968

SCOTT S ARMY DECIMATED BY C1T0LERA.

1832.

ii

   				

Hawk, who was retiring toward the Mississippi. Upon the bank of that river, nearly opposite tbe Upper loway, the Indians were overtaken and again defeated, on the 2d of August, with a loss of one hundred and fifty men, while of the whites but eighteen fell. This battle entirely broke the power of Black Hawk; he fled, but was seized by the Winnebagoes, and upon the 27th, was delivered to the officers of the United States, at Prairie du Chien.

General Scott, during the months of July and August, was con-tendinar with a worse than Indian foe. The Asiatic cholera had just reached Canada; passing up the St. Lawrence to Detroit, it overtook the western-bound armament, and thenceforth the camp became an hospital. On the 8th of July, his thinned ranks landed at Fort Dearborn or Chicago, but it was late in August before they reached the Mississippi. The number of that band who died from the cholera, must have been at least seven times as great as that of all who fell in battle. There were several other skirmishes of the troops with the Indians, and a number of individuals murdered ; making in all, about seventy-five persons killed in these actions, or murdered on the frontiers.

In September, the Indian troubles were closed by a treaty, which relinquished to the wdiite men thirty millions of acres of land, for which stipulated annuities were to be paid; constituting now the eastern portion of the State of Iowa, to which the only real claim of the Sauks and Foxes, was their depredations on the unoffending Ioways, about one hundred and thirty years since. To Keokuk and his party, a reservation of forty miles square was given, in consideration of his fidelity; while Black Hawk and his family, were sent as hostages to Fort Monroe in the Chesapeake, where they remained till June, 1833. The chief afterward returned to his native wilds, where he died in 1840.

Black Hawk cannot rank with Pontiac or Tecumthe; he seemingly fought more for revenge, and showed less intellectual power; but he was a fearless man.

The same disease which decimated General Scott's troops, during the autumn of this year, and the summers of 1833 and 1834, spread terror through the whole West, though during the latter year it was comparatively mild. Three facts in relation to it were remarkable; the first is, that other diseases diminished while it prevailed;   the second, that many points which were spared in 1832, (as Lexington, Kentucky,) were devastated in 1883;   the third, that its appearance and progress presented none of the evidences of contagion.