BOSTON CHARLEY—MURDER OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 263 
the law on me and know whether or not Iam agood man. * * * I 
will try to believe that the President did according to the will of the Great 
Spirit in condemning me to die. * * * My heart tells me I should 
not die. You are doing a great wrong to take my life.” Thus his natural 
love of life contended with his philosophic calm, sometimes getting the bet- 
ter of it; but he went to his death without any weakness. 
Boston Charley displayed the nerve of a devil; he alone manifested 
that Indian stoicism of which poets and romancers tell us. And, fiend- 
incarnate though he was, let us do him the justice to say that he was the 
only Indian of the four who did not die with a falsehood in his mouth. A 
mere boy in years, but tall, athletic, and of a splendid physique; a face 
perfectly smooth ; a head small and round; little, fierce eyes, set deep in it 
and gleaming with a devilish expression—there never went to the scaffold 
a human being with a more cool and reckless unconcern, not feigned but 
real, than Boston Charley. In his speech he said: “Although I ama boy, 
I feel that Iam aman. When I look at the others I feel that they are 
women. When I die and go to the other world I don’t want them to go 
with me. I am not afraid to die. I am the only man in this room to-day.” 
Speculating on the purpose the Modok had in murdering the commis- 
sioners, an ingenious writer advanced the theory that, judging the Ameri- 
cans by themselves, they believed that the death of our leaders would strike 
terror into the hearts of their followers, and cause them to disperse in wild 
dismay. Probably the motive for this to us almost unaccountable act 
must be sought from two sources. First, they doubtless considered it, 
educated in savage ideas as they were, as only a righteous retaliation for 
the massacre perpetrated by Ben. Wright many years before, in which 
Captain Jack’s father and the fathers or near relatives of many others per- 
ished. Second, there is a sentiment dwelling in the breast of every brave 
Indian that if he can only destroy the greatest, or at least a very great man 
out of the enemy’s camp, he will die in battle content. In the case of 
Boston Charley, and perhaps of one or two others, it was undoubtedly pure, 
unreflecting, 
any of them expected by the deed to put all our hundreds of soldiers to in- 
unreckoning malice and hatred. It is not at all probable that 
continent flight. They had lived among the Americans too long and knew 
