Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  Horses tied at the picket-lines reared and kicked and whinnied in fear and pain as bullets rattled among them. Those rope picket-lines strung between trees were but momentary obstacles. Half of the horses bolted through the camp, leaping over the crouching mounds of soldiers fleeing the hammering hooves.

  Through the night, the Modocs had slipped past the pickets and crept into position on the high ridge. Some of the warriors had quietly made their way down to the lower humps before dawn, that much closer to the sleeping soldier camp.

  Here and there on this northern fringe of camp, a soldier cried out to his fellows, saying he was hit. There were the screams of others as bullets found their marks among the cavalry and Teninos alike as they rolled behind saddles and blankets, pulling on boots or simply running for cover barefooted. Others fell without a sound at all. They were trapped between the lakeshore and the rocks where the Modocs hid, firing with impunity.

  His searching left hand found the Henry, but for a moment.

  Seamus threw the blankets back over the rifle and swept up the two pistol belts. The enemy was already pressing past the outer pickets they had killed, pushing into the camp itself. No need for the long-range Henry—even if he could have forced the butt against the healing shoulder. Pistols would have to do in the dirty little fighting when you got close enough to see the eyes of your enemy.

  With gritty pleasure, Seamus knew he had a personal score to settle after the horror of the Black Ledge. He wanted to get close enough to see the look on the face of every warrior he cut down with a .44.

  Captain Hasbrouck came out of the gloom, hollering his orders, scrambling to regain control of the panicked soldiers diving for cover, others scrambling to retrieve their Springfields. He sent veteran lieutenant Boutelle with a squad of proven men to attempt circling behind the enemy so they could get word to the artillerymen camped nearby.

  Captain Jackson, second in command, cried out his orders as well among his own B Troop. His men huddled on the lakeshore in terror—believing they were now to be massacred like Thomas’s men before them.

  Lieutenant Kyle attempted to reassume control of his Troop G and went after the horses before the Modocs could escape with the company’s mounts.

  Skirmish lines were established as bullets whizzed past the soldiers fighting first of all to see their enemy in the gray light. This time the white men did not flee and run like some headless creatures. Instead, Jackson and Kyle held a firm grip on their soldiers, pushing them ahead almost two hundred yards as McKay brought up his Teninos on the left flank.

  “Remember Thomas and Wright!” shouted some soldier down the line.

  “Avenge Canby!” cried another.

  The hail of Modoc lead was coming from a series of three low ridges directly to the north of camp.

  “The bastards followed us yesterday,” Kyle growled at Donegan as they forged ahead, foot by foot. “I’d lay money on it.”

  “Then laid in wait for first light,” Donegan replied. The pistol bucked reassuringly in his left hand.

  “You any good with that hand?”

  Donegan smiled. “Good enough as a man needs to be at this range.”

  “Lookit that!” cried a soldier nearby as some of the firing quieted.

  “Glory—who’s that?”

  “Who can it be?”

  For the space of a half-dozen heartbeats, the riflefire coming from the cavalry and scouts tapered off and withered to nothing as they all noticed the form standing alone on the ridgetop, outlined by the new light in the east.

  “He’s wearing a army uniform!”

  “Lookit that hat—the medals—a officer to boot!”

  “Did those devils capture a officer?”

  “Sure—that’s it! The red bastards got one of our men up there, holding him hostage.”

  “Going to kill their prisoner—cease fire, men! Cease fire!” became the yell up and down the skirmish lines.

  As the soldiers halted their fire, the figure paced to the left grandly, then back to the right. With a smart about-face, he marched to the left once more as the soldiers grumbled and the Teninos chaffed at this suspension of the fight.

  “The scouts say that ain’t a white man!” hollered a soldier down on the left flank near the Teninos.

  “By God—that’s Cap’n Jack hisself!” screamed another.

  “Wearing Canby’s bloody uniform!”

  “Shoot him—pray do it! Shoot the murderer!”

  The soldiers opened up once more with a wild barrage of fire. Those bullets were as quickly answered with a hideous war cry as the Modoc chief beat his chest provocatively.

