Myra alerted me to the news about the recent flooding in Vernon and Crawford Counties, Wisconsin. Soldiers Grove is one of the flooded places.

I had ridden through Soldiers Grove on my tour of the Black Hawk War Zone in September 2004. It was on my way to Victory, where the Bad Axe massacre took place. The soldiers came through here, on Black Hawk’s trail, the day before the fighting at Bad Axe on the Mississippi River.

I did not have time to linger or see much of the town.

This bridge is where I crossed the Kickapoo River. I understand that the main business places have relocated away from the river, driven out by previous floods.

According to one of the soldiers (quoted in Crawford B. Thayer’s, “Massacre at Bad Axe”, page 132) the Army had been pushing hard by the time it reached this place:

We had now been three days in those mountains, and our horses had lived on weeds, except those that became debilitated and were left behind; for a great number had become so, and left to starve in this dreary waste.

This place was a welcome sight to them. Another later wrote (again, quoted by Thayer):

We emerged…from these gloomy forests into the gladsome light of the sun, in an open pine grove, on the bank of a fine little river, which we scarcely knew then to be the Kickapoo. No great change of circumstances ever had a pleasanter effect upon the spirits of an army; vast high prairies were before us, the sun shone brightly, and gleamed from the crystal waves of the pretty river; the refreshing prairie breeze whistled merrily through the leaves of the pines; there were indications in the enemy’s deserted camps, that we were close upon him…

Others also wrote of the pleasure of encountering prairie.

I wish I could say that the terrain had the same effect on me. But I don’t recall any prairie-looking places after I crossed the river. I remember more hills. (I think the above was taken just a few miles west, perhaps at a place called Johnson Valley.) Maybe it’s time to go back and take another look. I didn’t have the words from Thayer’s book in my head at the time.

The country does open up between Soldiers Grove and the Mississippi, though. The next day I rode on Wisconsin route 27, which sort of follows a ridge that separates the Kickapoo River from the Mississippi. There are places where one can get a sense of being on high, open ground, looking down toward the Mississippi on one side and toward the Kickapoo on the other.

But it’s about 30 miles between Soldiers Grove and the Mississippi where Black Hawk’s people were headed. It sounds as though the soldiers were referring to something right close to Soldiers Grove.

Speaking of 30 miles, it was just after 5 pm when I crossed the Kickapoo, according to the timestamps on my photos, and this was September, when the days were getting shorter. I had a 30 mile ride ahead of me before reaching the campground. I had to start riding hard, and I didn’t take many more photos. The few I have show that it was getting too dark for picture-taking. I did get to the campground before it was completely dark, though.

September 9, 2004, continued.

This is state highway 35, maybe 3 miles north of DeSoto, Wisconsin (on the upper left of the map below). I would have taken highway 35 south to Prairie du Chien, but I think I was scared off by some of the discussions about highway 35 that had taken place on the Phred bicycle touring e-mail list. What I saw of the road was great for riding, but I had gotten the idea that there might be sections with no paved shoulders and lots of traffic.

I decided to take a more “inland” route, instead — state highway 27. Part of it is shown on the map below. It’s from the Wisconsin bicycling maps that can be found at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation web.

I didn’t have the Wisconsin bicycling maps with me on that September 2004 ride. I had heard they had been updated and improved since my last ride here, in 1996 (when they weren’t particularly good) but hadn’t been able to find a place that sold them. Myra had been on the lookout for them, too, and had made repeated inquiries on my behalf. But we had had no luck. So I was using maps that didn’t distinguish paved from unpaved roads.

The next day I got a chance to look at one of the legendary, elusive Wisconsin maps. I was allowed to touch it, even — at a visitor center in Prairie du Chien. But there weren’t any to give out or purchase. They were only available in bike shops, I was told, because of the way they had been funded. And that meant I wouldn’t be getting one at Prairie du Chien, I don’t recall why. (No bike shop, perhaps?) So I planned that day’s ride while I was at the visitor center.

It was true that the maps had been greatly improved since 1996. They weren’t quite as good as the Illinois ones I had used, but still, they were better than what most states have.

Now that I look more closely at the ones online, it seems they have been improved since 2004, too. I don’t recall quite as many categories of bicycling suitability as the one I saw in 2004. On the map below, the green roads are the best, and blue ones are good, too. Paved shoulders are indicated by black outlines. I’m not so sure I’d still say that the Illinois maps are better than the Illinois ones.

From looking at this map, it appears that I would have been better off taking highway 35. There are some sections of highway 27 that are shown in red. I do remember the part north of Mount Sterling. I had been riding along on a nice quiet road, and then realized that the traffic had somehow picked up considerably. I wondered where it had come from. But even the red sections along highway 27 weren’t bad that day. I wouldn’t hesitate to ride there again.

