Black Hawk's Warpath

“Hey, Tom! there’s a big hubbub amongst the Injuns!” exclaimed Ben Gordon to his twin brother, as he rushed into an unpainted, frame shanty in the frontier hamlet of Chicago. Th...

After the finish of the Indian duel, Tom and Ben Gordon started back toward the village by the fort. The fresh, perfumed air of early spring was blowing out of the west, sweepin...

That next morning, after the fracas at the Turtle, Ben and Tom, having nothing definite in mind for the day, decided to take a tramp north along the shore of mighty Lake Michiga...

Soon after the nerve-shaken boys had left the gruesome Indian burial ground, Bright Star’s roving eye caught a pin-point of flame far down the shore. He quickly announced his di...

Major Whistler’s quarters in Fort Dearborn proved to be a very fine room, a finer room, in fact, than the two eastern lads had supposed existed on the untamed, western border.

The tepee of wise, old Shaubena, noted sachem of the Pottawattomees, and father of the dauntless Bright Star, was pitched some distance west of Fort Dearborn. When within a mile...

A narrow shaft of yellow lamplight shone from the wide-open door of the Mud Turtle, as Tom and Ben Gordon approached the unsavory gambling den and grog-shop at the edge of the s...

At mid-afternoon of the second day following Tom’s set-to with Pat Fagan at the Mud Turtle, Bill Brown came rushing into the boys’ boarding shanty, across the river from Fort De...

At daybreak, the next morning, the trumpet sounded “Boots and Saddles” at Fort Dearborn; and a few moments later, the little band of sixty mounted troopers rode out from the vil...

All that day, and the next morning, too, the band of troopers from Fort Dearborn continued their steady travel westward, over the rolling prairies of the Illinois country. The f...

That same evening, in an Indian lodge on the banks of Sycamore Creek, a small stream flowing into the Rock River about thirty-five miles north of Dixon’s Ferry, an important con...

By the time that Van Alstyne and his party had got back to their camp, the deserter, Fagan, had recovered his senses, though still a bit woozy. Otherwise, surprisingly enough, h...

Major Stillman, veteran of many years on the border, realized that the situation of his little band was extremely dangerous. So far, the triumphant Sacs had not made an appearan...

“Yip-ee!” yowled Pete Perkins, as he burst unceremoniously into the tent occupied by Bill Brown and the Gordon twins, in the camp at Dixon’s Ferry. “Watch out! I’m the bloodiest...

“Gotta have the gunsmith take a look at this ol’ piece o’ mine,” declared Pete Perkins, coming up with an ancient flintlock rifle on his shoulder. “The plaguey screw won’t grip...

The weather continued warm and dry, and by late afternoon of the second day the four, fast-traveling scouts had arrived at Kellogg’s Grove, a tiny hamlet forty-five miles to the...

When Colonel Dodge had examined the dispatches brought up from General Atkinson at Dixon’s Ferry by the four scouts, he at once sent out fast riders far and wide, throughout the...

Soon after sunrise, as he had indicated, White Crow made his appearance at Dodge’s camp, accompanied by two of his foremost braves, both of them strong, sinewy warriors, armed w...

When Colonel Dodge had been informed by the two scouts of the surprising result of their nocturnal mission, his rage at the duplicity of the White Crow was fearful to see. With...

The place at which the Sacs had chosen to stand and fight was admirably suited to such a delaying action as Black Hawk hoped to effect. It was a shallow valley, rimmed on the no...

Though the slippery Black Hawk escaped from the pale-face trap at Wisconsin Heights, that hard-fought battle really marked the end of the Sac uprising. After fording the broad W...