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.