A STORY OF THE MODOC WAR. 



Lieutenant C. B. Hardin, U. S. A. 



IT was toward the close of the bloody 

 Modoc war, now almost forgot- 

 ten, save by those who endured its 

 hardships and its sufferings. I, a mere 

 lad of seventeen, then a private 

 in Troop " G," ist U. S. cavalry, had 

 gone through nearly the whole war 

 and had met with some thrilling 

 adventures. The strangest and most 

 startling of all, however, was yet to 

 come ; and that shall be the subject 

 of my narrative. 



The winter campaign against the 

 Modocs had been a failure, owing to 

 the small number of troops engaged. 

 Reinforcements had been sent to assist 

 in the prosecution of a vigorous spring 

 campaign ; but just then some one 

 conceived the idea that these Indians 

 might have grown weary of success- 

 fully resisting the troops, and might 

 desire peace ; so a peace commission 

 had been appointed, with the result 

 anticipated by nearly all of us in the 

 field, viz. : it had met with treachery. 

 General Canby of the army, and Rev. 

 Dr. Thomas, a civilian, both members 

 of the peace commission, had been 

 murdered. This was on April n, 

 1873. Then we were permitted to 

 open the campaign properly, and the 

 celebrated stronghold of Captain Jack 

 was taken, April 17, 1873, after three 

 days' of hard fighting. A portion of 

 the troops engaged in the capture of 

 the stronghold were sent back to the 

 Headquarter camp, while the remain- 

 der, including the troop to which I 

 belonged, were on duty in the captured 

 stronghold— occupying it, I presume 

 because it had been hard to get, and we 

 wanted to gloat over it for awhile. 

 Our horses had been left at a safe 

 place outside the lava beds ; and we 

 were enjoying life as best we could, 

 having, to some extent, purified the 

 atmosphere of our camp by dragging 

 out a few dead Indians and covering 

 them with loose stones, and the little 

 earth we could scratch up. Picket 

 duty was light, and we had nothing 

 else to do ; so we had plenty of spare 



time for fishing and swimming in the 

 lake. 



All the forenoon of April 26th, I 

 had been hard at work fishing, swim- 

 ming and trying to learn how to man- 

 age a " dugout," — which, by the way, 

 was what necessitated the swimming. 

 Tired, wet and hungry, I returned to 

 camp a little after noon, changed my 

 wet and worn-out boots for a new pair 

 of shoes; received my dinner allow- 

 ance of hard tack and bacon, with 

 enough bean soup to almost fill my 

 old tomato can, — the only article left 

 of my dinner set — and settled my- 

 self on the " soft side of a rock " to 

 enjoy a hearty meal. This was pro- 

 gressing finely, and I was beginning 

 to think of the good, long nap I 

 would have before time to go on 

 picket duty, when I heard our troop 

 commander ordering the trumpeter, 

 " sound assembly ! " followed by the 

 command of our first sergeant : " G 

 Troop, fall in ! " From past experi- 

 ence, I knew that something had 

 broken loose ; but what it was no 

 one seemed to know. In less than 

 two minutes we were marching at 

 "double time" along the trail, lead- 

 ing to Headquarter camp ; and, a few 

 minutes later, we met troops from 

 that camp hurriedly marching to meet 

 us. Then I heard some one say : 

 " Thomas is gone up ; " but it did not 

 then occur to me who this Thomas 

 might be. I hoped no one had suf- 

 fered with him, and with the united 

 commands we hurried away toward 

 the south side of the lava beds. 



Sometime during that dreadful after- 

 noon of clambering and falling over 

 the rough rocks, I learned that Captain 

 Thomas, 4th artillery, with Battery 

 " A," 4th artillery, and Company " E," 

 1 2th infantry, had marched from Head- 

 quarter camp that morning, to locate 

 the Modocs, had found them, and had 

 met with disaster. 



All the afternoon we struggled over 

 the rocks, a greater part of the time 

 deployed as skirmishers, keeping a 



