258 THE MODOK. 
[ all sat up in their couches and chanted together, in the loud, harsh voice in 
\ 
which they are accustomed to sing, some unmeaning chorus. This was 
related to me by N. B. Ball, a soldier of Capt. Jesse Walker’s company in 
1854, who listened to it one morning with a thrill of strange and supersti- 
tious awe as he lay close on his face on the brow of an overlooking hill 
waiting for the daylight to reveal the nick in the sights of his rifle, prepara- 
tory to a charge on the village. 
The Modok have a hereditary cheefeanchi and are less democratic 
and independent than the California Indians, though there reveals itself 
occasionally a surly and intractable character. A casual observer cannot 
perceive any great difference between the nobility and the riffraff. 
It is often asserted that the Indians improve in moral character after 
they become acquainted with the Americans. B. F. Dowell, for instance, 
states that twenty years ago the Modok were all roving, hostile, barbarous 
savages, while now more than half are loyal, very kind, and many of them 
speak good English. Their “loyalty ”, as with a great majority of Indians, 
is nothing else but fear; they are neither more nor less kind than they were 
as savages, if anything less generous to one another; and my observation, 
which is not limited, gives painful proof of the fact that the younger and 
English-speaking generation are less truthful, less honest, and less virtuous 
than the old simon-pure savages. And this is the testimony of everybody 
whose knowledge of the race has been gained by contact. 
In a lecture delivered in San Francisco, Hon. A. B. Meacham made 
the following statement concerning Modok marriages : 
‘Within the confines of this State nearly all the young women are the 
wives of old men, because the old men have the money to pay for them. 
Remonstrance on the part of a young woman is out of the question, because 
she is threatened constantly with the spirit of her father. Young men all 
over the country have old wives. A poor young man has not fifty horses, 
and he must take an old woman. He accepts the situation and marries an 
old woman; but, becoming rich, he takes to himself a young woman. Po- 
lygamy is allowed, and the Indians give many reasons why it should be 
allowed. They say that in the spirit-land women are very small; that 
