Murder, Madness, and Mayhem on the Iowa Illinois Frontier

Murder, Madness, and Mayhem on the

Iowa - Illinois

Frontier

Copyright © 2018  2023 Nick Vulich

Table of Contents

In the Beginning

Black Hawk War (1832)

The Bellevue War (1840)

The Rock River Pirates (1841)

Murder on the Mississippi (1845)

The Brothers Hodges (1845)

Mormon Trek Across Iowa (1846)

Vigilantes—Iowa Style (1857)

The Great Tornado of 1860

The Rock Island Military Prison (1863-1865)

The Murder of Lizzie Brownlie (1874)

The Rockdale Flood of 1876

The Grasshopper Plagues (1867-1879)

The Tornado at Pomeroy (1893)

Jesse James & the Adair Train Robbery (1873)

Robberies

Suicides

Short Takes

Bonus Excerpts and an Explanation of My Research Methodology

Killing Colonel Davenport

The Davenport Murderers

Extensive Organization of Murderers and Thieves

Confession of John Long

Execution of the Prisoners

About the Author

Works Cited

Footnotes

In the Beginning

Davenport, Iowa, sits at the bend of the Mississippi River just below the Galena lead mining region and opposite Rock Island, Illinois. Very few people alive today would believe it, but two hundred years ago, the Mississippi River at Iowa served as the gateway to the west.

Even then, people had their doubts. The big question was, where was the west?

A vast number of our people have determined to go West if the West was to be found, wrote the editor of the Burlington Hawkeye. "It was many years ago thought to have been in Ohio, but it was soon ascertained that it was not there. Next, some imagined they could find it in Indiana; but before a fair settlement had been made, Illinois set up her claim as being in the far west. The Black Hawk War soon opened the eyes of some Suckers to see that they were mistaken and that the New Purchase on the west of the Mississippi must, after all, be the place. A few years showed them their error."[1]

The frontier was forever changing and shifting its boundaries. Today it was Iowa. Tomorrow it would be the Dakotas, then the Pacific Coast.

The Indians knew very little about their lands. Once they stepped off their familiar trails, the area was a wilderness of unbroken trees and prairie grass. A few trading posts had sprung up to serve the small mining settlements in the lead regions at Galena and Mineral Point.

Most of the roads followed the old Indian trails. A trail along the east banks of the Mississippi River joined Galena and Rock Island. A few stagecoaches ran along Kellogg's Trail, connecting Galena, Peoria, and southern and eastern Illinois settlements.

Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois, in 1884. (Hand-colored Illustration from Picturesque America.)

A daily mail coach traveled this road.  It carried people going to and from the lead mines. The few settlers who lived along the road made their living feeding and housing travelers and providing a change of teams for the stagecoaches. There was Old Man Kellogg at Kellogg's Grove. Mr. Winter lived on the Apple River, and John Dixon ran a ferry at Dixon on the Rock River.

There were others, but most were small settlements of just one or a few houses. The largest settlement between Galena and the Illinois River was on Bureau Creek. It boasted thirty families. Chicago was little more than a speck on the prairie. There were maybe two or three hundred homes protected by Fort Dearborn.[2]

Compare that with the chief village of the Sac and Fox Indians located on the north side of Rock River. About five hundred families lived there.

In the summer of 1823, squatters began encroaching on Black Hawk’s village while the Indians were away on their winter hunt. The treaty of 1804 guaranteed the Indians the use of their lands so long as they remained un-surveyed and not sold to individuals. The frontier was still fifty miles to the east.[3] The country between had not yet been surveyed or explored. The squatters had no legal rights to be on this land. By law, the government should have protected the Indians, but the authorities tended to look the other way.

What bothered the Sacs was the settlers destroyed their homes and plowed up their corn fields. Saukenuk was their birthplace and contained the main cemetery of their tribe.

An early view of Fort Armstrong at Rock Island. The home Colonel Davenport was murdered at was located on the island. Colorized copy of an 1898 drawing by Mrs. Alice C. Walker.

