Sauk chief Black Hawk, ignoring a treaty he considered fraudulent, led hundreds of warriors and non-combatants across the Mississippi River to reoccupy ancestral lands along the Rock River. "We were determined never to be driven" back, Black Hawk wrote afterward, "and equally so, not to make the first attack, our object being to act only on the defensive."

Before he deployed U.S. troops, Gen. Henry Atkinson asked Gratiot to try to persuade Black Hawk to return to Iowa. Gratiot traveled to Prophetstown, Ill., where he met the mounted Sauk warriors on April 25.

"Their bodies were painted with white clay," a witness recalled, "with an occasional impression of their hands about their bodies, colored black. Around their ankles and bodies they wore wreaths of straw. . . . They moved on with great regularity, performing many evolutions, wheeling every few minutes and firing towards Fort Armstrong, turning, flanking, and then forming into solid columns."

They imprisoned Gratiot until Black Hawk could meet with him the next morning. After hearing the government's demands and Gratiot's advice to give up, the chief told Gratiot to inform Atkinson "that they would not return, but to the contrary that if he brought his troops among them, they would fight them."

When excited young warriors threatened to kill Gratiot, friendly Ho-Chunk chiefs ransomed him and sent him down river. The stage was set for the last war to be fought on Wisconsin soil.

Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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