The First Battle of the Stronghold (January 17, 1873) was the second battle in the Modoc War of 1872–1873. The battle was fought between the United States Army under Lieutenant Colonel Frank Wheaton and a band of the Native American Modoc tribe from Oregon and California, led by Captain Jack (Kintpuash in Modoc).
The US Army forces tried to dislodge the Modoc from the natural fortress, now called Captain Jack's Stronghold, in the lava beds along the south shore of Tule Lake in northeastern California. They had illegally left the Klamath Reservation in Oregon, to which they had been relocated from their territory in order to enable European Americans to settle in the area. The Modoc soundly defeated the Army, inflicting numerous casualties and forcing it to retreat. Factors aiding the Modoc included their excellent defensive position, steady patience, and a thick fog that obscured portions of the battlefield.
Immediately after the inconclusive November 27, 1872 Battle of Lost River in Oregon, the Modoc escaped to the lava beds in what is now Lava Beds National Monument, California. Their band included women and children. There they joined a Modoc band led by Shacknasty Jim from Hot Creek, who had not been involved in the Lost River action. The Modoc were encamped at a natural fortress of caves and trenches 300 yards (270 m) wide and 2 miles (3.2 km) long in the lava beds, which they had improved to make more defensible. The Modoc had captured about 100 head of cattle which they relied on as a food supply.
The Army moved units from across the Department of the Columbia to the south end of Tule Lake, where the units established two encampments, the larger at Van Brimmer's Ranch, about 10 miles west of the Stronghold, and a smaller force at Louis Land's Ranch, 12 miles (19 km) to the east.
The Modoc bands numbered about 160 people, 53 of whom were warriors. The leaders of the group were Captain Jack, Shaknasty Jim, Scarfaced Charley, Hooker Jim, and John Schonchin.
The US Army force in the field consisted of about 400 men. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Wheaton was in command, and had his headquarters at Van Brimmer's Ranch. Major John Green commanded the force in the west, and Captain Reuben Bernard was in command of the forces in the east.
The west force, under Major Green, consisted of the 21st Infantry under Major Edwin Mason; two companies of the Oregon militia under General John E. Ross; 1st Cavalry, Troop F, under Captain David Perry; a company of California volunteers under Captain John O. Fairchild, and one section of two 12-pounder (5 kg) mountain howitzers under 2nd Lieutenant W. H. Miller.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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