mail: Bill Thayer Italiano Help Up Home previous: Chapter 3 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Old Fort Crawford and the Frontier by Bruce E. Mahan The State Historical Society of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa, 1926 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 5 This site is not affiliated with the US Military Academy.

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 p34  IV
Old Fort Madison​a

Not until two years after Pike returned from his voyage up the Mississippi did the government begin to erect a trading post for the Sauk and Fox Indians as was promised them in the Treaty of 1804 at St. Louis, and then it was made an annex to a fort.96

Although the government had not followed Pike's recommendation about establishing posts in the Upper Mississippi region the administration was stressing the policy of establishing trading houses in the Indian country. Washington had initiated the system among the southern Indians and Jefferson extended it to Detroit, to Fort Wayne, to Chicago, and to the Louisiana Purchase.​97 Although the government desired especially to confer upon the Indians the advantages of fair dealing and to furnish goods at honest prices, the policy of establishing trading houses was also a blow at British domination of the fur trade in the Upper Northwest. In the struggle between England and Napoleon American shipping suffered so much loss and humiliation that President Jefferson felt he was justified in instituting a program of retaliation. By extending the trading house system in 1808 to Fort Osage on the Missouri and to Mackinac, a center of operations for British traders, the government hoped doubtless to "destroy the equilibrium and profits of British traders in the upper Mississippi Valley".​98 The same year witnessed the extension of this policy to the Iowa country by the establishment of Fort Madison.

 p35  In the early fall of 1808 Lieutenant Alpha Kingsley with a company of the First United States Infantry was sent up the Mississippi from Fort Belle Fontaine to erect a fort and trading post at the most eligible site near the Des Moines River.​99 Disregarding the recommendations of Pike, Kingsley selected the present site of Fort Madison, Iowa, as the place best suited for a post.

On the 26th of September the soldiers pitched camp and began at once to erect temporary barracks for winter quarters. Cabins were built and surrounded with a low stockade as a protection against Indian attacks. During the following months the soldiers were engaged in getting out logs from the surrounding timber for the permanent buildings. Without horses or oxen, the men hitched to sleds hauled the heavy logs for blockhouses, storehouses, and barracks, and the •fifteen‑foot pickets for a protecting stockade. In a letter to the Secretary of War Kingsley reported the progress of the work and hoped by spring "to have it so far advanced that it will bid defiance to the evil-minded savage, and at the same time insure the friendship and respect of the better disposed."100

From the first arrival of the troops the Sauk and Foxes resented the presence of soldiers on their lands. The Treaty of 1804, even if they had admitted its validity, contained no provision for a fort at this place. In vain Lieutenant Kingsley tried to allay their fears by telling them that the government planned to keep a few soldiers there as company for the traders. Black Hawk reported that the soldiers went about their work, weapons in hand, as if they were in an enemy's country.101

Much of the hostility of the Indians is attributed to the influence of the British traders who saw in the activities  p36 of the Americans a threat to their trade monopoly with the tribes of the Upper Mississippi region. Indeed the Montreal merchants of the Michilimackinac Company had petitioned the Governor-General of Canada for protection. They complained that "a systematic plan to drive the British Indian traders from American territory, by every species of vexation" had been inaugurated, and they asserted that if "His Majesty's Government did not soon take up their cause with decision, prevent interrupted navigation and fiscal extortions by Americans, and obtain for British traders the right to push their business interests to the west side of the Mississippi as before, they would soon have to abandon the trade to the east of the river as an object not worth pursuing."102

British traders gained the confidence of the Indians partly because they sold them better goods than the Americans. The British traders supplied the Indians with goods of the best quality while the American government agents carried a stock of "cast‑off, shop-worn merchandise of the cities".​103 American blankets, it is said, were small and thin, the cotton goods were flimsy, and the traps had weak springs. Sometimes the powder would not explode. So inferior, indeed, were the American goods that the Indians laughed in ridicule. "The British made a handle" of this situation, and not only derided the Americans and their goods, but informed the Indians that while they, the British, wanted only to trade, the Americans were plotting to take their lands. The building of Fort Madison, the Indians were informed, was a step in this direction, and the savages fully believed this news. Among those most hostile to the new arrivals was a leader of great influence among the Sauk and Foxes, the daring and crafty Black Hawk.104

