In the spring of the year 1830 William Davis had made a claim on “Big Indian Creek,” erecting a cabin, blacksmith shop (being a blacksmith by trade), and later a mill. When Black Hawk invaded the state in 1832, Davis was finishing a dam for the purpose of furnishing power to run the mill, preventing thereby the running upstream of the fish, as was claimed by the Indians. A numerous band of Pottowatomies, under their chief, Meau-eus, lived in their village on this creek, six miles above the dam, subsisting largely on the fish caught in that little stream. Meau-eus, having been always a fine hater of the whites, grew excessively angry at this obstruction, and in an attempt to destroy it resistance followed, in which the Indians claimed one of the band was unmercifully flogged by Davis, a man of powerful physique. For final adjustment, the controversy was carried before Shabbona, who, in conjunction with Wau-ban-se, concluded an arrangement whereby the Indians were persuaded for the future to fish below the dam, which involved but little additional labor and which they did for a time with apparent good will, but beneath the surface a hatred lodged, only to be spent when, through the assistance of Black Hawk’s braves, the settlement perished. John and J.H. Henderson, Allen Howard, William Pettigrew, William Hall and others, with their families, had from time to time settled near the place, until the settlement had grown to be one of the most promising in northern Illinois. After Black Hawk passed Dixon’s Ferry, it was not long before his emissaries discovered the situation and made the best of it by recruiting to his ranks the entire band, the very thing the Governor attempted to prevent when he sent out his express from Dixon’s. The Indians at once ceased to fish, a circumstance which Davis and J.H. Henderson proceeded to investigate by visiting the village. They found it abandoned, as they had feared, as was that of Wau-ban-se, who, by the advice of Shabbona, had taken his men to the village of the latter after both had sent their women and children to Ottawa for protection. Stillman’s defeat followed, and then came Shabbona’s famous ride to warn the settlements of the dangers which he too well realized were in store for the Davis settlement. Never lived there a more devoted and upright Indian than Shabbona! From the day he left the fortunes of Tecumseh he neglected no opportunity to manifest his friendship for the whites, and never was a more perilous ride projected in a frontier country than the one he took with his son, Pype-gee, and his nephew, Pypes, that memorable day down the Fox River Valley, on to Holderman’s settlement, and, separating, thence on to Bureau Creek, passing through the Indian Creek settlement on the route, missing none in all that vast territory.