The so-called Winnebago War of 1827 was of short duration. The energetic movements of Governor Cass, the promptness of the militia under Colonel Henry Dodge, and the dispatch of General Atkinson of the federal army filled the Winnebagoes with such respect for the power of the United States that the disturbance was quelled before it had fairly begun. At this time the tribe numbered nearly 7,000. It might also be mentioned that a few of the tribe secretly joined the Sauk and Foxes in the Black Hawk War of 1832. Smallpox visited the tribe twice before 1836, and in that year more than one-fourth of the tribe died. Mr. George Catlin, famous painter of the Indians, made the statement, when at Prairie du Chien in 1836, that, "The only war that suggests itself to the eye of the traveler through their country is the war of sympathy and pity."