  “Bastard thinks he can’t be killed, eh?” Kyle hissed, slamming a cartridge into his Springfield carbine.

  As the soldiers plunged to the base of the ridge, a Modoc dropped. Then a second. And suddenly the warriors were falling back, sagebrush tied to their bodies, providing the perfect concealment in the gray light of this new day. Soldiers shrieked out their own throat-searing war-cry now, following their quarry at a sprint, stopping only to fire at each new puff of smoke spotted among the retreating Modocs.

  But a sudden, wild shriek ignited the warriors, causing them to wheel and stand their ground, more accurately returning the soldier bullets.

  Within seconds the soldiers halted in the face of the renewed and devastating fire. Then the retreat began as the camouflaged Modocs surged back toward the white men. Yard by yard the white men gave up, a soldier falling here. Another there. Then a second of the Tenino scouts cried out, dead before he crumpled to the ground.

  Before they knew it, six soldiers were dead, another seven lay bleeding in the grass.

  Then behind the cavalry arose a rattle of riflefire, and another volley. Shouts climbed above the clamor as Captain Hasbrouck’s artillerymen arrived to reinforce the battered, confused and angry cavalry under Jackson and Kyle.

  Slowly at first, the Modocs gave ground again, this time carrying the body of a mortally wounded warrior. Then of a sudden they found bullets falling among them from a new direction. McKay’s scouts were flanking the surprised warriors on two sides, preparing to surround them in minutes.

  Now the warriors buckled in—foot by foot then yard by yard, until they were fully sprinting, leaping over the rocks, having abandoned their ponies in a mad flight due west into the heart of the lava flows just north of Big Sand Butte. But in that escape, with the Modocs having to break through the encircling flanks, the fighting became something more ferocious and primal.

  Then the warriors broke through the tightening noose.

  For three tortuous miles the soldiers followed the escaping warriors, harassing them, firing into the Modocs disappearing among the boulders and fissures. Hasbrouck ordered McKay’s scouts to mount what horses Kyle had succeeded in rounding up. Still the Teninos were unsuccessful in capturing their prey in that rugged, cruel terrain. Not another warrior was killed.

  “We’ve gone far enough!” yelled Captain Jackson.

  The Teninos howled in disappointment. McKay tried to explain to the soldier that his scouts wanted more scalps. The soldier told his guide to clamp it for good and follow orders.

  “We’re not stringing this patrol out across the whole extent of these goddamned Lava Beds—and us on foot to boot!” Jackson shouted down the complainers.

  “By gor—look at you fellas!” Lieutenant Kyle hollered at his dismounted company as they milled. “This is the first victory we’ve had—driving the bastards off the way we did—and still you whimper and cry for more!”

  “Damn right, Lieutenant! If this is what turning the tables on the Modocs feels like—we want more!”

  “Give us more Modoc blood!”

  “And scalps!”

  As they turned about and made their way back to their Sorass Lake camp, the soldiers found for all their own casualties, they had killed but one warrior. Two dozen captured Modoc ponies would in no way salve the wounds caused in losing so many good soldiers. Those animals,
along with some powder and blankets discovered on the field following the battle, were awarded the Teninos for their part in the victory.

  Still, the complexion of the Modoc War was changing at last. No more would the army turn its back on Jack’s ragtag band of renegades living hand-to-mouth, striking from the hills and running to fight another day.

  Victory was at hand. One more fight, the soldiers cheered one another lustily—and they would have this dirty little war won.

  Chapter 32

  May 10–18, 1873

  The sun had not yet fully risen when Captain Hasbrouck dispatched a mounted messenger bearing a quickly written report of the Modoc attack on the patrol camp.

  When Davis received word of the encounter, the colonel ordered another 170 men moved out as reinforcements, with his command to follow the Modocs into hell once and for all.

  At the same time, Hasbrouck had McKay’s scouts follow the foot-trail of the fleeing warriors into the black labyrinth of the Lava Beds. The Teninos returned shortly after noon to report they had located the Modoc camp near the base of Big Sand Butte, less than seven miles from where the soldiers stood at Sorass Lake.

