248 THE SHASTIKA. 
women, for they always had to slave for their masters more than these, and 
they are now driven correspondingly more into lives of prostitution. 
One day a band of Indians were aimlessly strolling about Yreka, when 
some outrage was perpetrated upon them and they started to leave. They 
had hardly gained the suburbs, when a squaw came running after them 
furious with anger; caught up her calico dress and rent it from top to bot- 
tom, as if to show at once her impatience at being a woman, and her loath- 
ing of the hated race which it represented; seized a rifle off the shoulder 
of an Indian; leaped upon a little hillock by the roadside, and in words of 
the fiercest passion called upon them, if they were not recreants and das- 
tards, to follow her and avenge the insult with blood. She started back, 
but the Indians had tasted rather oftener than she the quality of American 
cold lead, so they restrained her and took away the rifle and persuaded 
her to go home peaceably. 
Often of old the women went out with their lords to the battle. Alvy 
Boles relates this story: In 1854, when Captain Judah was campaigning 
against the Shastika on the Klamath, north of Yreka, women were fre- 
quently seen among the Indians fighting, and sometimes found among the 
dead. One day the savages came suddenly upon him, advancing rapidly 
over the brow of a hill, and filling the air with a perfect shower of arrows. 
3ut not a male barbarian was in sight! Before them, in serried line of 
battle, their women were moving to the charge, while the warriors slunk 
along behind them, discharging their arrows between the women. For a 
moment the Americans were taken aback. Their traditional gallantry, not 
a whit diminished by residence on the frontier, forbade their firing on the 
tender sex. But what could be done? They could not shoot bullets around 
a corner, or over the women’s heads at a right angle. Then the order rang 
out loud and clear, “‘ Break down the breastworks!” It was done. In his 
report Captain Judah mentioned that ‘‘a few squaws were killed by acci- 
dent.” 
I do not give entire credence to this story. It is the custom of the 
Modok, and perhaps also of this tribe, to go into battle in couples, one 
warrior crouching along behind another; and this circumstance may have 
originated the above anecdote. 
