When a remnant of Stillman’s men returned to Dixon after an exciting ride of twenty-four miles from Stillman’s Run, they reported that they had been attacked by thousands of Indians and that all the rest of the army had been massacred. The exaggerated report set a few of the men who had not been with Stillman, keen to fight; but it instilled into most of them a sense of home-sickness, and many of them requested to be excused from duty. Gen. Taylor immediately reported the situation to Gen. Atkinson, at Ottawa, and the latter ordered Generals Whiteside and Harney, who were in command of some United States regulars, to pursue the Indians.

When the troops arrived at Stillman’s Run they found the bodies of thirteen soldiers and most of the deserted commissary which had included a barrel of whiskey that Black Hawk emptied on the ground. Black Hawk destroyed the wagons and everything else that could not be carried away, excepting a few boats that belonged to the Indians which were left on the river bank.

As a matter of fact Black Hawk had only forty warriors with him at the time of the attack on him by Stillman’s men, while Stillman had about three hundred men. At the time of the attack many of Stillman’s men were under the influence of liquor and most of them in such a state of insubordination that they paid no attention to the orders of their officers. Thus they rushed into the camp of Black Hawk, and, as each was acting independently, it was but a short time until the Indians by their shots and yells had the militia scared crazy and on the run.20

On May 22nd, in accordance with Gen. Anderson’s order, Gen. Whiteside took up and followed the Indian trail for thirty-six miles along the Kishwaukee and the Sycamore; but when the high prairie was reached, the Indians scattered so in all directions that the troops were unable to track them further, and the army proceeded to the Fox River and down that stream to Ottawa, where it arrived on May 27th.

On the day that the girls passed a few miles to the east, the United States troops found on the Sycamore, articles belonging to the Indians who committed the massacre at Davis Settlement, among which were three scalps. Perhaps it was fortunate for the girls that Gen. Whiteside had not discovered and attacked the Indians, because under such circumstances the Indians might have murdered them.

Among the troops under Gen. Whiteside was the company in which Captain Abraham Lincoln, subsequently the great president of the United States, served. Probably the girls had not yet heard of him, who, if he had known of their predicament, might have ended their captivity on that day.

During the march up the Sycamore, an old Pottawatomie Indian came into camp, tired and hungry, with a letter of safe conduct, signed by Gen. Lewis Cass. Some of the men declared the letter was a forgery, and that the Indian was a spy and should be put to death. When the soldiers threatened the poor fellow, Capt. Lincoln stepped forward and said that he would shoot any man who would assault the Indian.21 It can be readily seen how a man of Lincoln’s bravery and superior mental resources, might have freed the girls without injury to them.