40
LOST RIVER
QUANAH PARKER AND CRAZY HORSE, WHILE ULTIMATELY losing their battles against the soldiers, won the respect of many in the United States for their courage and resourcefulness. The leader of another resistance movement, by contrast, became a watchword for treachery.
Captain Jack was the name whites used for a chief of the Modoc people of southern Oregon and northern California. The Modocs had been relatively unaffected by the migration to the Willamette Valley that ravaged the Cayuse and resulted in the Whitman massacre. And they survived the transit of Oregonians to California upon the discovery of gold on the American River. But after gold was discovered in southern Oregon, they became part of the cycle of killing, reprisal, escalation and atrocity that left whites and Indians feeling reciprocally aggrieved. The Indians of southern Oregon determined to defend their homelands; whites who had lost friends and kin would have been happy to exterminate the whole lot of the natives. Numbers, always growing, favored the whites; knowledge of the terrain helped the Indians.
In time the same factors that wore down Indians elsewhere took hold in southern Oregon, and by the 1870s nearly all the tribes had been compelled to sign away most of their lands and settle on reservations. The last holdouts were Captain Jack’s band of Modocs. Jack resented the whole reservation system, but especially the failure of the government to honor its treaty promise to furnish supplies and protect the Modocs from the larger tribes on the reservation they all were supposed to share. In protest, Jack led his several dozen warriors and their wives and children to their ancestral lands along the Lost River on the border of Oregon and California. Those lands were occupied by white settlers, who complained to the government. The army launched a campaign to force Captain Jack and his followers back to the reservation.
The campaign proceeded by skirmish and negotiation. The Modocs didn’t seem numerous enough to justify an all-out war. But the negotiations broke down at critical moments, from bad faith and misunderstanding on one side and then the other. The settlers, for their part, wanted no compromise. Neither did diehards among the Modocs, who preferred death in battle to confinement on the reservation.
In protest of the failure of the talks, Captain Jack led his band into some lava beds beside Tule Lake in northernmost California. The lava beds—a local expression of the tectonic forces that shaped the rest of the West—made an impenetrable stronghold, their frozen waves of stone forming nooks, crannies, caves and clefts. The soldiers chased the Modocs into the beds, only to be picked off by rifle fire from shooters they never saw.
The army regrouped, and the government reconfigured its peace commission. Alfred Meacham, a Methodist minister and superintendent of Indian affairs for Oregon, headed the commission; he was advised by General Edward Canby, the army commandant for the Pacific Northwest, and Eleazar Thomas, another minister. Frank Riddle and his wife, Tobey, a Modoc woman, served as interpreters.
Captain Jack recognized that his band couldn’t hold out against the army forever, even in the lava beds. He was prepared to negotiate. “General, we can make peace quick if you will meet me even half way,” he told Canby, through the interpreters. “If you will only agree to half of what I and my people want, why, we can get along fine.”
Canby would brook no compromise. “Captain Jack, I want you to understand that you are not to dictate to me,” he replied. “I am to make peace with you, nothing else.”
“General, I hardly think you ought to dictate to me,” Jack said. “I think you ought to be aware of the fact that I am not your prisoner or slave, not today, anyway. All I ask of you is to give me a reservation near Hot Creek or Fairchild’s ranch.” Hot Creek and Fairchild’s ranch were close to the lava beds.
“Jack, you know I cannot do that.”
“Then give me these lava beds for my home. No white man will ever want to make homes here.”
Alfred Meacham spoke up. “Jack, the general or any of us can’t promise you any place until we make peace.”
Canby told Jack what he must do. “Get all your people together and come out under a flag of truce. A white flag means peace. No one will hurt you under the white flag.”
“Look here, Canby, when I was a boy a man named Ben Wright called forty-five of my people under the flag of truce,” Jack said. “How many do you think got away with their lives?” He held up his hand, showing five fingers. Then he curled his thumb and two of the fingers, and with the two remaining fingers pointed in the direction of the lava beds. “Two of them are there, alive today. You ask me to come out under a flag of truce. I will not do it. I cannot do it.”
“That was wrong,” Canby said.
“Your white people at Yreka didn’t say it was wrong. They gave him a big dinner and dance at night, called him the hero.”
Meacham answered, “Jack, we are different men. We are not like Wright. We want to help you people so you can live in peace.”
“If you want to help us, give me and my people a home here in our own country. We will harm no one.”
Eleazar Thomas appealed to a higher authority. “God sent me here to make peace with you, brother,” he told Captain Jack. “We are going to do it. I know it. God says so.”
