawa river to the St. Lawrence. On a fourth voyage Radisson visited the Buffalo men or Sioux, west of the Mississippi, and returned in 1662 to Canada with about $37,000 worth of furs. To avoid being plundered by the French governor, Radisson escaped to Boston and thence sailed to England. Thus was revealed to English-speaking people this beautiful country. Later the representations of Radisson and Groseilliers and an expedition under their guidance to Hudson's bay, "the salt water" of the Crees and Winnebagoes, led to the formation of the famous "Hudson's Bay Company," which sent its agents all over this

The Fox and Sac Indians, who controlled the two main portages from the lakes to the Mississippi, exacted so much tribute from the fur traders, who traveled Avest by the Illinois river or by the Wisconsin, that the French authorities in Canada decided to destroy them. The Foxes and Sauks had many battles also with the Winnebagoes, both claiming this region. Black Hawk, who was a Sauk chief, said in his old age, "I loved that Rock river valley, I loved my corn fields; I fought for them."

In 171G a French expedition from Quebec, the first hostile band of white men that ever invaded this region, fought these Outagamie.s fit tlie little Butte des Morts, near the present city of Menasha. and the war, continued for ten years, resulted only in a two years' truce, made at Green bay in 1726, between the French and the newly allied Indians, Foxes, Sauks and Winnebagoes. After new attacks from the French the main band of the Foxes, about 300 warriors with 1,000 women and children, in the year 1730 left their Wisconsin homes, fled down the Fox river valley to the ancient Miami village, Maramek, on the river of the Rock (now a station in Kendall county, Illinois), and there, being attacked by about 1,300 French and Indians, were almost totally destroyed.

This left the Winnebagoes the controlling tribe over the southern half of this Wisconsin territory. A band of Sauks settled on the Wisconsin at Sauk City, where Captain Jonathan Carver found them, in 1766, living in houses built of slabs and with large corn fields. Ojibways (Chippeways) occupied the Lake Superior region; Menominees (Rice Indians) and the Stockbridge Indians, who immigrated to Wisconsin lands in 1822, occupied the country about Winnebago lake.

During the half century immediately preceding the American settlements in southern Wisconsin, there had been various movements of Indians from the central part of the territory southward, so that Kickapoos lived about the mouth of the Wisconsin, and Ottawas, Miamis and Pottawattoraies occupied the southeastern part. But most of all, the Winnebagoes, while remaining in large numbers near the lake of that name (Rev. Cutting Marsh, the missionary, wrote in 1831 that the whole number of them there .then was 4,300) extended their occupation south- ward over all this central southern region, and also to the southwest. When our lead regions, which had formerly been worked by Sauks and Foxes, began to be invaded by white miners in 1821 and 1822 they found that Winnebagoes were in possession and claimed that country. The war with the Indians in 1827, by which the United States gained control of those mines, is called "The Winnebago War."

In this region of Rock county Winnebagoes were undoubtedly the last Indian occupants. Their totem was the turtle and turtle inounds are prominent here. They had a village on the west side of Lake Koshkonong called Tay-e-hee-dah, the ruins of which attracted the attention of United States surveyors of that region in 1834. The other settlement of Winnebagoes within our county, called Turtle village, occupied the site of the present city of Beloit. The chief of this village was Kau-rau-maw-nee, or Walking Turtle, that chief who delivered up Red Bird at the close of the Winnebago war, and the beautiful turtle mound immediately north of the astronomical observatory in the grounds of Beloit college was very probably to him and to his people a sacred meeting place.

If this beautiful region suited the Indians and they loved it, why did they leave it? Because they had to. As settlers flocked into the western country the United States government made treaties with the Indians in order to buy their lands, to secure peace after war, and for both those objects combined. The pressure of immigration required that the United States should own the land and by that change of ownership the whole country was benefited.

In the fourteen treaties, which we record, our government sometimes treated the Indians as though they were independent foreign nations and sometimes as if they were dependent wards.

Our first treaty with these western Indians was made at St. Louis November 3, 1804. For $2,254 worth of goods and the promise of a continuous payment of $1,000 worth of goods each year thereafter, the Sacs and Foxes, represented by comparatively few of their chiefs, ceded to the United States all the land which they claimed east of the Mississippi, and bounded as follows : The north bound was the Wisconsin river to a point thirty-six miles up stream from its mouth, then a line directly eastward to the outlet of Lake Sakaegan (Lake Pewaukee in Waukesha county), thence down the Fox river to the Illinois and down that to the Mississippi, which was the western boundary, thus including all this region of southern AVisconsin. (Moses Strong's History of Wisconsin, page 70, gives Lake Muckwanago as being the treaty lake, Sakaegan. The founder of Milwaukee, Solomon Juneau, however, called Pew^aukee lake, Sakaegan or Snail lake, from its shape, and J. A. Rice also concludes that Pewaukee is the old Sakaegan.)

September 12, 1815, United States Commissioners William Clark, Ninian Edwards and Auguste Chouteaux made two treaties, one with the Sacs and the other with the Foxes, both confirming the treaty of 1804, but neither of them signed by Black Hawk. May 13, 1816, however, the same commissioners made at St. Louis a treaty with the Sacs of Rock river, also confirming the treaty of 1804 and signed by tw^enty-two Sac chiefs and warriors, among whom was Ma-ka-tai-mo-he-kia-kiak (Black Sparrow Hawk). Although Black Hawk acknowledged that he "touched the quill" to this treaty he afterwards claimed that he did not understand it as the United States did and that, therefore, it was not binding on the Sacs of Rock river. By that treaty the Sac and Fox nations were allowed the privilege of living and hunting upon the ceded lands in Wisconsin so long as they remained the property of the United States. Black Hawk said he understood that to mean ''so long as the rule of the United States over that region continued." The commissioners meant, however, "so long as the title to the land remained with the government." Whenever and wherever that title was transferred to actual settlers those Indian rights would cease. It was this radical difference of opinion about the meaning of that treaty which afterwards led to the Black Hawk war.

