provisions for the army were taken in boats and pirogues from Fort
Harrison up the river, and unloaded at this block house. On Saturday,
the 2nd day of November, John Tipton recorded in his diary that, "this
evening a man came from the Garrison (Fort Harrison) said last night his
boat was fired on--one man that was asleep killed dead." Beckwith
records that the dare-devil "Wabunsee, the Looking-Glass, principal war
chief of the prairie bands of Potawatomis, residing on the Kankakee
river, in Illinois, distinguished himself, the last of October, 1811,
by leaping aboard of one of Governor Harrison's supply boats, loaded
with corn, as it was ascending the Wabash, five miles above Terre Haute,
and killing a man, and making his escape ashore without injury."
Allowing a slight discrepancy in dates, this was probably the same
incident referred to by John Tipton, and taking into consideration that
the boats were probably guarded by armed men, this was certainly a
daring and adventurous feat.

Yet it is recorded of this chief, that he always carried about with him
two scalps in a buckskin pouch, "taken from the heads of soldiers in the
war of 1812, and when under the influence of liquor he would exhibit
them, going through the motions of obtaining those trophies."
Schoolcraft, whose attention was especially drawn towards this chieftain
on account of his drunken ferocity, and who paints him as one of the
worst of many bad savages of his day, says: "He often freely indulged in
liquor; and when excited, exhibited the flushed visage of a demon. On
one occasion, two of his wives, or rather female slaves, had a dispute.
One of them went, in her excited state of feeling, to Wabunsee, and told
him that the other ill-treated his children. He ordered the accused to
come before him. He told her to lie down on her back on the ground. He
then directed the other (her accuser) to take a tomahawk and dispatch
her. She instantly split open her skull. "There," said the savage, "let
the crows eat her." He left her unburied, but was afterwards persuaded
to direct the murderess to bury her. She dug the grave so shallow, that
the wolves pulled out her body that night, and partly devoured it."

The cold, cruel treachery of this tribe is without a parallel, save in
the single instance of the Shawnees. It has been admitted by Shaubena,
one of their best chiefs, that most of the depredations on the frontier
settlements in Illinois during the Black Hawk