Old Fort Madison in Iowa

 p37  On April 19, 1809, Lieutenant Kingsley made another report to the Secretary of War. This letter was headed "Fort Madison, near river Le Moin" and is the first official evidence of the application of the name of the newly elected President to that post. Previously it had been designated as Fort Belle Vue.​105 Kingsley stated that early in the spring he had received information from various sources that the Indians were about to raid the settlements and attack the garrison. Indeed, it was learned that four British agents had visited the Indians on Rock River, Illinois, "to get the nations together, and send them on the American frontiers" while others were urged "to take the fort of Belle Vue".​106 Kingsley had recently sent Lieutenant Nathaniel Pryor​107 "with six men to St. Louis for needed supplies and deemed his force inadequate to cope with any large number of the enemy." Upon receiving information of the threatened attack upon the fort, Kingsley made every exertion to erect the blockhouses and to plant the pickets. His men accomplished this task in two weeks "so that the soldiers took quarters in the new fort" on April 14, 1809. Although Kingsley had originally planned to build the factory house inside the fort the conduct of the Indians convinced him that he should erect the retail store outside the stockade. He further reported that rumors of an Indian alliance were reaching him frequently and added that the "sooner the British traders are shut out of the river", the better it would be for the government.108

In May, 1809, Kingsley wrote the War Department to learn how far and in what manner the soldiers were to be employed in the erection of the factory buildings. If he complied with the re­quisitions of the factory agent for soldier help it would be impossible to complete the  p38 fort that season. In reply he was informed by the Secretary of War that the soldiers were to build the factory but would receive extra pay at the rate of ten cents per day and one gill of whisky for each man.109

Meantime Indian hostility to the new fort in their land grew apace. In the autumn of 1808 when the Sauk came down the Mississippi to their wintering ground they had stopped at the new post and taken goods on credit to be paid for the next spring by the proceeds from their winter's hunt. All winter long spies kept them informed of the progress made by troops at Fort Madison. A scarcity of game that winter increased their discontent, and plot after plot was made to rob the government store, to capture the fort, and to kill the soldiers. The plan finally adopted was Black Hawk's, and he was placed in command of the project with Pashipaho second in authority.110

In February a young Ioway Indian came to the fort and informed the post sutler, who had once befriended this Indian at Detroit, of the plots of the Sauk. In May the young Indian returned and warned his friend to flee, saying that the Sauk would arrive the next day on their way to their summer village, and would stop to pay their debts. After that they would ask permission to give a dance within the stockade for the amusement of the garrison. At a given signal, they would brandish their previously concealed weapons and murder every white man in the place.111

Early the next day the men at the post saw a large band of the Sauk paddling up the river in their canoes. They swept up to the shore and disembarked. The Indians discharged their debts at the factory house promptly and without haggling. "Band after band paid up their  p39 credits and traded, the chief of each band sitting on the counter hurrying them on. By three o'clock the trading was over."112

Pashipaho with an interpreter went within to ask permission of Lieutenant Kingsley for the braves to give a dance in the enclosure as the ground outside, he said, was too rough. Kingsley refused his request. Meantime the braves outside under the command of Black Hawk grew impatient, and striking up on the drum began to crowd up to the main gate of the fort. Instead of an unsuspecting garrison they found a six‑pounder facing them, with a soldier standing by with a lighted port-fire, and bayonets bristled through the doors and windows of the barracks. Eager Indians filled up the gateway; "those in front, from the pressure of those in the rear, anxious to gain admittance within, were bent forward; the sentinel at the gate stood at a charge with his bayonet. The Indian in his front leaning with his nose nearly touching the sentinel's musquet."​113 If the order to fire had been given the Sauk warriors would have been blown to atoms so closely packed were they about the gate. Seeing that the plot was discovered Pashipaho waved his hand as a signal for a retreat. As the Indians turned about every man raised his war club in the air with a tremendous war whoop "disappointed and mad that their plans had been discovered."​114 Even the squaws were so certain of victory that they had brought along ropes to tie up goods in the post and factory after the garrison had been massacred. So enraged was Black Hawk over the failure that he left camp that night with a war party in fifty canoes to wreak vengeance on the Osages •three hundred miles distant.115