August 20-24, 1816, the Chippewa, Ottawa and Pottawattomie tribes, who claimed the west shore of Lake Michigan as far west as Rock river and Green bay, ceded to the United States a tract of land three leagues square at the mouth of the Wisconsin river, including both banks, and another tract five leagues square on or near the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, and all their lands in Illinois; and in return the United States ceded to them all the old Sac and Fox lands between the Mississippi river and

The Picture Mound Builders 31

Then, about ten years later, came the Winnebago war. After the Sacs and Foxes left the lead regions of southwestern Wisconsin in 1804, Winnebagoes, Ottawas, Chippewas and PottaAvattomies "squatted" on the land, worked the mines and had certain half breeds take the lead to St. Louis and sell it there. This started the coming of white miners from the south, who gradually drifted into the lead region and, in 1822, were working the mines under the protection of United States troops. The AVinnebagoes claimed possession over other Indians and so, in 1825, a treaty of peace was made at Prairie du Chien to settle the boundaries between Winnebagoes, Sacs, Foxes, Chippewas, lowas, Ottawas and Pottawattomics. But during the year 1827 mining at Fever river, Illinois, was extended into the Winnebago country and caused an Indian uprising that year. In 1828 Colonel Henry Dodge and 130 men were digging ore thirty miles within Wisconsin lands, removing the ore across the line by night. The Indians discovered and resented this. More troops having been sent, the result Avas the Winnebago war between Colonel Dodge and Chief Red Bird, the latter nobly giving himself up to death as a sacrifice for his people. August 25, 1828, the United States, by Lewis Cass and Pierre Minard, at Green bay, made a provisional treat}' with the Winnebago, Chippewa, Ottawa and Pottawattomie Indians, the latter having only "squatter's rights," for lands which were permanently ceded later. Then, by our eighth treaty, made at Prairie du Chien, July 29, 1829, the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawattomics ceded to the United States all their land south of the Wisconsin river and covered by the Sac and Fox cession of 1804, including therefore the lead regions and also the whole of this county. By the treaty of August 1, 1829, Winnebagoes ceded the lead regions. It is said that the lead fever of 1828 was like the gold fever of 1849 and 1850 for intensity, and caused a permanent settlement of southwestern Wisconsin several years before the eastern counties were occupied. Then the Black Hawk war of 1832 widely advertised this Rock river country and turned immigration toward south Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

at the mouth of the Pecatonic and extending up to the Wisconsin and to the Fox river of Green bay. (That covered the west half of Rock county.)

September 26, 1833, the Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawattomies ceded all east of that tract to Lake Michigan and north to the head of the Milwaukee river and a line reaching thence to the south end of Lake Winnebago. (This covers the east half of Rock county a second time.)

In 1836 the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians ceded land east of Green Bay (not touching us), and the Menomonees ceded a tract along the Wisconsin river, three miles in width east side, and extending forty-eight miles in a straight line up the river above the Grignon tract (about from Stevens Point to Wausau. In a Wisconsin map of 1839 the Grignon saw mills are located about ten miles further north than the north end of Lake Winnebago.) This opened the way for the lumbering operations of our early Beloit and Janesville lumbermen.

By the treaty of 1837, our thirteenth, at Washington, D. C, the Sioux ceded to the United States all their land east of the Mississippi, which perhaps may have sometime included this county.

In the same year, November 1, 1837, General Henry Dodge secured a treaty whereby the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all their land east of the Mississippi and southeast of the Black river and of the Wisconsin, thus covering Rock county again, this time the whole of it.

Article XI. of the treaty of September 15, 1832, reads, "No band (of Winnebagoes) shall plant, fish, reside or hunt, after June 1, 1833, on any portion of the country ceded herein to the United States." (That covered the west half of Rock county.) The Indians were to have left at that date and were to have thirty days of soldier's rations, not exceeding 60,000 rations in all. They were also given a tract of land west of the Mississippi and promised, after they had moved, $10,000 each year for the next twenty-seven years. By 1834 Winnebagoes to the number of 4,591 had settled north of the Wisconsin river, being unwilling to cross the Mississippi to their new Iowa reservation from fear of the Sioux. In 1835 about 1,000 Chippewas, Ottawas and

The Picture Mouxd Blij.Dehs 33

Pottawattomies were removed from Wisconsin, leaving some 7,000 in our territory. In 1836 the United States appropriated $40,000 to defray the expense of removing the Winnebagoes, who still remained south of the Wisconsin river. It was one of those bands of Winnebagoes, gathered for removal, who were camped on the west bank of Rock river opposite Turtle village when Caleb Blodgett came here in 1836 and who helped him build his double log cabin. In the treaty of 1837 they had agreed to remove within eight months, but by October, 1839, had not yet made any general effort to do so. Therefore in 1840 General Atkinson with two and a half regiments of United States soldiers forcibly moved 4,500 of them to the west side of the Mississippi. Some 300 Winnebagoes, however, did not leave our territory, and from 1840 to 1848 six companies of United States soldiers were kept in Wisconsin to protect the citizens and remove the renegades, but the latter effort failed.

In 1846 some 1,250 Winnebagoes came back from Iowa and settled along the Fox and Wisconsin and the Kickapoo and Lemonweir valleys. The process of removal was continued up to 1853, when from 700 to 900 still remained. In my early boyhood of those years, in Beloit, I remember seeing often little bands of those Indians in our streets. Those Winnebago or Turtle Indians dearly loved this spot, the home of their ancestors, as the many turtle totem mounds show, and paid us only too friendly visits with their squaws, babies, young bucks, naked children, dogs and all. Blanketed, painted and befeathered, they were not so stolid as they looked. The men would bring their bows and arrows to the government landing and ask white men for a mark to shoot at. Put up a big copper cent and they would shoot all around it. But let anyone set up a three-cent piece or better still a bright dime, and whack, some one would hit it the first shot.

In 1864 350 Pottawattomies came back from Kansas, so that, by 1870, northern Wisconsin had about a thousand Winnebagoes and Pottawattomies, who lived by hunting and berry picking and who were tolerated because they kept down the too abundant wild animals of that region. (While a home missionary at Black River Falls, Jackson county, in 1871 and 1872, I often saw them as they brought skins and blueberries to that place

In 1874 about 860 were deported. Then in 1881 congress enacted that those Winnebagoes, who had settled homesteads on Wisconsin lands, should be protected in their rights and pay no taxes for twenty years. In 1893 a school for Indian children was provided at Tomah, Wis. In 1895 the state had about 930 Winnebagoes, of whom some 360 had taken up homestead claims.

