You do NOT have to search in the cemetery or cross any fences. Please be respectful of this area. The cache is a small plastic container and you may need a pen. When I grew up around near here, it was rumored that the cemetery was haunted.
On June 14, a party of six militia volunteers headed south from Fort Hamilton to hoe corn and were attacked by Indians. The men labored in a farm field claimed by Omri Spafford, near the Pecatonica River. A Kickapoo war party surprises the party and murders Omri Spafford, Abraham Searles, James McIlwaine, and an Englishman nicknamed "Johnny Bull." Two men, Francis Spencer and Bennett Million, escaped death by dashing across the Pecatonica River. Million jumped into the river and managed to find refuge in timber, then raced back to Fort Hamilton. The Indians chased him several miles, perforating his hat with bullets, but he finally reached Fort Hamilton
Spencer could not swim so he skulked along the banks. An Indian mounted one of the plow horses and chased him, but Spencer shot him before he was overtaken. Spencer gets lost, and is found days later hiding in a pig pen near the fort. He avoids going any nearer because he mistakes as hostile Indians a company of Sioux, Menominee, and Winnebago Indians led by Col."Billy" Hamilton. Fright, starvation and exposure made a physical and mental wreck of him and his hair turned perfectly white.
Under orders from Colonel Henry Dodge (lead miner and smelter, war hero, and future WI. State Governor), militia company detachments are sent from Fort Defiance and Fort Jackson to Fort Hamilton. The next morning, June 15th, survivor Bennet Million guides militia volunteers back to the Spafford Field massacre site. There, they buried the mangled dead and search for Francis Spencer, to no avail.
On June 16th, Members of a seventeen-man Kickapoo war-party murder Henry Apfel not far from Fort Hamilton. Col. Dodge and two men from Mound Fort arrive at Fort Hamilton. There, he organizes the command to pursue the Kickapoo. Dodge and twenty-nine volunteers catch up with the Kickapoo war party and kill or wound them all, scalping eleven who resisted on the bank of a pond in a horseshoe bend of the Pecatonica River. Three militia volunteers are wounded in the Kickapoo's opening volley; a fourth is seriously wounded in the ensuing hand-to-hand fight at the pond embankment. Col. "Billy" Hamilton arrives an hour after the fighting ended at the head of a party of Sioux, Menominee, and Winnebago Indians. The native volunteers are thrilled at the scalps the militiamen show them, then set upon the bodies of the Kickapoo and mutilate them beyond recognition.
The location of Battle of Horseshoe Bend, is now known as Bloody Lake . The site is now preserved as part of Black Hawk Memorial Park. Visitors to the park may view the commemorative concrete marker dedicated in 1922 by the Shullsburg Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the people of the town of Wiota.
While in the area, please check out these other historic caches. Fort Hamilton Fort Defiance II Bloody Lake