In the Land of Burnt Out Fires - Page 8

The following data is extracted from Northwestern Fights and Fighters.

independent elements. Finally, they decided to leave the lava-beds.

On the morning of the loth of May Hasbrouck's light battery of the Fourth Artillery, mounted as cavalry, and two troops of the Fourth Cavalry were encamped on Sorass Lake on the west side of the pedregal. The Indians, who seemed to have temporarily reunited, made an attack upon this force. Captain Jack, clad in General Canby's uniform, led a company of thirty-three Modocs in a charge on the camp, while a detachment was absent for water. They succeeded in stampeding the horses and mules and for a time things looked serious. Hasbrouck, however, rallied his men, checked the advance, and, by a series of brilliant charges directly upon the lines the Modocs had established in the surrounding hills, cleared them out of the country, killed one man and - most important of all-captured twenty-four pack-animals, carrying most of the Indians' ammunition, all with a loss of but two killed and seven wounded. This was the first clean-cut defeat the Modocs had sustained, and proved conclusively that they could not fight the troops in the open.

After this the differences between the two parties of Modocs became permanent. They separated, left the vicinity of the lava-beds, and fled. A vigorous advance all along the line disclosed the fact that the Indians had abandoned their stronghold and were at last in the open. A hot pursuit was instituted in every direction. The first large party, numbering about a hundred, was captured on the 22nd of May after some hard marching, but Jack and his immediate following were still in the field.

Davis determined to use the leaders of the first party to effect the capture of the remainder. These Modocs saw the game was up and were willing to save their own lives by betraying the others. Hotly pursued by the soldiers, who were guided by the traitors, the remaining Modocs were gathered up in little bunches here and there, and on the 1st of June Jack was captured in Willow Creek Canon by Captain Perry's troop. He had been literally run to earth by the cavalrymen. As he came out of the canon and surrendered his gun, he sank to the ground exhausted, with the remark that his legs had given out.

General Davis made preparation to hang Jack and the other murderers of the commissioners out of hand. He was stopped by an order from Washington, and after considerable discussion as to the legality of the proceedings, upon the opinion of the Attorney-General, Captain Jack, Schonchin, Boston Charley, Black Jim, Barncho, and Sloluck were ordered for trial before a military commission. Hooker Jim, Bogus Charley, and Shacknasty Jim turned State's evidence. Ellen's Man had been killed. The charge was violation of the laws of war, attacking a peace commission under cover of a flag of truce. The prisoners were not represented by counsel. As Jack remarked, they had been unable to obtain any. The trial was fairly conducted, nevertheless. The testimony of the witnesses, both white and Indian, was strong against the prisoners. The captives asked these witnesses no questions. They called a few witnesses to the stand in their turn, and these only with the apparent object of establishing the fact that the Klamaths, their hereditary enemies, had urged and incited them to war, and had furnished the weapons and supplies to enable them to carry it on, all of which may possibly have been true, but none of which was material.

Jack made a speech, pitiful in its futility, in which he brought out one point that hostilities had commenced by Captain Jackson's attack on his camp on Lost River. Jack also stated that the Modocs who had betrayed him and turned State's evidence were the very Modocs whom he had refused to surrender at the beginning of the war, and if he had done so there would have been no trouble. It was also shown that these men were the most guilty and that it was their insistence in their desperation which had induced him and others to commit the murders.

In closing, the Chief Advocate specifically acquitted the prisoners of any participation in the murder of the citizens after Captain Jackson's attack. The verdict was guilty, and the punishment death by hanging.

Peace societies and earnest, intelligent, but misguided individuals, some of them of great eminence, all over the country, pleaded with the Government for a suspension or commutation of the sentence. Public agitation rose to fever heat. The Government, however, declined to interfere and stood firm in the case of the greater culprits.

It was shown that Barncho and Sloluck were merely tools of the others. President Grant, therefore, commuted their sentences to imprisonment for life, but that was all. In the case of the other four the sentence was carried out with due solemnity and all the forms of the law at ten o'clock in the morning of Friday, October 3, 1873.

They were hanged in full view of the Klamaths and their own women and children, who, from the stockade in which they were confined, saw all that happened. The prisoners met their death with calm fortitude. A wail of anguish rose from the stockade, in which even the stoical Klamaths joined when the trap was sprung and the men swung in the air. justice had had her innings. The murder of the great general and of the devoted

Source: Northwestern Fights and Fighters

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