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| Zachary Taylor |
The upper Mississippi River was a dangerous place
to be wearing an American uniform in the fall of 1814.
The British controlled Prairie du Chien. Sauk and
Fox warriors controlled the area around the Rock River. American settlements
farther south lived with constant rumors of raids, ambushes, and attacks. St.
Louis was about as far north as American power reached. Beyond that, things got
shaky fast.
So, the American Army hit back.
Major Zachary Taylor loaded 334 men into eight
fortified keelboats and pushed north up the Mississippi in late August 1814.
The mission was simple enough on paper: move toward Rock River, destroy the
Sauk and Fox villages, burn corn supplies, and remind everybody who controlled
the river.
The farther north Taylor went, the more warriors
appeared along the shoreline. Canoes slipped back and forth across the river,
and men watched from the trees.
Taylor noticed horses near the shore and smelled
trouble, saying they were “doubtless placed” there to lure American troops into
landing parties. He wasn’t wrong. The Sauk and Fox knew where boats could land,
where sandbars sat hidden under the water, and where a man could disappear into
the willows, never to be seen again.
Then the wind shifted as the Americans reached Credit Island near present-day Davenport and Rock Island.
Taylor called it “a perfect hurricane.” The boats lost control and were blown against a small willow-covered island near the Iowa shore.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse place.
Lieutenant Duncan Graham of the British Indian Department had already picked the area as the perfect ambush spot. “We were determined to dispute the road with them, inch by inch,” he said.
That night was miserable. Wind hammered the boats so hard Taylor worried the anchors would fail and send the entire flotilla crashing onto sandbars. Warriors moved through the darkness on both sides of the river. Canoes crossed silently back and forth. The Americans could hear them but couldn’t see anything through the storm.
Just before daylight, someone fired into Captain Whiteside’s boat from about fifteen paces away. A corporal standing outside the boat was mortally wounded.
Taylor shoved his men through the willows toward shore as the warriors melted backward through the marshes and islands. Captain Whiteside opened fire. Captain Rector moved his boat into position and trained his artillery on canoes and enemy positions.
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| Black Hawk |
For a few minutes, the Americans thought they had the situation under control.
Then the British guns opened up.
Hidden behind a knoll on the Iowa side of the river sat British artillery crews with a six-pound cannon, a four-pounder, and swivel guns aimed directly at the trapped American boats.
The cannon shot tore through Taylor’s flagship, the Commodore.
John Shaw, one of Taylor’s soldiers, said, “The attack occurred on a very bright morning. The first cannonball from the British passed through Taylor’s boat.”
The river exploded as British cannons hammered the boats. Sauk and Fox warriors opened fire from both shores. Taylor said the Indians “raised a yell and commenced firing on us from every direction.”
Smoke rolled across the river. Boats drifted in the current while men tried desperately to keep them from crashing into the shore. One British round shot blasted through Lieutenant Hempstead’s boat and shattered it badly enough that it nearly sank.
Taylor decided it was time to make a move. The British guns sat under cover behind the hill while his boats floated exposed in open water.
“The boats were entirely exposed to the artillery,” he said.
Captain Rector’s boat took especially hard fire. Warriors attacked from the shoreline while Rector’s men answered with grapeshot from a three-pound cannon. Taylor called it “a close and well-contested action.”
Then came one of the wildest stories from the battle.
A damaged American boat started drifting toward shore where the warriors waited. Somebody needed to get a cable across to Captain Whiteside’s boat before it smashed into the bank.
A young Missourian named Paul Harpole “exposed himself completely” while carrying out the cable under heavy fire. Most men would’ve dropped flat afterward and prayed to survive.
Harpole didn’t.
He stood there firing weapon after weapon handed to him by other soldiers, firing fourteen guns before a bullet smashed into his forehead and knocked him into the river.
“The crippled boat was saved,” Shaw remembered, “but poor Harpole’s exploit in which he lost his life, was the wonder and admiration of all.”
The Americans slowly drifted downstream while under constant attack.
Captain Whiteside tried dropping anchor to help cover the retreat, but the current and wind were too strong. Taylor said they remained exposed to Indian fire for nearly two miles.
The battle lasted about an hour before the battered flotilla made its way several miles downstream. Boats were patched up. Wounded men were treated. Officers gathered to decide the expedition’s fate.
The question was: could 334 men fight an enemy that outnumbered them three to one and still destroy the villages.
The answer was no. That ended the mission.
Taylor retreated south toward the Des Moines Rapids. There the Americans hurriedly built a new fort that the British described as a rough stockade made from heavy oak pickets on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi.
The battle itself was small compared to famous fights farther east, but it was a major setback in the west. The Sauk and Fox had defended their villages, and the British had blocked another American push north. The Mississippi River remained dangerous and contested country.
The British and Native tribes won the battle, but both sides seemed worn down.
Zachary Taylor said the British position made it “impossible for us to have dislodged him without imminent danger of the loss of the whole detachment.”
Duncan Graham admitted his force lacked enough food and ammunition to continue the chase very far.
Had Taylor given it another shot, things might’ve ended differently. Maybe not.
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