September 1814 — Near
Credit Island, Upper Mississippi: They went upriver chasing ghosts.
Eight keelboats, heavy and slow, grinding through the brown current under a
blistering sun. The soldiers called it “Taylor’s little war.” Major Zachary
Taylor—thirty years old, square-jawed—was supposed to punish the Sac and Fox
for embarrassing the United States that summer.
Major Zachary Taylor
Governor William Clark had
sent him north to settle the score. Burn the villages, flatten the corn, and show
the flag. It sounded easy enough when they launched from Cape au Gris,
Missouri, on August 23. Three hundred thirty-four men, a few light cannon, and
enough arrogance to make the river laugh.
The
Mississippi wasn’t buying it. For almost two weeks they fought it mile by mile,
rowing through mud and heat and clouds of mosquitoes thick enough to choke on.
The river kept shifting under them—sandbars one day, deep channels the next.
Everything felt uncertain except the current.
They
reached the mouth of the Rock River somewhere close to September 5. The air was
heavy, and the wind came out of nowhere—sheets of rain, boats colliding, men
shouting just to hear themselves. By nightfall, the flotilla was smashed up on
a spit of mud and willows called Credit Island. It wasn’t part of the plan.
At
dawn, the fog thinned, and they saw figures moving in the trees across the
water, watching. Sac and Fox warriors. Hundreds of them, with painted faces,
rifles in hand, quiet as smoke. Taylor pulled his men into line, trying to look
calm. Captain James Rector rolled a small cannon ashore and set it facing
upriver.
