Chapter 16

Early April 1873

Captain Biddle drove the captured ponies on west to Gillem’s headquarters at Van Bremmer’s ranch.

It was there, two days later, that a half-dozen Modoc women showed up to protest the capture of the herd.

Alfred Meacham advised General Canby against returning the animals. Agreeing, Canby allowed the women only to briefly visit their ponies before the squaws were escorted from the army camp, empty-handed.

As a staunch Republican and a God-fearing Methodist, Meacham was a former hotel and toll-road operator from the Grande Ronde Valley of the Blue Mountains in north-eastern Oregon when President Grant appointed him to serve as the state’s Indian Superintendent in 1869. Meacham had long been a supporter of the Grand Old Party and “Unconditional Surrender” Grant.

But his appointment had not come as his first experience dealing with Indians. Back in 1863 when he had arrived in Oregon, Meacham already possessed twenty-six years of fair-handed business dealings with Indians in his native Iowa. He himself had been instrumental in the government’s 1844 removal of the Iowa bands to lands farther west on the plains.

This quiet, stocky and balding superintendent got the shock of his life when he made his first visits to the agencies newly in his charge. Not only did he find most of the agents corrupt and venal under an effectively-oiled spoils system, but he discovered most of the Indian Bureau itself to be morally bankrupt. Meacham himself was enraged to run across several attempts of local agents to “wash out the color”—an expression of the time referring to the interbreeding between white and red to solve “the Indian problem.”

Instantly indignant at the abuses, Meacham was quick to rid his department of those agents doing everything they could to personally hurry along the “mixing of the races.” At the same time, he declared it mandatory that any man living on the reservations with an Indian woman had either to marry the woman in legal ceremony or abandon her immediately.

Yet his greatest despair, it seemed, was that he was unable to elicit the army’s help in his reform. In fact, Meacham was unable to enact any substantial change in the moral climate at Fort Klamath itself, where the officers openly “borrowed” squaws from their husbands. Try as he might, Meacham was powerless as well to end the practice of the fort commissary officers and contract sutlers using the local squaws, who were unable to pay for their purchases, as prostitutes for the enlisted men.

So by this spring of 1873, Alfred Meacham found himself feeling older every day now. For more than two months he had been traveling this road of negotiation and hope, attempting to find some accord between the government and the Modocs. He took little joy in knowing the process was making an old man of him.

Immediately following the 17 January debacle in the Lava Beds, Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano had asked Secretary of War William Belknap to suspend hostilities against the Modocs while Washington selected a commission to determine how best to bring about a lasting peace with Captain Jack’s renegades. On 30 January military action was duly suspended, except for any action required by the army for the protection of settlers in the area.

At that same time, Secretary Delano did not have to cast far to find the head of what would be his peace delegation. Former Oregon superintendent Meacham was visiting in Washington. In a matter of hours his presidential appointment was made official and Meacham was on a westbound train, headed for Oregon country once more.

As mile after mile, and day after day, were put behind him, Meacham wrestled with the dilemma of where to begin and what to do once he arrived at the Lava Beds. Truth was, he had accepted the position with misgiving.

And ever since he had arrived on the scene, nothing had changed his most private of feelings. Down in his heart of hearts, A. B. Meacham sensed that he had accepted a task that may very well cost him his life.

By the last days of March, Meacham found himself dealing with a new group of commissioners. Joining him now in the peace efforts were the fifty-eight-year-old Methodist minister Eleazar Thomas from California, and the subagent from the Klamath reservation, L. S. Dyar. In addition, General Canby had in recent weeks become so active in the affairs of the commissioners that he was regarded as one of their delegation.

But back on the twenty-third of March, Meacham actually feared Canby had put his foot in it.

Colonel Gillem had suggested that the colonel and Canby journey over for their own firsthand look at the Lava Beds. Escorted by a full company of heavily armed troops, the officers marched east from Van Bremmer’s to the bluff from which the disastrous 17 January attack had begun.

“At that point, I ordered the troops to dismount and rest,” Canby had explained upon his return to Meacham. “I could look out over the placid expanse of Tule Lake stretching away many miles northward and eastward, while to the east and south lay the seemingly level expanse of the Lava Beds.”