On the next day two old chiefs came across the river  p40 with a white flag and informed Lieutenant Kingsley that they had no control over the young braves who had been incited by bad white men and by young chiefs to go to war. They thanked the Great Spirit that the smoke had disappeared and that the sun shone once more. At the end of the council the six‑pounder was wheeled out to the river bank and discharged. As the lead bullets churned up the calm surface of the Mississippi in a most impressive way, the chiefs put their hands to their mouths with an exclamation that the shot would have killed half of them if it had been fired the previous day.116

In response to the persistent appeals for reinforcements Captain Horatio Stark​117 arrived at Fort Madison in August, 1809, and assumed command of the post. From returns of troops stationed in the District of Louisiana from June 30 to August 31, 1809, it appears that the garrison of Fort Madison on the latter date consisted of Captain Stark, Lieutenant Kingsley, Lieutenant Pryor, one surgeon's mate, four sergeants, three corporals, two musicians, and sixty-eight privates, a total force of eighty‑one exclusive of the factory force which in 1809 consisted of seven persons.118

After the arrival of Captain Stark life at Fort Madison ran its routine course for two years without excitement. Lieutenant Kingsley left the post during the winter after Stark's arrival, and other changes from time to time were made in the personnel of the garrison. The factory houses were completed in the winter of 1809‑1810 and were immediately occupied by John W. Johnson, the United States agent at this post.​119 His employees, generally numbering about ten, consisted of interpreters, and of clerks who tied up and transported the packs of furs to St. Louis and New Orleans. From a return dated  p41 October 31, 1811, it appears that the garrison then consisted of Captain Stark, Lieutenant Ethan A. Allen of the First Artillery, Lieutenant Pryor, two sergeants, two corporals, one musician, and thirty-four privates — an aggregate strength of forty‑two. The agent reported ten employees at the factory.120

In those days runners came from the Wabash and whispered to the Ioway, Sauk and Foxes, and Winnebago of a general Indian uprising to take place under Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, and his brother, the Prophet. "If you do not join your friends on the Wabash" said the Prophet to Black Hawk "the Americans will take this very village from you!"​121 Indeed, many of the Sauk, Foxes, and Ioway had visited the British agent at Malden and had received a liberal supply of rifles, fusils, powder, and shot. One band of Winnebago joined Tecumseh on the distant Wabash. It was expected that the storm would break early in 1812, but on November 7, 1811, General William Henry Harrison met and defeated the allied Indians at the battle of Tippecanoe. Among the routed savages was the band of Winnebago who had lost heavily in the encounter. Sullen and revengeful they withdrew to Rock River in Illinois. War parties were organized to wreak vengeance on Americans along the Mississippi — one to Prairie du Chien, one to the lead mines, and another to Fort Madison.122

Meantime George Hunt, the sutler at Fort Madison, had taken an outfit of goods to the lead mining region •about eight miles above the mouth of Galena (Fever) River, and was engaged in a profitable trade with the Sauk Indians who were mining lead in that region. In fact, his log store and warehouses were in a way an extension of the Fort Madison Factory for Agent Johnson  p42 had supplied him with government goods to exchange for furs and lead. Nearby former Lieutenant Pryor, who had resigned from the army, operated a smelting furnace.123

The first intimation Hunt had of the Battle of Tippecanoe came when a band of Winnebago, some one hundred in number, painted for war and led by Rolling Thunder surrounded his establishment on New Years Day, 1812. They riddled his two American helpers with bullets, scalped them, and tore their bodies to pieces limb by limb. Stripping the bones of flesh they threw the pieces at the trees. As the Winnebago mistook Hunt for a "Saginash" or Englishman they spared his life.124

