Bedlam followed. The militia had enlisted for only 30 days, and as the fourth week approached they could think of all kinds of reasons why they had to go home. Some simply deserted. There was no end to the accusations about who was responsible for the shame of Stillman’s Run, and the governor seemed to have lost what little control he had. The regulars were so contemptuous of the militia that Atkinson put the Rock River between his men and the Suckers to avoid collision.

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Meanwhile, Black Hawk found himself with the very war that he had tried to avoid fully on his hands. The heady and wholly unexpected victory at Old Man’s Creek, however, deluded the old war chief into believing he might have a chance of victory after all. Instead of quitting while he was ahead and withdrawing as planned just days before, Black Hawk took up the warpath.

Atkinson did what he could to get the expedition going again. He got a scouting party out, led by Colonel William Stephen ‘Uncle Billy’ Hamilton, a scruffy, hard-drinking son of the late Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Before anything more could be done, word came of the massacre of 15 white settlers on Indian Creek and the kidnapping of two teenage girls by the raiders.

Frightful news of other killings and burnings caused mass flight along the frontier, with fugitives pouring into havens as far away as Chicago. Not all the raiders were Sauk; there were Winnebago, too, but winged rumors made no distinction. At one settlement two shots fired at a flock of wild turkeys were enough to stampede everybody in the entire area into a wild flight for shelter at the local fort.

Meanwhile, orators and newspapers all along the frontier screamed for bloody revenge. By the end of May, much of the Illinois Militia had disbanded, with only 250 heeding frantic appeals form the Old Ranger to re-enlist. There was a new levy coming, but nobody knew just how large it could be. Men were unenthusiastic about the war. The Detroit Free Press sneered, ‘There is no danger — no more probability of an invasion by Black Hawk’s party than there is from the Emperor of Rusia [sic].’

A new swarm of militia soon gathered, however, thirsting for Indian blood and stealing anything that was not nailed down. They were organized into there brigades of about 1,000 men each, still as loud, brawling, hard-drinking and undisciplined as ever.

Black Hawk, camped around Lake Koshkonong, learned of the new army and knew he could not wait for it to come looking for him. In mid-June, he went over to the attack. First he sent small parties on forays westward, a feint to convince his enemies that he was beginning to move into Iowa. Meanwhile, his main force remained around Koshkonong, hunting to support the families.

The raiders stole stock and struck at isolated parties of whites, leaving a trail of scalped, mutilated bodies and unmitigated terror. The white pursuers did win one small success on June 16, at a place called Pecatonica Creek. The Battle of Bloody Pond, as it was also called, wasn’t much of a fight — 21 militia dragoons commanded by Colonel Henry Dodge took on 11 Kickapoo and managed to exterminate them while losing three of their own.

The frontier went crazy with delight. An ocean of hyperbole elevated the little skirmish into something approaching the Battle of Waterloo, and the militia leader was proposed as a candidate for governor. ‘The annals of border warfare’ crowed one writer, ‘furnish no parallel to this battle.’ That much was true: never in the field of frontier conflict had so much been said about so little.

In fact, the Battle of Bloody Pond did nothing to stop the ceaseless strikes of Black Hawk’s war parties, and most of the settlers remained terrified, disorganized and feckless. On June 24, Black Hawk led 150-200 warriors in an attempt to storm the hastily erected stockade at Apple River. The fort and its inhabitants were saved primarily by the exertions of a touch, tobacco-chewing woman with the appropriate name of Elizabeth Armstrong. This profane fury tongue-whipped the terrified refugees inside the fort and bullied its 25 male defenders into action, dragging one man from his hiding place inside a barrel and shoving him to a loophole.

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