According to the Indian commissioner's report for 1903, there were then in northern Wisconsin 1,402 Winnebagoes, 565 of them being in the neighborhood of Black River Falls. And on seven reservations, covering 583,135 acres, were 6,778 other Indians, Oneidas, Menomonees, Stockbridges and Chippewas. In noticing the large variety of nations who are represented in our Wisconsin population, we cannot overlook, therefore, our more than 8,000 Indians.

As an important event, which advertised this region and led to its early settlement by eastern people, the Black Hawk war deserves some fitting notice here. When the war of 1812 began the Sac chief, Black Hawk, naturally took the side of Tecumseh and the British. Accompanied by a band of 200 Sac braves he served under Tecumseh and was with that great Shawanee chief when the latter was killed at the battle of the Thames, October 5, 1813. Black Hawk and his warriors then returned to their Rock river home, but kept making forays along the upper Mississippi and did not cease until about a year and a half after Great Britain and the United States had made their treaty of peace at Ghent. His village, where he had been born and then lived, was on the north bank of Rock river, about three miles above its mouth, and the same distance south of Rock Island in the Mississippi. It was occupied by about 500 families and contained also the chief cemetery of his nation.

Being a friend of the British and hating Americans, Black Hawk led his followers to entertain the same feeling, and they were popularly known as "the British band." After burying the hatchet in 1816, however, the chief led a comparatively peaceful life for six years. Then in the winter of 1822-1823, in some difficulty with white men he, or some say his son, was given a cruel beating, which renewed and increased his hatred of all Americans. In the summer of 1823 squatters began taking possession of the rich land occupied by these Sacs toward the mouth of Rock river. While the band were away on their winter's hunt Americans fenced in various Indian corn fields and claimed that land, which included Black Hawk's village. The head Sac chief, Keokuk, and the United States Indian agent at Fort Arm- strong, which had been built on Rock Island about 1816, both advised Black Hawk to make a peaceful retreat across the Mississippi, but he refused to leave the home and graves of his ancestors. Afterwards, in his old age, he remarked, not without dignity, "I loved that Rock river country. I loved my corn fields. I fought for them." He claimed also that their village had never been sold to the whites. The treaty of 1804, reaffirmed in 1816. made no such exception. It simply guaranteed to the Indians the use of the ceded territory so long as the lands remained the property of the United States and were not sold to individuals. Technically the squatters, not having bought those yet unsurveyed lands, were not actual but only prospective settlers. According to the treaty itself, therefore, since no sales of the land had been made and since the frontier line of homesteads was some fifty miles to the east, this was still Indian land and it was the duty of our government to protect the Indians in their occupancy of that region until the land should be duly surveyed and sold to settlers. In the spring of 1830 Black Hawk and his band, returning from an unsuccessful winter's hunt, found their town demolished and the site ploughed up. During the winter those squatters, after seven years of illegal occupancy, had duly preempted several quarter sections at the mouth of the Rock, covering the disputed ground, namely, the village site and the Sac corn fields. This placed them technically in the right. So when Black Hawk returned to the village in the spring of 1831, after another unsuccessful hunting season and ordered the settlers to leave that locality or he would remove them by -force, they confidently appealed to the governor of Illinois, John Reynolds, for protection. In his biography, written at his dictation in after life by Editor Patterson, Black Hawk claimed that he did not mean bloodshed or war, but simply the use of physical force. The whites, however, understood his order as threatening their lives and so did the governor. Reynolds therefore called out a mounted force "to repel the invasion of the British band," and about 1,600 volunteers responded. These, with ten companies of regulars under General E. P. Gaines made a demonstration before Black Hawk's village June 25, 1831, which led those Indians to withdraw that night to the west bank of the Mississippi. June 30 they signed a treaty of peace with General Gaines and Governor Reynolds, agreeing never to return to the east side of the river without express permission of the United States government. This is not numbered among the formal treaties between the Indians and our government, because it was merely a local agreement for the sake of peace. In view of it, however, Black Hawk's later expedition into Illinois and "Wisconsin became a doubly illegal invasion.

Another cause of trouble was this. During the year 1830 a party of ]\Ienomonees and Sioux had murdered some of the British band of Sacs. So in 1831, soon after the treaty, Black Hawk and his war party, according to Indian custom, retaliated by attacking and killing twenty-seven Menomouees near Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien. General Joseph Street, the United States Indian agent there, on complaint of the Menomouees, demanded the surrender of those Sac murderers for trial under existing treaty provisions. Black Hawk refused to give them up, claiming that his bloody reprisal was justified by the usages of savage warfare. By this refusal he thus placed his band in an attitude of rebellion against the United States authority as represented by its Indian agency.

At this time, also, the shrewd chief or prophet, AVhite Cloud, half Winnebago, half Sac, persuaded Black Hawk that not only Winnebagoes, Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawatomies, but also the British themselves would help him to regain his village.

At that time the northern part of Illinois and this southern part of Wisconsin, the territory ceded in the Sac and Fox treaties of 1804 and 1816, Avas still largely an unknown wilderness of prairies, oak groves, rivers, lakes and marshes. Little of it had been surveyed or even explored by white men. There were mining settlements in the lead regions about Galena and Mineral Point. An Indian trail along the east bank of the Mississippi connected the former place with Fort Armstrong on Rock Island, and a wagon road, opened in 1827 and called Kellogg 's trail, connected Galena with Peoria and other settlements in southern Illinois. A mail coach traversed this road every day and was often crowded with people going to or from the mines, the regular freight outlet from which, however, was down the Mississippi. Indian trails between the various Indian villages and their hunting and fishing grounds were used as public thoroughfares by the reds and whites alike. One of these trails connected Galena with Chicago by the way of Big Foot's Pottawatomie village at the head of what is now Lake Geneva. The various mining settlements were connected by trails and two well traveled ways led respectively to Fort Winnebago (now Portage, Wis.) and to Fort Howard, Green bay, on the lower Fox river. In Illinois was the great Sac trail extending directly across the state east from Black Hawk's village to the south shore of Lake Michigan and onward to the British agency at Maiden. Between Galena and the Illinois river the largest settlement consisted of some thirty families on Bureau creek, and there were little clusters of cabins at Peru, La Salle, South Ottawa, Newark, Holderman's Grove, and on Indian creek. The lead mining colonies in Michigan territory (now Wisconsin) were at Mineral Point and Dodgeville. At the mouth of the Milwaukee river the fur trader, Solomon Juneau, had started a settlement, and at Chicago 200 or 300 people were living under the shelter of Fort Dearborn. Squatters were more numerous than homesteaders and metes and bounds were still indefinite, yet the white population had increased so rapidly that in 1830 it is said to have numbered about 155,000.