After the Indians had made long speeches about their feats of bravery the war chief lighted a pipe which he said had presented to him by their British father at Malden and had been smoked by many tribes that had agreed to assist the British in a war soon to commence with "Big Knives". When the pipe came his way Hunt decided to take a few whiffs for his own safety. Then began the pillage of the store. Not satisfied with robbing the store of everything it contained the Indians broke into Hunt's trunk, and took a dozen fine linen shirts which the braves distributed among themselves. Then the savages found half a barrel of whisky which Hunt had concealed beneath the puncheon floor of his room. The latter find proved to be Hunt's salvation for in the drunken orgy that followed he and his half-breed interpreter escaped.​125 With the aid of a Sauk guide he set out down the Illinois side of the river, and, after an arduous journey of •over two hundred and fifty miles through snow and with the temperature freezing cold, arrived at Fort Madison on January 4, 1812.126

 p43  After Hunt's escape the bloodthirsty Winnebago visited Pryor's smelting furnace, not far distant. They shot a yoke of oxen and feasted on fresh beef. Then they seized Pryor and were on the point of murdering him when it is squaw intervened, saying he was a "Saginash". The Indians drew their knives across his throat, and made him open his mouth so that they could look down his throat and see if he was an American. At length they held a council to determine whether or not to kill him. The vote was that he must die. While the Indians deliberated Pryor made a dash for liberty. He escaped to a French settlement •fifteen miles away and there lived in concealment in a cellar nearly all winter. In the spring he made his escape down the Mississippi hidden in a boat load of furs which the trader Blondeau was bringing down stream from Prairie du Chien.127

Meanwhile the garrison at Fort Madison expected an assault by the Indians almost any time, and Governor Benjamin Howard of Louisiana Territory was urgently requested to send reinforcements. Early in March a corporal was killed outside the fort, and later a sentinel was shot.​128 The threatening attitude on the part of prowling Indians necessitated constant watchfulness on the part of the soldiers. Colonel Daniel Bissell, commander of the troops in the Territory of Louisiana, directed Captain Stark to put his works into the best possible state of defense, and added that he believed that Stark by using proper vigilance could defend the place against any number that could be brought against it. Nevertheless, he dispatched Ensign Barony Vasquez with twelve men to reinforce the post.​129 During the summer of 1812 Captain Stark left the post for service down the river, and Lieutenant Thomas Hamilton assumed command.130

 p44  In April, 1812, the State of Louisiana was admitted to the union and what had been the Territory of Louisiana, including what is now Iowa, became a part of the new Territory of Missouri with William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame as Governor. Meanwhile, month by month, the breach between the United States and England over events far remote from this region widened. The Canadian authorities early saw the value of having Indian allies in the approaching struggle. Captain A. Gray who was sent to inquire into what aid the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company could furnish in the eventuality of war reported on January 12, 1812, to Sir George Prevost, commander of the British forces in Canada, as follows: "By means of these Companies, we might let loose the Indians upon them throughout the whole extent of their Western frontier, as they have a most commanding influence over them." In a memorandum of plans for the defence of Canada it was noted that "the Co‑operation of the Indians will be attended with great expense in presents, provisions &c."131

To this proposed alliance the Indians for the most part gave willing ears, and when Congress, goaded to desperation, declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, the inhabitants of the Northwest received the coming of hostilities with joy. To the Indian it meant an opportunity to avenge past wrongs; the Canadian hoped to make secure his control of the fur trade and to put an end to American interference; while the American settler saw in the war a chance to remove the Indian menace, to drive out the foreign trader, and to appease his growing hunger for land.​132 As soon as war was declared the British summoned the Indians to their aid — Tecumseh was made a brigadier general, and Black Hawk donned  p45 a British uniform. Robert Dickson, that energetic fur trader of the Upper Mississippi, who had impressed Pike as a man of "open, frank manners", became a successful recruiter of Indians for the British service.133

For the Americans the opening months of the war were filled with disaster and gloom. The fort at Mackinac fell on July 17th, and by one stroke the British regained control of the great water highway to the Mississippi and strengthened the allegiance of their Indian allies. Although the capture of Mackinac was not attended by any Indian atrocities, the success of that victory was to precipitate one of the most horrible massacres in the annals of Indian warfare. Upon hearing of the capture of the fort at Mackinac General William Hull ordered Captain Nathan Heald at Fort Dearborn to evacuate that post. On the morning of August 15, 1812, as the small garrison of fifty-five regulars and twelve militia were leaving the fort with the women and children, five hundred Indians fell upon them and murdered twenty‑six regulars, all the militiamen, two women, and twelve children. That evening an unknown number of wounded prisoners were victims of the Indians' lust for blood.134

With the capture of Mackinac, the shameful surrender of Detroit by the bungling General Hull, and the loss of Fort Dearborn, the key to the Northwest, the Indians in the Mississippi Valley​b were free to wreak their vengeance upon Fort Madison, the sole remnant of American power in that region.

