Story by E.C. Jones

Just to the west of Tule Lake and the Lava Beds, a white cross stands on a sagebrush flat. It marks the spot where, on a clear and crisp morning in early April, 1873, two great men and their entourages met face to face under the flag of truce. It is a place where one man died, killed by the other, hoping to protect his people. The murdered man was General Edward R. S. Canby—a civil war hero and the only General to die in the Indian wars—and the murderer was a Modoc Chief called Kintpuash, forever remembered as Captain Jack.

The areas west and south of Upper Klamath Lake were the home to two tribes who shared a language and much of their culture, but didn’t get along very well. The first, the Klamath usually kept to the North of the valley near the Sprague and Williamson Rivers. The second, the Modoc spent their time in areas along the banks of the Lost River, usually in the area north of Tule Lake. For centuries their lives would remain unchanged. Like the Klamath, the Modoc subsisted on deer, elk, pronghorn antelope, waterfowl, small game, camas roots and waterlily seeds. While not overly aggressive toward other tribes, the Modoc were known as fierce fighters.

Things would change during the last half of the Nineteenth Century. Trappers, followed by miners, followed by settlers began to enter the Klamath region. The Applegate Trail, a southern alternative to the Oregon Trail, now skirted Goose and Tule Lakes bringing thousands of whites through the area. It was near Tule Lake that the fortunes of the Modocs started to change. In 1852, an immigrant band skirted the shore of one of the lakes. An unknown group of natives attacked the train and killed many immigrants, and those who survived stumbled into Yreka. Enraged and terrified citizens raised a militia headed by Captain Jim Crosby, who traveled to the massacre site to bury the dead.

The next day, Crosby’s men killed fifteen Modoc women and children. The Modocs, who rarely let insult go unpunished, brought the bands together in council. The chiefs, among them Captain Jack’s father, decided to retaliate. They ambushed a wagon train at Bloody Point, where the Applegate trail skirts the shore of Tule Lake. Sixty-five white immigrants perished. The response from Yreka this time was to send another militia, this one headed by a much more competent leader—and a much more ruthless Indian hater—named Ben Wright.

Wright unsuccessfully tried to lure the Modocs into the open by creating a fake wagon train, hiding armed men in the backs of the wagon. The trick failed when the Modocs could see the men and their rifles in the back and prudently chose not to attack. After other ruses failed, Wright managed to convince the Modoc leaders to negotiate. He and his men set out a food for the natives, a feast that some say was poisoned. The Modocs came to talk with the whites, and when concentrated in one area, Wright pulled a pistol and ordered his men saying “Boys, don’t spare the squaws; get them all!” After the smoke cleared, forty-one Modocs lay dead. One was Captain Jack’s father.

After the Ben Wright massacre, the Modocs, plagued by disease, had few altercations with whites. Indian wars to the west and northeast parts of the region diverted attention away from the Modocs, who started more positive contact with whites. By 1864, government representatives under Klamath Agent A. B. Meacham, a former minister, gathered the Modoc bands in an attempt to persuade them to move to a reservation. Meacham appointed Old Schonchin as Chief over all Modocs. Captain Jack was a chief of one of the bands, yet he was not given a leadership position. Regardless, his group and the other groups of Modocs agreed to move to the Klamath Reservation where they stayed for a time. Captain Jack’s band and others drifted away from reservation boundaries to return to ancestral homes in the Lost River valley shortly after. They stayed off reservation for a couple more years causing few problems, but by 1869, the government agents again convinced Captain Jack to return with his people to the Klamath reservation for a second time.

When the Lost River Modocs returned to the reservation, the plan was to build a permanent home at the mouth of the Williamson River, the area now called Modoc Point. As the Modocs were building fences to hold their stock, a group of Klamaths stole the fence rails they had split. When Jack complained to the government agent, Captain O. C. Knapp, he was unwilling, or possibly unable to help the Modocs. Feeling insulted and slighted by not receiving the same provisions given to the Klamaths, Jack and his band left the reservation, and returned once more to the Lost River Valley. White homesteaders had moved into the country by this time, and when Jack’s band returned, the settlers petitioned the government to remove the Modocs.