Black Hawk claimed that his band had a right to hunt and fish in this region as long as it belonged to the United States, that is, was not under the authority of any other power. This interpretation of the theaty of 1804, renewed in 1816, he seems to have determined to secure by a hunting expedition up the Rock river, which would serve as a precedent in any future negotiations. That it was not at first a war party is plain from the fact that their squaws and children went with them.

April 6, 1832, Black Hawk and his second in command, Neapope, with about 450 mounted warriors and fifty in canoes, with their squaws, children and belongings, crossed the Mississippi into Illinois near the mouth of Rock river and started up it. His avowed intention was to proceed to the village of the Indian prophet. White Cloud, about thirty-five miles up that stream, and unite with the Rock river Winnebagoes in raising a crop of corn. After getting that supply of food in hand they would in the fall be ready for the warpath. At least this was the idea of the expedition which was quickly spread abroad among the whites.

The Black Hawk Wae 39

and on east as far as Chicago. The news spread like a prairie fire. Settlers gathered at the larger towns or at more convenient points, where they built rude stockade forts and formed themselves into garrisons. At Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island, General Atkinson, who had arrived there that spring with a company of regulars to support the demand of the Indian department for those Sac murderers, immediately began arranging a campaign against the British band. He first assured himself that the rest of the Sacs and Foxes were not hostile and then sent a message to Black Hawk by two different messengers ordering him to peaceably return and withdraw to the west bank of the Mississippi or be driven there by force of arms. One of these managers was Henry Gratiot, Indian agent for the Rock river band of Winnebagoes. It was his father. Charles Gratiot, who at Cahokia and Kaskaskia generously supplied George Rogers Clarke in 1778 and 1779 with the means which enabled him to make his memorable campaign a success. So now his equally generous and honorable son, Henry, who had always dealt kindly and fairly with the Indians, risked his life for them in this effort to prevent a war.

Four Winnebago chiefs, one of whom may well have been White Crow, whose village was at Lake Koshkonong, had personally warned him that on account of the encroachments of the whites they could no longer restrain their young men from making war.

At General Atkinson's request, however, he undertook this dangerous mission to Black Hawlj, having with him the five friendly W^innebago chiefs. Broken Shoulder, Whirling Thunder, White Crow, Little Medicine Man and Little Priest. Immediately on their arrival at the prophet's village they were all violently seized and made prisoners and the young warriors clamored for their scalps. The prophet could only protect these envoys for a couple of days. The message of peace was rejected. Gratiot and the Winnebagoes, by the prophet's advice, gained their canoes in the night, were pursued down the river and, barely escaping with their lives, reached Rock Island the next day.

In the meantime Governor Reynolds' published call for volunteers had brought together a force of about 1,600, all but 300 being horsemen. Among these was one company who had chosen as their captain young Abraham Lincoln. In his brief autobiog- raphy, written after he became famous, Lincoln says: "Then came the Black Hawk War, and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since." General Atkinson's force included 400 regular infantry gathered from Forts Crawford (Prairie du Chien) and Leavenworth, under the command of Colonel Zachary Taylor, afterwards president of the United States, Major William S. Harney, the hero of Cerro Gordo, also served with these regulars. A young lieutenant of Company B, First United States Infantry, Jefferson Davis, afterwards president of the Confederacy, was stationed at Fort Crawford in January and February, 1832, but he is marked on the rolls as "absent on detached service at the Dubuque mines." (From March 26 to August 18, 1832, he was absent from his company on furlough, so that he seems to have taken no part in the Black Hawk AVar; but he escorted that chief to Jefferson Barracks when the war was ended.)

May 7, 1832, Abraham Lincoln and his company reached General Atkinson at the mouth of Rock river and were mustered into the United States service. Lieutenant Robert Anderson, of the regulars (later the hero of Fort Sumter), was detailed inspector general of the Illinois militia, about 1,600 in all, who were placed under Brigadier General Samuel Whiteside, an experienced Indian fighter, and accompanied by Governor Reynolds as major general.

May 9 the start was made. General Whiteside with his 1,300 mounted men leading on land and General Atkinson's 400 regulars and the 300 volunteer infantry, with guns and most of the baggage, following in boats. The baggage with Whiteside's command was carried in wagons, and heavy rains made the traveling bad for both divisions. There was no road, of course, but through swamps and a rough country. Whiteside, his force advancing more rapidly than Atkinson, found the prophet's town deserted, and promptly following Black Hawk's trail, reached Dixon's ferry on May 12. Here he met two independent battalions consisting of 341 men under Majors Isaiah Stillman and David Bailey. These had abundance of ammunition and supplies, were boastful and eager to serve as rangers, and so were sent forward on the morning of May 13 as a scouting party. Late in the afternoon of the 14th they encamped in a small grove three miles

