The tremendously superior force of volunteers, upon seeing Black Hawk’s charging braves, fled frantically with the first volley fired by the Indians. As they fled they spread the alarm over most of northern Illinois, and maintained that Black Hawk had ambushed them with 2000 warriors. Following this event Black Hawk removed his women and children to the Lake Koshkonong area in Wisconsin, so that they could forage for desperately needed food and be relatively safe from attack. Black Hawk and his warriors spent the following two months attacking settlements along the Wisconsin-Illinois frontier. Two hundred whites and possibly as many Indians were killed in these border skirmishes. Black Hawk soon found himself pursued by a greatly superior force of militia and regular U. S. Army troops. He and his band fled through the Madison, Wisconsin, area and were overtaken attempting to cross the Wisconsin River, where the Battle of Wisconsin Heights took place on July 21, 1832. Black Hawk’s braves succeeded in holding back the Americans while the tribe crossed the river, and the following morning one of his men made a surrender speech in the Winnebago language. No one in the American camp understood the plea for surrender terms, since the Winnebago followers of the Americans were not in their camp at the time. The Indians were again compelled to flee. Black Hawk then divided his people into two groups, one of which obtained rafts and canoes from friendly Winnebago, and proceeded down the Wisconsin River, hoping to reach the Mississippi River and cross back to Iowa. Soldiers from Prairie du Chien captured or shot most of them. Some others were hunted down in the woods by Menomini Indians led by white officers. As the rest of Black Hawk’s band fled overland toward the Mississippi River, they were pursued by the combined forces of General Atkinson, General Henry, and Major Dodd, a total force of some four thousand men. When Black Hawk’s band arrived at the Mississippi River, they were met by the steamboat “Warrior.” Black Hawk again attempted to surrender, but the “Warrior’s” captain preferred to believe this a trick and opened fire on the Indians. The infantry then arrived and attacked the Indians from the rear. Men, women, and children were forced into the river at bayonet point. Many were drowned as they attempted to swim the river, and others were picked off by American sharpshooters from the shore. This was the massacre of the Bad Axe River, which lasted three hours, and in which 150 Indians were killed and as many more drowned. A band of Sioux, brought there for the purpose by General Atkinson, set upon the 300 Indians who reached the other bank and killed about half of them. Only about 150 survivors remained of the thousand Indians who had crossed with Black Hawk into Illinois in April only four months before.