The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  The move was made in February, 1873, and the Aravaipas were beginning to build a new ranchería and to plant new fields at San Carlos when the uprising occurred in which Lieutenant Almy was killed. Neither Eskiminzin nor any of the other Aravaipas had anything to do with the killing, but because Eskiminzin was a chief, the Gray Wolf ordered him arrested and confined as a “military precaution.”

  He remained a prisoner until the night of January 4, 1874, when he escaped and led his people away from the reservation. For four cold months they roamed the unfamiliar mountains in search of food and shelter. By April most of the Aravaipas were sick and hungry. To keep them from dying, Eskiminzin returned to San Carlos and sought out the agent.

  “We have done nothing wrong,” he said. “But we are afraid. That is why we ran away. Now we come back. If we stay in the mountains, we will die of hunger and cold-sickness. If American soldiers kill us here, it will be just the same. We will not run away again.”

  As soon as the agent reported the return of the Aravaipas, an order came from the Army to arrest Eskiminzin and his sub-chiefs, hobble them with chains so they could not escape, and transport them as prisoners of war to the new site of Camp Grant.

  “What have I done?” Eskiminzin asked the soldier chief who came to arrest him.

  The soldier chief did not know. The arrest was a “military precaution.”

  At the new Camp Grant, Eskiminzin and his subchiefs were kept chained together while they made adobe bricks for the new buildings at the post. At night they slept in their chains on the ground, and they ate food discarded by the soldiers.

  One day in that summer a young white man came to see Eskiminzin and told him that he was the new agent at San Carlos. He was John Clum. He said the Aravaipas at San Carlos needed their chief to lead them. “Why are you a prisoner?” Clum asked.

  “I have done nothing,” Eskiminzin replied. “White men tell lies about me, maybe. I always try to do right.” 13

  Clum said he would arrange his release if Eskiminzin would promise to help him improve conditions at San Carlos.

  Two months later Eskiminzin rejoined his people. Once again the future looked bright, but the Aravaipa chief was wise enough not to hope for too much. Since the coming of the white men, he was never sure of a place where he could spread his blanket; the future for any Apache was very uncertain.

  In the spring of 1874 Cochise became very ill from a debilitating disease. Tom Jeffords, the Chiricahua agent, brought the Army surgeon from Fort Bowie to examine his old friend, but the surgeon could not determine the ailment. His prescriptions brought no improvement, and the muscular body of the great Apache leader began wasting away.

  During this time the government decided that money could be saved by consolidating the Chiricahua agency with the new Hot Springs agency in New Mexico. When officials came to discuss the matter with Cochise, he told them the transfer was a matter of indifference to him, that he would be dead before he could be moved. His subchiefs and his sons objected strongly, however, declaring that if the agency was moved, they would not go. Not even the United States had enough troops to move them, they said, because they would rather die in their mountains than live at the Hot Springs.

  After the government officials departed, Cochise grew so weak and was suffering from such intense internal pain that Jeffords decided to ride to Fort Bowie for the surgeon. As he was preparing to leave, Cochise asked: “Do you think you will see me alive again?”

  Jeffords replied with the frankness of a brother: “No, I do not think I will.”

  “I think I will die about ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Do you think we will see each other again?”

  Jeffords was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. What do you think about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Cochise answered. “It is not clear to my mind, but I think we will, somewhere up there.” 14

  Cochise was dead before Jeffords returned from Fort Bowie. After a few days the agent announced to the Chiricahuas that he felt it was time for him to leave. They would not hear of it. Cochise’s sons, Taza and Naiche, were especially insistent that he remain. If Taglito deserted them, they said, the treaty and promises made between Cochise and the government would be worthless. Jeffords promised to stay.

  By the springtime of 1875 most of the Apache bands were either confined to reservations or had fled to Mexico. In March the Army transferred General Crook from Arizona to the Department of the Platte. The Sioux and Cheyennes, who had endured reservation life longer than the Apaches, were growing rebellious.

