Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/203



“I have chosen a site on a hill forty miles above the river De Moyen rapids, on the west side of the river. The channel of the river runs on that shore; the hill is about sixty feet perpendicular, nearly level on top.”

In September, 1808, Lieutenant Alpha Kingsley was sent with a company of the First United States Infantry up the river to make a plat of the ground and begin the erection of the fort. During the fall and winter barracks and store houses were built and work pushed on the block houses and fort. In April of the next year it was garrisoned and named in honor of the new President, Fort Madison. It does not appear that the Indians had consented to the erection of this fort on the west side of the Mississippi, which was a direct violation of the treaty negotiated with the five Sac and Fox chiefs in 1804. By the eleventh article of that treaty the United States was entitled to build a fort in the vicinity of the mouth of the Wisconsin River; but the sixth article of the treaty provided that if any citizen of the United States, or any other white person, should form a settlement upon lands belonging to the Indians, such intruders should at once be removed. Notwithstanding this article, Fort Madison was built on lands belonging to the Sac and Fox Indians, without their permission, in clear violation of the treaty. It is not strange that the Indians complained of such an act of bad faith and hostility and under the lead of Black Hawk made an attempt to capture and destroy the fort.

Lieutenant Kingsley’s force at the time he built the fort, and up to August, 1809, when he was relieved by Captain Horatio Stark, consisted of seventy men. In September, 1812, the fort was under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Hamilton, who had about fifty men. On the 5th of that month a band of about two hundred Winnebago warriors made an attack upon the fort. Among these Indians was Black Hawk, then a young man. A lively fight ensued, lasting until the 8th, when the Indians withdrew after having burned several buildings in the vicinity.

In 1813 the fort was again attacked by Indians, who