by Dee Brown
Meacham and- Fairchild were puzzled, by the request, but they went out to the council tent with Winema and Frank Riddle. The Modocs were waiting, and Jack greeted the white men warmly. He explained that he did not trust Canby, because he wore a blue uniform and talked too much about his friendship for Indians; his talk did not ring with truth, because he kept bringing his soldiers closer to the Lava Beds. As for Reverend Thomas, he was a "Sunday doctor," and his holy medicine was opposed to the Modocs'
beliefs. "Now we can talk,” Jack said. “ I know you, and Fairchild. I know your hearts.” He went on to explain how the soldiers had forced them to flee Lost River and take shelter in the Lava Beds. "Give me a home on Lost River, , he pleaded. "I can take care of my people. I do not ask anybody to help me. We can make a living for ourselves.
Let us have the same chance that other men have."
Meacham pointed out that Lost River was in Oregon, where the Modocs had shed the blood of white settlers. "The blood would always come up between you and the white men,"
the commissioner declared.
Jack sat in silence for some minutes. "I hear your words," he said. "Give me this Lava Bed for a home. I can live here; take away your soldiers, and we can settle everything. Nobody will ever want these rocks; give me a home here."
Meacham replied that the Modocs could not stay in peace in the Lava Beds unless they gave up the men who committed the killings on Lost River. They would be treated fairly, he promised, in a court of law.
"Who will try them?" Jack asked. "White men or Indians?"
"White men, of course," Meacham admitted.
"Then will you give up the men who killed the Indian women and children on Lost River, to be tried by the Modocs?"
Meacham shook his head. "The Modoc law is dead; the white man's law rules the country now; only one law lives at a time."
"Will you try the men who fired on my people?" Jack continued. "By your own law?"
Meacham knew and Captain Jack knew that this could not be done. "The white man's law rules the country," the commissioner repeated. "The Indian law is dead."
"The white man's laws are good for the white men," Jack said, "but they are made so as to leave the Indian out. No, my friend, I cannot give up the young men to be hung. I know they did wrong-their blood was bad. . . . They did not begin; the white man began first. . No, I cannot give up my young men; take away the soldiers, and all the trouble will stop."
"The soldiers cannot be taken away," Meacham replied,
"while you stay in the Lava Beds."
Grasping Meacham's arm, Jack asked imploringly: "Tell me, my friend, whit am I to do? I do not want to fight."
"The only way now to peace is to come out of the rocks,
"Meacham told him bluntly. "No peace can be made while you stay in the Lava Beds."
"You ask me to come out and put myself in your power,"
Jack cried. "I cannot do it. I am afraid-no, .I am not afraid, but my people are. . I am the voice of my people. . . . I am a Modoc. I am not afraid to die. I can show him (Canby) how a Modoc can die."
Both men knew there was nothing more to be said.
Meacham invited Jack to return with him to the soldier camp and continue their discussions with General Canby and the other commissioners, but Jack refused. He said he must first counsel with his people, and that he would let the commissioners know if there was to be any more talk.
When Meacham reported to General Canby that Captain Jack would never give up Hooker Jim,’ band and therefore would not surrender the Lava Beds stronghold without a fight, Canby decided to give any Modocs who wished to leave one more opportunity to do so. Next day he sent Winema to inform Jack that any of his people who wanted to surrender could return with her.
While Winema waited, Captain Jack called a council. Only eleven Modocs voted to accept Canby’s offer. Hooker Jim, Schonchin John, and Curly Headed Doctor all spoke strongly against surrender, accusing Canby and the commissioners of plotting treachery. The meeting ended with a threat from Hooker Jim's followers to kill any Modocs who tried to surrender.
That evening, as Winema was riding back to Canby’s headquarters, a young Modoc named Weuim who was related to Winema halted her a short distance along the trail. He warned her not to come to the Modoc stronghold again, and to tell her white friends not to meet his people in council again. Hooker Jim's followers were planning to kill everyone who was against them, Weuim said. Winema rode back to the Army camp, but she was afraid to pass the warning on to anybody other than her husband. Frank Riddle, however, went immediately to headquarters and informed the commissioners of the warning. None of them believed it was anything more than angry talk.