“That’s when you saw the Modocs?”

Canby had bristled, nettled at Meacham’s attempt to hurry along his own well-paced rendering of the story.

The general cleared his throat. “While leisurely gazing over the imposing landscape, we suddenly heard a shout from the rocks near the foot of the bluff where we were standing. I then observed an Indian waving his cap at us.”

“Is that when Dr. Cabaniss approached the warrior?” Meacham asked, referring to one of the several contract surgeons assigned the regiments for the campaign.

Canby nodded. “He knows some of Jack’s men and a few of the women.”

“Yes. He’s a good man,” Meacham observed.

“That’s when he and that English journalist, uh…”

“Fox?”

The general agreed, “Yes. When they went down and found out from the warrior that Captain Jack wanted to talk to me—personally.”

“Cut through the brush, General,” Meacham chided. “Did you make any ground in your talk with Jack?”

This time the pleasure drained from Canby’s face. “No. Jack kept Cabaniss and Fox as hostage until we had finished talking.”

“Wasn’t it more of an argument?”

The general eventually agreed. “I suppose it was. Jack hasn’t relented at all. Still wanting the army to disperse and his people allowed a reservation on Lost River. It was clearly not a pleasant encounter.”

Meacham grinned darkly, his eyes moving over to a nearby fire where New York Herald correspondent Fox was having an army barber trim his long hair. “I suppose that unpleasant encounter is reason enough for Fox to want his hair sheared?”

“Yes,” Canby agreed, attempting to smother a chuckle. “Immediately after the Modocs left us and we were heading back, Fox vowed he would crop his mane so short that should he have another encounter with Jack’s renegades, no Modoc would want his scalp!”

And through it all, day in and day out, Captain Jack’s band played the army and civilians alike for time. Almost any day expecting another terse, impatient telegram from Secretary Delano, Meacham feared the calendar would end up falling on Captain Jack’s side of this war of nerves.

On the first day of April, Canby agreed with Meacham that they should stoke the fire beneath the Modocs. The general moved his headquarters from Van Bremmer’s ranch to a site at the base of the bluff—three miles from and almost within hailing distance of the Stronghold.

After Gillem’s camp had been impressively spread below the bluff, the following day saw the entire peace commission meet with a delegation of Modocs for the first time. The wary on both sides met in that no-man’s land between the army’s tents and the bastion of the Stronghold. Meacham was alone among the commissioners in realizing the Modocs had come with some women as a universal sign of peaceful intentions.

Yet, as things turned out, the two sides argued more on the form of future sessions than on matters of substance.

“Why are you moving your soldiers so close to my women and children?” Captain Jack asked angrily of General Canby through the interpreters.

Meacham watched the old soldier squirm some under the hard scrutiny igniting the Modoc eyes.

Canby cleared his throat, trying out an uncomfortable smile. “I—I moved my soldiers … my own headquarters—so I could be closer to talk with you, Jack. You have men in the trees behind you—there.” Canby pointed.

“They are here to be sure I am not killed by your soldiers,” Jack replied.

“My soldiers camp close by so that I am not harmed by your warriors, Jack.”

The Modoc chief shook his head. “You do not have women and children in your camps. I am not a threat to any of your women and children. Take your soldiers away from here before we can talk about peace.”

“Your warriors could most certainly be a threat to women and children.”

Jack’s face flared. “When the soldiers attacked our camp and the white settlers were killed—not a woman, not one child was harmed by my warriors!”

Canby shifted uneasily. “We want the murderers brought to justice.”

“White man’s justice?” Jack asked. “Did the white man hang the murderers of my people when Ben Wright came among us and slaughtered the Modocs who trusted in the word of a white man?”

“That has nothing to do with our situation today.”

Jack stood abruptly, surprising everyone. “There will be no more talk between us until you guarantee me that Hooker Jim’s warriors will be treated the same as the rest of my people if we surrender.”

Canby shook his head, concern growing across his face. “I cannot negotiate their amnesty, Jack. They are guilty of murdering innocent civilians.”

“Then we really do not have much to talk about.”