In the meantime Black Hawk, after losing a week in fruitless councils with the Winnebagoes at Prophetstown, pushed on to meet the Pottawatomies at Sycamore creek. The chiefs of that tribe having been influenced by the advice of Shaubena, he could only gain on his side about a hundred of the more hot-headed of the tribe. As a parting courtesy, however, he was arranging to give them a dog feast on the evening of May 14 when he was told that a party of white horsemen were going into camp three miles down the river. In after years Black Hawk asserted that at this juncture he had fully resolved to peacefully return to the west side of the Mississippi should General Atkinson again summon him to do so. The hostile faction of the Pottawatomies and the majority of his own party were some seven miles north. Black Hawk, having with him only about forty of his warriors (Reynolds thought the number fifty or sixty), and thinking that Stillman's corps was a small party headed by Atkinson, sent to them three of his young men with a white flag to convey his offer to meet with the White Beaver (Atkinson) in council. He also had five others, mounted, follow the three at a safe distance to report how they were received. When the flag-bearers were seen by those rangers, many of whom were half intoxicated with liquor, a mob of the latter rushed out upon the envoys and ran them into camp with yells and oaths. Some twenty of the excited horsemen also, having sighted the second party of Indians, at once gave chase and killed two of them. The other three galloped back to their chief and reported that the three flag-bearers as well as two of their number had been slain. The old Sac and his forty or fifty braves, roused to a spirit of revenge, and being well mounted, at once started to meet the enemy and soon saw the entire white force of about 300 rushing towards them in a confused mass. Ambushing his men. Black Hawk waited until the enemy were within range, and then firing with deadly effect, charged upon them. At that first fire of the Indians Stillman's whole force turned and fled, pursued by about twenty-five savages, until nightfall ended the chase but not the rout. The panicstricken volunteers plunged on through swamps and creeks to Dixon's ferry, twenty-five miles away, and many of them kept

The Indians lost the two spies and one of the flag-bearers, who had been treacherously shot in Stillman's camp, while the others escaped by the fleetness of their ponies ; and of the whites eleven were killed.

But for this act of treachery the war might have been wholly avoided. From his easy victory, however. Black Hawk formed a poor opinion of the valor of the whites and an exaggerated estimate of the prowess of his own braves. The capture of Stillman's camp and rich stores of food and ammunition also supplied what he most needed, and having decided that war was now inevitable, he sent scouts to watch the white army and hurried his women and children northward to Lake Koshkonong. He was guided to that swampy fastness by friendly Winnebagoes, among whom he seems to have gained some allies, and then he returned, apparently with his whole force, to northern Illinois, prepared to resist General Atkinson's advance. It is a local tradition that he visited the "Winnebago village located at what is now Hohonega Park, five miles south of Beloit, and after failing to draw that band into the war went to the Winnebago camp just east of Janesville, called Black Hawk's grove, and thence on up to Koshkonong. It is quite certain at any rate that General Atkinson's command came this way in their pursuit.

May 15 Whiteside, with 1,400 men, reached the field of battle and buried the dead, and on the 19th Atkinson, with his entire army, moved up Rock river, leaving Stillman's corps, such as were left of them, to guard the supplies at Dixon's. These promptly deserted their post and went home, so Atkinson and the regulars returned to Dixon's, sending Whiteside to follow and locate Black Hawk. His troops, however, declared that the Indians had gone into the impenetrable swamps at the north, where pursuit was useless, and that they were not required to serve outside of the state in that Michigan territory. So before reaching the state line they turned around and marched south to Ottawa, 111., where they were all mustered out by General Reynolds May 27 and 28, Lincoln among them.

through the war and urged those who had been mustered out to reenlist for twenty days until the new regiments were formed. In reply to this appeal Abraham Lincoln enlisted and by Lieutenant Robert Anderson was on May 29 mustered into a company of mounted independent rangers, Lincoln furnishing his own arms, valued at $40, and horse with equipments, at $120. When mustered out at Dixon's Ferry June 16, the same day Lincoln enlisted again, and as a private in an independent cavalry company was again mustered in by Lieutenant Anderson to serve under Captain Jacob M. Early. This was part of a force of 300 mounted volunteer rangers under Colonel Henry Frye and Lieutenant Colonel James D. Henry, who agreed to protect the northern line of Illinois settlements until the new levy could be mobilized.

Atkinson's army was now divided into three brigades, under Generals James D. Henry, M. K. Alexander and Alexander Posey. The latter led the left wing, Henry the right, and Alexander the center.

During the irregular hostilities which followed that first attack of May 14 Black Hawk's various bands, including some scalping parties of Winnebagoes and Pottawatomies, made several raids on the Avhites of northern Illinois, resulting in the loss of many lives and producing widespread terror and panic among the settlers. The most notable instance occurred May 21, 1832. Thirty Pottawatomies and three Sacs under Girty surprised and slaughtered fifteen men, women and children at the Davis farm on Indian creek, twelve miles north of Ottawa. Two daughters of William Hall, Sylvia, aged seventeen, and Rachel, aged fifteen, were spared, carried up Rock river through this region to a stronghold not far from Koshkonong lake, which is by some identified with Black Hawk's grove, near Janesville, and were apparently adopted into the family of a Sac chief. Although obliged to endure some unavoidable hardships, they were not ill treated in any way, and by the influence and exertions of the Winnebago Indian agent, Colonel Gratiot, before mentioned, and the payment of about $2,000 (ransom offered by General Atkinson), through the Winnebago chief. White Crow, they were rescued, unharmed, less than two weeks after their capture. On June 3 White Crow delivered them to the occupants of the fort

Another factor in this war was a voluntary military force from the lead regions, led bj^ Colonel Henry Dodge, afterwards governor of Wisconsin and United States senator, who placed his command under the orders of General Atkinson. On May 25 near the head of the four lakes he had a conference with several Winnebago chiefs, through their agent, Henry Gratiot, and the Winnebagoes promised to be faithful to their treaties with the whites.

June 14 a party of thirteen Sacs killed five white men at Spafford's farm on the Pecatonica river, in what is noAV Lafayette county, Wisconsin. Colonel Dodge, with Captain James H. Gentry, two other officers and twenty-six privates, promptly followed the Sacs and on the 16th caught and killed all of them, having three of his own men killed and one wounded. The scene of this battle was a bend in the Pecatonica on section 11, town 2, range 5 east, in the town of Wiota.

On June 24 Black Hawk's own band of 200 attacked the Apple River fort fourteen miles east of Galena, killed one man and wounded one. The next day at Kellogg 's grove (now in Kent, Stephenson county. 111.) the same band attacked Major Dement 's scouting party of 150, but General Posey having come up with a detachment of volunteers, the Indians were routed with a loss of about fifteen, while the whites lost five.