On my 2004 ride, I also took a lot of paved roads that are unrated — shown in grey. There is a lot of good riding on those, too. Thinking about it makes me want to go back for more.

Sept 9, 2004, continued.

By the time I got back to the campground at Blackhawk Park, the fog was gone entirely. Now I was able to get some clear shots of the river. This one is looking north.

Black Hawk’s people were trapped on the bank on the right, in between the steamboat “Warrior” which had been patrolling the river, looking for them, and the army and militia forces coming down the bluffs at them.

Here is how one of the eyewitnesses described it:

The troops and [Menomonie] Indians on board the Warrior, kept up a brisk fire on the Indians ashore, who fought with a desperation that surpassed everything I [John Fonda] ever saw, during an Indian fight, and I have seen more than one. The Indians were between two fires; on the bluffs above them were Dickson and his rangers, and Dodge leading on his men, who needed no urging; while we kept steaming back and forth on the river, running down those who attempted to cross, and shooting at the Indians on shore.

I got this quote from page 210 in Crawford B. Thayer’s book, “Massacre at Bad Axe.” He got it from the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Volume V (1868), Fonda, John H., “Early Wisconsin”

One last post from Battle Hollow Road. I promise.

This scene may be at the end of the little side road shown in the previous post, facing north. I’m not absolutely sure, but it looks about right.

Bicycling is a great way to memorize the terrain. One carries away a lot of memories when you get to know places up close and personal. But 3.5 years later, my memory is not quite complete for every last photo. I’m not absolutely sure. The timestamps on my photos make it very plausible, though.

If so, this would be in the near vicinity of the main path along which Black Hawk’s warriors were retreating and along which Henry’s militia forces were advancing, from right to left. Quite a few warriors were killed, as well as a few of the militia. But the real killing took place when the Sauk people reached the river and could go no further.

google map

Here is a google map of Battle Hollow Road. Unfortunately, it does not show the location of the creek that was (presumably) just behind me when I was taking this photo. [OK, I don't get it. When I'm creating the map, I don't get to see the creeks. But here it is when I display it. And I see that I've marked the location on the wrong side of the creek. Oh, well.]

This may or may not be the Battle Bluff mentioned on the sign pictured in a previous post. Thayer’s book shows an old photo of Battle Bluff, but if it’s the same place, it was taken from a different angle.

The morning fog had almost dissipated by now.

September 9, 2004, continued.

It took me a long time to ride the two miles back down Battle Hollow road, because I made a lot of photo stops.

It was still a foggy morning. On August 2, 1832, the soldiers were roused and on the march before sunrise. They knew they were getting close to the Mississippi River, because of the fog over the river (according to eyewitness account quoted in Thayer, “Massacre at Bad Axe”).

This is a little side road off on the north side of Battle Hollow Road. It drops down to the creek (in the low ground towards the background of the photo) and then goes across it. The most dangerous place to have been on August 2, 1832, would have been on the other side of the creek.

September 9, 2004, continued.

After two miles of gravel, I came to the end of Battle Hollow Road. I met only one car, apparently some high school kids on their way to school. At the end there were a couple of residences. I took this photo facing northwest.

According to one diary, this hollow was the route taken to the river by a large number of Black Hawk’s people, and was also the route taken by the left wing of the forces under Gen. Atkinson:

Our order of battle was promptly arranged under the personal supervision of Gen. Atkinson, the center composed of the regular troops, about three hundred and eighty in number, and Dodge’s corps, perhaps about one hundred and fifty. The right, of the remains of Posey’s and Alexander’s militia brigades, probably in all two hundred and fifty men; the left, of Henry’s brigade, in numbers not far from four hundred men–which brigade was, throughout the campaign, a most excellent body of militia and well commanded. The army advanced by heads of companies over two or three miles.

I got this quotation from “Massacre at Bad Axe : An eye-witness account of the Black Hawk War of 1832,” compiled and edited by Crawford Beecher Thayer (1984) page 172. Thayer cites what he refers to as the Smith diary: “Smith, Henry, “Diary” extracts from newspaper article [Milwaukee Sentinel? nodate] in Notebook 501b in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, Historical Society, Howard Museum.

So from this and other material in Thayer’s book, it appears that the army and militia were advancing over a front of two or three miles, and that much of the fighting took place in this hollow until the Sauk people had retreated to the river and go no further, at which point many more were killed. A map from the Office of the Adjudant General, from the National Archives is reproduced in Thayer’s book, and suggests that the main path taken by Black Hawk’s people and Henry’s men was at the foot of the hills in the distance. Black Hawk’s people were retreating from right to left in the photo (east to west).