At that moment a brutal spring storm that had been taking shape over Tule Lake, full of froth and foam, burst over the council area. A cold rain began falling, urged by maddening gusts of brutal wind hurled off the white-capped water. Canby rose, sheltering his face beneath his wide-brimmed hat.

“We will talk another time, Jack. When it is not raining.”

Some on both sides apparently agreed with Canby that the changeable weather dictated that their council be suspended. A few Modocs were withdrawing for the Stronghold while Dyar and Thomas were turning away toward their horses.

“Where are you going?” Jack demanded, a smile creasing his dark face, black hair stringy and sopping in his eyes. “You white men are wearing better clothes than I am—and I won’t melt like snow!”

Plainly Canby grew impatient as Toby Riddle translated. “We’ll talk more another day, Jack. When I return to my camp, I will have some soldiers come to this place—to this meadow—where they can erect a tent for our future meetings. We can be safe from the weather in the days to come, Jack.”

Canby waved the other delegates away from the area, leaving the Modoc men behind with their mocking laughter ringing across the open basin.

That same day, 2 April, Artillery Battery E arrived at Gillem’s new camp. And on the fourth, while the soldiers erected the high-walled canvas tent in a flat meadow all but entirely free of the large lava boulders normally dotting the area, the Modocs most assuredly witnessed the arrival of Artillery Battery K.

“If that growing show of military might is not enough to awe Captain Jack and his people,” sighed Alfred B. Meacham that gloomy twilight, “they’ll think twice about doing anything the slightest bit underhanded now that our chosen meeting place actually lies closer to this soldier camp than it does to their distant Stronghold.”

“Praise God! Perhaps now they’ll not be so quick to dig in their heels,” agreed the kindly Reverend Eleazar Thomas, the portly minister, at their evening mess-fire, “and Jack’s cutthroats will begin to negotiate in good faith at last. I get the feeling you made some headway in your talk with the Modocs at the tent today, did you?”

Meacham considered his answer. “Jack wanted to see only me and Fairchild. Along with the Riddles. He does not trust Canby.”

“Why doesn’t he like the general?”

Meacham sighed. “Perhaps it is his uniform—the fact that he is a soldier. Jack says Canby talks too much of his friendship for the Indians.”

“Jack doesn’t believe Canby.”

He nodded. “That’s at the basis of it. A soldier who brings his army closer and closer to the Lava Beds cannot be trusted by Captain Jack.”

“So tell me why our renegade chief did not want me there with you.”

Meacham felt ill at ease saying it. “To the Modocs, you are what is called a ‘Sunday Doctor.’ They know you don’t like them because your Christian religious views are so different from theirs.”

Thomas snorted. “You’re a Methodist yourself, Alfred. Aren’t your beliefs different from that curly-headed witch doctor’s?”

Meacham shook his head. “That’s not the point, Reverend. Because you are a minister, they feel you can’t give them the slightest consideration because you consider them outright savages.”

“In the name of heaven! That’s just what they are—ignorant and not in a state of grace, for they know not of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.”

Meacham waved his hand for quiet. “Because of those views you hold, they’ll continue to distrust your intentions, Reverend.”

Thomas drew his lips up into a line of determination. “They do that with no more fervency than I in continuing to trust to my God in guiding my footsteps as I trod this dangerous path to bring the Modocs to peace.”

Meacham opened the cover on his pocket watch. “I must be going soon.”

Thomas clucked in that righteous way of his. “So how many delegates do you think that renegade will bring to the talk?”

“It matters very little—”

“What really matters is that the renegade chief will continue to try every little ploy to drag this affair out, Meacham—if you allow him.”

He shook his head, weary of the constant sniping he suffered from the other commissioners. “Canby’s already sent word to Jack that he’ll be moving his camp even closer to their Stronghold since the Modocs aren’t attempting to negotiate with us.”

“Who’s carrying word between our camps now?”

“Three of Jack’s warriors: Boston Charley, Hooker Jim and another called Bogus Charley,” Meacham replied, watching the sun settle far beyond the high peaks of the Cascade range. “They want to spend the night with us in camp.”

“Damn those godless Philistines, I say.”