About June 28 all the forces under Colonel Dodge gathered at Fort Hamilton (town of W^iota, Lafayette county) and were joined by Posey's brigade, all expecting to meet General Atkinson with the other two divisions of his army at Lake Koshkonong. On June 27 Henry's brigade and the regulars under Zachary Taylor, accompanied by General Atkinson, resumed their march from Dixon's up the east bank of Rock river, Early's company, in which Lincoln was a private, being with Henry. June 30 this force crossed the state line into what is now Wisconsin at Turtle village (Beloit) and camped on the prairie, well back from the river and about two miles north of the village, which was then unoccupied. General Atkinson went into camp early in the afternoon and had his men bring wood and water up from the river before dark. Then posting sentinels about the camp, he was protected against any night attack. (Some poles of this camp on the prairie were still to be seen there in 1840, when my father, Benjamin Brown, first came to Beloit. He several times pointed out to me the site of that camp as being on a slight ridge about eighty rods north of the present crossroads two miles north of Beloit.) The next morning, July 1, 1832, "the army continued its march up the river," says Westfield, "and after proceeding two or three miles saw an Indian spy on the high ground of the opposite or west side of Rock river." That high ground was probably Big hill, which in an early day was not covered with second growth as now, but had on it large timber and little underbrush, so that the view from it was unobstructed.

The army soon reached an abandoned Indian camp, which seems to have been at what has ever since been called Black Hawk's grove, in the southeast part of Janesville. The tent poles and remains of camp fires found there by the earliest settlers indicated a camp site of some permanence. On the evening of July 1 one division of Atkinson's force encamped near Storr's lake, a short distance east of the village of Milton. The night was dark and Captain Charles Dunn, afterwards chief justice of Wisconsin, while going the rounds as officer of the day was accidentally shot by an excited sentinel and so severely wounded that soon after he had to be conveyed to Dixon by an escort. Colonel Dodge and General Henry, with about 600 men, having sought the enemy at the rapids of the Rock (now Hustisford, Dodge county) and learned that they had gone west, returned to the main force.

On the morning of July 2 Atkinson 's command marched north to about the north line of Rock county and then, turning towards Lake Koshkonong, Early's rangers being in advance, soon struck the trail of Black Hawk's retreat and halted. It is alleged that on July 3 the army was in camp on the north side of Otter creek, about two miles from Lake Koshkonong (on section 3 in the town of Milton). While they were at this camp scouts brought in an aged Sac Indian who was blind. When the army passed on they left him food and water, but some of the forces of Posey or Alexander, who followed, coming on him unex- pectedly and supposing him a spy, shot him - the only Indian known to have been killed in Rock county. On the evening of July 3 Alexander arrived with his division. July 6 Atkinson marched to Burnt Village, at the junction of Whitewater creek with Bark river. That night Posey's brigade and Colonel Henry Dodge 's regiment arrived at the mouth of the Whitewater. Captain Early also returned from a scout. July 7 Atkinson marched several miles up the Rock, but on the 8th returned to the mouth of the Whitewater. Winnebago Indians falsely reported Black Hawk as being on an island in Lake Koshkonong (since called Black Hawk's island.) July 9 Early's company crossed to the island on rafts, but found no one there. A. A. Jackson, of Janesville, from wliose article in Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. 14, on "Lincoln in the Black Hawk War," part of this account has been taken, says: "I have been thus particular in tracing Captain Early's company for the purpose of showing that Abraham Lincoln was with the right wing of Atkinson's army and jiiarched up the Rock through Beloit and Janesville."

By July 10, the provisions of the army having been exhausted, Henry and Alexander were sent to Fort Winnebago (at Portage) for supplies ; Posey was ordered to Fort Hamilton (in the lead region soutli of Dodge ville) ; Taylor with the regulars went to Prairie du Chien ; Emory's regiment returned to Dixon's, 111.; while Early's rangers were mustered out of the United States service at Burnt Village July 11. The day after he was mustered out Lincoln started for his home in Illinois. That night his horse and that of a comrade were stolen and they had to walk. The two went from the mouth of the Whitewater to Peoria and verj^ probably returned through this region by Black Hawk's grove and Turtle village, the trail over which they had already marched the other way.

The close of the war soon followed. The retreat of Black Hawk's band westward with their women and children having been discovered, the commands of Colonel Dodge and General Henry promptly pursued, and on July 21 found and fought them on the Wisconsin river at Wisconsin Heights (two miles below Sauk City). The final battle was fought at the mouth of the Bad Axe river (opposite the north line of Iowa), where the larger part of Black Hawk's party, including many squaws and children.

The Black Hawk W Ak 47

were ruthlessly destroyed, August 2. Black Hawk and the prophet fled north, but were eaptured about two miles above the site of Kilbourn by two Winnebago chiefs, Chaeta and Decorra, and delivered August 27 to the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, General Street, who at once sent them under charge of Lieutenant Jefferson Davis to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Mo.

General Winfield Scott had been ordered from the East, with 1,000 regulars, to take command, but was delayed by an epidemic of cholera among his soldiers and did not reach Rock Island until after the war was ended. It was estimated that some 850 Indians, with 250 soldiers and settlers, had been killed, and that the war had cost also about $2,000,000.

September 15 to 21, 1832, a treaty of peace was signed by the AVinnebagoes at Fort Armstrong, Rock Island, and Black Hawk was held as a hostage during the winter at Jefferson Barracks. In April, 1833, he was taken to Washington, D. C, along with the prophet and Neapope, and they were kept as prisoners in Fortress Monroe until June 4 and then discharged. During his imprisonment there Black Hawk's portrait was painted by R. M. Sully, and it now hangs in the museum of the Wisconsin State Historical Society at Madison, Wis.

On their way west the party having charge of the Indians took Black Hawk through most of the principal cities, in each of which he was lionized, and at Fort Armstrong, August 1, 1833, formally placed him under the guardianship of the legal Sac chief Keokuk.

Black Hawk lived on a reservation in southeastern Iowa and died there October 3, 1838, aged seventy-one years. There also he was buried on the west bank of the Mississippi, according to Moses M. Strong, near what is now Montrose, Lee county. Surveyor Willard Barrows, however, wrote to the Davenport "Gazette" in 1859 that Black Hawk sickened and died near lowaville, on the Des Moines river in Wapello county, and was buried near by; that at a later period his bones were placed in the hall of the Historical Society at Burlington, Iowa, and consumed when the whole collection was destroyed by fire. Barrows said that he noted Black Hawk's wigwam and grave while surveying in 1843.

traordinary and widespread public interest in its progress, the reports of the soldiers engaged in it, together with the attention which Black Hawk attracted in the East, all gave to this fertile and beautiful Rock river region a wonderful advertisement. Nearly all previous settlement of the southern part of our territory had been from and in the Southwest. But the Black Hawk "War interested hundreds of eastern people in this locality, and so was the indirect means of bringing here that high quality of citizenship which has made the Rock county of today.

