A regretful post. The Washburn side of my family (my mom's maternal grandmother) lived in Plymouth Colony during the 1600s. Lately I've been reading about New England’s King Philip's War, 1675-1676, in which some Washburn uncles fought. Proportionately it was America's bloodiest war, killing about 10% of the white population and perhaps 50% of the Native population. By contrast, the Civil War cost 2% of the country's population. Perhaps more tragically, it became the template for future white relations with Native populations: failures to live together, white claims to Native lands, the ugly perception of Native peoples as savages. The notion of Manifest Destiny began at this time in New England, if not the phrase itself.
The Black Hawk War is another tragic conflict between white forces and Native Americans. I've an ancestor, Henry Brown, and a distant cousin, John A Wakefield, who participated in the conflict (through Mom's paternal grandmother). As this says, Chief Black Hawk led his people across the Mississippi into disputed territory. Governor Reynolds of Illinois called up the state militia to repel the "invasion" and the threat to white settlers. With the US Army entering the situation, the Natives were outnumbered 10 to 1. A few months later, the conflict ended, with about 70 settlers and soldiers killed, and around 450 to 600 Indians killed. Thus ended much of the Native population of Illinois, as the survivors were relocated. Two future US presidents, Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln, participated in the war, and also several men who became US Senators and state governors. Wakefield--who was an early settler near what is now Brownstown, IL--wrote a history of the war, to defend Governor Reynolds' course of action against the "ruthless savages." Now we see what a tragedy it all was.
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