He wanted to smile at the preacher, as one might pat the head of an errant child, yet did not allow himself that pleasure. “For myself, Reverend—I believe it better that we have those two Philistines in our camp, if only for the night. Right where we can keep our eyes on them. They’re trouble—I’ll admit that.”

“And the Lord knows they’re stirring all they can of the cauldron of discontent among us, Meacham.”

“The soldiers up in their signal post tonight must be cold,” the commissioner finally said after a few moments, watching the distant flare of light illuminating a soldier’s face as he would light his pipe.

From the elevation of the rock outcropping more than seventy-five feet above the camp, the soldiers could signal Hospital Rock on the far side of the Lava Beds, besides having a commanding view of the meeting tent itself. “When the sun goes down tonight—those boys up there going to be so cold they’ll shiver keeping themselves awake.”

Thomas appeared to have the least care for the enlisted soldiers on night watch as he cleared his throat. “When are we next meeting with the Modocs?”

“I’ll determine that when I talk with Jack at the tent tomorrow,” he answered anxiously. “I must be going for now.”

“I’ll pray for your guidance in the morning, Meacham. Pray that God Himself finds the words for you.”

“Better pray that God Himself were attending these councils, Reverend. Then we might all sleep a little more soundly.”

*   *   *

Meacham was wrong about the full commission meeting with the Modocs.

It was the very next day, the fifth of April as white man reckons his time, when Captain Jack sent Boston Charley back to the soldier camp, requesting a meeting with the old white man named Mee-Cham, along with his long-time friend John Fairchild and the Riddles.

Only they.

With the dying of each day, Jack had sensed a growing urgency pressing in upon him as the Doctor gloated that the chief’s faith in negotiating a favorable reservation from the white man was itself dying a little more with each sunset glowing behind Mount Shasta.

More than anything right now, the young chief of the Modocs somehow had to get the white peace talkers to understand that matters would soon be wrenched out of his hands. The white men must make peace with his people, and now—or Jack could not guarantee the safety of those who came to that tent in the meadow to talk of peace, to talk of a reservation for his old people and the little ones who cried from empty bellies or the cold each night. The rest of his band were strong enough to suffer through this siege.

Captain Jack watched the three white men and his niece approach the high-walled peace tent, knowing he had come here to talk peace not for those who could survive at all costs holed up like cornered animals among these brutal rocks. No—he had come here to talk peace for those too old or sick or small—those who did not hunger for Curly Headed Doctor’s war—those who hoped most of all for peace so they could return to their life of old among the Lost River camps.

But the army was moving again. Almost every day Jack received reports from his wide-ranging scouts that the soldiers were tightening the noose around the Stronghold in the Lava Beds. Not only had the largest group of white men on the west moved closer to the Modocs, but now the soldiers on the east were moving their camp from Scorpion Point to Hospital Rock as well—as little as two miles from where he now stood.

“I know your hearts—I can trust you four,” Jack replied when the old white man Mee-Cham asked again why he could not bring the rest of the peace commission with him to the council.

“What is it your heart wants to tell me?” asked the old white man.

“I came to this place of rocks when the soldiers drove us here,” Jack said. “We had no place to be safe. Now we want to return to our homes on Lost River. I was born there—like my father before me. Give us back our homeland, and we do not need anything from the white man—not like the Klamaths up north. We will not need your food or your clothing. Leave us be to hunt and fish as we have always done. And we will leave you white men alone.”

“I cannot do that, Jack. Things are too far gone now.”

“The soldiers took our horses and would not give them back. Just like the land the white man has taken from us. One day—a man must stand up and fight for what another man takes from him.”

“The horses were captured in war—”

“Your soldiers bring many guns to talk peace to so few Indians!” Jack did not allow Meacham to continue. He rose suddenly, pointing across an arm of Tule Lake. “See that place over there, Mee-Cham. I was just a boy then—when Ben Wright murdered my people … my father.” He whirled on the commissioner. “But I remember. I will always remember the men who say they come in peace—then bring guns to do their talking for them.”

“We are not like Ben Wright,” Meacham started to protest, but Jack was there, his five fingers extended, wagging, forcing the white man back into his seat.

“You know how many escaped that butchery of Ben Wright’s men? Five—one for each of my fingers.”