The years 1836 and 1837 were years of wild speculation in western lands, and men seem to have been as readily duped in those days with fabulous stories of wealth to be picked up easily and quickly from the Wisconsin prairies as they are today with tales of riches to be gathered from the jungles of Yucatan.

Early in the year 1836, and while there were but few actual settlers in what is now Rock county, a number of cities, villages and towns were laid out that we may now call "the forgotten places," so absolutely have their names and locations passed away. What is now Rock county was then a part of Milwaukee and Racine counties, and no names had as yet been given to any of the townships; but for the purpose of more plainly designating the points where those now forgotten places were located we use the present names of the townships as well as the government designation of townships and ranges.

In telling of the forgotten places in Rock county, as they were in the great boom of 1836 and 1837, we deal only with those that have absolutely ceased to exist. Wisconsin has grown into a great state with a growth that has been steady and sure, and in the same way Rock county has grown into one of the great counties of the state, with thriving cities and villages, and with rich farms ; but upon no one of the sites of the cities, villages or towns described herein are there now any houses except those of the farmers who till the soil, with here and there a modest church or a little country school.

On December 13, 1836, Van Buren was laid out and platted by John Thomas Haight, Francis W. Hending, Giles S. Brisbin and John L. Hilton upon the north half of the southeast quarter of section 1 of the town of Union, in Rock county, and the south- east quarter of section 36 in the town of Rutland, in Dane county. The town of Van Buren was platted into sixty-one blocks, that part in Dane county containing blocks No. 1 to 40 inclusive, and that part in Rock county blocks 41 to 61 inclusive. In comparison with this and other similar places we will state that the original plat of the village of Janesville, our county seat, platted on May 14, 1840, contained but fifty-nine blocks. Van Buren was laid out upon both sides of Badfish creek, and upon each side of the creek a wide space was reserved for "hydraulic purposes," as stated upon the map of the town site. Some few conveyances of lots were made during several years succeeding the date of the plat, but as early as 1843 that part of the town site in Rock county was sold under the government designation of the north half of the northeast quarter of section 1 in town 4 north of range 10 east, and the land upon which Van Buren had been laid out has ever since been conveyed as farming land and used for farming purposes.

A few miles southeast of Van Buren, and in the west half of the east half of the northwest quarter of section 15 of the town of Porter, the town of Saratoga was laid out by Calvin Harmon, William PajTie and Thomas A. Holmes, on January 6, 1837. This land is part of the farm now owned by Charles White. There were thirty-six blocks platted in Saratoga. Block 23 was laid out around a large and beautiful spring of water, now called Caledonia spring, that may have suggested to the proprietors the name for the townsite. On November 17, 1837, the proprietors sold a number of blocks and lots to Alfred Bixby, and that is the only sale of which we have any record. The spring remains, pouring out its great volume of water, but Saratoga has long ceased to exist; the birds bviild their nest and fill the air with their songs about the flowing water, and cattle graze upon the lands upon which Holmes, Payne and Harmon had hoped and expected to see a city grow up that in time would rival the Saratoga of the East.

Warsaw was platted by Charles Mellin and Albert Fowler on September 21, 1836, on the southwest quarter of the southwest quarter of section 11 of the town of Fulton, within a quarter of a mile of the present city of Edgerton. The town map shows twenty-four blocks and a public square. The last sale of any of the platted land was made on August 10, 1837, and after that

The late Silas Hurd, who was one of the pioneers of Rock county, used to tell the following story : One evening a stranger came to his home on the east side of Rock river and asked for a night's lodging, which of course was given to him. The stranger stated that he was from New York city, and complained bitterly of the hardships he had experienced on his journey west. In the course of the conversation he asked Mr. Hvird how he could reach a place called Warsaw. Mr. Hurd told him that unfortunately his only boat was smashed up, and that there was no other within some miles of his place. "But," he said, "you can go right down back of my house and swim Rock river easily enough. Then you will go about half a mile north and about a mile east, and there you will find a lot of stakes stuck in the ground. That's Warsaw." "But are there no houses there?" asked the man from New York city. "Not a house," Mr. Hurd replied. "There's nothing but stakes." "Well," the stranger said, "that settles it. I have bought a lot of property in Warsaw, and have been assured that it is a growing, thriving place with great possibilities in the near future, and I've had a good, tough time getting this far. If there's nothing but stakes in Warsaw I don't care to look at it; and, any way, I wouldn't swim Rock river for all the land in this township. I'll go back to New York and get after the man that sold me corner lots in Warsaw."

On the west bank of Rock river, at the junction of the Rock and Catfish rivers, in section 19 of the town of Fulton, early in the year 1836 James D. Doty, Alfred Orendorf, John Bannister and Morgan L. Martin laid out a village that they named Carramana, containing fifty platted blocks, and being about the size of Janesville, the county seat, as originally laid out. The date of the plat cannot be ascertained from the records of the county, as the map of the village is somewhat defaced, but it was earlier than April 20, 1836, because on that day Morgan L. Martin conveyed to Solomon Juneau an undivided one-half interest in the village site. Later a few lots were sold as platted land, but since 1845 the townsite has been sold and conveyed by the usual and ordinary description of farming lands. The word "Carramana" is the Anglicized spelling of the name of an old Winnebago chief, called "The Walking Turtle."

The first survey for the Milwaukee & Mississippi railroad carried the line between the old site of Carramana, as we understand, and what is now called Indian Ford. The exactions of the land owners, however, were regarded as exorbitant by the railroad company, and a new line was surveyed leaving Carramana some miles to the southwest and going north by the way of Edgerton. Had Carramana gotten the railroad, and with the fine water power on Catfish and Rock rivers, it would in all probability have grown into an important place. But Carramana got neither railroad nor water power, and in a few years it passed away with the other boom towns of those times, and even its name now seems to be unknown to the people in the township in which it w^as located.