  The captain determined he had less than twenty gallons of water and would now have to temporarily delay his trip back to Scorpion Point for more. He forbade all able-bodied personnel from what water they had left. It was to be used for the wounded.

  * * *

  “You must take the blame for the death of Ellen’s Man George!” snapped Hooker Jim.

  While never an endearing friend of Ellen’s Man, Jim seized upon the warrior’s death by the soldiers at Dry Lake as an occasion to chop away at Captain Jack’s power.

  It was Ellen’s Man whom soldier bullets had struck in the dawn attack that morning. He was unconscious and mortally wounded when they dragged him from the fight. Lingering in a fitful delirium for a few hours, Ellen’s Man finally died.

  The whole world had tipped on its side for the Modocs. Until this day, in every battle fought with the soldiers, there had been booty abandoned on the field with the dead white men: rifles and ammunition, clothing and boots and even food. But this morning the warriors themselves had been forced to flee—leaving behind two dozen horses. Back in the Ice Moon they had lost some horses to the soldiers, then more were captured by the white man several weeks later. Besides being a serious blow to their pride as a people, Jack’s band had lost nearly all its mobility.

  But at that moment the death of a warrior like Ellen’s Man hit them the hardest.

  The band carried the body to a clearing a few miles from their camp and scratched an oblong hole out of the ground. Sagebrush, juniper and mahogany were heaped into the pit before Ellen’s Man was laid atop. The pyre was lit as the men and women and children stepped back, flames clawing higher and higher into the spring sky.

  Jack stood watching, surrounded by his tribal enemies, who hurt most at this loss of one of their own. As they witnessed this cremation which marked the Modoc manner of freeing the spirit into the afterlife, a gold pocket watch slipped from the clothing being quickly consumed.

  General Edward R.S. Canby’s watch—twisting now, its painted face crackling under the extreme heat of the flames totally engulfing the body of one of the two Modocs who had killed the soldier chief. The watch too, freed now of its temporary imprisonment.

  Others like Shacknasty Jim and Steamboat Frank, both Boston and Bogus Charleys, all stood ready to side with Curly Headed Doctor in blaming their chief for the warrior’s death when they returned in silence from the funeral. The time for respectful quiet was done. Emotions exploded like a sudden, volcanic eruption.

  “You only think about protecting your own hide,” Shacknasty cursed. “You never worry about others.”

  Rarely had Jack felt this alone.

  “I’m done fighting for you,” vowed Steamboat Frank.

  “Good!” Jack shouted. “Go, run away from here and let men do the fighting now.”

  “Men—ha!” Boston Charley lunged forward, his breath hot in Jack’s face. “No more will we fight for a coward, Kientpoos!”

  Knowing the soldiers and their Tenino trackers would soon be coming along their backtrail, Jack was nonetheless forced to listen to this tirade from the lips of the feckless murderers the moment they had arrived back at their camp.

  “These warriors are ready to fight for me again. Your magic is only as strong as a dog raising its leg to piss against these soldiers. No coward should lead fighting men!” declared the Doctor.

  That singular insult was the straw. The words had barely crossed the shaman’s lips when Jack crumpled the Doctor’s shirt in both fists, pulling him off his feet.

  “Coward? You call me coward?”

  With a mighty shove, Jack hurled the shaman backward into the arms of his supporters.

  “You—each of you are the cowards. Spineless dogs, the lot of you. Come to me after your bloody murders of innocent, unarmed men, didn’t you? Whined and cried for help hiding you from the white man you knew would come, didn’t you? Everything was good when you had the protection of my people, my warriors—while you were killing soldiers. You even called me a squaw, dressed me as a woman—shamed me before my family!

  “But when one of your faithless ones is killed—you come crying to me,” Jack hissed. “Me a coward? You are the cowards—killing good men in cold blood when they come to talk peace.”

  “You waited a long time to pull your gun on the soldier tyee,” Shacknasty dared speak.

  Jack whirled on him, raising his hand and watching the warrior cower beneath its shadow. “That soldier chief was a better man than any of you! He was brave, facing death when it stared him in the face … while all of you run and cry out to the sky when one man gets killed.”

