THE MODOC WAE. Ixxi 



had become disgusted at the close neighborhood and secret enmity of the 

 Klamath Lake Indians, their congeners. 



The presence of the Modocs in their "old country," though contrary 

 to the letter of the treaty, was tolerated by the Government until the 

 autumn of 1872, when the complaints of the white settlers against the 

 Indians became too frequent and serious to be further disregarded. A 

 struggle to secure the enforcement of the treaty could no longer be post- 

 poned. The Modocs' open defiance to the authorities could no longer be 

 endured, and this brought on the Modoc war. 



Space does not permit me to give more than an outline sketch of this 

 bloody contest of a small, sturdy people of mountaineers against the regu- 

 lar army and a large body of volunteers ; but many references in detail 

 have been made to it in the Texts and Notes, to which the x'eader may 

 refer. A monograph of the Modoc war doing full justice to the importance 

 of this event and to its ethnographic features would alone fill a volume of 

 considerable size. Here, as well as hi all other Indian wars, the result was 

 that the strong conquered the weak, which is always the case in the end, 

 especially when the former has the law on his side. 



According to the war chronicle obtained by me in the Modoc dialect 

 from the Riddle famil}- the war oiiginated in a petition sent by the settlers 

 to the President to have the Indians removed from their old homes to the 

 Reservation, in fulfillment of the treaty stipulations. The President agreed 

 to this, and sent an order to the commander at Fort Klamath to have them 

 removed — "peaceably if you can; forcibly if you must!" In the morn- 

 ing of November 29, 1872, Major Jackson surrounded the Modoc camp 

 upon Lost River, near its mouth. When he tried to disarm and capture the 

 men they escaped to the hills. The soldiers and the settlers of the neigh- 

 borhood then fired upon the unprotected women and children of another 

 Modoc camp farther north, for which brutal act the Modoc men retaliated 

 in the afternoon by killing fourteen settlers upon their farms. Hereupon 

 the Modocs retreated with their families to the Lava Beds, south of Tule 

 Lake, the home of the Kumbatwash, and there they strengthened some 

 select positions, already strong by nature, through the erection of stone 

 walls and earth-works. Kintpuash or Captain Jack, who no^^- was not the 



