The day after the battle on this river, I fell down with the regular troops to this place by water, and the mounted men will join us to-day.  It is now my purpose to direct Keokuk, to demand a surrender of the remaining principal men of the hostile party, which, from the large number of women and children we hold prisoners, I have every reason to believe will be complied with.  Should it not, they should be pursued and subdued, a step Maj.  Gen. Scott will take upon his arrival.

I cannot speak too highly of the brave conduct of the regular and volunteer forces engaged in the last battle and the fatiguing march that preceded it, as soon as the reports of officers of the brigades and corps are handed in, they shall be submitted with further remarks.

5 killed, 2 wounded, 6th inft.
2 do. 5th inft.
1 captain, 5 privates Dodge’s Bat. mounted.
1 Lieut. 6 privates Henry’s
1 private wounded, Alexander’s
1 private, Posey’s.

I have the honor to be with great respect,
Yr. obt. servant, H. ATKINSON,
Brevet Brig.  Gen. U.S.A.

Maj.  Gen. Macomb, Com. in Chief, Washington.

The destruction of life in the battle of the Bad-axe, was not confined to the Indian warriors.  Little discrimination seems to have been made between the slaughter of those in arms and the rest of the tribe.  After they had sought refuge in the waters of the Mississippi, and the women, with their children on their backs, were buffeting the waves, in an attempt to swim to the opposite shore, numbers of them were shot by our troops.  Many painful pictures might be recorded of the adventures and horrors of that day.  One or two cases may be cited.  A Sac woman, named Na-ni-sa, the sister of a warrior of some note among the Indians, found herself in the hottest of the fight.  She succeeded at length in reaching the river, and keeping her infant child, close in its blanket, by force of her teeth, plunged into the water, seized hold upon the tail of a horse, whose rider was swimming him to the opposite shore, and was carried safely across the Mississippi.  When our troops charged upon the Indians, in their defiles near the river, men, women and children were so huddled together, that the slaughter fell alike upon all of them.  A young squaw was standing in the grass, a short distance from the American line, holding her child, a little girl of four years old, in her arms.  In this position, a ball struck the right arm of the child, just above the elbow, and shattering the bone, passed into the breast of its young mother, and instantly killed her.  She fell upon the child and confined it to the ground.  When the battle was nearly over, and the Indians had been driven from this point, Lieutenant Anderson of the United States army, hearing the cries of the child, went to the spot, and taking it from under the dead mother, carried it to the place for surgical aid.  The arm was amputated, and during the operation, the half starved child did not cry, but sat quietly eating a piece of hard biscuit.  It was sent to Prairie des Chiens, and entirely recovered from its wound.