  “How many more of us will fall dead if we follow Kientpoos?” asked Hooker Jim, his voice an impassioned shriek. “We must go before this man gets us all killed.”

  Jack turned on him. “Go! Yes, go! I do not want you here anymore. Run far, far away now while you can—all of you who want to go. I will stop the soldiers as long as my body stands to receive their bullets. Yes—I will stay and fight. For I am the only true Modoc of you.”

  “Maybe we kill you instead before we go!” Hooker shouted back, angry at the rebuke and reaching for the pistol stuffed in his waistband.

  Scar-Faced Charley stopped the gun hand. “You want to kill—go kill white men. Lots of soldiers left. We can’t kill each other now. Not enough Modocs left.”

  Jim yanked his hand away from Charley’s grip and stomped away a few steps, then turned, burning with indignation.

  “Yes, go, Hooker!” Jack taunted his enemy before Jim could speak. “You can never kill me!”

  Hooker suddenly lunged back through the knot of warriors for Jack, hands like hawk’s talons aimed at the chief’s neck. Charley and the others kept the two men separated as they hurled their threats at one another.

  “I kill you—with my bare hands I kill you!”

  “Ha! I will not die by Modoc hands, Hooker. I will die fighting! No cowardly Modoc like you will ever kill Captain Jack!”

  “Let me go!” demanded Hooker Jim. “I show you how you die by Modoc hands! Mine!”

  His father-in-law, the shaman, pulled Jim back from the chief. “We go.”

  Jack watched them load up a few horses with what few possessions they had been able to carry all these weeks since leaving their Lava Bed Stronghold. Hooker Jim and the shaman led twelve warriors and their families, sixty-two women and children, away, heading west.

  When the Tule Lake murderers were gone, Jack turned once more to those who were left. “Now we must flee ourselves.”

  “There is time,” said Schonchin John.

  “Yes, let us rest,” William Faithful added. “Every time we have fought the white man, he is many days coming after us.”

  “Yes, your words are true,” Jack replied. “But today is the first time we have been driven off, fully beaten—”
<
br />   “Soldiers coming!”

  They all turned together to find a young warrior they had stationed on their backtrail running into their camp near the base of Big Sand Butte.

  “Soldiers?”

  “Many, many soldiers.” The young one huffed to a halt, catching his breath, hunched over and hands on his knees as the warriors crowded around him.

  “How many?”

  “Many, many—”

  “The soldiers from the dried lake?”

  “More—twice that number.”

  “The Teninos with them?”

  “Yes—and they bring their big guns that shoot twice too!”

  * * *

  The army was moving, but not against the Modocs that tenth day of May.

  Instead, Captain Hasbrouck finally ordered his men north with their dead and wounded for Scorpion Point to reoutfit and obtain more water. The next morning, Davis signaled Hasbrouck to take his three companies back south to Big Sand Butte. The colonel was also ordering Major E. C. Mason out of the camp in the Stronghold, with plans to link up with Hasbrouck’s patrol and make a concerted, overwhelming attack on the Modocs’ mobile camp.

  By the night of the twelfth, as the soldiers made their bivouac, Mason and Hasbrouck were less than three miles apart, with not only Big Sand Butte, but what they believed would be the Modoc camp between them. On the thirteenth, when the two patrol leaders met to plan their attack, they determined to delay the offensive until more water could be transported in for both wings.

  By the next afternoon a Tenino scout informed Hasbrouck that he believed the Modocs had fled their camp and were now in parts unknown. Lieutenant J. B. Hazelton volunteered to take a patrol in to find out conclusively if the Modocs were gone. Twenty-six men immediately lined up to join Hazelton’s reconnaissance. It would not be the first indication that Colonel Jefferson C. Davis had indeed infused these tired, frightened, battle-whipped soldiers with a new sense of courage and hope.

  A few hours later Hazelton returned, reporting that the Modocs had disappeared. The war was no longer one of searching for Captain Jack’s band, hoping to surprise the Modocs in their camps. From Davis on down, the officers now realized how liquid the situation had become. Needed now were the cavalry.