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

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Don’t matter now how bad the food’s been for us,” chimed in another. “We’ll be eating Modoc steaks soon enough!”

  “As for me,” said a third, joining in the fun, “I’ll let you boys raise scalps. Me—I’m grabbing me one of them squaws to take back home and be my dishwasher!”

  On Wednesday the fifteenth Wheaton reported to General Canby that “a more enthusiastic jolly set of Regulars and Volunteers I never had the pleasure to command.” While repeating his assertions that Captain Jack would not make a fight of it, he nonetheless wrote that “if the Modocs will only try to make good their boast to whip a thousand soldiers, all will be satisfied.”

  The sixteenth had been consumed with the movement of men. A series of rocky upheavals in the terrain, all running north and south in direction and having created a series of nearly insurmountable bluffs, existed between Van Bremmer’s ranch and the lake itself. Each successive bluff was followed by a gradually sloping plateau, until the country rose toward its next ridge.

  Rather than fighting this terrain, Mason had his wagons ramble north some distance until they could come down along the lakeshore itself. At the same time, his cavalry and pack-train marched directly east, going overland to a point three miles from the Modoc stronghold.

  On the east side of the Lava Beds, Wheaton’s plan dictated that Captain Bernard was to draw close to his own staging arena as well. Wheaton desired his combined forces to spring into action at dawn on the seventeenth, battling their way by skirmishes through the Lava Beds until the two wings could converge on the central fortification held by Captain Jack, thereby preventing the hostiles from escaping south. While the lion’s role would fall on Green’s troops coming in from the west, Bernard’s forces were stationed on the east by and large to keep the Modocs from fleeing when the attack came.

  Fleeing is just what they expected the Indians to do. So it was no important matter that time and again the officers had tried to downplay the significance of the shortage in ammunition the troops were suffering. The soldiers expected only to have to round up the ragtag band of renegades and herd their prisoners north to the reservation.

  Late on the sixteenth Seamus rode with Captain Jackson’s troops as Bernard moved his men toward their staging area through a thick, inky fog that soaked a man if it didn’t downright freeze him. The rocky trail they followed for more than sixteen miles through the soupy veil wiped out most of the landmarks Bernard was using to guide him into position for Friday morning’s attack. From that point he was to send out patrols to capture any Modoc canoes they could find along the lakeshore. The Indians would thereby be prevented from making their escape when the mad rout the army was expecting would take place.

  The Modocs were waiting not only on the west side of the Lava Beds, but on the east as well.

  When the winds shifted and the fog rolled out momentarily, Bernard was startled to find out he had led his men to a position far too close to the Modoc Stronghold. He immediately ordered a judicious retreat, only to discover that a band of warriors had been tailing his men.

  They fired into both Jackson’s left flank and pack-train, causing more confusion and stark terror than casualties among the soldiers and twenty of the Klamath scouts under Dave Hill. Four men were slightly wounded in the terrifying skirmish before Bernard got his men pulled back, formed up, and the Modocs drifted away into the maze of black monoliths like dissipating fog. They made camp at the base of a large outcropping known as Hospital Rock.

  Now Captain Jack’s warriors could not help but realize the attack would be coming at them from two directions with the coming of day. And they alone realized what effect the terrain would have on the pending battle.

  As officers from both flanks peered across the Lava Beds that late afternoon, 16 January, 1873, the fog continued to hug the ground, obliterating all the upheavals of that black, bone-shard terrain in the Lava Beds. From where the soldiers stood, it plainly looked as if they would easily gain access to the Modocs’ Stronghold—thereby quickly whipping Captain Jack’s small band of poorly-equipped warriors.

  * * *

  Modoc sentries reported the many sagebrush fires they had seen being lit at twilight, both to the east and west. Now it was the Ice Moon.

  The soldiers had been a long time in coming.

  Tomorrow would be the test of Captain Jack’s people, and their Stronghold.