In January, 1872, A. B. Meacham, now Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon, requested from General Canby, Commander of the Department of the Columbia, for “50 or so soldiers” from the Fort Klamath detachment to escort Captain Jack’s band back to the reservation. It wouldn’t be until the end of that year until the army finally acted, and by that time Jack was well aware of their plans. Winema, Captain Jack’s cousin, hurried to the camp on the banks of the Lost River, near the natural bridge that gives the river its name. She warned Jack the soldiers were coming. A few days later, on November 27, Major John Green, commander of the Klamath garrison, sent Captain James Jackson and a group of Linkville (Klamath Falls) militiamen to escort Jack and his people back to Klamath.

Reports from the Battle of Lost River are unclear, and even the first-hand reports sometimes contradict each other. What is known is the detachment of soldiers under Captain Jackson rode to camps near the natural bridge. Once at the river, the soldiers saw two camps on opposite sides, with Jack’s band on the south bank and another band on the north bank that included Hooker Jim, Curleyheaded Doctor, and Boston Charley. Jackson and his men entered Jack’s camp, and another detachment went into the other camp.

Lieutenant Frazier A. Boutelle ordered the Modocs to stack their rifles, which most did. A Modoc called Scarfaced Charley didn’t want to give up his pistol, and after arguing with Boutelle, someone fired a shot. The Modocs scrambled to get their surrendered weapons, and both sides shot at each other. By the end of the short engagement, one bluecoat and one Modoc lay dead. In freezing rain and sleet, Jack and his people escaped, following the river south to seek refuge at the Lava Beds.

Unknown to Jack, a child had been killed in Hooker Jim’s camp. In a brutal act of retribution, Jim and his cohorts purged the countryside of all the white men they could find, killing eighteen white men but sparing women and children. Another off-reservation group of Modocs were at the time camped along the shores of Hot Creek, about twenty- five miles to the south of the Lost River bands. They had nothing to do with the attacks or the murders, but after hearing the news, the Hot Creeks, led by Bogus Charley, Shacknasty Jim, Steamboat Frank, and Ellen’s Man, decided it best to surrender and return to Klamath Agency. They approached a couple of white farmers who sent word to Major Green at Ft. Klamath that they wanted to surrender. Green sent word to meet with Captain Jackson near the Lost River camps, where troopers would escort the Indians safely to the reservation. Someone misunderstood the orders, and instead of going to the agency, the group headed toward Linkville (now Klamath Falls), where an angry, drunken mob was arming itself to revenge the Lost River murders. When the Hot Creeks learned of this, they left their escort and turned south to join Captain Jack at the stronghold on the Lava Beds.

By mid-January, 1873, soldiers found the Modocs in the Lava Beds, well entrenched and well aware of their defensive advantage. A group of about 400 soldiers, comprised of regulars, volunteers, and a group of Klamath scouts attacked the stronghold on January 17. Using the cover offered by dozens if not hundreds of cracks, fissures and tubes in the lava, the Modocs easily kept the soldiers at bay with only 53 warriors. Thick clouds and fog rolled in blanketing the area, providing all the cover the Modocs would need to counterattack and rout the army troops, who fled, dropping supplies and weapons the natives would later use. The army lost thirty-five men in the battle, with twenty-five wounded; the Modocs didn’t lose a man. The one-sided defeat lead the Army to replace commander Colonel Frank Wheaton with Colonel Alvin Cullem Gillem, a veteran of the Seminole and Civil Wars.

The embarrassing defeat changed the focus of the battle. The telegraph allowed news to travel quickly, and the Modoc battle was the first Indian war covered by the papers. For a period of time it dominated headlines. Knowing another frontal assault would be pointless and another defeat embarrassing, the Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano, decided to resolve the situation peacefully, and on January 25, formed a peace commission to try to resolve the conflict. A. B. Meacham, was appointed chairman, and one of the members was to be General E. R. S. Canby.

Canby, originally from Indiana, graduated from West Point in 1839, just in time to fight Florida the Second Seminole War under the command of Zachary Taylor. He would again distinguished himself as a soldier and an officer during the Mexican War of 1846, where he earned brevet, or battlefield promotions three times while fighting in and around Mexico City. At the end of the war, Canby had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Between the Mexican War and the beginning of the Civil War, Canby was assigned to both administrative and command posts. He served as an assistant Adjutant General of the Pacific Division, a post that would help to develop his strongest asset—the ability to organize and plan things.

