Battle of Waddams Grove

Fought on June 18, 1832, in what is now Stephenson County, Illinois, this clash formed one episode within the larger Black Hawk War and carries a second name, the Battle of Yellow Creek. Its origins lay in a string of attacks by Sauk raiders against settlers living along the Apple River. In response, Captain James W. Stephenson set out from Galena with a company of volunteer militia to track down the raiding party. The two sides came together near Yellow Creek on that same June day, and what followed quickly turned into brutal close combat fought with bayonets and knives. Several Sauk warriors died alongside three of the militiamen. Stephenson himself took a musketball to the chest and suffered severe wounds during the exchange. Those who fell were later laid to rest in a memorial burial ground at Kellogg's Grove, Illinois, where a stone monument now stands to honor everyone who perished in the conflict.

Background

Grief over losing the land where he was born, taken through treaties he never accepted, drove Black Hawk to cross back over the Mississippi River more than once starting in 1830. Each incursion ended the same way, with him talked into retreating westward without any fighting breaking out. That changed in April 1832, when talk of joining forces with other tribes and even the British convinced him to bring his "British Band," some thousand warriors and civilians together, into Illinois once more. No allies materialized, and when he sought to head back toward Iowa, circumstances spiraled into what became the Battle of Stillman's Run. More clashes followed this initial fight, prompting Wisconsin and Illinois to call up their state militias in pursuit of Black Hawk's followers. History would remember this whole struggle as the Black Hawk War.

After Stillman's Run opened hostilities, a wildly overstated rumor, that some 2,000 "bloodthirsty warriors" were sweeping across northern Illinois in destruction's bosom, spread panic throughout the countryside. A string of minor massacres and skirmishes followed this alarm, and confidence in the militia's abilities remained shaky right up until the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, which took place just two days ahead of the fight at Waddams Grove.

Prelude

Between the two assaults on Fort Blue Mounds, a band of Native Americans made its way across the Mississippi from the western bank near Galena, timing their movement to June 9, 1832. As they pushed northward along the Apple River, they helped themselves to horses and plunder, and roughly three-quarters of the way along that route they made off with about a dozen animals taken from a modest stockade. These Sauk raiders were chiefly after provisions and goods meant to sustain Black Hawk's band, some 1,000 men, women and children hiding out in the marshy lowlands of southwestern Wisconsin. Days afterward another such raid occurred nearby, and though nobody was hurt or killed in it, the episode stirred the local white militia into action.

As unease spread among the white settlers, Captain James W. Stephenson assembled twelve volunteers at Galena and set out toward the trouble spots. Along the way he added more men to his ranks at Apple River Fort before pressing on eastward. On June 18, Stephenson's party rose in the dark hours before sunrise to pick up the trail left by the horse-stealing Sauk. Despite marching through heavy rain, the militia eventually closed the distance and caught up with the Sauk band.

Aftermath

The clash left the militia's original aim, halting Native American raids in the region, unresolved even as it gave the volunteers a measure of bloody satisfaction. Riding back into Galena, Illinois, the men displayed the scalps of two slain Sauk warriors as trophies of their triumph. Public sentiment toward the militia improved as a result. Coming on the heels of the calamity at Stillman's Run in May, this engagement at Yellow Creek, alongside the fight at Horseshoe Bend, proved that volunteer forces were capable of standing firm against Black Hawk's fighters and prevailing.

Those militiamen who lost their lives at Waddams Grove now rest in a memorial burial ground at Kellogg's Grove, their remains marked by a massive stone monument honoring militia dead from the Black Hawk War. As for the site of the fighting itself, historians place it along Yellow Creek, to the northwest of William Waddams' original land claims, near what is today the unincorporated community of Waddams Grove, Illinois.