Amid the revelry that night before the planned assault, some of the men in both camps sat talking with comrades of other wars and faraway battles, of places called Antietam and Cold Harbor, Manassas and the Wilderness, Kennesaw Mountain and the James River. Toasting one another’s health come dawn and the orders to advance on that impregnable fortress of black rock where the Modocs danced and sang and celebrated over the scalps of good soldiers.
A few made oral wills or scribbled down their final requests and stuffed them into the hands of friends. To see that a wedding ring made it back home to a wife; a cabinet photo back to children waiting in the east; a little extra pay forwarded to some aging parents somewhere in southern Ohio.
A few of the many faceless enlisted who could not write asked friends who could to put down their name on a piece of paper they would pin to their uniform come morning. So that when they died, the men burying them would know them, at least by name.
And there were always the songs to be sung: “The Girl I Left Behind Me” given voice repeatedly over those campfires where gathered the men in blue, young and old alike; along with the “Doxology” and “Annie Laurie,” sung as a bittersweet lament for love’s anguish.
Likewise the many raised their tin cups to toast to success with the coming light of day. Seamus Donegan stood among them, soldiers all at that moment, adding his roughened, off-key brogue of a voice to theirs.
“Then stand by your glasses steady,
This world’s a round of lies;
Three cheers for the dead already,
And hurrah for the next who dies!”
Not only in Yreka that day, but elsewhere across the land, a terrible grief was sweeping through every heart. As ink was smeared across long sheets of newsprint, the shocking headlines reached a stunned nation that Easter Sunday. On every street corner from big city to small hamlet, newsboys hawked their wares to angry customers, eager for any scrap of news from the bloody Lava Beds.
Slowly, but steadily, the cries for a war of extermination were heard echoing across the land.
In the far west, two long lines of silent, bare-headed mourners lined the streets of that California mining town beneath flags dropped to half-mast. The army’s black-draped ambulance pulled up before the only mortician in Yreka, and the two rifle-case coffins unloaded while the loud cries of vengeance against Captain Jack rose to the leaden skies once more.
Outside in the streets they hung a life-size effigy of Interior Secretary Columbus Delano, who had urged his peace policy on the Grant administration’s War Department.
“Give them bullets and grapeshot!” was the shout raised that day.
“No talk of peace with murderers—let ’em choke on their own blood!”
Canby lay in state for most of the day and into that black evening while thousands for many miles around, even schoolchildren dismissed from classes, came in to pay their respects and glimpse the mortal remains of the man who had given his life, sacrificed on the altar of the hope of making peace with Jack’s Modoc renegades.
Late that Sunday night a recovering A. B. Meacham’s own brief telegram outlining the murders at the peace tent in horrid details was speeding to officials in Washington. His painful conclusion: “We believe that complete subjugation by the military is the only method by which to deal with these Indians.”
Receiving word of Canby’s murder at a late supper, General William Tecumseh Sherman immediately hurried to a midnight counsel with President Grant before wiring General Schofield, Commanding Officer of the Military Division of the Pacific, recently returned from Hawaii.
The President now sanctions the most severe punishment of the Modocs and I hope to hear that they have met the doom they so richly have earned by their insolence and perfidy.
More to the gritty business of waging war on the Modocs, Sherman selected Colonel Jefferson C. Davis to fill Canby’s role as Commander of the Department of the Columbia. But Davis would be some time in arriving on the scene. For the present, it would fall to Colonel Alvan C. Gillem to prosecute Sherman’s war of annihilation on sixty Modoc warriors.
At his command, Gillem had fully five troops of cavalry and five companies of infantry, in addition to four artillery batteries and the newly-arrived mercenaries under Donald McKay. His firepower had recently been augmented by the addition of four Coehorn mortars capable of effective bombardment of the Stronghold. For every soldier to carry into battle was a supply of five hundred hand grenades from the armory at Benicia Barracks near San Francisco.
Yet Gillem’s officers continued to shrink from the idea of a direct frontal assault on an impregnable position backed by a determined enemy. Their idea was to soften up the Modoc positions by judicious use of the mountain howitzers and mortars before the foot soldiers moved in: Major Mason from the east with some three hundred men, Major Green marching from the west with 375 soldiers.
Gillem’s final orders, “Tell your men to remember General Canby, Lieutenant Sherwood and the flag.”
They didn’t get moving until Monday. By that night of the fourteenth, Mason moved his troops and the Warm Springs Indians into position on the east. There was a slight delay while the seventy-two Indians held a Christian service of song, thanksgiving and prayer before going into battle.
So different from the attack of last January—no blinding, confusing fog awaited them now. Only a balmy, moonless sky, undisturbed by a single breeze.
After bugles blew reveille at midnight, Green ordered his soldiers forward at two A.M. across the sharp rocks in the dim starshine to the nearby peninsula to await the coming of dawn less than a mile from the hostiles. Mortars and mountain howitzers had been broken down and packed on foot-sure mules for the trip into the Lava Beds. Each man carried sixty rounds for his Springfield. On his back was a haversack containing fifteen hardtack and a skimpy supply of salt-pork.
