The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life by Frank Everett Stevens
CHAPTER XIX.
510 words | Chapter 54
DIXON’S FERRY–PLIGHT OF REYNOLDS’ MESSENGERS–STILLMAN’S DEFEAT.
Dixon’s Ferry, now Dixon, Illinois, at the period of this campaign
consisted of a ferry, the simple flat-bottomed affair of those days, and
a 90-foot log cabin, built in three sections, both owned by John Dixon.
The patriarchal appearance of this old pioneer had brought to him the
title “Na-chu-sa” from the Indians, meaning in the Winnebago dialect
“Long hair white,” and from the whites “Father Dixon.” By his kindness,
gentleness, honesty and courage he had won the love of every person,
white and red, who had ever met him, and to those in the land who had
not met him his reputation had extended, so that the mention of his name
meant an overture for peace.
In the spring of 1827 his brother-in-law, O.W. Kellogg, broke a trail
through the country from Peoria to Galena, to facilitate the rapidly
increasing overland travel to the lead mines. “Kellogg’s trail,” as it
was then called, crossed Rock River at this place, and in 1828, when
Father Dixon received the contract for carrying the mails from Peoria to
Galena and Gratiot’s Grove, he took with him from Peoria to Rock River a
half-breed named Joseph Ogee,[115] who established a permanent, though
unlicensed, ferry. Prospective competition or a friend must have
suggested his _laches_ in this respect, for on December 7, 1829, he
received from Jo Daviess County, whose jurisdiction embraced all that
section of country, the statutory license to operate the same. But by
1830 the restraint of a ferryman’s life had become so exceedingly
irksome to one of his nomadic nature that Father Dixon was constrained
to take it off his hands and remove his family thence, which he did,
arriving there April 11, 1830.
When Ogee established his ferry he built a hut of logs, unfit for
habitation to any but a rover like himself. The needs of Father Dixon’s
family and increasing travel required something better, and this
improvement he at once supplied by making additions, so that he soon had
the comfortable house-store-hotel displayed in the illustration. He,
with his family of wife and five children, from that time forward
entertained travelers and traded with the Indians until the Indians were
no more and travel many years later had become diverted to bridges and
other thoroughfares made by the new and ever-multiplying settlements. He
was made postmaster, and thenceforth Dixon’s Ferry was of commanding
prominence in Illinois travel and Illinois geography. At this period,
however, Father Dixon’s was the only family on Rock River above the old
Black Hawk village.
On his march up the river Black Hawk camped one night near the Dixon
cabin, and with Ne-a-pope and the Prophet ate with the family, Mrs.
Dixon waiting upon them in a manner so courteous as completely to
captivate Black Hawk and command from him thereafter his highest
admiration. During this stop the family, after a careful observation,
estimated the number of able-bodied warriors with the expedition to be
800, and that number was reported to the troops, which arrived there May
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