1833 - Scene at the Battle of the Bad Axe

The below article is in regards to the Battle of Bad Axe. A woman is killed holding a child in her arms who ends up having her arm amputated.

The Battle of Bad Axe was a mostly one-sided affair that has been called a massacre by both modern and historical accounts of the engagement, as well as by those who participated. On 3 August 1832, the day after the battle, Indian Agent Street wrote to William Clark describing the scene at Bad Axe and the events that occurred there. He stated that most of the Sauk and Fox were shot in the water or drowned trying to cross the Mississippi to safety.[1] Major John A. Wakefield published an account of the war in 1834, which included a description of the battle. His description characterized the killing of women and children as a mistake.[2] "During the engagement we killed some of the squaws through mistake. It was a great misfortune to those miserable squaws and children, that they did not carry into execution [the plan] they had formed on the morning of the battle -- that was, to come and meet us, and surrender themselves prisoners of war. It was a horrid sight to witness little children, wounded and suffering the most excruciating pain, although they were of the savage enemy, and the common enemy of the country."

THE FRIEND - NOVEMBER 17th 1833

Scene at the Battle of the Bad Axe.- When our troops charged the enemy at their defiles near the bank of the Mississippi, men, women, and children were seen mixed together, in such a manner as to render it difficult to kill one and save the other. A young squaw of about nineteen stood in the grass at a short distance from our line, holding her little girl in her arms, about four years old. While thus standing apparently unconcerned, a ball struck the right arm of the child above the elbow, and shattering the bone, passed into the breast of its young mother, which instantly felled her to the ground. She fell upon the child and confined it to the ground also. During the whole battle this babe was heard to groan and call for relief, but none had time to afford it. When, however, the Indians had retreated from that spot, and the battle had nearly subsided, Lieutenant Anderson, of the United States army, went to the spot and took from under the dead mother her wounded daughter, and brought it to the place we had selected for surgical aid. It was soon ascertained that its arm must come off, and the operation was performed without drawing a tear or a shriek. The child was eating a piece of hard biscuit during the operation. It was brought to Prairie du Chien, and we learn that it had nearly recovered.

1. Grimsley, Mark. "Interrogating the Project of Military History, War Historian, Ohio State University. Retrieved 22 October 2007.
2. Wakefield, John Allen; Stevens, Frank Everett, ed. History of the War between the United States and the Sac and Fox Nations of Indians, and Parts of Other Disaffected Tribes of Indians, in the Years Eighteen Hundred and Twenty-Seven, Thirty-One, and Thirty-Two; Reprinted as: Wakefield's History of the Black Hawk War, Original Publication: Jacksonville, Ill.: Calvin Goudy, 1834. Reprint Publication: Chicago: The Caxton Club, 1908, Chapter 7: Section 133, and Chapter 8