Early in September, 1812, a party of some two hundred Winnebago and many Sauk attacked the post. In their assault they killed and scalped a soldier, John Cox, who was caught outside the fort. A constant firing was continued until dark, commencing again early the next morning.  p46 The Indians burned three boats belonging to traders, killed live stock, and plundered and burned houses outside the stockade. They hurled fire brands on the blockhouses and shot burning arrows into the roofs of the barracks. The soldiers made syringes of their gun barrels and were hard pressed to keep the fires down. Fort Madison was poorly located either for offensive or defensive warfare. From bluffs to the rear the enemy had a clear view of the interior of the fort, and the ravines thereabouts afforded full protection for the lurking foe. The soldiers had little opportunity of doing much execution beyond "knocking over such red skins as had the impudence to peep over the bank."135

Believing that the Indians were waiting to burn the factory when a favorable wind would carry the sparks to the fort, Lieutenant Hamilton ordered the factory house to be burned one calm evening. When several Indians crept into an old stable and commenced shooting out of it Lieutenant Vasquez with a shot from the cannon "soon made their yellow jackets fly." The assault and siege, which was begun on September 5th and had continued unabated for three days, began to slacken on the fourth, and on the fifth day, which was September 9th, the Indians disappeared across the river. No lives had been lost in the fort, and only one man had been slightly wounded. It was thought that many Indians had been killed as several had been seen to fall.

There are many reports that the site chosen for Fort Madison was unsuitable. General Howard had repeatedly advised the authorities at Washington to move this post up the river preferably to Prairie du Chien. Indeed, on his recommendation the War Department in a letter dated October 7, 1812, instructed Colonel Bissell to withdraw  p47 the troops and army stores from Fort Madison, but Bissell pointed out the impracticability of evacuation until the following March when the river would be free from ice.136

During the winter of 1812‑1813 the commanding officer at Fort Madison appealed in vain for reinforcements. The government was engaged in a war that taxed its resources. When spring came the fort was not abandoned since General Howard pointed out that such a measure "could be employed with great dexterity among the Indians by British agents, as evidence of our inability to maintain it, and would embolden those who are now hostile, and probably decide the wavering to take part against us". Moreover, Fort Madison was the only place in the Upper Mississippi Valley where information could be collected about the views and movements of the British and their Indian allies. Furthermore if the government should decide to prosecute a campaign up the river "Fort Madison", he said, "would afford many facilities" as a base of operations. In April Howard himself visited Fort Madison on an inspection tour. At that time the garrison consisted of Captain Stark, Lieutenants Hamilton and Vasquez, and nearly one hundred non‑commissioned officers, musicians, and privates.137

Twice during the month of July, 1813, prowling Indians in small numbers made attacks on the fort but were easily repulsed. In the attack on the sixteenth of July a corporal and three privates were caught in an outlying blockhouse commanding a ravine. In less than ten minutes they were killed and horribly mangled by the savages. In reporting this tragedy Lieutenant Hamilton was particularly bitter in his denunciation of the location of the fort. Constant duty and watchfulness on the part of the garrison,  p48 he said, caused much sickness among the soldiers, and supplies — fire-wood, powder, and shells — were running low.138

This was the last official report from Fort Madison. Before a reply could be received Indians in overwhelming numbers besieged the post. When the garrison was reduced to the verge of starvation the commanding officer had to choose between surrender and an attempted escape. He chose the latter. On the night of September 3rd he set part of the command to work digging a trench from the southeast blockhouse of the fort to the river. Others conveyed the remaining provisions and the most valuable of the movable property of the post to the boats. Then the soldiers crawled stealthily down the trench and embarked. The last man to leave the fort set fire to the buildings; and before the astounded natives realized what had happened Fort Madison was in flames, and the soldiers were safely away on the broad bosom of the Mississippi.​139 When the sun rose the next morning there was nothing left of old Fort Madison save two tall charred chimneys, which for many years stood as a landmark on the site called by the Indians Potowonock, the place of the fire.140

The Author's Notes:

96 Cole's A History of the People of Iowa, p62. For an account of Fort Madison compiled from and including copies of official records in the War Department see the Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp97‑110.