When the Civil War broke out, Canby was stationed in New Mexico, attempting to get the Navajo to move to a reservation. Although Canby’s campaign was unsuccessful, Canby knew that when chased, the Indians would use up their supplies and be forced to abandon stock, and they would eventually be forced to surrender. Canby never saw his policy succeed, but it did a couple years later when the devastated Navajo surrendered and many died on the Long Walk.

When the army began to split up at the beginning of the Civil War, Canby took command of Union forces in New Mexico and pushed the Confederate forces into Texas. Canby’s next post was not an easy assignment: he was given the dubious honor of restoring peace to New York City after the draft riots of July, 1863, which he did; and to restore the draft in the city, which he also accomplished. After a short time in Washington, D. C., Canby later went to the Western Front, where as commander of the Military Division of Western Mississippi, he orchestrated the army and navy attack that captured the city and harbor of Mobile, Alabama—destroying the last of the Confederate Navy in the process, effectively ending the war in the West. On May 26, 1865, all Western Confederate troops surrendered to Canby, marking the end of the Civil War. By all reports, Canby was an excellent administrator and a competent combat leader with extensive experience in native issues.

During the time between January, and April 1873, both sides were at a standstill. Canby decided to travel south to personally oversee the military operation and to try to make peace with the Modocs. Like any well-trained officer would have, Canby ordered Gillem to move troops closer to the Lava Beds and the stronghold, following a policy of restrictive confinement, which, like a snake, slowly squeezed the enemy until it suffocated. As the troops moved closer to the stronghold, the two parties started to negotiate. Jack demanded complete pardons for all his men, the withdrawal of all federal troops, and the right to choose the location of their own reservation. The peace commission responded with their own demands: the Modocs must go to the reservation chosen for them, and face civil charges of murder for the settlers Hooker Jim and his men had killed. Jack knew that if he and his band surrendered, they probably wouldn’t face any major consequences, yet he decided to protect Hooker Jim, and wouldn’t give up any of his demands.

The Modocs had spent an entire winter outside, living in uncomfortable lodgings, exposed to rain, snow, and cold, uncertain of where food, water and firewood would come from. The stress, and the way the Modocs leadership worked, led to split in the ranks. A faction led by John Schonchin, soon began to undermine Captain Jack’s authority. Schonchin and his followers believed if they killed the peace commissioners, the army would leave the area, and leave them alone forever. Because negotiations had stalled, Schonchin’s faction was convinced that Captain Jack acted weakly. At a council meeting, Schonchin John and his followers dressed Jack in women’s clothes, shaming him in the process, saying, “You’re a woman, a fish-hearted woman. You are not a Modoc. We disown you.” Jack resisted, until the schism reached a point where he had to choose between killing the peace commissioners or losing his position as chief. “Why do you want to force me to do a coward’s act?” Jack asked his antagonists. “I will kill Canby, although I know it will cost me my life and all the lives of my people….”

An April 11 meeting was planned to bring all the major players for the Modocs and the government together. The peace commission consisted of Meacham, General Canby, Reverend Eleazar Thomas, a California minister the Modocs called the Sunday Doctor, and L. S. Dyer, an Indian agent. Winema, Captain Jack’s cousin, and her husband Frank Riddle were acting as interpreters.

In the days leading up to the meeting, a Modoc warrior called Weium, or William Faithfull, warned Winema that Captain Jack and the other Modocs planned on murder. Winema told Reverend Thomas, who foolishly didn’t believe her and confronted the Modocs. “Why do you want to kill us?” he asked Bogus Charley and Boston Charley, not believing they would dare attack. As might be expected, the two Charleys denied wanting to kill anyone, and when Canby heard of the threats, he also seemed unconcerned, saying that his troops commanded the situation. “The little handful of Modocs dare not do that—kill us in the presence of a thousand men. They cannot do it.” Frank Riddle, Winema’s husband, saw things differently: “Gentlemen, I have known these Modocs for a long time…. If you men go tomorrow to meet them Modocs you will never see the sun rise again in this world.” Confident of their positions, the peace commission walked to the peace tent the next day.