“Brother Thomas, I may trust God,” Jack said. “But what good will that do me? I am sorry to say I cannot trust these men that wear blue cloth and brass buttons.”
Canby reacted as though insulted. “What have these blue cloths and brass buttons done to you?” he queried sharply.
“They shot our women and little babies,” Jack said, his voice rising.
“Did not your men kill settlers, and them innocent?”
“The men killed were not innocent. They were the first to fire on my people on the north banks of Lost River.”
At this point Tobey, the interpreter, spoke in her own voice. “Mr. Canby, do not get mad,” she told the general. “You cannot make peace this way.” She turned to Captain Jack. “You, too, Jack, be a man. Hold your temper.”
Tobey’s words calmed things a bit but didn’t produce an agreement. Jack went back to the lava beds; Canby and the others returned to their camp.
WHEN JACK TOLD CANBY HE COULDN’T MAKE PEACE ON THE white men’s terms, he wasn’t speaking figuratively. Leadership among the Modocs was even more tentative than among the Comanches or the Sioux. A chief wielded authority only as long as the others in the tribe chose to follow him. The irreconcilables among the Modocs were angry at Captain Jack for merely talking to the whites, and they expressed their displeasure plainly at the next council meeting. One asserted that the peace talks were a ruse to allow time for more soldiers to arrive. Another, Black Jim, agreed, and said, “I for one am not going to be decoyed and shot like a dog by the soldiers. I am going to kill my man before he gets me. I make a motion that we kill the peace-makers the next time we meet them in council. We may just as well die a few days from now, as die a few weeks from now.” Black Jim called for a show of support. More than a dozen warriors stepped forward.
Jack acknowledged the difficulty of the negotiations. “I just do not know how to commence,” he said. “I have a hard fight ahead of me in the coming councils, to save my men that killed the settlers, or to win my point to secure a piece of land in this country for our future home.” Yet he was confident, sort of. “I shall win—at least I think I will.”
“You will never save your people,” Black Jim shouted. “Are you blind, my chief? Can’t you see soldiers arriving every two or three days? Don’t you know the last soldiers that came brought big guns with them that shoot bullets as big as your head?” He glared at Jack. “The commissioners intend to make peace with you by blowing your head off with one of those big guns. You mind what I tell you, Jack. The only way we can get an even start with the peace-makers is to kill them next council. Then all we can do is to fight until we die.”
The other diehards gave their approval. Black Jim, encouraged, almost spat in Jack’s face: “Promise us you will kill Canby next time you meet him.”
“I cannot do it, and I will not do it,” Jack said.
Another irreconcilable pushed forward. “You will kill Canby or be killed yourself,” he told Jack. “You are not safe any place. You will kill or be killed by your own men.”
The diehards crowded around Jack. One pushed a woman’s hat down on his head. Another draped a woman’s shawl over his shoulders. Several shoved him to the ground. “You coward! You squaw!” they mocked. “You are not a Modoc. We disown you. Lay there, you woman, you fish-hearted woman!”
Jack struggled to his feet. He threw off the hat and the shawl. He looked from one to the other of the diehards. “I will do it,” he said. “I will kill Canby, although I know it will cost me my life and all the lives of my people.” He paused a moment, then continued, “I know it’s a coward’s work. But I will do it.”
THE CLASH IN THE COUNCIL, AND CAPTAIN JACK’S SUBMISSION to the irreconcilables, became known to all the Modocs, including Tobey. She felt an obligation to Alfred Meacham, who had done her family a good turn, and so she told her husband, Frank Riddle, who just before the next meeting warned the commissioners that their lives were in danger. “Do not go,” Riddle said. “You will all be killed if you do.”
Edward Canby dismissed the warning. His scouts had been watching the council tent. Only four Modocs had arrived. Should any more approach, Canby said, his men had orders to attack. He would not be frightened by the words of a woman.
Eleazar Thomas likewise deemed the warning unreliable. In any case, the minister said, he was willing to put his fate in the hands of God.
Meacham knew the Modocs better than Canby and Thomas did. And he knew Tobey Riddle. He didn’t think she frightened easily, and he trusted her honesty. He shared his view with Canby and Thomas. Neither changed his mind.
Meacham thereupon wrote a letter to his wife. “You may be a widow tonight,” he said. “You shall not be a coward’s wife. I go to save my honor.” He added, “The chances are all against us. I have done my best to prevent this meeting. I am in no wise to blame.”
The commissioners proceeded to the tent. Canby opened the meeting by appealing once more to Captain Jack to come in from the lava beds and take up life on the reservation. Resistance was hopeless, he said. “If you kill all these soldiers, the Great Father will send more soldiers. You cannot kill all of them.” The Modocs had no choice. “The white man’s law is straight and strong.”
