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Updated: May 27, 2025
Next morning he was standing at the entrance to the fort with one of his men when a chorus of yells burst upon his ear. He told his bugler to sound the alarm, and was walking towards the house to get a rifle when the man beside him fell shot through the heart. The fort was surrounded by thousands of natives, who kept up a continuous fire, and the bushes near at hand were full of sharp-shooters.
The Indian women plunged into the Mississippi, with their babes on their backs some of them caught hold of horses' tails, to be towed faster; but the steamboat Warrior was waiting, sharp-shooters on shore espied them, and only a few escaped, into the hands of the Sioux. In two hours Black-hawk lost two hundred people, men and women both; the white army lost twenty-seven in killed and wounded.
For a long time Rebel sharp-shooters, from this secure position, had baffled every attempt to advance our lines on the left. The general ordered up a battalion of the Harris Light. Quickly they came! Addressing a few encouraging words to the men, and then turning to Major McIrvin, the officer in command, he said, pointing to the barricades: 'Major, there is the opportunity you have asked for.
We marched slowly, stopping every hundred paces to listen. The shots grew nearer; they were fired at intervals, and the quartermaster said: "They are sharp-shooters reconnoitring a body of cavalry, for the firing is all on one side." It was true.
The surgeons at work along the stream dressed the wounds with one eye cast aloft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets they feared, though they passed continuously, but too high to do their patients further harm, but the bullets of the sharp-shooters which struck fairly in among them, splashing in the water and scattering the pebbles.
Next morning, at daybreak, the firing began again. This day, the 3rd, we suffered nothing, save having one man wounded by a sharp-shooter, and, thanks to the approaches to the trenches, we were able to relieve the guards without any difficulty. The Spanish sharp-shooters in the trees and jungle nearby, however, annoyed us very much, and I made preparations to fix them next day.
In more than one instance after an engagement, members of the "Andrew Sharp-shooters" have indicated precisely the spot where their victims would be found, and the exact position of the bullet-holes which had caused their death; for with the telescope-rifle the question is not, whether an enemy shall be hit, but what particular feature of his face, or which button of his coat shall be the target.
The space between the armies was at times occupied by the partial and irregular contest of individual sharp-shooters, and a hat or bonnet was occasionally seen to fall, as a wounded man was borne off by his comrades. These, however, were but trifling skirmishes, for it suited the views of neither party to advance in that direction.
Whether it was the cause or not, this latter fact was probably the case, but there were individual sharp-shooters about who were inclined to make themselves a nuisance.
On the return of the Northern vessels up the river, they first encountered the form of warfare that proved the most perilous for the sailors of the river navy. Confederate sharp-shooters lined the banks, perched in the trees, or hidden in the long, marshy grass; and any unwary tar who showed his head above the bulwarks was made a target for several long rifles in the hands of practised shots.
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