16 Report of the American 



Occasionally a white horseman or a white straggler on foot, or a news- 

 paper reporter from the Modoc country just above us, stopped at our 

 door, or stayed over night ; but usually we saw twenty Indians to one 

 white man. Red faces became more familiar, as they were much more 

 common than white ones. Indian words and phrases crept into our 

 vocabularies, and became part of our ever}' day language. As a rule the 

 Indians were friendly and civil. They had been, however, the last of 

 the Californian tribes to yield to the white man's sway, and the hardest 

 to subjugate. They had also succeeded thus far in one wa}' or another in 

 keeping white men away from their country. At one time a party of 

 miners came down across the vSacrameuto hills to their river to look for 

 gold, but the}^ were waited upon in the morning by three caiefs and three 

 hundred warriors, and summaril}' escorted out of the country. This sort 

 of thing was repeated several times. Still later a party of two Ameri- 

 cans and eleven Chinamen came up from the Sacramento river to dig for 

 gold, and camped a short distance above the present location of our camp, 

 but before morning the McCloud Indians murdered every one of them, 

 not leaving one to tell the story. 



A year ago a Mr. Crooks came to the river, and settled a mile or two 

 above us, but the Indians murdered him as late as last September, 

 while I was there. Thus by one means or another they have kept the 

 whites out, so that even now, there is not a single white man living on 

 the McCloud river. 



When we came to the river to erect our house and hatching works, a 

 large number of Indians assembled on the opposite bank and spent the 

 whole afternoon endeavoring by threats and furious gesticulations to 

 drive us away, and afterwards several of them waited on me and told me 

 in their dialect, of which I had learned a little, that this was their river 

 and their land, and these were their salmon, and that I was stealing their 

 land and salmon ; that the}^ had never stolen an}- thing from the white 

 man nor taken his land, and that I ought to go away. Some of them 

 were very much excited and verj- angr}' while talking. Others went so 

 far as to give out threats about my being killed. When I thought of the 

 fate of all my predecessors on the McCloud, I did sometimes feel slight 

 misgivings, but I adopted a firm and and conciliatory policy with them 

 which worked so satisfactorily that I am now perfectly satisfied that none 

 of us are in any danger there. I ought also to add that thej^ stand in too 

 much fear of the white man to do any open injury. 



I gave the Indians all the salmon which we caught after we had got 

 through with them, and I treated them well always, being particularly 

 careful to be thoughtful of and attentive to their sick, so that we got, 

 along with them very well, and I think reall}' made friends of some of 