97 Van der Zee's Fur Trade Operations in the Eastern Iowa Country from 1800 to 1833 in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XII, p496.

98 Van der Zee's Fur Trade Operations in the Eastern Iowa Country from 1800 to 1833 in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XII, p496.

99 Kingsley's letter to Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War, in re his orders appears in the Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p100.

100 Van der Zee's Old Fort Madison in the Iowa and War Series, No. 7, p16; Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p100.

101 Black Hawk's Autobiography (1882 edition), p24.

102 Van der Zee's Fur Trade Operations in the Eastern Iowa Country from 1800 to 1833 in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XII, pp496, 497; Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXV, pp255, 256.

103 Van der Zee's Old Fort Madison in the Iowa and War Series, No. 7, p17.

104 A Personal Narrative written by a sutler at Fort Madison was printed in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. VIII, pp662‑669, and Vol. XII, pp438‑450. It was reprinted under the title Old Fort Madison: Some Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp517‑545. The part of this narrative relating to the relative merit of British and American goods for the Indian trade, and the use made of this by British traders is found in the latter reference, pp518, 519.

105 See Kingsley's letters in the Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp100, 101.

106 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, p799.

107 Lieutenant Nathaniel Pryor had been in Iowa before when he accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition as a sergeant.

108 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p101.

109 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p102.

110 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp520, 521; Coles' A History of the People of Iowa, p64.

111 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp521, 522.

112 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, p522.

113 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, p523.

114 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, p523.

115 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, p524.

116 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp524, 525.

117 For the military career of Horatio Stark and other officers mentioned in this volume see Heitman's Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, Vol. I.

118 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp102, 103.

119 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p103.

120 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p103.

121 Black Hawk's Autobiography (1882 edition), p26.

122 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p104; Van der Zee's Old Fort Madison in the Iowa and War Series, No. 7, pp21‑23.

123 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp525‑527. The Galena River was known for many years as Fever River. The modern name has been used in this volume.

124 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp527‑531.

125 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp532‑535.

126 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, pp534‑538.

127 Old Fort Madison: Source Materials in The Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. XI, p540, 541.

128 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp805, 806, 807.

129 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp103, 104.

130 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p104.

131 Publications of the Canadian Archives, No. 7, Documents Relating to the Invasion of Canada and the Surrender of Detroit, 1812, pp11, 13; Hansen's Old Fort Snelling, pp8, 9.

132 Hansen's Old Fort Snelling, p9.

133 Coues's The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Vol. I, p120; Quaife's Wisconsin Its History and Its People, Vol. I, pp333, 334; Weaver's "The Career of Robert Dickson" (M. A. thesis, State University of Iowa, 1924), pp16‑26.

134 Quaife's Chicago and the Old Northwest, Chs. IX, X, XI, contains an excellent account of the outbreak of the War of 1812 and of the massacre at Fort Dearborn. For the number of killed and wounded at Chicago see p230. Hereafter this volume will be referred to as Quaife's Chicago and the Old Northwest.

For the attack on Mackinac see Kellogg's The Capture of Mackinac in 1812 in the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1912, pp124‑145.

135 The account of this siege is found in Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. III, pp142, 143. Apparently no report of this action appears in the files of the War Department. See also the Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp104, 105.

136 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp105, 106.

137 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp106, 107.

138 Hamilton's report dated July 18, 1813, appears in the Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, pp108, 109.

139 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. III, p109.

140 Cole's A History of the People of Iowa, p71.

A manufacturing company now occupies the site of Old Fort Madison. The garrison well is still used. In 1908 the Jean Espy Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a memorial chimney in commemoration of the centennial of the establishment of the post.

Thayer's Notes:

a For quick information on Fort Madison, with a map and a photograph, see the page at FortWiki.

b My emendation. As printed, the text of this paragraph, instead of the intended third line, duplicates the fifth line:

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