  A forced peace lay over the deserts, peaks, and mesas of the Apache country. Ironically, its continuance depended largely upon the patient efforts of two white men who had won the regard of Apaches simply by accepting them as human beings rather than as bloodthirsty savages. Tom Jeffords the agnostic and John Clum of the Dutch Reformed Church were optimistic, but they were wise enough not to expect too much. For any white man in the Southwest who defended the rights of Apaches, the future was very uncertain.

  * Eskiminzin was not referring to the alcoholic beverage known by the same name but to roasted leaves of the agave, a sweet and nutritious food that was cooked in earthen pits. The Mescalero Apaches received their name from it.

  TEN

  The Ordeal of Captain Jack

  1873—January 6, U.S. Congress begins investigation of Crédit Mobilier scandal. March 3, “Salary Grab” Act raises salaries of congressmen and government officials retroactively. May 7, U.S. Marines land in Panama to protect American lives and property. September 15, last units of German Army leave France. September 19, failure of Jay Cooke and Company, banking firm, precipitates financial panic. September 20, New York Stock Exchange closes for ten days; severe economic crisis spreads across nation and world. Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days and Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age are published.

  I am but one man. I am the voice of my people. Whatever their hearts are, that I talk. I want no more war. I want to be a man. You deny me the right of a white man. My skin is red; my heart is a white man’s heart; but I am a Modoc. I am not afraid to die. I will not fall on the rocks. When I die, my enemies will be under me. Your soldiers began on me when I was asleep on Lost River. They drove us to these rocks, like a wounded deer. …

  I have always told the white man heretofore to come and settle in my country; that it was his country and Captain Jack’s country. That they could come and live there with me and that I was not mad with them. I have never received anything from anybody, only what I bought and paid for myself. I have always lived like a white man, and wanted to live so. I have always tried to live peaceably and never asked any man for anything. I have always lived on what I could kill and shoot with my gun, and catch in my trap.

  —KINTPUASH (CAPTAIN JACK) OF THE MODOCS

  CALIFORNIA INDIANS WERE GENTLE AS the climate in which they lived. The Spaniards gave them names, established missions for them, converted and debauched them. Tribal organizations were undeveloped among the California Indians; each village had its leaders, but there were no great war chiefs among these unwarlike people. After the discovery of gold in 1848, white men from all over the world poured into California by the thousands, taking what they wanted from the submissive Indians, debasing those whom the Spaniards had not already debased, and then systematically exterminating whole populations now long forgotten. No one remembers the Chilulas, Chimarikos, Urebures, Nipewais, Alonas, or a hundred other bands whose bones have been sealed under a million miles of freeways, parking lots, and slabs of tract housing.

  One exception to the nonresistant Indians of California were the Modocs, who lived in the harsher climate of Tule Lake along the border of Oregon. Until the 1850’s, white men were almost unknown to the Modocs; then settlers began coming in droves, seizing the best lands and expecting the Modocs to submit meekly. When the Modocs showed fight, the white invaders attempted extermination. The Modocs retaliated with ambushes.

  During this time a young
Modoc named Kintpuash was coming to manhood, and he could not understand why Modocs and white people could not live together without trying to kill each other. The Tule Lake country was limitless as the sky, with enough deer, antelope, ducks, geese, fish, and camas roots for everybody. Kintpuash scolded his father for not making peace with the white men. His father, who was a chief, told Kintpuash that the white men were treacherous and would have to be driven out before there could be peace. Not long afterward the chief was killed in a fight with white settlers, and Kintpuash became chief of the Modocs.

  Kintpuash went into the settlements to find white men he could trust, so that he could make peace with them. At Yreka he met some good men, and soon all the Modocs were coming there to trade. “I have always told white men when they came to my country,” Kintpuash said, “that if they wanted a home to live there they could have it; and I never asked them for any pay for living there as my people lived. I liked to have them come there and live. I liked to be with white people.” 1 The young chief also liked the clothes they wore, their houses, wagons, and fine livestock.