“Yes! I agree! Ben Wright committed an unspeakable evil—but we are not here today to talk of him—”

“No! We are here to talk of peace while your soldiers prepare for war, Mee-Cham. Listen to me carefully: I will not fall on the ground when the shooting starts. I will fall on the bodies of my enemies.”

Meacham shook his head sadly. He swiped the back of a hand across his mouth, appearing to form the words in his mind. He gazed steadily at the Modoc chief. “If you do not come out of these rocks in peace, Jack—then many will die. Not just soldiers. Not just your warriors. But sadly, many of your women and children will die. Are they as ready as you to die, Jack?”

The Modoc chief felt the same old desperation growing inside him, with the realization that the white man’s words were right, striking the heart of his worst fears. When he finally spoke, Jack’s words came out strong, yet were uttered so low that Frank Riddle leaned in closer to hear them.

“Give us the chance other men have to provide for their families.”

Meacham shook his head. “I cannot talk about Lost River. That is in Oregon where some of your warriors murdered innocent settlers. That means there will always be bad blood between you and the white man in that country.”

There. That was it, Jack decided. Yes—what the old white man said was true. There would always be much bad blood now that Curly Headed Doctor and Hooker Jim had murdered the white men. He sighed, capping his knees with his small hands.

“All right. Give my people this place. These black rocks for our new home.”

“The Lava Beds?”

“I can live here and raise my families. Take the soldiers far from here. I will make this my home, Mee-Cham.” He watched the white man’s face drain of what he thought had been hope.

“We cannot allow you to stay in these rocks unless you give up the murderers, Jack. They will have their say in our court of law.”

Jack wanted to laugh, the pain was so big inside him. “Have their say? You white men have no right to judge a Modoc.”

“It is our system of justice.”

Riddle had a hard time finding words to explain that, while Jack hung on every word.

Then the chief spoke again after some thought. “So give us the civilians and soldiers who killed the women and children on Lost River many moons ago.”

Meacham wagged his head. “I cannot do that. Your law is dead. White law is the only law that can live in this land now. There cannot be two laws living side by side in peace. Only one, Jack.”

Perhaps another way would win a concession from this peace man, Jack thought “Then you try those white men for murdering my people—under your white man’s law, Mee-Cham.”

“I cannot do that.”

Jack was wringing the thick wool of his army britches in his hands. “Then the white man’s law is a fool’s law. If it is only for the white man—and cannot bring justice for the Modocs. If so, it is for fools to believe in.”

“You are being unfair—”

Jack stood. “My people did not start this war. The soldiers and the other white men came and started it. The white man shot first. No, I shout! I will not give my young warriors over to your white man’s law. Take the soldiers away and we will have peace.”

Meacham rose too. Fairchild and the Riddles with him, all sensing the conference coming to a dark conclusion. “I cannot tell the soldiers to leave. They have their orders to stay until your people have left the Lava Beds.”

As Meacham turned slightly to go, Jack lunged and grabbed the commissioner’s arm, his voice cracking as he implored the old man.

“Tell me what to do, Mee-Cham! What path am I to walk now? I do not want this fight.”

Meacham put his hand over the Modoc’s hand locked on his arm so tightly. “The only way we will not have a fight is for your people to come out of the rocks.”

Jack yanked his hand away, straightening. “I cannot come out and turn myself over to you. I am afraid—” But then he realized he did not want to say that. “No! I am not afraid—my people are afraid of what your soldiers will do to them … and I speak the heart of my people. I am their tongue—the voice of my people. Go tell that soldier chief I am not afraid to die. Tell this soldier chief in his fancy blue coat that I will show him how a brave Modoc dies.”

“Come, Jack—back to the soldier camp with me so you can tell General Canby your words for yourself. We can talk more there.”

“We are done talking now,” Jack said quietly, sensing with his failure that the power of the shaman was growing all the more stronger than his own. “I must talk to my head men. We will decide if we will come here to this tent to speak to you anymore.”

He watched the white men and his niece Winema Riddle mount. Then he strode to Meacham’s stirrup.

“Tell the soldier chief that if he does not take his soldiers far from my women and children—I will show him how bravely a Modoc chief dies.”