Unlike the disaster of January, this time the troops were no longer dependent upon doing the job in one day. This time they were prepared to stay until the job was done.
A handful of the infantrymen left behind to guard Gillem’s camp decided they had the best idea for starting the war to annihilate the Modocs. As pickets who hid among the rocks a few yards east of the soldier tents, they watched with surprise as a lone warrior strode up out of the darkness.
Slow-witted Long Jim had decided he would like to visit the soldier camp again, as he had done so many times in the past weeks of negotiation and wrangling. Yet he walked right into a far different reception than the one he had enjoyed before the murder of the peace commissioners.
Seizing Long Jim, the soldiers argued as to the best way to kill the Modoc, something no soldier could boast of having yet done in the war of the Lava Beds. They decided to convince Jim to escape—then shoot him as an escaping prisoner of war. While they were arguing over their options, Jim took it upon himself to flee toward the Stronghold.
The hapless infantrymen fired, and fired again at their escaping prisoner, until the starlit darkness swallowed Long Jim from pursuit.
“Now I know why we were left here and the rest of ’em got orders to do the fighting,” grumbled one of the infantrymen. “Ain’t none of us can shoot to hit a Modoc, even a old slow-witted one like that’un.”
As the minutes crawled into hours and the stars whirled overhead, Green’s troops inched closer and closer to the peninsula where they would await first light. Off to Donegan’s right a soldier stumbled and fell clambering over the black rocks. His Springfield clattered to the ground, discharging.
Every man dropped to his belly, most believing they had been spotted by Modoc snipers—a repeat of the horror encountered in last January’s defeat.
But as that solitary shot echoed away over the silent stronghold, only harsh whispers from confused and harried soldiers were heard beneath the black of night.
No Modoc warriors were waiting to swallow the soldiers this time.
* * *
Jack issued orders to William Faithful and Scar-Faced
Charley to roust everyone from their sleep. After that single gunshot had echoed over their Stronghold, wasn’t many of the Modocs still sleeping anyway.
Everyone knew the attack was coming.
Old women and men took charge of the children and moved them farther back into the deepest of the caves, fortified with their skimpy supplies of water and what food they had.
The young women went out with the warriors to help reload the captured Springfield rifles, keep powder and ball supplies near at hand for the older muzzle-loaders, along with carrying water skins and canteens to their men who would stand the brunt of the coming assault.
In the dim light of coal-bright fires, the women wrapped rawhide around the hands, elbows, knees and feet of the warriors for protection from the sharp rocks they would be called upon to scale during the battle.
All Captain Jack could do now was to wait for dawn, anxious to see if the shaman’s magic still possessed enough power to hold the white soldiers at bay.
Chapter 25
April 15–16, 1873
As ready as everything was, the order for the attack did not come until after eight o’clock.
By midmorning the soldiers were still advancing slowly, only inching toward the outer defenses of the Stronghold. No man had yet seen a Modoc defender.
The ground was broken and serrated, strewn with sharp rock and rough going for men on foot. Even more than that, the company commanders themselves kept the advance slowed to a crawl to prevent a repeat of the disastrous attack of 17 January.
Those soldiers on the far right flank of Green’s advance were “hanging in the air” and without much support should the Modocs throw themselves against that end of things. Which is just how and where the Second Battle for the Stronghold began.
Eight warriors had left the rest and crawled toward the lava flow to the south of their Stronghold. Their intention was to prevent the soldiers from sweeping to the south and thereby joining Mason’s forces coming in from the east. Riflefire from those eight Modocs stopped Green’s entire advance where they stood.
Officers dashed up, shouting orders to renew the advance and return the enemy fire.
Either the soldiers could not, or they simply would not, advance into the sound of the random Modoc gunfire. Angrily, the officers surged up and down their lines, bullying and cajoling—until the Irishman rose up and trotted over to present himself to Captain Evan Thomas.
“You find me a dozen men, Cap’n—we’ll get this flank in sight of the red divils’ main Stronghold.”
“You can see it?”
“Ain’t much more than a thousand yards from the far end of our flank now.”
“How you know that?” asked a grizzled sergeant coming up.
“I can see Cap’n Jack’s medicine flag fluttering out there meself, and a few specks moving around it that I take to be some of his warriors.”
The captain turned to his old sergeant. “By glory—get me a dozen men, Holcomb. We’ll put them behind this bull-headed Irishman and see if we can’t get this line moving again.”
“Aye, Captain!”
Inside of a handful of minutes Seamus had his squad, led by the grizzled sergeant himself, as they moved out in silence.
“I didn’t believe you at first, mister,” whispered the older man as they came to a halt at a rocky ledge. Peering over it, looking north, they could make out the outline of the central Stronghold held by the Modocs, encircled with caves where the Indians had retreated and several pockets fortified with rocks.
“We’re not going to get any closer than this without a hard fight of it, I’m thinking,” Seamus replied.
“I do believe you’re right on that count too,” replied the sergeant.
“Go back and tell the cap’n what you’ve seen here,” Seamus suggested. “If he and the others can get their lines moving when we start our charge—we might do some good.”
The sergeant nodded and backed down the rocky ledge, wincing as he went, his knees and hands shredded on the sharp soil.
