Geocaching...and Indian Wars

One of the activities we pursue is geocaching. For those not familiar with geocaching, it is the location of hidden (not buried) treasures using longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates and Global Positioning System receivers. More people are familiar with Global Positioning System receivers (GPSr) as the navigational devices found in newer automobiles. Geocaching utilizes the same GPS satellites that orbit the earth, and our GPS receivers monitor our precise location based on signals received from the satellites. People who hide geocaches publish the coordinates, as well as some information about the hide and the site, and once you find the cache you log your find with the person who placed it. It's a wonderful way to learn about an area, its history and geography.

Before heading out to find geocaches in a given area, we download the coordinates and pertinent information for the sought-after caches into our hand-held GPS receiver, and off we go. Sometimes, we also load the coordinates into our car's navigation system, so that we can get to the general area as quickly and expeditiously as possible.





On a sunny and pleasant day about three weeks ago, we set out to southwestern Wisconsin in search of a series of caches near Browntown-Cadiz Springs State Recreation area.

The day was pleasant, and our caching was successful. The most interesting cache was in commemoration of four young men who died in Wisconsin's Indian Wars.

The story behind the cache was this:

On June 14, a party of six militia volunteers headed south from Fort Hamilton to hoe corn and were attacked by Indians. The men labored in a farm field claimed by Omri Spafford, near the Pecatonica River. A Kickapoo war party surprises the party and murders Omri Spafford, Abraham Searles, James McIlwaine, and an Englishman nicknamed "Johnny Bull." Two men, Francis Spencer and Bennett Million, escaped death by dashing across the Pecatonica River. Million jumped into the river and managed to find refuge in timber, then raced back to Fort Hamilton. The Indians chased him several miles, perforating his hat with bullets, but he finally reached Fort Hamilton

Spencer could not swim so he skulked along the banks. An Indian mounted one of the plow horses and chased him, but Spencer shot him before he was overtaken. Spencer gets lost, and is found days later hiding in a pig pen near the fort. He avoids going any nearer because he mistakes as hostile Indians a company of Sioux, Menominee, and Winnebago Indians led by Col."Billy" Hamilton. Fright, starvation and exposure made a physical and mental wreck of him and his hair turned perfectly white.

Under orders from Colonel Henry Dodge (lead miner and smelter, war hero, and future WI. State Governor), militia company detachments are sent from Fort Defiance and Fort Jackson to Fort Hamilton. The next morning, June 15th, survivor Bennet Million guides militia volunteers back to the Spafford Field massacre site. There, they buried the mangled dead and search for Francis Spencer, to no avail.

On June 16th, Members of a seventeen-man Kickapoo war-party murder Henry Apfel not far from Fort Hamilton. Col. Dodge and two men from Mound Fort arrive at Fort Hamilton. There, he organizes the command to pursue the Kickapoo. Dodge and twenty-nine volunteers catch up with the Kickapoo war party and kill or wound them all, scalping eleven who resisted on the bank of a pond in a horseshoe bend of the Pecatonica River. Three militia volunteers are wounded in the Kickapoo's opening volley; a fourth is seriously wounded in the ensuing hand-to-hand fight at the pond embankment. Col. "Billy" Hamilton arrives an hour after the fighting ended at the head of a party of Sioux, Menominee, and Winnebago Indians. The native volunteers are thrilled at the scalps the militiamen show them, then set upon the bodies of the Kickapoo and mutilate them beyond recognition.

The location of Battle of Horseshoe Bend, is now known as Bloody Lake . The site is now preserved as part of Black Hawk Memorial Park. Visitors to the park may view the commemorative concrete marker dedicated in 1922 by the Shullsburg Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the people of the town of Wiota.

We forget that not all wars fought by our Americans were on foreign soil, or on our own soil against foreigners. Some, in the earlier days of our country, were fought against those men who lived here long before western Europeans arrived.

We found this cemetery in the middle of a corn field (fortunately, it was too early in the year for corn to be growing). We wandered through the cemetery in silence, reading the headstones and trying to imagine what life was like in those days.