the Modocs indicated treachery and a renewal of hostillties. In reply Sherman said on the r)th that the authorities at Washington confided in him but not in the commissioners, and placed the matter in his hands.
While the negotiations with Jack had been in progress the connnissioners were engaged in examining, according to the instructions of the Secretary of the Interior into the cause of the war. On the 22d of February their first report was formulated, in which was recited all the alleged wrongs of the Modocs, as already known to the reader of my general history, dissatisfaction with the Klamath reservation as a place of residence, owing mainly to the domination of the Klamaths and ill treatment by the agents. With reference to these charges, the commissioners remarked that concerning the latter complaint it was well founded; they were satisfied the fault lay in the treaty, and not in the conduct the agents and employes of the reservation. If food and clothing had been insufficient they had nevertheless been impartially distributed. No indulgences had been granted to one tribe or band not extended to all; and while the Klamaths, Snakes, and Sconchin's band of Modocs were contented, Jack and his followers alone found cause to justify a refusal to perform their treaty stipulations.
Out of this refusal had grown the causes which led to the war; the assertion by the Modocs of a right to a country which they had conveyed by treaty to the United States, and which was subsequently settled upon in good faith by citizens of Oregon; their persistence in roaming over, and refusal to abate their pretensions to, this country, treating the settlers as theh tenants, and committing acts which must inevitably lead to collision between the races. Then followed the attempt to compel them to go where they belonged — an attempt ordered by the Indian department at
