Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 25

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER XXV.

A NEW DEPARTURE.

HAT I had made a grave mistake I now saw. Indians are clannish. They may fight among each other like the other people of the earth ; but let them be attacked by the common enemy, and they make common cause. I had fought against their brothers, and I was not to be at once forgiven for that. On the other hand, I had sympathized with the Indians. That also was a mortal crime, an unpardonable offence, in the eyes of the whites.

I had attempted to sit on two seats at once, and had slid between the two. It takes a big man to sit on two chairs at once. Any man who has the capacity to do such a thing, has also the good sense not to attempt it.

The Indians came slowly back into the country ; but some never came. They had gone to the Pit River war. The rank grass is growing above their ashes on the hills that look upon that winding, shining river.

Klamat was never friendly after that. The defeat of the Indians on all occasions, without being able to inflict any injury in return, made him desperate, and to see me among their enemies did not add to his good nature. But dear little Paquita was the same. The same gentleness in her manner, the same deep sadness in her eyes as she tended me. I now began to think again. I now thought, I surely am awake. If I had been awake, I should have mounted my mule as soon as able to ride, and left the country for ever.

No, I said, after a long debate with myself, I will remain. I will reconsider this whole matter. I will gather these Indians together, get arms and ammuni tion, and around Mount Shasta make my home, and, if needs be, defend it to the end. I had done all that could be done, I thought, to convince the whites and make them do justice to the Indians and to under stand me. I would try no more.

I returned the horses belonging to our ranch at Soda Springs, gave up without any consideration all my interest in the property there, bade Mountain Joe a final farewell, and returned, casting my lot wholly and entirely with the Indians.

As I crossed the little stream running through the Now-aw-wa valley, before reaching the Indian camp, I dismounted, and on a birch tree with my bowie knife I cut this word, "Rubicon."

I never saw Mountain Joe again. I never returned to the ranch, for fear of involving those there i n what-

ever misfortune might overtake my enterprise. Dear old Mountain Joe ! he had as warm a heart in him as ever beat in man, and was a kind, true friend. He wandered away up to the mines of Idaho, and there giving way to his old weakness for drink, became a common hanger-on about the saloons, and at last sunk down into a tippler s grave, after having faced death in every form in which it confronts the man of the border.

He had had his love affairs and adventures with the brown children of the Sierras, and the story was current that when he went away a little waif of humanity was left fatherless in the forest.

There were most stringent regulations and laws against selling the Indians of the border any ammuni tion for any purpose whatever. After the Pit River war these were enforced with a twofold vigilance.

This was particularly oppressive to the Indians. It was, in fact, saying to them, u Look here, you savages ! We have superior means for taking your game. We will enter your forests when we choose. We will camp there in summer by the cool waters, and kill game at our pleasure with our superior arms, but you must only use the bow, and keep your distance from our camps. We will thin out and frighten away your game, so that it will be never so difficult for you to subsist ; but you must not attempt to compete with us in the chase, even in your own forests, and in sight of your own wigwams."

The Indians felt all this bitterly. Month by month the game grew more scarce, shy, and difficult to take ; the fish failed to come up from the sea, through the winding waters of the Sacramento, now made thick with mud by the miners, and starvation stared them in the face. They wanted, needed ammunition. They needed it to take game now, they wanted it to defend themselves; they were beginning to want it to go to war. Any man who attempted to furnish them with arms and ammunition was liable to the severest penalties, and likely to be shot down by any one who chose to do so, with impunity. I resolved to undertake to furnish them with arms and ammuni tion.

I visited the Indians in Pit Eiver, and found that they were determined to fight rather than be taken to the Reservation, some hundreds of miles away. I knew this would involve them in war. I knew that this Avar would drive the Shastas into difficulties ; for the whites make but little distinction between what they call tribes of wild Indians. Every Indian camp taken adds to the laurels of the officers of the campaigns ; there is no one to tell to the world, or report to head-quarters, the other side, and they have it pretty much their own way in the invasion, un less checked by cold lead, which says, u Don t come this way, this is our ground, and we purpose to de fend it."

I saw but two paths before me. One was to abandon the Indians, after all my plans and priva-

tions ; the other was to make up such a brief and argument for our side of the case, when the threat ened time came, as would convince the authorities that we were in earnest.

Early in the spring I left the mountains with a few Indians, partly warriors, partly women, and partly children, and made my way through the woods to the vicinity of Yreka, and there pitched camp in open view of town.

The women and children were taken along, in order to give to our camp the appearance of an ordi nary party of vagrant, half-civilized Indians, which is always found moping about the border ; and the camp was made in sight of the settlements, because it was unsafe to attempt concealment.