In the Lava Beds, however, the angry talk against the white peacemakers grew stronger. On the night of April 7, Hooker Jim and his followers decided to have a showdown with their chief. Some of them suspected Jack of being on the verge of betraying them.
Schonchin John opened the council with a bitter speech: “I have been trapped and fooled by the white people many times. I do not intend to be fooled again." He accused the peace commissioners of trickery, of playing for time while the Army brought in more soldiers and guns. "When they think there is enough men here, they will jump on us and kill the last soul of us."
Black Jim spoke next: "I for one am not going to be decoyed and shot like a dog by the soldiers. I am going to kill my man before they get me." He then spoke for killing the peace commissioners at the next council with them.
When Captain Jack saw how far the talk was going, he tried to convince the speakers they were wrong. He asked for time in which to bargain with the commissioners, to try to save Hooker Jim's band as well as to obtain a good piece of land for a reservation. "All I ask you to do is to behave yourselves and wait."
Black Jim accused Jack of being blind. "Can't you see soldiers arriving every two or three days? Don't you know the last soldiers that came brought big guns with them that shoot bullets as big as your head? The commissioners intend to make peace with you by blowing your head off with one of the big guns." Other speakers supported Black Jim's argument, and when Jack again tried to reason with them, they shouted him down: "Your talk is not good! We are doomed. Let us fight so we die sooner. We have to die anyway."
Believing it was useless to say more, Jack turned to leave the council, but Black Jim stopped him. "If you are our chief, promise us that you will kill Canby next time you meet him." "I cannot do it and I will not do it."
Hooker Jim, who had been watching silently, now stepped up to his chief. "You will kill Canby or be killed yourself.
You will kill or be killed by your own men."
Jack knew this was a challenge to his chieftaincy, but he held in his anger. "Why do you want to force me to do a coward's act?"
"It is not a coward's act," Hooker Jim retorted. "It will be brave to kill Canby in the presence of all those soldiers."
Refusing to promise anything, Jack again started to leave the council. Some of Hooker Jim's men threw a woman’s shawl and headdress over his shoulders, taunting him:
“You’re a woman, a fish-hearted woman. You are not a Modoc. We disown you.”
To save his power, to gain time, Jack knew he had to speak.
"I will kill Canby," he said. He pushed the men aside and walked on alone to the cave. Winema did not come with any messages the next day or the next, and so Boston Charley, who could speak and understand English, was sent to tell General Canby that the Modocs wanted to counsel with him and the commissioners on Friday morning, April 11. The Modocs would come unarmed to the council tent, Boston Charley told Canby, and they expected the commissioners to come unarmed.
On the morning of April 10, Jack called his men together outside the cave. The day was spring like, the sun quickly burning away the night fog. "My heart tells me I had just as well talk to the clouds and wind," he said, , but I want to say that life is sweet, love is strong; man fights to save his life; man also kills to win his heart's d
esire; that is love. Death is mighty bad. Death will come to us soon enough." He told his listeners that if they started fighting again, all would die, including their women and children. If they had to fight, let the soldiers start it. He reminded them that he had promised the commissioners to commit no acts of war as long as the peace councils continued. “Let me show the world that Captain Jack is a man of his word,” he pleaded.
Then he came to the promise he had made to kill General Canby. "Do not hold me to it. If you hold me to what I said in anger, we are doomed. Hooker Jim, you know that as well as I do."
"We hold you to the promise,” Hooker Jim replied. “you have to kill Canby. Your talk is good, but now it is too late to put up such talk."
Jack looked at the fifty men seated around him on the rocks. The sunlight was bright on their dark faces. “All who want me to kill Canby," he said, "raise to your feet.” Only about a dozen of his loyal followers remained seated.