  The area he had chosen to make his stand was roughly rectangular in shape, a thousand feet wide by a half-mile long, stretching south from the shore of Tule Lake. The rocks standing like sentinels around the center of this Stronghold were like a thrashing ocean surf of frozen lava. Wave following tumultuous wave of sharp, backboned pumice made for an impregnable fortress, complete with banquettes and watchtowers, loopholes and fortified breastworks. As nightmarish as the terrain might appear to the white man, the Modocs knew every foot of it: each crevice, cavern and chasm.

  Down in the heart of the Stronghold, they had discovered patches of grass for their ponies and cattle. For fuel they had used the greasewood which abounded. The fires now warmed the Modoc hands and feet while Jack watched Curly Headed Doctor warm the war-spirits of the warriors.

  As the shaman harangued the people, readying them for the coming fight, Jack could only look on, sullen and bewildered. Carrying two thoughts in his heart. He wanted the white man gone from his land on Lost River—gone for good. But the bitter truth he had to swallow was that the white man was not going to go away without a fight. The dilemma for Jack was how to protect his people. A war with the soldiers would mean many women and children would be killed. Why should he sacrifice the innocent ones for the lives of those who had murdered the white settlers back in the Moon of Freezing Rain?

  But most of his people were now enthusiastically behind Curly Headed Doctor.

  This was to be the supreme test of the shaman’s power. For many moons now as the trouble brewed and finally erupted, the Doctor had been promising that those faithful who followed his teachings could not be harmed by the white man. Throughout that great circle of black rock, the women and older children were busy with one preparation or another for the morning’s fight—polishing weapons, loading powder horns, making lead balls. Everyone had a task.

  Curly Headed Doctor clapped his hands and called some young warriors forward into the firelight. They each carried a huge coil of handwoven rope made from tule fibers found along the lakeshore. Totaling hundreds of feet together, each rope had been dyed red—the magical color of war.

  “These ropes I will now string end to end entirely around our stronghold,” the shaman declared loudly before his hushed audience. “They will form a magic circle the white man cannot cross when he comes to drive us out tomorrow!”

  Clearing his throat in nervousness, Jack slid from his rock and stepped up to the shaman. He felt cornered—like a desperate animal—caught here between the soldiers who were coming and the bloodthirsty medicine man who now held so much sway over his tribe.

  “We are a brave people. Let no man, white or Klamath, mistake that. But look at us,” Jack said, an arm sweeping the gathering. The light from the huge fire caressed the faces of only fifty-one warriors, along with 175 women and children.

  “We are few—against the many,” he continued, hoping to silence the shaman. “We have seen what happens when the soldiers die. More come. Let us talk of peace with the white man before our people are gone forever.”

  “Ha!” snorted Curly Headed Doctor. “Your bowels run cold with water, eh?”

  “All these will die before this war ends,” Jack protested.

  The shaman shook his finger at the chief. “Suppose we do die? I will take many soldiers with me before I fall.”

  Hoots of agreement from many of the young warriors echoed in the Stronghold.

  “At last we will be able to pay the white man back for the treachery he brought us. You remember Ben Wright, don’t you, Kientpoos? Ben Wright and his white brothers murdered your father and mother
!”

  “I remember,” Jack answered. “I too nursed revenge in my heart. And in the end, it was my spirit being consumed by hate. Let us send word to the soldiers that we will talk of peace with them.”

  Again he was hooted down by the young warriors, their blood heated by the shaman.

  Curly Headed Doctor dropped his rope at his feet, holding up his hands, palms out. “See? My hands are blackened with the blood of many white men! But still the spirits of Ka-moo-cum-chux cry out for more blood. A hundred should die for every Modoc woman and child killed—and that means war. Kientpoos talks like a scared animal.” He slapped his chest. “I will make medicine to turn the white man’s bullets to harmless puffs of smoke. Your shaman calls for war!”

  “You would not surrender, I know that,” Jack said as the fleshy medicine man stooped to retrieve his sacred rope. “I would not expect any of you to surrender—those who murdered the white settlers who were our friends.”

  “Friends?” shouted Hooker Jim. “Friends would take our land from us and not repay us!”