It had been a place of terrible killing on August 2, 1832 — quite a contrast to my peaceful ride up the hollow. But it wasn’t all peaceful while I was taking my photos there. This dog was behind me, barking its head off the entire time I was there.

Back to my before-breakfast ride on 9 Sept 2004. This is one of the old historical markers that marks the last events of the Black Hawk war. I wanted to visit Battle Hollow. It was one mile by crow from this sign, but a little farther by road.

There have been discussions on the phred bicycle touring list about the suitability of Hwy 35 for bicycle touring. It’s the road on the east side of the Mississippi. Battle Hollow Road is a gravel road that leads away from it and gently up the valley that contains Battle Creek, to the area where a rear guard of Black Hawk’s warriors fought some of the soldiers who had been trying to catch up with them.

I had planned to do just the one post from the Black Hawk war zone and then get back to posting about the day I spent in Nate Shaw’s backyard. But now I’m distracted by the other photos I took on 9 September 2004.

That was the summer we decided we were getting a bit old for using my backpacking tent for our car/bicycle camping trips. So we decided to become degenerate and get a bigger tent in which we could camp in luxury. It’s shown here, at the Army Corps of Engineers campground alongside the Mississippi River at Victory, Wisconsin.

The need for a different tent wasn’t just because of the clumsiness of two people in their mid-50s crawling out in the middle of the night to use the restrooms. Myra also didn’t like pitching my little tent, which made her less than enthusiastic about my arriving late at a campsite. She finds this Eureka tent much easier to set up on her own. (Myself, I find it easier to set up my backpacking tent, but the important point is to make these outings pleasant enough for her so she’ll let me do more of them.)

Actually we overdid the degeneracy part, because we also got a big, thick, double-wide Thermarest-type sleeping pad, which a couple years later we quit using because it took up so much space in our little car.

I thought I had hit on a good routine this particular morning. This was where the Battle of Bad Axe took place on August 2, 1832. There were related history sites nearby that I wanted to visit. I could get up early and ride to some photo ops in the early morning light, then come back and help Myra break camp. I hated to just get up early and take off, leaving her with the chore of packing the tent. I do that sometimes (and she claims not to mind) but this time she was also the one who set it up herself the evening before.

It worked pretty well this time.

There are historical markers along the Mississippi River, but there was too much fog this early in the morning. But there was a place I wanted to visit that was on higher ground, part way up the side of the Mississippi River valley. More on that next time (unless I get distracted by something else).

When I got back to camp I helped pack. We may have had breakfast there, too. The breakfasts we eat are rather spartan when we make them in camp. Sometimes, if we’re near civilization, we’ll get in the car and go to a place where we can get breakfast, warmth, and e-mail. But Victory, WI was not such a place.

After we packed, we went our separate ways for the day, myself by bicycle and she by car, and didn’t see each other again until after dark, at Wyalusing State Park. I’m glad she likes doing things that way. When I first started doing this type of bicycle touring, she quickly discovered that she didn’t care to be a SAG wagon driver for me. But if she can have the day free to do what she wants, she’s willing to let me go by bicycle. I think it’s a pretty cushy arrangement for me.

Historical marker on U.S. 11 in Mississippi:

John L. Sullivan defeated Jack Kilrain for heavyweight championship in a 75 round fight on July 8, 1889, at Richburg, 3 miles southwest of this spot. This was the last official bare-knuckle bout.

Jim Ruland in the March 2008 issue of The Oxford American writes: “Historical markers are notorious for being inaccurate, but this one is ridiculously vague. Three miles? . . . And since Sullivan mauled Kilrain with his bare hands, which made the fight illegal, how could the fight have also been ‘official.’”?

Historical markers that are unnecessarily vague about the exact location are a minor peeve of mine. I like to know exactly where on the terrain something took place, if such information is available. Historical markers are sometimes moved to locations convenient for cars, but as a bicyclist I don’t care about that. I can stop almost anywhere. On rare occasion I can even get off my bicycle and walk on my feet.

Scheske’s note reminded me of this marker (shown below) along state route 82 in Wisconsin. It’s from a ride in September 2004.   On that day I started on the Mississippi River, where the Bad Axe battle/massacre took place, and ended up at Wyalusing State park, on the south side of the Wisconson River. (I wrote about the evening’s destination here, but I didn’t get to the place until after dark so the photo had to wait for the next day.)

The marker is an old one about Black Hawk’s retreat. But the bad thing is that it has been moved from its original site.

Here’s a modern marker to explain the older one. It’s a shame. Once upon a time the marker was right on the spot where the trails were, and now it has been moved. I like to understand just how the old Indian trails used the terrain, and now that information is no longer visible.

