Modoc War

Causes

In 1843, John Charles Frémont, Kit Carson, and Billy Chinook became the first known explorers from the United States to pass through the land of the Modoc. Three years later, on the night of May 9, 1846, a messenger named Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie caught up with Frémont to deliver word from President James Polk concerning a possible war with Mexico. Distracted by these dispatches, Frémont failed to set the usual camp watch. Carson felt uneasy about the lapse, though he "apprehended no danger." A thump in the darkness later roused him from sleep, and he rose to find his fellow trapper and friend Basil Lajeunesse lying in blood. His shout of alarm revealed that dozens of Native Americans had descended on the camp. Two more of Frémont's men lay dead before the attackers were finally repelled, and the single attacker who fell was identified as a native of Klamath Lake. What followed, in Frémont's party, was "an angry gloom."

Frémont answered this loss by striking a Klamath Tribe fishing settlement called Dokdokwas, situated where the Williamson River meets Klamath Lake, on May 10, 1846, even though the village likely bore no responsibility for the killings. Scholars differ on particulars, yet they concur that the village was leveled entirely; according to Sides, Frémont's men killed women and children along with warriors.

What makes the destruction of Dokdokwas especially bitter is the widely held scholarly view that Frémont and Carson vented their fury on the wrong people entirely: those responsible for killing the three men were most likely Modoc, not Klamath, even though the two groups shared cultural ties and counted each other as fierce rivals.

The California Gold Rush largely bypassed Modoc country until March 1851, when a mule packer named Abraham Thompson stumbled upon gold near Yreka while moving along the Siskiyou Trail out of southern Oregon. This find pushed the boundaries of the gold rush northeastward from the Sierra Nevada. By April of that year, some 2,000 prospectors had made their way to what became known as "Thompson's Dry Diggings," traveling the southern branch of the old Emigrant Trail directly across Modoc lands.

Relations between the Modoc and American settlers began peacefully enough, but violence erupted after the Pit River Tribe killed several settlers. An American militia, unable to distinguish between different native groups, struck back at a Modoc village that had no part in the raid, slaughtering men, women, and children indiscriminately. Kintpuash, later known as Captain Jack and destined to lead his people, lived through this assault but lost relatives in it. In the aftermath, certain Modoc resolved to strike the next white travelers they came across as a means of driving off the encroachers. This resolve led, in September 1852, to an assault on a wagon train carrying roughly 65 men, women, and children bound for California.

Word of the massacre reached the Willamette Valley settlements through one severely injured survivor who managed the journey to Oregon. News of his account traveled fast, and the Oregon volunteers who eventually arrived at the site found the mutilated remains of men, women, and children strewn across more than a mile of lakeshore, with the wagons looted and set ablaze. The site earned the name Bloody Point. Retribution followed once more: a California militia force under the Indian fighter Ben Wright slaughtered 41 Modoc during what was supposed to be a peace conference. Among those who managed to flee was John Schonchin, brother of the Modoc chief.

As settlers kept pushing into Modoc territory and lobbying for government control of the region, cycles of violence persisted. Klamath and Yahooskin warriors likewise struck at settlers and migrants in hopes of pushing them back. Matters shifted in 1864, when the United States concluded a treaty with the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin band, numbering over 1,000 Indians and consisting mostly of Klamath, under which the tribes surrendered millions of acres and the government created the Klamath Reservation in what is now Oregon. This agreement required the Modoc, under the leadership of Old Chief Schonchin, to abandon their territory around Lost River, Tule Lake, and Lower Klamath Lake in California and relocate to a reservation situated in the Upper Klamath River Valley. The government's end of the bargain promised food, blankets, and clothing for however many years were needed for the tribes to become self-sufficient. Allen David put his name to the document on behalf of the

Final Stronghold

For months before hostilities broke out, Captain Jack had bragged that his band could hold its own against any attack from a spot amid the lava beds along Tule Lake's southern edge. It was there the Modoc withdrew following the fighting at Lost River, and the place has since become known as Captain Jack's Stronghold. Ridges of lava, fissures, hollows, and caves gave the Modoc every advantage a defender could want, and when the 52 warriors settled into the position, Tule Lake formed its northern boundary and supplied them with water.

On December 21, a scouting party operating out of the Stronghold struck an ammunition wagon near Land's Ranch. Within weeks, by January 15, 1873, roughly 400 U.S. Army troops had gathered in the vicinity of the Lava Beds. Van Brimmer's ranch, twelve miles to the west of the Stronghold, held the largest body of these forces, while another contingent was posted at Land's ranch, ten miles to the east. Overall command rested with Col. Frank Wheaton, whose forces combined regular soldiers with volunteer companies drawn from California and Oregon.

Then, on January 16, a detachment out of Land's ranch under Col. R. F. Bernard clashed with Modoc fighters close to Hospital Rock.

Written by Aubrey Research from Modoc War on Wikipedia, cited as a reference and not reproduced.

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