"A half-savage looking race of men..."

[Robert Braun]

This motley column pushed along over the rough roads made for themselves in their long hunts after the Indians, and carried with them such provisions and subsistence-stores as could be procured on short notice and from limited sources of supply.—a half-savage looking race of men, clad for the most part in buckskin garments, and to a stranger almost as wild as the Indians themselves. They were expert woodmen, reared up on the frontier, and trained from their earliest infancy to a knowledge of woodcraft,— brave and hardy, inured to privation and toil, and ever ready to shoulder their rifles, and under the leadership of their favorite chieftains, march against their hereditary foeman, the aborigines of America. Their language was peculiar, and with an honesty which was proverbial, they combined an appetite for strong drink which seems never to have been appeased. They chose their own officers. Made pretty much their own laws, and were, as a general thing, patient under discipline; a long, lank wiry set of men with gaunt jaws and stiff hair, and eyes full of resolution bordering on fierceness.

Source: “The Major: Reminiscences on the Black Hawk War.” Wisconsin newspaper; no date.