Here’s looking west. But what is meant by, “a very short distance.” Does it mean the next rise of ground beyond the stop sign? And on which side of the road? North or south? Is it at the the farm site in the distance?

I understand that sites are sometimes identified only in vague terms so as not to encourage artifact hunters. And sometimes people don’t like gawkers in their front yarrds. But I think we lose something valuable when we don’t tell people what we know about how historic events fit onto the terrain.

If we want developers and homebuilders to be respectful of the landscape when they build their subdivisions and shopping malls, maybe the history-minded people need to give something in return and not hold back on information like this. (I realize the developers themselves are not likely to care enough to be influenced, but other members of the public might be.)

Back to Eric Scheske’s blog. Here is information about the Sullivan Kilrain fight. It seems that one reason the information is somewhat vague is that nobody knows exactly where the fight was held:

The precise plot of earth on which Sullivan and Kilrain battled is a perennial source of dispute. Some say it was held on land owned (in 1989) by O. C. Hill — about three miles south of Hattiesburg, at the fork of Richburg, Sandy Run, and Sullivan-Kilrain Roads. This would place the fight on a hill behind Colonel Rich’s home. William Jones, owner (in 1989) of the property adjacent to Hill’s, claimed, in a newspaper article, that the fight was held on his land. Other sources say it was held in one of the area’s “natural amphitheaters” on the opposite side of the road. The only permanent marker alluding to the event is a sign erected by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, near the Richburg Road intersection on U. S. Highway 11, south of Hattiesburg, proclaiming that the fight occurred “three miles southwest of this point.”

And the site is a ways off of US-11. Looking at a map of the area shows that the marker was probably placed where a lot of people could see it. I guess that can be forgiven. But in a case like that, it would be nice if an additional marker could be placed more exactly on the site for those who would take the trouble to bicycle over to it — if the site was known.

This is Joliet Road on Door Prairie in LaPorte County, Indiana, from my 2004 ride to the Black Hawk war zone. It’s somewhere between Door Village and Westville.

This is a map of Michigan Road Lands from the Indiana State Library. I’ve drawn the route between Door Village and Westville on it.

The road lands are the areas shaded in white. The Michigan Road does not pass through the place shown here, though it isn’t too far away to the north. In the 1826 Treaty of Mississinewa, the Potawatomi people in Indiana ceded to the United States a strip of land through their remaining territory, so a road could be built from Lake Michigan to the Wabash River, and from there to Indianapolis and on to the Ohio River. They also ceded a square mile of land contiguous to the road for each mile. The U.S. Congress soon afterward authorized Indiana to sell that land to pay for construction costs.

This entry shows where the road passed thorugh Fulton County, as an example of how it worked.

But there was a controversary over which square miles of land could be used to pay for the parts of the road that passed through parts of Indiana that had already been ceded to the United States in previous treaties. A state road commission for this purpose tried to select land in those previous cessions that still had not been sold by the federal government. But the federal land offices said, in effect, “No, that’s ours to sell; go take land from the Indians.”

The Indian agent John Tipton then wrote to the Land Office in Washington:

I feel bound to state to you, and through you to the President, that at the time of negotiating this treaty, these Indians did not understand that their land, not embraced within the bounds of the tract then ceded, would be required to construct this road, except where the road passed through the country retained by them; and that they understood the sections requried to construct the road through the ceded land would be taken therefrom precisely in the manner in which the commissioners have selected it. This was also my understanding of this treaty at the time it was made. Should the United States cause these lands to be sold, and the State of Indiana be authorized to take the best lands now owned by these Indians, it will greatly disappoint and distress them… Two, or at most four years, may find Indiana clear of these Potawattamies, provided a tender course is pursued towards them…” (Tipton to Elijah Hayward, November 8, 1830, Tipton papers, Volume 2, pages 366-367)

It’s not hard to guess what happened. The Potawatomi had to give up more of their land to pay for parts of the Michigan Road, even parts that were far away from any area they ever occupied.

And the state road commissioners were not bashful about taking the land of highest value, including a lot of excellent cropland in LaPorte County. Enough to pay for about 55-60 miles worth of the road is shown on the map above.

I didn’t notice until preparing the overlay above that the road commissioners were careful not to select section 16 from the townships that are shown, e.g. the section in which Door Village is located. That was land that the federal government would eventually give to Indiana anyway, for the purpose of funding schools.

And why the odd 80-acre holes in the selection, I don’t know. Maybe a look at a topo map would tell me. Or it might make for an interesting bicycle detour to take a look. In any case, I plan to take the above map along with me next time I go riding there, so I can compare the Michigan Road lands with the lands the road commissioners did not select. (In the case of the land shown in the photo, I just don’t remember exactly where along the route it was taken, even though I’ve ridden there several times.)