Battle of Credit Island War of 1812

Major Zachary Taylor

Black Hawk met with Lieutenant John Campbell of the 1st US Regiment of Infantry on July 18, 1814. Campbell reported that the Indians were friendly.  

Campbell said he met a party of Sac warriors carrying a white flag just below the Rock River Rapids. They invited him to Saukenuk for a council, so he traveled about four miles upstream to their village to meet with them.  

 There were maybe 150 warriors, plus their women and children. The chief (most likely Black Hawk) asked if he had presents for them. Campbell replied that he did if they went to war against the Peaus as promised. The chief said he’d made no such promise to his white father. “His father was drunk if he said so.” However, the chief agreed to attack the Peaus if Campbell supplied them with the necessary weapons. 

 Campbell stayed at Rock River for three days from July 28 to 31, then set off for Prairie du Chien. The soldiers didn’t travel more than six miles before hurricane-force winds grounded their boats. 

 The area they stopped at was covered in high grass, and hazel and willow bushes lined the shore for some distance. They weren’t there for more than a half-hour before the Indians attacked. Both sentinels Campbell posted died in the first fire. 

 The soldiers tried to get the boats off the shore, but the wind was too strong. Campbell ordered the men to defend themselves to the “last extremity,” and they did. The fighting lasted nearly two and a half hours. 

The wind was blowing so hard that it took Lieutenant Elias Rector and Ensign Jonathan Riggs nearly an hour to bring their boats close enough to assist. By that time, Campbell’s boat was a flaming hulk. Rector maneuvered his boat alongside Campbell’s and evacuated the survivors. 

 Black Hawk explained that a British party came down the Rock River the previous night. They said the British had taken Fort Shelby, opposite Prairie du Chien, and asked him to “join them again in the war.” 

Black Hawk

The next day, the Sac and Fox attacked Campbell’s party with 500 warriors. “If we had known the day before,” laughed Black Hawk, “we could easily have taken them all, as the war chief used no precautions.” 

Black Hawk’s men scalped five dead regulars and danced over the scalps to celebrate their victory at the Battle of Campbell’s Island. 

 The Americans took another drubbing at the Battle of Credit Island in August 1814.  

 William Clark, Governor of Missouri Territory, intended to even the score with the Sac and Fox for the fall of Fort Shelby and the attack on Lieutenant Campbell. He ordered Zachary Taylor to destroy the Sac and Fox villages on the Rock and Mississippi Rivers. Taylor set off from Cape au Gris, Missouri, on August 23, with 334 men loaded in eight large, fortified keelboats. They reached Rock River on the evening of September 5. 

 A storm blew the expedition’s boats ashore on Credit Island. The following day, a large Sac and Fox war party was spotted moving toward the island. Taylor formed his troops for battle on the Iowa shore. Captain Rector landed his boat on Credit Island and set up his artillery. 

Black Hawk’s warriors outnumbered Zachary Taylor’s troops. Eventually, he gave up the fight and dropped downriver, constructing a fort at the entrance of the Des Moines River.

Taylor’s boats were no match for the British artillery. He was forced to order his boats downstream. Taylor reported that he hoped to draw the Indians into a council. “I was in hopes to draw them some distance from their towns towards the rapids,” explained Taylor, “run down in the night and destroy them before they could return to their defenses.” 

 Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The wind shifted “and blew a perfect hurricane.” The troops made land on a small island in the middle of the river. Around 4 p.m., they noticed Indians along the banks of both shores and more crossing over in canoes. 

No shots were fired that night. However, the Indians shot and killed a corporal standing guard on Captain Samuel Whiteside’s boat at daylight the next day. 

It soon became clear that Taylor didn’t have the manpower or weapons to overpower the Indians. Nor could he destroy their villages and burn their corn, so he decided to drop down the river and construct a fort at the entrance of the Des Moines River. 

 Lieutenant Duncan Graham reported that the Americans built a fort at the entrance of the River Des Moines. “The fort is about fifty yards square,” said Graham, “and is picketed in with very large oak pickets about twelve feet high and is situated on a high hill. They have cleared all the trees and brush from the back part of their fort to the distance of a musket shot, but in the front to the waterside, they have left a thick wood standing, I suppose to cover their going for water.” He noted a small hill, somewhat higher than the fort about seven or eight hundred yards distant. 

 Taylor blamed failing to complete his mission on the British artillery. “I conceive it would have been madness in me, as well as a direct violation of my orders,” wrote Taylor, “to have risked the detachment without a prospect of success.” 

 Black Hawk felt cheated.  

 “I was prepared to meet them,” said Black Hawk, “but was soon sadly disappointed—the boats had started down the river.” In the end, the Battle of Credit Island was a minor skirmish.