The onset of the Black Hawk War in northwestern Illinois in April 1832 triggered panic in southwestern Wisconsin's lead mining region and led to the erection of more than a dozen stockades. On an open prairie knoll three-quarters of a mile south, area miners and settlers who became part of Col. Henry Dodge's militia built Blue Mounds Fort. Here the Hall sisters, survivors of the Indian Creek massacre, were released for ransom through Winnebago intercession. W.G. Aubrey, George Force, and Emerson Green died in ambush attacks near the stockade. After the Battle of Wisconsin Heights, troops regrouped here. Despite repeated surrender attempts, Black Hawk's band of Sac and Fox Indians was virtually annihilated at the junction of the Bad Axe and Mississippi Rivers on August 2, ending one Native American group's efforts to escape the tragic consequences of white settlement. The heirs of Col. Ebenezer Brigham donated a portion of the fort site to the State Historical Society in 1921.