The settlers showed nothing but contempt for the Sacs. They fenced in their cornfields. They whipped and beat the women and children whenever they set foot in their cornfields.  They burned the Indian lodges and dug up their corn fields. When Black Hawk complained to the authorities at Fort Armstrong, his pleas went unheard. Each year the settlers got bolder and tore up more of the Indian’s land. When they returned from their winter's hunt, the Sacs found their homes destroyed; their fields fenced in and plowed up by the whites.

What’s surprising—is not that the Sacs pushed back but that they didn’t react more violently sooner. The kindling was there as early as 1823.

I had an interview with Keokuk, said Black Hawk, to see if this difficulty could not be settled with our Great Father and told him to propose to give any other land that our Great Father might choose, even our lead mines, to be peaceably permitted to keep the small point of land on which our village was situated...Keokuk promises to make an exchange if possible.[4]

Keokuk and the United States Indian agent at Fort Arm­strong—advised a peaceful retreat across the Mississippi. However, Black Hawk was reluctant to leave his ancestral home. He claimed the Sac and Fox chiefs who signed the treaty of 1804 never agreed to give away the land their village was located on.

I questioned Quashquame about the sale of the lands, said Black Hawk. He assured me that he never had consented to the sale of our village.[5] All his advisors—the British agent at Malden, the Winnebago prophet, and Neapope misled him. Each of his trusted advisors told Black Hawk if this was true, the government did not legally own the site of his village. They told him to hold fast to his village. The United States would not dare to remove him by force.

I heard that there was a great chief on the Wabash and sent a party to get his advice.[6] That chief told him the same thing. Finally, Black Hawk went to see the British Father at Malden. He gave the same re­ply that the chief on the Wabash had given. This assured me that I was right and determined me to hold out, as I had promised our people.[7]

That was the beginning of the end for the Sac and Fox nation in Illinois.

Black Hawk War (1832)

Black Hawk was the leader of the British Band. He believed the Sacs had never sold the lands their village sat on during the Treaty of 1804. (McKenney and Hall. The Indian Tribes of North America. 1836-1844.)

The Black Hawk war wasn't much of a war. It was more like a massacre.

By 1831 the state of Illinois had had enough of arguing with Indians. They warned Black Hawk if he crossed the Mississippi River and returned to his village at Saukenuk, it would be considered an act of aggression. When the Sac and Fox ignored the warning and crossed the Mississippi in 1832, all hell busted lose along the border.

The Sac and Fox told a different story.

Neapope said the prophet advised Black Hawk to cross back to his village and make corn, that if the Americans came and told them to move again, they would shake hands with them. It would have ended then and there. If the Americans had come and told us to move, we should have shaken hands and immediately have moved peaceably.[8]

That was the Indian’s version of the story.

What followed was a mix-up of frontier murder, madness, and mayhem. Illinois Governor John Reynolds called out the militia and raised thousands of volunteers. General Winfield Scott marched his regulars to Fort Armstrong at Rock Island. Zachary Taylor led a group of dragoons in the fighting. 

One of the men who fought in that war was a tall, gangly youth with whom the world became better acquainted decades later. The twenty-three-year-old’s name was Abraham Lincoln. When he described his experiences during the Black Hawk War, Lincoln laughed off his time as a soldier and compared it to swatting flies. 

Did you know I am a war hero? asked Lincoln. Yes, sir. In the days of the Black Hawk War, I fought, bled, and came away... I had a good many bloody struggles with mosquitos, and although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly I say was often very hungry.[9]

Even though he never fought a battle in his short stint as a warrior, Lincoln saw the aftermath. After the battle of Kellogg's Grove, he helped bury five men killed and scalped in action.

The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay heads towards us on the ground. And every man had a round red spot upon the top of his head about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque...[10]

The Black Hawk War was the first Indian war fought west of the Mississippi River.

––––––––

Keokuk led the Peace Faction. At the end of the war, government authorities released Black Hawk into his custody. (From George Catlin. Letters and Notes on the North American Indian Tribes. 1903.)

Of course, we all know that telling history is about which side you are on. The story of the Black Hawk War is no different. Every yokel and backwoods frontiersman with a grudge against the Indians joined the fray. A slew of future presidents, congressmen, senators and military leaders launched their careers on the Indian’s misfortune.

Several opportunities presented themselves to end the conflict without spilling any blood. But, instead, they were bungled.