"I see you do not love life nor anything else.” His voice was somber as he grasped for an alternative. In the council with Canby, he said, he would tell the general what the Modocs wanted. "I will ask him many times. If he comes to my terms I shall not kill him. Do you hear?"
"Yes," they all said.
"Will that do?"
"Yes," they agreed.
Now only the words of Canby could stop the killing Good Friday, 1873, dawned clear, with a chill breeze fluttering the canvas of the council tent, which still stood between the soldier camp and the Lava Beds stronghold.
Captain Jack, Hooker Jim, Schonchin John, Ellen's Man, Black Jim, and Shacknasty Jim reached the council ground early, and one of them built a fire of sagebrush to keep warm by while they waited for the commissioners to arrive.
They had not brought their women this time. None had brought a rifle, either, but all had pistols concealed beneath their coats.
The commissioners were late in arriving (Winema kept warning them not to go), but soon after eleven o'clock General Canby and Reverend Thomas appeared on foot, and behind them on horseback were L. S. Dyar, Alfred Meacham, Winema, and Frank Riddle. Accompanying the commissioners and the interpreters were Boston Charley and Bogus Charley, who had gone into camp to meet them.
Both Charleys carried rifles carelessly slung. None of the commissioners had any arms showing; Meacham and Dyar carried derringers in their coat pockets.
Canby brought along a box of cigars, and as soon as he reached the tent he gave a cigar to each man. Using brands from the sagebrush fire, they lighted up and sat on stones around the fire, smoking silently for a few minutes.
As Frank Riddle later remembered, Canby made the first speech. "He told them that he had been dealing with Indians for some thirty years, and he had come there to make peace with them and to talk good; and that whatever he promised to give them that he would see that they got; and if they would come and go out with him, that he would take them to a good country. and fix them up, so that they could live like white people."'
Meacham spoke next, opening with the usual preliminary remarks about the Great Father in Washington sending him there to wipe out all the blood that had been shed. He said that he hoped to take them to a better country, where they could have good houses and plenty of food, clothing, and blankets. When Meacham finished talking, Captain Jack told him that he did not want to leave the Modoc country, and asked for a reservation somewhere near Tule Lake and the Lava Beds. He also repeated his previous demand that the soldiers be taken away before they talked peace.
Apparently Meacham was irritated by Jack's repetitious demands. He raised his voice: "Let us talk like men and not like children." He then suggested that those Modocs who wished to do so could remain in the Lava Beds until a reservation was found where they might live in peace.
Schonchin John, who was seated about ten feet in front of Meacham, spoke angrily in Modoc, telling the commissioner to shut up. At this moment Hooker Jim arose and strolled over to Meacham's horse, which was standing to one side of the commissioner. Meacham's overcoat was draped over the saddle. Hooker Jim took the coat, put it on, and buttoned it up, clowning a bit as he walked in front of the fire. The others had stopped talking and were watching him. "You think I look like Meacham?" he asked in broken English.
Meacham tried to make a joke of the interruption. He offered Hooker Jim his hat. "Take it and put it on; then you will be Meacham."
Hooker Jim stopped his clowning. "You keep a while. Hat will be mine by and by."
Canby evidently understood the meaning in Hooker Jim’s words. He quickly resumed the parley by saying that only the Great Father in Washington had authority to send the soldiers away. He asked Jack to trust him.
"I want to tell you, Canby," Jack replied, “we cannot make peace as long as these soldiers are crowding me. If you ever promise me a home, somewhere in this country, promise me today. Now, Canby, promise me. I want nothing else.
Now is your chance. I am tired waiting for you to speak., Meacham sensed the urgency in Captain Jack's voice.
“General, for heaven's sake, promise him," he cried.
Before Canby could say anything, Jack sprang to his feet and moved away from the fire. Schonchin John turned toward the general. "You take away soldiers, you give us back our land," he shouted. "We tired talking. We talk no more!"
