A SCRAP OF RESERVATION HISTORY. 265 
interlopers, and they were helpless to defend themselves. In every way 
that savages are so ingenious to invent their lives were made bitter to them. 
Their women were beaten and insulted whenever it could be done with im- 
punity; their springs and streams were muddied or poisoned; their ponies 
were shot; their children were whipped; themselves were stoned and 
scoffed and flouted. 
Their brave and honest old chief Skonchin had given his word to the 
Government, in 1864, that he would stay on the reservation, and he kept it 
to the letter. The cries and wails of his sorely-persecuted people came up 
to his ears as did the lamentations of the children of Israel in the desert to 
Moses. But he was helpless to save them. He could only appeal to the 
reservation authorities for relief, and when they did nothing he was forced 
therewith to be content. 
Finally Captain Jack arose as a would-be deliverer. In fiery orations 
he pictured and magnified to the long-suffering Modok the griefs which they 
knew all too well. He gathered about him a band of reckless young men 
who chafed under the restraints of the reservation. He made common 
cause with them and united them to his fortunes. At length, in 1870, em- 
boldened by the imbecility which reigned on the reserve, he struck camp 
and boldly marched away, taking with him one hundred and fifty followers, 
about three-fifths of the Modok tribe. 
He went down to Lost River, the ancestral home of his race, and re-oc- 
cupied the rich grazing lands which the Government had sought to secure 
to the settlers by the treaty of 1864. Troubles continually arose with the 
settlers. The air was burdened with their complaints. The Modok had 
become impudent and insolent; they had learned to despise the wretched 
farce of the reservation management. 
Herein lay the great and fatal mistake of the American authorities, 
that they did not deal firmly with the savages. They sent agents to them 
to urge them to return; they threatened, they coaxed, they made promises, 
they wheedled, then they threatened again, and so on through all the 
inefficient and farcical round which has generally characterized the deal- 
ings of our reservations with the American Indians. They taught the 
Modok to contemn them. All their lives they have done nothing but read 
