Indian Creek Massacre (New)

On May 21, 1832, Potawatomi Indians, angered over the damming of Indian Creek by local settlers, attacked and murdered fifteen men, women, and children of the Indian Creek Settlement, located on this site. Two of the girls, Rachel (15) and Sylvia (19) Hall, were taken hostage for eleven days and later ransomed. The Potawatomi chieftain Shabbona, warned settlers of an impending attack but his appeals were ignored. For his role in trying to warn the settlers, Shabbona was thereafter called “The White Man’s Friend,” and given title to a track of land now known as Shabbona Grove. The massacre at Indian Creek happened at the same time as Black Hawk and 1,000 Sauk and Fox tribesmen, women, and children returned to Illinois, provoking the Black Hawk War and leading to atrocities on both sides. Rachel and Sylvia Hall, who were taken to Black Hawk’s camp, survived captivity and lived to old age, their lives spared by two members of the Sauk and Fox tribe. Shabbona, an invited guest to the Lincoln-Douglas debate in Ottawa in August 1858, died the following year and is buried in Morris, Illinois.