[CRUIKSHANKI HARRISON AND PROCTER 141 
Louisville on September 18th, bringing their own horses, arms, and 
provisions for thirty days. Four thousand horsemen responded to the 
call and were organized into a division of three brigades under General 
Hopkins. Fort Harrison was relieved by him on October 10th, and a 
few days later he began his march across the open prairie with the 
intention of destroying the Indian villages on the Wabash and Illinois. 
His guides lost their way and the troops speedily became dispirited 
and unruly. The tall dry grass caught fire through their own negli- 
gence and threatened them with a sudden and dreadful death. The 
air was filled with thick clouds of smoke that hid the sun. Forage and 
water for their horses could scarcely be found. Finally the men posi- 
tively refused to advance further. Their officers confessed that they 
had lost all control over them and the whole force returned to Fort 
Harrison where Hopkins organized a smaller column which moved up 
the Wabash and destroyed the Prophet’s town and two other deserted 
villages, but lost thirteen men in an ambush.! 
About the same time Colonel Russell and Governor Edwards with 
a mixed force of rangers and volunteers, among whom were many genuine 
border ruffians marched from Vincennes against the villages on Peoria 
Lake which they destroyed without opposition, tarnishing their success 
by at least one act of almost incredible barbarity. A party of horsemen, 
commanded by a certain Captain Judy, encountered an Indian and a 
squaw on the open prairie. The Indian offered to surrender but Judy 
replied that he had not come out to take prisoners, and shot him through 
the body. The Indian began chanting his death-song and shot one of 
the party. The remainder instantly sprang from their saddles and 
sheltering themselves behind their horses opened fire upon the hapless 
pair. The man soon fell pierced by many bullets but the woman 
singularly enough escaped unhurt. Her life was spared although soon 
afterwards these wretches killed a starving Indian child who fell into 
their power.” They scalped and mutilated the bodies of the slain 
and ransacked graves in search of plunder. Such acts naturally con- 
verted the existing hostility of the Indians into an almost insatiable 
passion for revenge. When the British officers attempted to restrain 
them they indignantly retorted:—“The way they treat our killed and 
the remains of those that are in their graves to the west make our people 
mad when they meet the Big Knives. Whenever they get any of our 
people into their hands they cut them like meat into small pieces.’ 
Another body of seven or eight hundred men composed of the First 
United States Infantry, a company of rangers, and two regiments of 


1 Atherton, 19. 
? Davidson, History of Illinois. 
3 Speech of Blackbird to Claus, July 15, 1813. 
