The pursuers pushed every closer to the Sauk band, slogging through trackless swamp, matted undergrowth and difficult hills. Now, the leading Sucker units knew they were close — the air was filled with circling buzzards and the way was littered with Indian corpses. A few were marked with wounds, but most of them had simply died of exhaustion and starvation.

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It was all over now but the killing. At the Wisconsin’s mouth, one band of Sauk was stopped cold by the flatboat’s murderous grapeshot. The survivors scattered to the river’s banks. They could perish miserably over the next few days, hunted down by bands of Menominee led by Uncle Billy Hamilton. Across the broad Mississippi waited bands of Lakota, alerted that the hated Sauk would try to cross. And upstream, as Black Hawk’s hapless survivors reached the mouth of the Bad Axe on August 1, blasts of canister from the steamboat Warrior slashed through them and drove them back from the shore. Black Hawk ventured out toward Warrior with some white cotton on a stick in what proved to be a vain attempt to surrender. The remaining Sauk were hemmed in between the great river and Atkinson’s force, outnumbered 4-to-1.

The whole affair ended the next day, August 2, as Black Hawks knew it must. Atkinson’s men dropped their packs, fixed bayonets and pushed toward the banks of the Mississippi, regulars in the center, militia on either flank. There were perhaps 1,100 of them, plodding in line, holding muskets and equipment over their heads as they waded through pools of stagnant water. They advanced cautiously into the thick morning mist along the river.

Black Hawk’s warrior got off a single volley and then the soldiers were upon them. The whites suffered a mere 27 casualties — only five of them dead — while Black Hawk’s band was destroyed. At least 150 bodies were found, including many women and children. Many Indians fell or jumped into the river and the Mississippi took them forever. Those few who escaped were hunted down by vengeful Winnebago and Lakota, and even some traitorous Sauk.

A few refugees took to the water and the islands in a vain attempt to escape across the river. Fire from Warrior killed many of them with grapeshot and musketry, and even crushed some of the survivors with its paddle wheel as they tried to hide in shallow water. Fortified by whiskey, some militiamen pushed on to the islands and more fugitives were killed there.

A few of Black Hawk’s people escaped, against all odds. Many women tried to swim, some carrying small women on their backs. Most sank under a hail of musketry or were taken by the river as their strength ebbed, but a few made it. One mother swam the great river while clutching her tiny baby’s neck in her teeth. She would survive and so would the child, who rose to be chief, ever after called Scar Neck.

Perhaps 115 of Black Hawk’s party remained as prisoners, nearly all of them women and children. It was over, and there was much celebration, whiskey drinking and boasting over the pitiful scalps and booty that were all that remained of the British Band.

If the fighting was over, the dying was not. Cholera stalked down the river with the remains of Scott’s force and struck mercilessly at Sucker and regular alike. Fifty-five men were dead within a week, and many others deserted in terror, further spreading the epidemic. Its hideous rictus and vomiting would claim victims for the rest of that year and into the next, spreading all the way down the river to New Orleans, where it would kill 500 people a day at its height.

But at least there would be peace, however shameful. A new treaty was dictated by the victors. By its terms, the Sauk and Fox would leave the east bank of the Mississippi forever and five up a 50-mile strip on the west bank as well. There would be a trumpery payment to the tribe, which worked out to about $4 per Sauk per year, before, of course, ‘deductions’ for various sums owed merchants and agents.

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