Captain Jack swung around, speaking in Modoc: "Ot-we-kau-tux-e (All ready!)." He drew his pistol from his coat, pointing it directly at Canby. The hammer clicked, but the weapon failed to fire. Canby stared at him in astonishment, and then the pistol fired and Canby fell back dead. At about the same moment Boston Charley shot Reverend Thomas, killing him. Winema saved Meacham's life by knocking Schonchin John's pistol aside. During the confusion, Dyar and Riddle escaped.
After stripping Canby of his uniform, Jack led the Modocs back to the stronghold to await the coming of the soldiers.
The main point of contention-the surrender of Hooker Jim's killers -had not even been discussed in that last council.
Three days later the fighting began. Batteries of mortars pounded the Lava Beds, and waves of infantrymen charged the rock breastworks. When the soldiers finally overran the strong- hold, they found it empty. The Modocs had slipped away through the caves and crevices. Having no taste for searching these hard-fighting Indians out of their hiding places, the Army employed seventy-two mercenary Tenino Indians from the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon.
These Warm Springs scouts discovered the Modocs' hiding place, but when the soldiers were brought up to capture it, Captain Jack set an ambush and came very near wiping out the advance patrol.
At last the overwhelming numbers and firepower of the soldiers forced the Modocs to scatter. They had to slaughter their horses for food, and some days there was no water to drink. As casualties mounted among the Indians, Hooker Jim began quarreling with Captain Jack over his strategy.
After a few days of running, hiding, and fighting, Hooker Jim and his band abandoned the chief who had given them sanctuary and then had refused to surrender them to Canby. Jack was left with thirty-seven warriors to fight off more than a thousand soldiers.
Not long afterward, Hooker Jim's band surrendered to the soldiers and offered to help them track down Captain Jack in exchange for amnesty. The new military commander, General Jefferson C. Davis, gave them the protection of the Army, and on May 27 Hooker Jim and three members of his band set out to betray the chief who had refused to betray them. They found Jack near Clear Lake, arranged to parley with him, and told him they had been sent to take his surrender. The soldiers would give the Modocs justice, they said, and plenty to eat.
"You are no better than coyotes that run in the valleys,” Jack answered them. "You come here riding soldiers, horses, armed with government guns. You intend to buy your liberty and freedom by running me to earth and delivering me to the soldiers. You realize that life is sweet, but you did not think so when you forced me to promise that I would kill that man, Canby. I knew life was sweet all the time; that
is the reason I did not want to fight the white people. I thought we would stand side by side if we did fight, and die fighting. I see now I am the only one to forfeit my life for killing Canby, perhaps one or two others. You and all the others that gave themselves up are getting along fine, and plenty to eat, you say. Oh, you bird-hearted men, you turned against me. . . ."
What galled the Modoc chief most of all was that these turn-coats had been the very ones who had thrown squaw’s clothing over his head and called him a fish-hearted woman a few weeks before, thus forcing him to promise to kill Canby. They knew as well as he that it was too late for him to surrender; he would be hanged for murdering Canby. He told them he had made up his mind to die with a gun in his hand instead of a rope around his neck, and then ordered them to go back and live with the whites if they wanted to. But he swore to them that if they ever came within range of his gun again he would shoot them down like dirty dogs.
For a few more days the pursuit continued. It was “more of a chase after wild beasts than war," General Davis said,
“each detachment vying with each other as to which should be the first in at the finish."
After a grueling foot race across jagged rocks and through a thicket, a small party of troops surrounded Captain Jack and three warriors who stayed with him to the end. When Jack came out to surrender he was wearing General Canby's blue uniform; it was dirty and in tatters. He handed his rifle to an officer. "Jack's legs gave out," he said. "I am ready to die."
General Davis wanted him to die immediately by hanging, but the War Department in Washington ordered a trial. It was held at Fort Klamath in July, 1873. Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Boston Charley, and Black Jim were charged with murder. No lawyer represented the Modocs, and although they were given the right to cross-examine witnesses, most of them understood very little English, and all spoke it poorly. While the trial was in progress soldiers were constructing a gallows outside the prisoners' stockade, so there was no doubt as to what the verdict would be.