Any party of Indians found hidden away in the woods and hills too near the settlements, no matter how peaceful and well-disposed are its members, is at once suspected of some secret attempt to right their wrongs, and some fine morning they wake up to the tune of a volley of shot poured in from the four sides of their camp.

The plan was to buy arms and ammunition myself in small quantities, as I could, here and there, and now and then, without exciting suspicion ; and also to se.id out the Indians to trade, and pick up as best they could the desired supplies, until we had pro cured as much as we could well carry in a hasty return to the mountains.

The enterprise was hazardous in the extreme. All

kind of caution was necessary. Ammunition was only to be had in small quantities, and arms only at second hand. The stringent laws and customs compelled cunning, treachery, and deceit. We used all these. If there was any other course open, I failed, and still fail, to see it. We were preparing means to feed the half-starved children of the forest. We were pre paring, if necessary, to defend homes that were older than the ancestral halls of earls or kings.

I went over to Deadwood, ten miles away, among my acquaintances, entered into many kinds of em ployment at different places, and procured most of the desired supplies. Indians carried them to the camp by night.

Soon we were ready to return. Horses were needed. I always kept my own horse and saddle, which was either with me or in some wood near by; but an Indian seen with a horse in the valleys then was liable to be shot down the first time he got out of sight of a house, and plundered. He would hazard about as much by the attempt to purchase a horse provided he exhibited the necessary purchase money.

The whites whenever in an Indian country helped themselves to game or anything else they needed without asking anyone. These few Indians were now in a white settlement and needed horses. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways. The test rule was to be applied.

Every year the whites were entering the Indians forests, and destroying more game than the value of

a whole herd of horses. They would only use the choicest and fattest, and carry away only the saddle of the venison. The Indians would deplore this waste. They would often, compelled by hunger, follow these sportsmen and hunters, and sullenly pick up what was left.

They had no horses now to carry them and the provisions and ammunition to the camp, nearly a hundred miles away.

They were equal to the emergency. A time was fixed for a sudden flight for the mountains with our supplies. The women and children were to come over on the hills overlooking Deadwood, and there remain with one warrior, doing what they could till our return. The purpose was to keep up this communication till the Indians were fully armed and equipped.

Whenever I felt my courage or resolution relax, I lifted my helpless arm, recalled my life of the last year, and then grew resolute and reckless, even to death.

Early one evening I rode into camp ; there came an Indian on a spirited and prancing horse, looking, in his skins and long black hair, tossed about by the action of the restless and plunging horse, like a sav age Gaul in the days of Caesar. Then came another, and then another, till all were ready. They had taken their horses from different parts of the settle ments, so as not to excite any suspicion of concert of action ; stolen them, if you prefer the expression, and under my di rection.

Belts, saddle-bags, and catenas were loaded down with arms and ammunition. What a glorious wild ride up the Shasta valley in the moon, full against the grand old mountain. Here the strange, half- savage men about me exulted, threw back the black hair from their brows, and like giants striding in the air stretched their necks and leaned forward with eyes that were half aflame.

We met a party of miners going in a long string to the city. They stepped aside and stood so near the road as we passed that I could see their teeth as their mouths opened with wonder ; but they did not lift a hand, and we were out of sight in an instant. Then we met the stage. The driver set his horses on their haunches, and heads popped out of the win dows ; but we were gone like a whirlwind.

We reached the wood by dawn, climbed the moun tain, and made our way through rain and storm to a small camp on the head of the McCloud. The ammunition was taken into a lodge, and the delighted Indians busied themselves examining the arms. I cautioned them not to unpack the powder till dawn, but was too tired to do more, and lay down in another lodge by the fire and fell asleep.

A dull rash, a dreadful sound that has no name, and cannot be described, started me to my feet. Bark and poles and pieces of wood came raining on our roof; then there was not a sound, not even a whisper.

The poor Indians, so accustomed to a rrange and

prepare their arms and such things by the camp fire, had forgotten my caution perhaps, for somehow the powder had, while the Indians were unpacking and arranging it in the lodge, ignited, and they, and all the fruits of our hard and reckless enterprise, were blown to nothing.

The Indians of the camp and the three surviving companions of my venture, were overcome. Their old superstition returned. They sat down with their backs to the dead bodies, hid their faces, and waited till the medicine-man came from the camp on the lake below.

About midnight the women began to wail for the dead from the hills. What a wail, and what a night ! There is no sound so sad, so heartbroken and pitiful, as this long and sorrowful lamentation. Sometimes it is almost savage, it is loud, and fierce, and vehe ment, and your heart sinks, and you sympathize, and you think of your own dead, and you lament with them the common lot of man. Then your soul widens out, and you begin to go down with them to the shore of the dark water, to stand there, to be with them and of them, there in the great myste rious shadow of death, and to feel how much we are all alike, and how little difference there is in the destinies, the sorrows, and the sympathies of the children of men.