  “Fairchild, Dorris and O’Roarke are our friends—each year they pay us for the land they use.”

  “If they get in our way—we will crush them too!” shouted the Doctor.

  “War! War!” was the word echoed off the black rocks dancing with eerie smears of firelight.

  When Jack held up his hand for silence, he called for a vote. Of the fifty-one warriors not on guard duty and present in the Stronghold, only fourteen sided with Captain Jack and Scar-Faced Charley.

  Thirty-seven voted to follow the seductive war medicine espoused by Curly Headed Doctor.

  Chapter 9

  January 17, 1873

  At four o’clock that Friday morning, buglers blew reveille.

  “Damn,” Ian muttered to himself, “if that don’t tell them Modocs we’re coming, I don’t know what will.”

  O’Roarke pulled himself reluctantly from his frozen blankets. The air made a frosty halo before his face as he stomped into his boots, wiggling toes to stimulate warmth.

  Last night had been hardest, that night before this coming unknown. As the temperature dropped and the heavy, humid air began to freeze a coating on everything, he had tossed in his blankets. Thinking hard on Dimity. Yearning to roll over and feel her warmth. Wanting more than anything right now after all these years to gently lift the bottom of that worn flannel gown and feel the softness of her hips as he ground himself into the heat of her—there in the blackness of their cabin beneath Mahogany Mountain.

  But here he was among the hundreds of soldiers and volunteers. His hands shook with cold as he knelt to pull wood from beneath the oiled shelter-half where he had kept the firewood dry. Starting the fire as Fairchild and Dorris and others grumbled and kicked around, Ian listened to the high-spirited soldiers boasting of their coming march right into Captain Jack’s fortifications, when they would kick some Modocs all the way back to their reservation.

  “We’ll be back by lunch!” came a cheer from a nearby soldier bivouac.

  One of those Twenty-first fellas, Ian brooded as the split kindling clawed at his match flame and held it dearly. Ruddy foot-sloggers don’t have no idea the living hell they’re about to face they go in that devil’s cauldron to pull Jack out.

  In a matter of minutes the assembly was blown, then orders grumbled through the massive encampment and the men began moving out.

  For more than two hours the cold and apprehensive white men stumbled through the dark of winter’s predawn to reach the bottom of the bluff. From there the left flank led the way, marching carefully to the lakeshore, where the entire outfit filled their canteens for the coming fight. Once they were again formed up, Wheaton gave the order to establish a skirmish formation. The infantry deployed first: Company C on the far left, followed by Company B on the right. Next to them stood the Oregon volunteers, while Fairchild and his California volunteers were deployed on the left as flankers for the infantry itself. Perry’s cavalry, armed with repeating Spencer rifles, were on the far right as the command was given.

  “Move out!”

  The order was repeated up and down the line as men shuffled forward into the gray-black of that cold morning with a clatter and rattle of arms, both Springfields and Sharps rifles, along with the squeak and groan of each man’s own equipment. From this point on no one man would be able to see the rest of the formation. Ian could look both left and right, recognizing beneath the dim starshine no more than a half-dozen men in either direction. The broken, unforgiving terrain made it impossible for him to see any more of the command.

  About six-thirty Wheaton ordered the howitzers to fire three shots—a signal to begin the battle. Yet instead of answering gunfire, there was an eerie lull from the Lava Beds.

  One of the Klamaths who could speak Modoc was sent far forward to announce to Captain Jack’s people that they had ten minutes to surrender or be prepared to suffer the coming attack.

  The sun came up late and lazy beneath the sodden clouds, to shine with a chilly light devoid of any warmth on this left arm of the attack. Ian could now make out the full extent of the thick fog souping the battleground below them. From this far right came the sound of sporadic riflefire.

  “Sounds like the soldiers over yonder run onto some Modoc pickets,” said one of the soldiers as they continued to cautiously feel their way across the forbidding terrain.

  Ian heard John Fairchild snort. “I doubt it,” the settler said.