John A. Fletcher purchased of the United States government on February 21, 1839, the east half of the southeast quarter of section 23 in what is now the town of Johnstown. Shortly after his purchase of this land he concluded that it would make a good townsite. No map of the place is on record, and it does not appear even to have been named. The good Squire Fletcher had just driven his last stakes when a land hviuter came by, who said he was from Milwaukee, and was looking up some desirable tract that had not yet been entered; then he added, "It must be very sickly around here?" "No, it ain't," said Mr. Fletcher; "it's the healthiest country in the United States. What makes you ask such a fool question as that?" "Well," the man replied, "I only ask because I see you are laying out a thundering big burying ground."

The most pretentious of the forgotten places of Rock county was Wisconsin City, platted by John Inman, Josiah Breese, Edward Shepard, James E. Seymour and John H. Hardenburgh, May 24, 1836, on the south part of section 34 in the town of Janesville, and section 3, and part of fractional lot in section 2, in the town of Rock, on the west side of Rock river.

Early in the spring of 1837 Dr. James Heath located East Wisconsin City on the east bank of Rock river, and opposite Wisconsin City. No plat was ever made of this place, and the city consisted of a frame house sixteen feet square in which Dr. Heath lived with his family and kept a country store and a tavern of the old-fashioned type, with entertainment for man and beast. In addition to .being a physician Dr. Heath was a farmer, store- keeper and landlord, and he must also have been a man of cheerful disposition and of infinite humor, as evidenced by his bestowing the name of East Wisconsin City upon his humble little shack which served as home, store, tavern and office.

Wisconsin City as laid out contained 209 blocks, with reservations for six churches, a market-place, a college, an academy and three common schools. Part of the plat now lies within the limits of the south end of the city of Janesville, and the remaining part is just outside of and adjoining the city limits on the southwest. There are limestone quarries upon the site of Wisconsin City, and the remainder of it is used for agricultural purposes. A portion of the land is a part of what is usually called "the old Search farm," the scene of the murder of the aged Henry Search and his wife about twenty years ago; a brutal crime, the perpetrator of which has never been discovered.

On July 7, 1836, Edward Shepard sold a one-twelfth interest in eighty-one of the 209 blocks in Wisconsin City to Maurice Wakeman for $6,666.54, and on the following day he sold another one-twelfth interest in the same blocks to Addison Dougherty for $6,666.66. On November 29, 1836, he sold interests in certain other tracts to Peter Cannon for $10,000. Many smaller sales were made before the boom came to an end, and then in 1845 parts of that city were sold for taxes, and under these sales and those of a few succeeding years, with some conveyances made by the proprietors and their grantees, and for very moderate prices, the various blocks in the pretentious city passed into farming lands, with here and there a limestone quarry; and where the six churches should be lifting their spires towards the sky, and the youth of the Rock River valley should be drinking from the founts of learning in the college, the academy and the three common schools, the farmer tills the soil and the quarryman blasts the rock with which we build out streets.

A quarter of a mile south of Wisconsin City, on fractional lots 2 and 3 of section 10, and on the east half of the east half of section 9 in the town of Rock, William Payne laid out the village of Newburgh. The date of the plat of this village is not shown upon the map, but it was evidently some time in 1836. The village contained 140 blocks and a public square, but with no other reservations. Possibly Mr. Payne figured out that he would waste no land, as his village was but a quarter of a mile from the six churches, the college, the academy and the three common schools of Wisconsin City, and his people would have but a little way to go for either religious or secular education.

On February 25, 1837, Mr. Payne sold Newburgh to William B. Lamb for $20,000, taking back from Lamb a mortgage for $7,000 to secure the payment of part of the purchase money. Between March 29, 1837, and August 5, 1837, parts of the village were sold to the amount of $95,200, and it is highly probable that in Newburgh, as in the other places mentioned herein, other sales may have been made, but the conveyances have never been recorded. It appears that Lamb did not pay his mortgage, and it was subsequently foreclosed and the entire tract bought in by Payne for $1,352. The sheriff 's deed to him is dated October 21, 1843. The tract upon which the townsite of Newburgh was laid out afterwards became the farm of the late William Gunn and was owned by him at the time of his death.

Half a mile down Eock river, south of Newburgh, and within sound of the promised bells of the six churches of Wisconsin City, and of the class yells of the students whom it was hoped would some day fill the various educational institutions in that seat of learning, there was laid out in an early day, in 1836, a place called the town of Kushkanong, upon the northwest fractional quarter of section 22, fractional lots 3 and 4 of section 15, and the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter of section 21, in the town of Eock. The name upon the map is "Kushkanong," but in some of the few conveyances of lots made in 1836 and 1837 the name is spelled "Kuskanong" and "Koshkanong. " The name is from the Winnebago, and means "the lake where we live." Doubtless the proprietors took the name from that of Lake Koshkanong, in the northern part of the county.

Neither the date of the plat nor the names of the proprietors appear upon the map, but an earlier history of Eock county states that Kushkanong was surveyed by Kinzie, Hunter and Booby. All the lands within the limits of the town of Kushkanong were purchased at government entry by Eobert A. Kinzie in the month of March, 1836. Neither Hunter nor Booby appear in the records. The records do show, however, that parties other than Kinzie had some equitable interests in the land, but neither the names of such parties nor the nature of their equities appear.

with a reservation twenty rods square for "state purposes" and another of equal size for "county purposes," and there was also a market square, and a proposed bridge crossing Rock river at the foot of Market street. Neither Carramana, Wisconsin City nor Newburgh, all laid out upon the west bank of the river, seemed to have aspired to a bridge.

Upon the map of the town is the following unsigned interesting note of the surveyor, which we give verbatim ; the map is badly defaced, and we have indicated such parts as are illegible : the river, where the bank is from eight to twelve feet in height, and gradually recedes to the back of the town, presenting a moderately enclined plain at the east and southeast. It is at material for building. Stone of a good quality and lime are abundance in the vicinity. The surface of the ground upon which the town is located is dry. Neither is there any marshes or stagnant water in the surrounding country to poison the air with noxious effluvia. Considering it is on a right line from the mouth and the nearest bend of the Mississippi to said lake, it must, I think, soon become the most interesting site on the river on which it is located."