The Indians had surprised the camp and killed and scalped every man.

"I remember just how those men looked," said Lincoln, "as we rode up the little hill where their camp was.

The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay, heads toward us, on the ground, and every man had a round red spot on the top of his head, about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp.

It was frightful, but it was grotesque, and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over." Lincoln paused as if recalling the vivid picture, and added, somewhat irrelevantly, "I remember that one man had buckskin breeches on." Lincoln also told a good story of his first experience in drilling raw troops during the Black Hawk War.

He was crossing a field with a front of twenty men when he came to a gate through which it was necessary to pass.