  “That’s right,” Ian replied. “It’ll be those soldiers over there shooting at shadows in the fog—thinking they’re Modoc warriors.”

  Ghosts, Ian thought as some of the sharp rocks slashed through the thick hide of his boots. He felt the first nagging trickle of warm blood seeping into his torn, cold stocking.

  Ghosts is what we’re sent in here after.

  * * *

  Jack hadn’t slept all night.

  He was sure the dancing and singing had been heard miles away in the soldier camps. The white men were coming with the rising of the sun—so Curly Headed Doctor led the warriors in a wild, frenzied celebration of their war-spirits.

  At the center of their Stronghold the Doctor had some young men raise a medicine pole—nothing more than a large limb cut from a nearby juniper. Once again, he declared, they would dance back the ghosts as the prophets in Nevada had taught them. From the limb’s grotesque shape the women hung several white-haired dog skins, hawks’ feathers, a white weasel skin and a glistening, dark brown otter hide. Then the music began. And the dancing.

  With the women chanting the prescribed words to the ghost-song, Curly Headed Doctor started to dance the one-foot-step-then-drag that characterized the dance brought to them from Nevada. As he circled the pathetic little medicine pole, the women and warriors threw tiny bits of food and roots and other sacrifices into the bonfire casting throbbing shadows on the black walls surrounding their fortress.

  With a wild flourish, time and again the shaman bent over the smoke rising at the edge of the fire. He would inhale deeply, drawing its potent power into his lungs.

  Suddenly there had been a shriek—then many shrieks. Jack had turned to find the Doctor had fallen, convulsing on the ground, his eyes rolled back, arms and legs akimbo, thrashing in a frenzy.

  “He is visiting the land of the ghosts!” shouted Hooker Jim, pushing the many back out of the way.

  “Let him talk to our ancestors!” shouted Steamboat Frank.

  “Their spirits help us drive the white man away!” Ellen’s Man George joined in.

  First a few, then more of the women started dancing in the way shown them months before by the shaman. Shuffling, bent-kneed, hop-stepping, then dragging the trailing foot, they circled the medicine pole, chanting and keening all the while as the drummers pounded out the steady, hypnotic rhythm.

  As the night wore on and the dancing ended, Jack dispatched his men to various stations on either side of their Stronghold. Forced to spread his warriors across a wid
e front, he brooded angrily that he had less than sixty men to throw against the might of the white man come the new day’s sun.

  “It is not our numbers,” Scar-Faced Charley had said in the cold darkness of that morning-coming. “In each of us now is the strength of our departed spirits. Ka-moo-cum-chux has shown the Doctor that we will be protected from the soldier bullets. We will fight like demons—destroying ten times our number! They cannot touch us with their bullets.”

  “Yes,” Jack replied, forcing himself to feel better for the coming fight. “And we have captured many of the white man’s guns and bullets for our own warriors to use.”

  “Do not worry, Kientpoos,” Charley said. “We may be spread thin—but when the soldiers attack a portion of our defensive ring, we can rush more warriors to that position. When they attack another part of our defense, we will rush warriors over there. The soldiers will never reach our Stronghold.”

  Jack regarded his old childhood friend carefully. “Because of the shaman’s red rope he has strung far around us?”

  Charley shook his head. “No. Because we will be fighting to protect our families.”

  * * *

  After a bit, some of the frantic, scattered far-off shooting from Green’s and Mason’s soldiers tapered off.

  Ian marched at a snail’s pace with the other Californians, listening for any sign of the enemy looming out of the roiling fog.

  As the minutes passed into hours, more shots and shouting were still heard to echo from the right end of the formation. So retarded were they by the thick fog making their advance agonizingly slow, that by eleven A.M. they had only put some two miles behind them since leaving the staging area.

  The only good thing about the pace was that few men had been hit during that morning of bullets coming out of the fog from unseen snipers and shadowy ghosts with sprigs of sagebrush camouflage tied atop their heads.

  “Where’s more of that howitzer fire Wheaton ordered to soften the Modocs up?” grumbled Pressley Dorris.