ger.

Black-hawk and his warriors, and other women and children, had cut
across by land. When they came to the mouth of the Bad Axe River, at
the Mississippi above the Wisconsin, the armed steamboat _Warrior_ met
them. Sioux were upon the western bank.

Black-hawk decided to surrender. He again raised the white flag, and
called out to the captain of the _Warrior_ that he wished a boat sent
to him, so that he might go aboard and talk peace.

Perhaps the Winnebago interpreter on the _Warrior_ did not translate
the words right. At any rate, the captain of the _Warrior_ asserted
that Black-hawk was only trying to decoy him into ambush. He waited
fifteen minutes, to give the Indian women and children that much time
to hide; then he opened on the white flag with canister and musketry.
The first cannon shot "laid out three." In all, he killed twenty-three.

Black-hawk fought back, but he could not do very much against a
steamboat in the river.

So he had been unable to surrender, or to cross the Mississippi. His
people were frightened, and sick with hunger and wounds. The next
morning, August 2, he was working hard to get them ready to cross, when
General Atkinson's main army, of four hundred regulars and nine hundred
militia, fell upon him at the mouth of the Bad Axe.

The Indian women plunged into the Mississippi, with their babes on
their backs--some of them caught hold of horses' tails, to be towed
faster; but the steamboat _Warrior_ was waiting, sharp-shooters on
shore espied them, and only a few escaped, into the hands of the Sioux.

In two hours Black-hawk lost two hundred people, men and women both;
the white army lost twenty-seven in killed and wounded.

This finished Black-hawk. He got away, but spies were on his trail,
and in a few weeks two Winnebago traitors captured him when he gave
himself up at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

He expected to die. He had turned his medicine-bag over to the
Winnebago chief at the village of La Crosse, Wisconsin--and he never
got it back.

He made a speech to the Indian agent, General Joseph Street, at Prairie
du Chien. He said:

You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved,
for I expected to hold out much longer and give you more trouble before
I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last
general understands Indian fighting.

I fought hard, but your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like