  The white men around Yreka gave these visiting Indians new names, which the Modocs found amusing, and they often used these names among themselves. Kintpuash was Captain Jack. Some of the others were Hooker Jim, Steamboat Frank, Scarfaced Charley, Boston Charley, Curly Headed Doctor, Shacknasty Jim, Schonchin John, and Ellen’s Man.

  During the time of the white man’s Civil War, troubles arose between the Modocs and the settlers. If a Modoc could not find a deer to kill for his family, he would sometimes kill a rancher’s cow; or if he needed a horse he would borrow one out of a settler’s pasture. The Modocs’ white friends excused this as a “tax” the Indians were levying on the settlers for use of their lands, but most settlers did not like this and through their politicians arranged for a treaty to remove the Modocs from the Tule Lake country.

  The treaty commissioners promised Captain Jack and the other head men that if they would move north to a reservation in Oregon every family would have its own land, teams of horses, wagons, farming implements, tools, clothing, and food—all provided by the government. Captain Jack wanted to have his land near Tule Lake, but the commissioners would not agree to this. Somewhat reluctantly Jack signed the treaty, and the Modocs went north to the Klamath reservation. From the very beginning there was trouble. The reservation was on territory that had belonged to Klamath Indians, and the Klamaths treated the Modocs as intruders. When the Modocs cut rails to fence their assigned farmlands, the Klamaths would come and steal the rails. Supplies promised by the government never arrived; the reservation agent issued food and clothing to the Klamaths, but there never seemed to be any for the Modocs. (The Great Council in Washington did not vote any money to buy supplies for the Modocs.)

  When Captain Jack saw his people growing hungry, he led them off the reservation. They went down into Lost River Valley, where they had once lived, in search of game and fish and camas roots. White ranchers who lived in the valley did not want the Modocs to be there, however, and they complained frequently to government authorities. Captain Jack cautioned his people to stay clear of white men, but it was not easy for three hundred Indians to remain invisible. During the summer of 1872 the Indian Bureau warned Captain Jack to return to the Klamath reservation. Jack replied that his people could not live with the Klamaths. He requested a Modoc reservation somewhere on Lost River, which had always been Modoc country. The Indian Bureau considered the request a reasonable one, but the ranchers opposed granting any part of the rich grazing lands to Indians. In the autumn of 1872 the government ordered the Modocs to move back to the Klamath reservation. Jack refused to go. The Army was assigned the duty of transferring the Modocs by force. On November 28, 1872, in a freezing rain, Major James Jackson and a company of thirty-eight troopers of the First Cavalry marched out of Fort Klamath, bound south for Lost River.

  Just before daylight the cavalrymen arrived at the Modoc camp. They dismounted and with carbines at the ready surrounded the lodges. Scarfaced Charley and several other men came outside with their weapons. Major Jackson asked to see the chief, and when Jack appeared the major told him he had orders from the Great Father to take the Modocs back to the Klamath reservation.

  “I will go,” Captain Jack said. “I will take all my people with me, but I do not place any confidence in anything you white people tell me. You see, you come here to my camp when it is dark. You scare me and all my people when you do that. I won’t run from you. Come up to me like men when you want to see or talk with me.” 2

  Major Jackson said he was not there to make trouble. Then he ordered Jack to assemble his men in front of the soldiers. As soon as this was done, the major pointed to a bunch of sagebrush at the end of the formation. “Lay your gun here,” he commanded.

  17. Captain Jack, or Kintpuash, Having the Water Brash. Photographed by L. Heller in 1873. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

  “What for?” Jack asked.

  “You are the chief. You lay your gun down, all your men will do the same. You do that, and we’ll have no trouble.”

  Captain Jack hesitated. He knew his men would not want to give up their arms. “I have never fought white people yet,” he said, “and I do not want to.”

  The major insisted that they give up their guns. “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he promised.

  Captain Jack placed his gun on the sagebrush and signaled the others to do as he had done. They stepped up one by one, stacking their rifles. Scarfaced Charley was the last. He laid his rifle on top of the pile, but kept his pistol strapped around his waist.

  The major ordered him to hand over the pistol.