Jack, clearly agitated, stood up and walked around. He seized a sagebrush stick that was lying in the dirt and held it out toward Canby. “Your law is as crooked as this,” he said. He bent down and made a scrawl in the dirt with his finger. “The agreements you make are as crooked as this.”
“What have I done?” Canby asked calmly. “Tell me.”
Jack said that Canby had promised not to make war so long as the peace talks continued. But he had been reinforcing his troops and bringing up new weapons, including artillery. “Does that look like peace?” Jack demanded. “We cannot make peace as long as these soldiers are crowding me.” He was getting worked up. “Take away your soldiers. Take away your big guns. And then we can talk peace. Either do that or give me a home at Hot Creek.”
The other Modocs present, including Hooker Jim, an irreconcilable, began talking angrily over Jack. Alfred Meacham tried to calm them down. Canby seemed unperturbed.
“Canby, do you agree to what I ask of you or not?” demanded Jack, trying to regain control of the meeting. “Tell me. I am tired of waiting.”
Meacham nervously implored Canby to answer Jack. “General, for heaven’s sake, promise him,” he said.
Another of the Modocs tried to get Meacham to make the promise. “Meacham, give us Hot Creek,” he said. “Give us Hot Creek.”
Meacham said all he could honestly say: “I will ask the Great Father at Washington.”
While Tobey was translating Meacham’s reply, Jack took a step toward Canby. In Modoc he declared to the other Indians, “Let’s do it.” He drew a pistol from under his shirt and took aim at Canby, a few feet away. He squeezed the trigger, and the hammer fell. But the charge didn’t ignite. He pulled the hammer back again, and squeezed the trigger once more. This time the bullet fired, and it hit Canby in the face, just under his right eye. Yet the bullet missed Canby’s brain, and the general tried to run. A Modoc named Bogus Charley tripped him, then fell upon him and fatally slit his throat.
Another Indian shot Eleazar Thomas in the chest. The minister fell to the ground, asked God to have mercy on his soul, and died.
Alfred Meacham, believing Tobey’s warning, had brought a small pistol to the meeting. He now aimed the pistol at one of the Modocs, named Schonchin. He squeezed the trigger, but the gun failed to fire. Schonchin fired at Meacham, hitting him in the left shoulder. Meacham retreated and Schonchin kept firing, but to little further effect. When Schonchin ran out of bullets, he produced another pistol. By the time he took aim, Tobey had stepped between him and Meacham. “Don’t kill him!” she said. “Don’t kill Meacham. He is the friend of the Indians.”
Schonchin ignored her. He fired and hit Meacham in the forehead. Miraculously Meacham wasn’t killed outright. Another bullet slammed into Meacham’s right arm. Yet another nicked his right ear. And still another grazed the right side of his head. He fell to the ground, all but dead.
One of the Indians began to scalp him. Tobey rushed at the Indian and tried to pull him off the prostrate, dying Meacham. The Modoc threw her aside.
Thinking quickly, she shouted, “The soldiers are coming! The soldiers are coming!”
The Modocs froze, then started running to the lava beds. In seconds they were gone.
The soldiers were not coming, but Tobey’s words saved Meacham, who kept his scalp and somehow survived his wounds.
THE KILLING OF EDWARD CANBY AND ELEAZAR THOMAS MADE a prophet out of Captain Jack. Canby was the highest-ranking officer—the only general—to be killed by Indians in all the wars of the West. And Thomas was a man of the cloth. The murder of the two, under a peace flag, abruptly erased the sentimental support that had existed in parts of white America for Captain Jack and the outnumbered Modocs. “All the Modocs are involved,” William Sherman declared. “Do not pretend that the murder of General Canby was the individual act of Captain Jack. Therefore the order for attack is against the whole, and if all be swept from the face of the earth, they themselves have invited it.” Not everyone in America would have put the matter as harshly as Sherman did, but almost no one contradicted the sentiment.
The Modocs were not—quite—swept from the face of the earth. The soldiers’ ranks were reinforced until they outnumbered the Modoc warriors twenty to one. With their artillery they pounded Captain Jack’s lava-bed stronghold. The Modocs slipped the cordon one moonless night, but they didn’t elude their pursuers for long. After a few more skirmishes, short but sometimes bloody, they surrendered.
Most of the survivors of Jack’s band were sent into exile in Oklahoma. Jack and three others, convicted of the murder of Canby and Thomas, were sentenced to death. They were hanged at Fort Klamath, near the reservation they had refused.