He was back in a matter of minutes. “Cap’n sends his compliments to the civilian, mister,” the sergeant said as he crawled back up. “Says we can advance with the rest of the force in our reserve.”
Seamus’s eyes narrowed. “I’m a horseman myself, Sergeant. Don’t know much about playing infantry. How does your captain figure us to advance on our own?”
“You ever play leapfrog as a boy, Irishman?”
“Aye—tell me how we’ll play it here.”
“We’ll leave half of our men back to cover the other half what’s advancing.”
Seamus nodded then. “Then the bunch left to cover will come up while the others cover them.”
“’At’s right, son. You Irish will make good soldiers yet.”
It took the better part of the afternoon, clawing their way across the rough terrain and sharp rocks, exposing themselves to Modoc snipers as they gained yard by yard of ground, inching ever closer to the enemy’s Stronghold.
Four hundred pitted against but eight warriors, yet those eight riflemen made it tough and gritty work for the soldiers across six long hours.
Along about mid-afternoon Seamus got his first clear view of the Modoc position. It was plain to him that when the natural rock formations did not meet the warriors’ needs, they had built up fortifications of stone to a minimum of four feet, leaving loopholes in those improvised bastions for their rifles. One by one the soldiers attacked these small bastions of defense, only to find them abandoned by the enemy moments before the walls were breached.
At one rock formation four soldiers crabbed forward, expecting it to be as abandoned as the rest had been. A Modoc warrior had bravely remained behind, drawing the soldiers in by refusing to fire until the white men were dangerously close. He fired at the closest soldier, then retreated and disappeared among the rocks.
Private Charles Johnson reeled backward, a bullet between the eyes, blood slowly seeping from the purplish hole in his forehead as he collapsed against his companions.
Near the same time on that long afternoon, a California sutler hired by the army saddled his mule in Gillem’s camp, curious to see what he could of the protracted fighting. Patrick McManus was not cut of heroic cloth.
The sutler hadn’t gotten very close to the action when Steamboat Frank shot the mule out from under the white man, forcing McManus to huddle behind some rocks for the remainder of the afternoon while the Modocs fired an occasional shot to keep the frightened sutler cowering and hollering for assistance.
As soon as the light drained from the sky behind the Cascades, sutler McManus dared scurry back to camp on foot, leaving his saddle on the mule’s stiffening carcass. As he neared the outer videttes, a picket’s voice called out in warning ahead of him and a single shot whined over the civilian’s head.
“Goddamn you, soldier! Don’t shoot a friend!”
“Friend?” came the reply. “How I know you ain’t one of them sneaking Modocs talking white man talk—”
“Dry up there, you idiot!” he snarled, more angry now than afraid. “It’s me—McManus, the sutler. Don’t you know a white man on his knees from an Indian on his belly?”
For the time being the white men had no way of knowing how many Modocs they had killed or wounded, if any, throughout their day-long assault. But as the count stood with the falling of the sun, five soldiers had been killed and nine wounded.
At about the same time, just after dusk, Captain Perry’s cavalry advanced from the peninsula through the stationary line of attack where the infantry had halted at the end of the day’s fighting. Within minutes Perry had his horse soldiers in control of the ridge at the far north-western border of the Stronghold. It was from that very ridge on 17 January that the Modocs had delivered such devastating fire on the soldiers blinded by the cold fog.
Matters were looking up as orders were passed down through the line to dig in for the night. With each previous assault, the soldiers were ordered out of the battle arena
come dark. But this time was different. The men were now to find themselves a tiny piece of the rugged, sharp ground where they could fortify themselves and try for some sleep until the morning brought a renewed assault on the Modocs.
As the light drained from the sky, Colonel Gillem proudly stomped up to the edge of the bluff to once more overlook the progress his troops had made through that long day. Dorris, O’Roarke and Fairchild stood among a few others, trying one last time to catch a glimpse of Donegan out there among the blue-clad men hunkered behind dark shadows of black rock.
Gillem sighed, a bit too satisfied with himself to Fairchild’s way of thinking. Ever since Gillem had taken to being sick the morning the commissioners were attacked, then stood about frozen with indecision once the murders were committed, then compounded everything by refusing to attack the Modocs until the Warm Springs mercenaries arrived—John Fairchild had grown to despise the soldier.
“Well, gentlemen,” Gillem said, moving right in among the civilians. “I’m satisfied. Don’t you agree, Mr. Fairchild—this is a splendid day’s work? How long did it take Wheaton to get this far?”
Fairchild’s chance had arrived. He looked squarely at the colonel to say, “General, I don’t remember exactly, but as near as I can judge, it was about twenty minutes.”
Gillem hemmed and hawed and huffed at the insult, finally turning away with the members of his staff.
As he disappeared into the growing darkness, Ian said quietly, “You bloody well know that wasn’t true, John.” Then he had to grin and slap Fairchild on the back. “But it served that pompous windbag right, didn’t it?”
The three laughed among themselves, if only to relieve some of the tension that had every man wound like a watch mainspring.
“I pray your nephew will fare the night, Ian.”
“Aye—Seamus is one to always need your prayers.”
Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3 Page 25