  “You got my gun,” Scarfaced replied.

  The major called to Lieutenant Frazier Boutelle: “Disarm him!”

  “Give me that pistol, damn you, quick!” Boutelle ordered as he stepped forward.

  Scarfaced Charley laughed. He said he was not a dog to be shouted at.

  Boutelle drew his revolver. “You son-of-a-bitch, I’ll show you how to talk back to me.”

  Scarfaced repeated that he was not a dog, adding that he would keep his pistol. 3

  As Boutelle brought his revolver into firing position, Scarfaced quickly drew his pistol from his belt. Both men fired at the same time. The Modoc’s bullet tore through the lieutenant’s coat sleeve. Scarfaced was not hit. He swung toward the stack of arms, sweeping his rifle from the top, and every Modoc warrior followed his example. The cavalry commander ordered his men to open fire. For a few seconds there was a lively exchange of shots, and then the soldiers retreated, leaving one man dead and seven wounded on the field.

  By this time the Modoc women and children were in their log dugouts, paddling southward for Tule Lake. Captain Jack and his warriors followed along the shore, keeping hidden in the thick reeds. They were heading for the Modocs’ legendary sanctuary south of the lake—the California Lava Beds.

  The Lava Beds was a land of burned-out fires that had turned into rocky fissures, caves, and crevices. Some of the ravines were a hundred feet deep. The cave which Captain Jack chose as his stronghold was a craterlike pit surrounded by a network of natural trenches and lava-rock breastworks. He knew that his handful of warriors could fight off an army if necessary, but he hoped the soldiers would leave them alone now. Surely the white men would not want these useless rocks.

  When Major Jackson’s soldiers had come to Captain Jack’s camp, a small band of Modocs led by Hooker Jim was camped on the opposite side of Lost River. In the early hours of the morning while Captain Jack was fleeing with his people for the Lava Beds, he had heard gunfire from the direction of Hooker Jim’s camp. “I ran off and did not want to fight,” he said afterward. “They shot some of my women, and they shot my men. I did not stop to inquire anything about it, but left and went away. I had very few people and did not want to fight.” 4

  Not for a day or two did he discover what had happened to Hooker Jim’s people. Then suddenly Hooker Jim appe
ared outside Jack’s stronghold. With him were Curly Headed Doctor. Boston Charley, and eleven other Modocs. They told Jack that at the time soldiers came to his camp, several settlers had come to their camp and started shooting at them. These white men shot a baby out of its mother’s arms, killed an old woman, and wounded some of the men. On their way to the Lava Beds, Hooker Jim and his men decided to avenge the deaths of their people. Stopping briefly at isolated ranch houses along the way, they had killed twelve settlers.

  At first Jack thought Hooker Jim was merely boasting, but the others said it was true. When they named the dead white men, Jack could not believe it. Some of them were settlers he knew and trusted. “What did you kill those people for?” he demanded. “I never wanted you to kill my friends. You have done it on your own responsibility.” 5

  Captain Jack knew for certain now that the soldiers would be coming; even into the vastnesses of the Lava Beds they would come for revenge. And because he was chief of the Modocs he would have to answer for the crimes of Hooker Jim and the others.

  Not until the Ice Moon did the soldiers come. On January 13, 1873, the Modocs guarding the outer defense ring sighted a Bluecoat reconnaissance party approaching a bluff overlooking the Lava Beds. The Modocs drove them away with a few long-distance shots. Three days later a force of 225 regular soldiers supported by 104 Oregon and California Volunteers came riding like ghosts through the fog of a wintry afternoon. They took positions along ridges facing Captain Jack’s stronghold, and as darkness fell they began building sagebrush fires to keep warm. The military commanders were hopeful that if the Modocs saw the force arrayed against them, they might come in and surrender.

  Captain Jack was in favor of surrendering. He knew that the soldiers most of all wanted the Modocs who had killed the settlers, and he was willing to put his life along with theirs in the hands of the soldier chiefs rather than sacrifice the lives of all his people in a bloody battle.