after the War of 1812 American prospectors pushed into the region, and
the Government began granting leases on easy terms to operators. In 1823
one of these men arrived with soldiers, supplies, skilled miners, and
one hundred and fifty slaves; and thereafter the "diggings" fast became
a mecca for miners, smelters, speculators, merchants, gamblers, and
get-rich-quick folk of every sort, who swarmed thither by thousands from
every part of the United States, especially the South, and even from
Europe. "Mushroom towns sprang up all over the district; deep-worn
native paths became ore roads between the burrows and the
river-landings; sink-holes abandoned by the Sauk and Foxes, when no
longer to be operated with their crude tools, were reopened and found to
be exceptionally rich, while new diggings and smelting-furnaces, fitted
out with modern appliances, fairly dotted the map of the country." *

* Thwaites, "Story of Wisconsin". p. 163.

Galena was the entrepot of the region. A trail cut thither from Peoria
soon became a well-worn coach road; roads were early opened to Chicago
and Milwaukee. In 1822 Galena was visited by a Mississippi River
steamboat, and a few years later regular steamboat traffic was
established. And it was by these roadways and waterways that homeseekers
soon began to arrive.

The invasion of the white man, accompanied though it was by treaties,
was bitterly resented by the Indian tribes who occupied the Northwest
above the Illinois River. These Sioux, Sauk and Foxes, and Winnebagoes,
with remnants of other tribes, carried on an intermittent warfare for
years, despite the efforts of the Federal Government to define tribal
boundaries; and between red men and white men coveting the same lands
causes of irritation were never wanting. In 1827 trouble which had been
steadily brewing came to the boiling-point. Predatory expeditions in the
north were reported; the Winnebagoes were excited by rumors that
another war between the United States and Great Britain was imminent;
an incident or even an accident was certain to provoke hostilities. The
incident occurred. When Red Bird, a petty Winnebago chieftain dwelling
in a "town" on the Black River, was incorrectly informed that two
Winnebago braves who had been imprisoned at Prairie du Chien had been
executed, he promptly instituted vengeance. A farmer's family in the
neighborhood of Prairie du Chien was massacred, and two keel-boats
returning down stream f