| MUNSON MONUMENT. | PLACE OF MASSACRE. | STATE MONUMENT. |
1
INDIAN CREEK MASSACRE
and
Captivity of Hall Girls
COMPLETE HISTORY
of the
MASSACRE OF SIXTEEN WHITES
on
INDIAN CREEK, NEAR OTTAWA, ILL.
and
Sylvia Hall and Rachel Hall
As Captives in Illinois and Wisconsin
during
THE BLACK HAWK WAR, 1832
BY
CHARLES M. SCANLAN
Author of
“Scanlan’s Rules of Order,” “The Law of Church and Grave,”
“Law of Hotels” Etc.
SECOND EDITIONREIC PUBLISHING COMPANY421 Matthews BuildingMilwaukee, Wis.
2
Copyright, 1915.
BY
CHARLES M. SCANLAN
3
PREFACE.
No one is satisfied with an incomplete story.The very meagre and inconsistent accounts ofthe adventures of Sylvia and Rachel Hall(familiarly known as the “Hall girls”) heretoforepublished, merely excited one’s curiosity toknow the whole story. The ladies’ statementsthat have been published, gave only an outlineof the facts as far as they knew them personally.To obtain all the facts, required much investigationof books and a great deal of correspondencewith historical societies, editors ofnewspapers and the War and the Interior Departmentof the United States. Also, the writerhas had personal interviews with relatives ofthe Misses Hall, and has traveled over theground and examined all the evidence that nowappears from the location of the little cottageon Indian Creek to Galena where the girls tooka boat for St. Louis.
Mrs. A. Miranda Dunavan, a daughter ofMrs. Rachel Hall Munson (the younger captive),gave me the family history of her mother;and Miss Sylvia E. Horn of Lincoln, Nebraska,and Mr. C. L. Horn of Mackinaw, Illinois.4grand-children of Mrs. Sylvia Hall Horn (theelder captive), contributed the history of theHorn family. Thus every fact in the followingpages is stated upon the best evidence.
To gather all the traditions that still lingeralong the course over which the Indians traveledwith their captives, the writer enlisted theservices of his nieces, Miss Gertrude Scanlanof Fennimore, Wisconsin, and Miss MarianScanlan of Prairie du Chien, whose grandfatherswere pioneers in the lead regions. However,no fact has been stated on tradition withoutthe clues being verified by land records orgovernment documents.
Of course every lady wants to know how thegirls looked. Unfortunately, there is no pictureof either of them prior to middle life. Mrs.Dunavan lent to me a very rare daguerreotypepicture of her mother, Mrs. Munson, taken atthe age of about forty-two years, and a photographof her aunt, Mrs. Sylvia Hall Horn, takenwhen she was over sixty years of age.