Review of:  The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien , by Mary Elise Antoine

Jung, Patrick J.

English

Review of: "The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien", by Mary Elise Antoine

The Annals of Iowa

The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien

Iowa Research Online

The Annals of Iowa 
Volume 76 Number 3 (Summer 2017) pps. 339-340 
The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien 
Patrick J. Jung 
Milwaukee School of Engineering 
ISSN 0003-4827 
Copyright © 2017 State Historical Society of Iowa. This article is posted here for personal use, 
not for redistribution. 
Recommended Citation 
Jung, Patrick J. "The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien." The 
Annals of Iowa 76 (2017), 339-340. 
Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.12406 
Hosted by Iowa Research Online 
Book Reviews and Notices      339 
The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien, by Mary Elise 
Antoine. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2016. xiv, 287 pp. 
Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $28.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Patrick J. Jung is professor of history and anthropology at the Mil-
waukee School of Engineering. He is the author of The Battle of Wisconsin 
Heights, 1832: Thunder on the Wisconsin (2011), The Black Hawk War of 1832 (2007), 
and “Lonely Sentinel: A Military History of Fort Madison, 1808–1813” (Annals 
of Iowa, 2016) and is working on a book on the history of the War of 1812 in the 
upper Mississippi River valley. 
Of all the theaters of the War of 1812, the upper Mississippi valley un-
doubtedly has been the least researched. This is not surprising when 
one considers that it was the most peripheral theater in a war that oc-
curred largely on the peripheries of both the United States and British 
Canada. Thus, Mary Elise Antoine’s highly readable volume is a wel-
come addition to a growing body of historical literature concerning the 
conflict. Like all the theaters in the War of 1812, the upper Mississippi 
valley had its own dynamics and idiosyncrasies. The campaigns there 
provided a consistent series of victories (and occasional strokes of luck) 
for the British-Indian alliance and a succession of setbacks and failures 
for the United States. Antoine provides an excellent overview of the 
personalities and events on both sides that shaped the course and out-
come of the war in the upper Mississippi valley. 
 The first four chapters examine the history of Prairie du Chien 
from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the eve of the war. 
Antoine’s focus on Prairie du Chien is justified given that it was the 
great prize at the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers 
that both Great Britain and the United States sought to possess during 
the War of 1812. Nevertheless, she does not neglect other areas of the 
upper Mississippi valley; she provides a thorough analysis of the region 
from St. Louis to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Also integral to the 
narrative is an examination of the western Great Lakes, particularly the 
geo-strategically important location of Mackinac Island. Decisions and 
events at that major fur trade entrepôt had a crucial impact on the con-
duct of the war to the west.  
 British Indian agent Robert Dickson of Prairie du Chien emerges 
as an important figure whose efforts to recruit Indian allies were a key 
element in Great Britain’s success. Dickson’s American counterpart, 
Nicolas Boilvin, had a far more difficult task; the Indian nations over-
whelmingly sided with the British during the war, and Boilvin lacked 
the resources required to make the Indians American allies or even to 
guarantee their neutrality during the war. William Clark, the superin-
tendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis, was intent on seizing Prairie du 
340      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Chien and led the 1814 expedition that established Fort Shelby at the set-
tlement. However, the British commander at Mackinac Island, Lieutenant 
Colonel Robert McDouall, scuttled Clark’s plans. McDouall organized a 
force composed of British regulars, Indian warriors, and French Cana-
dian volunteers that ended the month-long American occupation of 
Prairie du Chien with a well-executed three-day siege. 
 Great Britain’s Indian allies subsequently thwarted further at-
tempts by U.S. forces to extend American military power into the Mis-
sissippi valley north of St. Louis. Those victories ensured that the wide 
arc of territory from Mackinac Island to the Sauk village of Saukenuk 
along the Mississippi remained under the control of the British-Indian 
alliance until the end of the conflict. 
 Despite this impressive accomplishment, diplomats in Europe opted 
in the 1814 Treaty of Ghent to return the region to the United States, an 
act that stunned McDouall and other British officers as well as their In-
dian associates. In the end, Great Britain abandoned its native allies to 
the whims of the United States and its aggressive program of territorial 
expansion. Antoine concludes with a sketch of Indian-white relations 
in the upper Mississippi valley from the war’s conclusion in 1815 to the 
1832 Black Hawk War, the conflict that finally extinguished Indian re-
sistance in the region. 
 Antoine writes in a flowing prose that makes her book excellent for 
general readers and academics alike. Moreover, the narrative is not en-
cumbered with excessive detail or opaque jargon. The illustrations are 
attractive, and the maps are particularly outstanding. Nevertheless, the 
book exhibits a few flaws. The discussion of Great Britain’s native allies 
would have been stronger if the author had consulted the important 
secondary literature on British-Indian relations from 1783 to 1815; the 
works of Colin G. Calloway, Robert S. Allen, Richard White, and Tim-
othy D. Willig in particular might have saved Antoine from a few em-
barrassing errors. For example, she refers to the Sauk leaders Black 
Hawk and Keokuk as “chiefs” (132, 215) when, in fact, neither man was 
born into a chiefly clan. Black Hawk was a war leader and band leader 
among his people; Keokuk’s rise to leadership was principally due to 
his position as an orator among the Sauks. 
 These, however, are relatively minor criticisms; the research is strong, 
the writing graceful, and the story compelling. Antoine’s book is a much-
needed addition to what remains one of the least-known theaters of the 
War of 1812. Students of Wisconsin history as well as the larger region 
of the upper Mississippi Valley will find much that is new and useful 
in this book. 
 


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The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien

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