not to cross the river.  I was pleased with this assurance of safety, and immediately crossed over and made my winter’s camp.  Game was plenty:  We lived happy and often talked of you.  My boy regretted your absence, and the hardships you would have to undergo.  We had been here about two moons, when my boy went out as usual to hunt.  Night came on and he did not return.  I was alarmed for his safety and passed a sleepless night.  In the morning my old woman went to the other lodges and gave the alarm, and all turned out in pursuit.  There being snow on the ground, they soon came upon his track, and after pursuing it some distance, found that he was on the trail of a deer, that led to the river.  They soon came to the place where he had stood and fired, and found a deer hanging upon the branch of a tree, which had been skinned.  But here also were found the tracks of white men.  They had taken my boy prisoner.  Their tracks led across the river, and then down towards the fort.  My friends followed them, and soon found my boy lying dead.  He had been most cruelly murdered.  His face was shot to pieces, his body stabbed in several places, and his head scalped.  His arms were tied behind him.”

The old man ceased his narrative, relapsed into the stupor from which he had been aroused and in a few minutes, expired.  Black Hawk remained by his body during the night, and next day buried it upon the peak of the bluff.  Shocked at the cruel fate of his adopted son, and deeply touched by the mournful death of his old comrade, he was roused to vengeance against the Americans, and after remaining a few days at the village, and raising a band of braves, prepared for offensive operations upon the frontiers.

Having narrated to his band the murder of his adopted son, they began to thirst for blood, and agreed to follow Black Hawk wheresoever he might lead.  The party consisted of about thirty.  They descended the Mississippi in canoes to the place where Fort Madison had stood, but found it abandoned by the American troops and burnt.  They continued their course down the river and landed near Cap au Gris, on the 10th of May, where they killed one of the United States Rangers, named Bernard, but were driven off by Lieutenant Massey, with a detachment from Fort Howard.  The Indians, however, rallied in the woods, and on the 24th of May, a severe battle and of a character somewhat novel, was fought between the troops at Fort Howard, under Lieutenant Drakeford of the U. S. Rangers, and Black Hawk and his party.  The former, in his official report of this engagement, says,