The morning of April 11 dawned brisk but clear when the two parties met. Canby told Jack the government would not be able to meet any of his demands, and the atmosphere in the meeting turned dark. With the command “Ut wvih kutt” (let’s do it), the Modocs turned hidden weapons on the peace commissioners. Jack pulled a pistol and aimed it at Canby and pulled the trigger. The first shot misfired with an ominous click, but the second bullet hit Canby under the right eye, wounding but not killing him. Canby started to run when he either tripped or fell down and Bogus Charley slit his throat.

Boston Charley shot and killed Reverend Thomas, and Schonchin John shot Meacham in the head about the same instant as Canby and Thomas were shot, wounding but not killing him. When Jack’s pistol misfired, Dyer and Frank Riddle started running in opposite directions. Both managed to escape. Meanwhile, Winema, jumped in front of Meacham, convincing Schonchin John and Shacknasty Jim that he was already dead, saving his life. Boston Charley tried to scalp Meacham, which was difficult, as Meacham would later share, because it’s hard to scalp a bald man, especially with a dull knife.

“Soldiers! Soldiers!” Winema shouted, further distracting the Modocs away from Meacham. In the aftermath, the Modocs stripped the clothing and uniforms from the dead (and unconscious) commissioners. Captain Jack took Canby’s uniform and the others divided the rest of the clothing. “I know I will be killed,” Jack said to Winema, “but when I fall there will be soldiers under me.” With these words, Jack and the Modocs returned to the stronghold and waited for the soldiers to leave. And they waited in vain.

The Army attacked the Modoc stronghold in the Lava Beds a second time on April 15, four days after the murders, an attack the natives easily withstood. A couple weeks later, The Modocs ambushed a reconnaissance patrol at Sand Butte, killing eighteen and wounding twenty, causing Canby’s replacement at the Department of the Columbia, General Jeff C. Davis, to relieve Colonel Gillem and take command of the troops himself.

Luck would turn on the Modocs when, in early May, they attacked an encampment at Dry Lake. Ellen’s Man and four other warriors died, and the deaths caused the remaining Modocs to part ways. Bogus Charley, Boston Charley, Curley Headed Doctor, Shacknasty Jim, Hooker Jim and others went west, hoping to surrender. Captain Jack, John Schonchin, and a few others moved to the east.

In an ironic twist, after they surrendered, Scarface Charley, Hooker Jim, and Bogus Charley—men who Captain Jack protected—were given immunity by the army if they agreed to work as scouts, which they accepted, and they eagerly pursued Captain Jack into Langell’s Valley in upper stretches of the Lost River. Captain Jack eventually surrendered on June 1st, 1873. “Jack’s legs gave out,” he said, still wearing the tattered remains of Canby’s uniform and sitting down.

Captain Jack, John Schonchin, Boston Charley, and three others were tried in a military court at Fort Klamath for the murders of General Canby and Reverend Thomas, and for the murdered settlers killed in Lost River. Four, including Captain Jack, were convicted and hung for their roles in the murders; two others were sent to Alcatraz for life. The government relocated the rest of the Modocs who participated in the war to Quapaw, Indian Territory, Oklahoma. They wouldn’t be allowed to return until 1909.

The actions and personalities of the two leaders in the Modoc War gave a preview of things to happen. Three years after Jack surrendered, another celebrated Civil War officer led his cavalry troopers into a force of Cheyenne and Lakota warriors many times greater in number and in firepower. George Armstrong Custer, whose permanent rank was Lieutenant Colonel, like Canby, didn’t believe a group of undisciplined “savages” would attack his well-disciplined soldiers. The massacre that followed at Little Big Horn set the Indian Wars into full swing. Custer’s overconfidence is eerily reminiscent of Canby’s misguided faith in numbers at the Lava Beds.

Other native leaders would meet tragic ends. Like Captain Jack, Crazy Horse, then Sitting Bull would be betrayed and murdered by their own people, reminding one of Hooker Jim’s betrayal of Captain Jack. After much bloodshed, the Indian Wars would finally came to a close in 1890 when a young Lakota warrior, like Scarfaced Charley, didn’t want to give up his rifle, a rifle he had legally bought and paid for. A skirmish broke out at a place called Wounded Knee, leading to a horrific massacre and a defeated people. While the Indian wars didn’t start at the white cross planted next to the Lava Beds, Canby’s Cross stands as a bitter monument to the two great men who became casualties in the war, and to all—Indian or white, who died in any of these battles.