The first chance to end the campaign peacefully came before a single shot was fired. Another opportunity to end the war presented itself just before the battle of Bad Axe. Black Hawk attempted to hail Captain Throckmorton onboard the steamboat Warrior.[11] American troops disregarded the Indian’s flag of truce and fired upon them. What followed was the massacre of nearly seven hundred men, women, and children of the Sac tribe.

What’s important about the Black Hawk War is it set the tone for future conflicts between the whites and the Indians in the opening of the American West. The land it was fought over was set aside exclusively by treaty for the use of the Indians. As the pioneers moved further west, they encroached upon the Indian nations, building homes and fencing their lands. When the Indians complained, their concerns went unanswered.

During the troubles that followed, the settlers beat or killed the Indians who got in their way. When the Indians retaliated, the frontier went into a panic. The cavalry rushed in to save the day. Frontier troopers attacked and pushed the Indians further westward when by treaty, they were obligated to protect the Indian lands from the white settlers who squatted on them.

Ironically, the Nile’s Weekly Register said, Black Hawk has little respect for treaties.[12] Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?

On November 3rd,1804, the United States government concluded a treaty with the Sac and Fox Indians. By the terms of this treaty, the Indians ceded fifty million acres of land. Article 7 of the treaty — became one of the chief causes of the Black Hawk War. It stated, as long as the lands which are now ceded to the United States remain their property, the Indians belonging to the said tribes shall enjoy the privilege of living or hunting upon them.[13]

The last portion of the treaty became the sticking point.

If the Sac had been forced to leave their lands when they ceded them to the government, there would have been no problem. But instead, they continued to occupy the area for nearly thirty years. Black Hawk’s memory grew fuzzy. He insisted his people never sold the land his village sat on.

On April 6th, 1832, Black Hawk, along with five hundred warriors and their squaws and children, crossed the Mississippi River at the Yellow Banks below the mouth of the Rock River and advanced into Illinois. News of the Indian invasion spread like wildfire throughout the settlements in Illinois and Wisconsin. Those settlers who did not join the militia made their way to the larger settlements, where they built crude stockade forts. Inside the fortifications, the settlers formed themselves into garrisons and prepared for the impending Indian attacks

The first engagement was a comedy of errors. Major Isaiah Stillman bivouacked his troops in a clump of open timber three miles southwest of the mouth of Sycamore Creek while his men scouted the area, trying to find Black Hawk’s warriors.

Black Hawk said he had decided to surrender. When he learned Stillman’s troops were nearby, he sent three of his braves to make peace. They walked towards the soldiers carrying a white flag of truce. Five braves followed on horseback at a safe distance to keep Black Hawk informed about what was happening. A group of soldiers spotted the five watchers and chased after them. Two of the five braves died in the pursuit. The other three escaped and made their way back to Black Hawk, telling him two of their number died along with the three flag-bearers.

After he learned what happened to his messengers, Black Hawk gave up all thoughts of surrender. Instead, he tore up his flag of truce and encouraged his men to attack the soldiers despite the Sac being outnumbered and facing almost certain death. Neapope told the same story when he was interviewed by the soldiers immediately after his capture.

What should have been a peaceful end to the Black Hawk War turned into a full-fledged tragedy for whites and Indians alike. Black Hawk said, I was forced into war, with about five hundred warriors, to contend against three or four thousand.[14]

The Battle of Stillman’s Run occurred at Sycamore Creek. Newspaper accounts said the Sac depredations were the worst ever seen. The dead militiamen’s heads and limbs were severed from their bodies. The body parts littered the ground, tossed to and fro in wanton and savage triumph.[15] The Nile’s Weekly Register provided a more graphic account. The dead that were found were cut and mangled most shocking and indecent; their hearts cut out, heads off, and every other spot indignity practiced upon their person.[16]

The dead soldiers were treated miserably, but the soldiers didn’t treat the Indians they killed any better. Consider the case of Captain J. W. Stephenson. He fought a bloody battle near Apple River on June 19th. The Indians had stolen ten horses outside the stockade at Galena the previous night. 

The next morning, Stephenson chased them into the woods. The thickets were so thick his men were forced to dismount and charge the warriors on foot. They were so close their guns were useless. The men battled with bayonets and Bowie knives. Stephenson reported, "We