Highlights Archives
The Battle of Bad Axe: a Wisconsin Tragedy
August 2 marks the anniversary of one of the saddest days in Wisconsin history. On this day, the cruelly misnamed Battle of Bad Axe began near the mouth of the Bad Axe River and on the banks of the Mississippi. It would be the last battle of the Black Hawk War and the last battle fought east of the Mississippi between Indians and Americans. Black Hawk, realizing the futility of continuing to fight and evade U.S. troops, attempted to lead his people across the Mississippi River on August 1, 1832. But rather than crossing to safety, they were caught in the crossfire between a gunboat ahead and the pursuing troops on the bluffs behind them. Despite waving white flags of surrender, most of the remaining men, women, and children were massacred by the Americans. In the end, only 150 of Black Hawk's initial community of 1,200 followers survived.
Although the Black Hawk War officially "began" with the Battle of Stillman's Run in May of 1832, tensions between the Sauk and American settlers had been building for more than a generation. As thousands of white settlers swarmed into the Rock River region without regard for Indian treaties, Keokuk and other Sauk leaders decided to comply with an 1829 government order to move across the Mississippi in return for corn to get through the winter of 1831-32. When the government failed to honor its promises, a group of about 1,200 Sauk under Black Hawk's leadership returned to the Illinois side of the river in hopes of re-occupying their homeland and harvesting their corn. Black Hawk returned to find the land fenced by settlers, the corn trampled by cattle and, even worse, the Illinois militia, soon joined by the U.S. Army, waiting to push them back. For 16 weeks, Black Hawk and his warriors created tactical diversions and eluded capture while trying to make their way safely back across the Mississippi.
John H. Fonda was an explorer, trader and mail carrier who came to Prairie du Chien in the 1820s and served under Colonel Dodge at the Battle of Bad Axe. His reminiscences were published as a series of newspaper articles in 1858. Perry Armstrong wrote one of the first comprehensive histories of the Black Hawk War in 1886 based on letters and interviews with participants. His account of the events at Bad Axe includes a letter from the captain of the gunboat that fired on the retreating Indians as well as Black Hawk's own version of the events.
Noted landscape artists Samuel Brookes and Thomas Stevenson painted several Wisconsin scenes, including one of the Bad Axe battlefield in 1856.
See a powder horn carried by a member of Colonel Dodge's militia throughout the spring and summer of 1832, an object in our Museum's collections.
:: Posted August 2, 2005
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