In the Land of Burnt Out Fires - Page 4

The following data is extracted from Northwestern Fights and Fighters.

required were present. General Canby then took command in person. It was thought best, before proceeding further, to try the effect of negotiations. A Peace Commission was created charged with their conduct. From a humanitarian standpoint there can be no question as to the-propriety of this course. To the Indian an offer to negotiate is a confession of weakness. The Modocs concluded that the white soldiers were afraid of them.

The United States demanded that the Indians go back on the reservation and that the men, headed by Curlyheaded Doctor and Hooker Jim, who had killed the settlers after Captain Jackson's unsuccessful "jump" of the Modoc camp, should be surrendered for trial as murderers. It is true they had shot down inoffensive men, yet the first act of hostility had come from the soldiers and the little band of settlers who had attacked them on Lost River. Jack had not participated in this slaughter, yet to have given up these men would have been a lasting disgrace in his eyes. He refused to surrender them, naturally. He demanded a complete amnesty and the withdrawal of the troops as his conditions of peace. He professed willingness to go upon the reservation, but he wanted to choose his own. Several localities that he suggested were regarded as impracticable. Finally, he proposed the lava-beds. Such a thing could not be thought of. The United States was not ready to name any definite reservation. They offered to place Jack and his people on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, and thereafter to transport them to some suitable reservation as might be desired.

Jack promptly refused this proposition. The Lost River country was his home and he wanted to stay there. For one thing the wily chief was playing for time. The negotiations were terribly protracted. Meanwhile, he had tried in vain to induce the other Indians to join forces with him, especially the main body of the Modocs on the reservation under old Schonchin. Failing in that, he was inclined toward peace, ultimately, if he could get it on his own terms. The majority of his warriors were clamorous for war. Boston Charley professed to be able to make medicine which would protect the Modocs from the soldiers' bullets. He pointed out the fact that none of them had been killed in the recent attack as proof of his claims. Jack was a man of much native shrewdness and he realized what the end of the little handful of Indians would be. He stood out for a settlement as best he could. There were scenes of intense dramatic interest in the lava-beds. Finally, the warriors put a woman's hat and shawl on their chief and called him a squaw. This insult, and his inability to agree upon anything definite with the commissioners, broke down his determination. He tore off the offensive garments and declared that if the band wanted war they should have it with a vengeance.

The first step resolved upon was the murder of the commissioners and the commanders of the soldiers. The commission had been variously constituted at different times, but at present included General Canby, whose function was of an advisory nature; Colonel Gillem; the Rev. Dr. Eleazer Thomas, a Methodist minister, a man of the deepest piety and widely known as a friend of the Indians; the Hon. A. B. Meacham, formerly an Indian Agent, who was also famed for his just treatment of these very Modocs who knew him well, and Mr. L. S. Dyer, another Indian Agent of character and standing.

The Modoc stronghold was in the center of the north line of the lava-beds, about three-quarters of a mile from Tule Lake. Jack had roughly fortified his position by joining several ravines by rudely made stone walls, and by filling some of the exits and entrances with huge boulders, rolled into the crevices with prodigious labor.

On the east side of the lava-beds near the lake front, about two miles from the stronghold, Major Mason's men were posted. About the same distance on the west, General Canby had his headquarters with the main body under Colonel Gillem. About three-quarters of a mile from headquarters the peace tent had been pitched under the shadow of a bluff, a short distance from the lake shore. Meacham and others had visited Jack in the lava-beds during the negotiations, and various Modocs had returned these visits to Gillem's and Mason's camps. There had been a rather free exchange of courtesies and calls.

After he had decided upon treachery, Jack requested that the five commissioners with Riddle, a squaw-man, who had married a Modoc woman named Toby, and who acted as interpreter, should meet an equal number of the Modocs at the council tent for final conference, both parties to come unarmed. The meeting was agreed upon, but before it took place it was reported from the signal-station on the bluffs back of Gillem's camp, from which the peace tent was in full view, that, in addition to the six Modocs who were of the council party, some twenty armed warriors were concealed in near by ravines. The commissioners refused to go to the meeting. They were not surprised at this evidence of bad faith.

Undeterred by this another meeting was arranged under the same conditions. So confident was Riddle, an unusually intelligent man, that treachery was intended, that he remonstrated personally with each member of the commission. Meacham and Dyer agreed with him

Source: Northwestern Fights and Fighters

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