Battle of Sand Butte

Fought at Sand Butte, this clash between the Modoc Indians and the United States Army formed one episode within the broader Modoc War in California. On April 26, 1873, roughly 70 Army soldiers, accompanied by about 12 Warm Springs Indians scouts, set out searching for a band of Modoc who had slipped away from an earlier Army assault. Around midday, the searching party found itself ambushed near the base of Sand Butte, where just 20 Modoc warriors managed to nearly annihilate the combined force of soldiers and scouts. This unexpected triumph for the Modoc only intensified public demands that they be exterminated.

Background

During the spring of 1873, amid the ongoing Modoc War, the War Department gave Donald McKay, a mercenary of mixed race who led the Warm Springs Indians, permission to raise a force of 100 men from his tribe to take up arms against the Modoc people in California. McKay was no stranger to combat, having already led a band of Warm Springs Indians against the Northern Paiutes back in the 1860s.

Tensions escalated further when General Edward Canby, along with a reverend by the name of Thomas, was killed by the Modocs in April 1873. In the aftermath, the Army joined forces with the Warm Springs Indians in an effort to seize the Modoc stronghold located near Medicine Lake Volcano, known simply as the Stronghold. An assault on this position was scheduled for April 18.

However, on the 17th, just hours before the planned attack, the majority of the Modoc slipped away from the Stronghold. When the combined force of soldiers and Warm Springs Indians arrived the following day, they found only women, elderly individuals, and the wounded remaining. The women were handed over to the Warm Springs Indians, while the elderly and wounded were killed by fire.

Prelude

On the morning of April 26, roughly seventy Army soldiers pulled out of Gillem's Camp, the encampment set up beside the Stronghold, and headed south in search of the Modoc. Their working assumption placed the Modoc east of Sand Butte, a hill rising four miles south of the Stronghold, and their goal was to haul a mortar battery up to its summit so they could rain fire down on the Modoc with ease. Captain Evan Thomas and Lieutenant Thomas Wright commanded this early detachment, which advanced spread out in a line stretching from left to right.

Kientpoos, the man who had killed Edward Canby, and Scarface Charley led the Modoc forces in the vicinity, a band numbering somewhere between twenty and thirty men armed with rifles. Since the soldiers moved in plain view and did nothing to muffle their presence, the Modoc had little trouble tracking their location. The warriors shadowed the patrol along a parallel path, hanging back out of sight as they closed in from the rear. Near midday the soldiers halted at the foot of Sand Butte, on its eastern side, to eat and rest while keeping an eye out for Donald McKay's arrival with his troops. This resting spot sat on flat grassland ringed by ridges on every side, some two hundred feet beneath the butte's peak. At noon, McKay showed up along with a dozen scouts and joined the waiting patrol.

Battle

While the army units paused to rest, the Modoc quietly maneuvered into place around them. Kientpoos and Charley led their band toward a stand of trees on Sand Butte's northern side, while two more squads took positions to the north and south, and a handful of fighters settled on a ridge overlooking the scene from the west. Whichever direction the soldiers chose to move, they would find themselves exposed to Modoc rifles firing down from the high ground.

Once the men had eaten, Thomas gave orders for three soldiers to climb up and hold a picket post on the ridge above. As these men began their ascent, the Modoc understood they would soon be discovered, and opened fire on the pickets. Back at Gillem's Camp, the crack of gunfire drifted in, stirring some unease, though many assumed the army's superior numbers would carry the day before long. Instead, the soldiers scattered in disorder, and amid the chaos some even turned their weapons on Warm Springs scouts who were rushing to their aid. By half past one in the afternoon, a number of soldiers had straggled back into Gillem's Camp with word of the ambush, though their accounts were so frantic and disjointed that little credit was given to them.

Eventually Gillem, for whom the camp was named, dispatched troops from the Stronghold toward Sand Butte, though darkness had already fallen by the time they arrived. The stranded soldiers had begun piling up low stone barriers for cover, resigned to spending the night where they stood. Around midnight, additional soldiers straggled into Gillem's Camp and were sent onward to the Stronghold, where Warm Springs scouts waited, ready to head back out to Sand Butte and help free the trapped men. But the night proved too dark for the scouts to navigate, forcing the rescue effort to wait until morning.

As the fighting wound down, Scarface Charley is said to have called out to the soldiers that those still alive should head home, since the Modoc had no wish to kill them all in a single day. When the rescue party finally reached the site the following day, they discovered only bodies. In total the army suffered thirty-six casualties, among them five officers who lost their lives, including Evan Thomas and Thomas Wright.