Chapter XXXVIII: The Two Gibbets

A gloomy picture fills the eye from the height of the bluff whence we took our first view of the Lava Beds, Jan. 16th, 1873. The whited tents are there no more. The little mounds at the foot rest heavy on the breasts of the fallen. No curling smoke rises from savage altar, or soldier camp. The howl of cayote and cougar succeed the silver bugle, calling to the banquet of blood. Wild birds, instead of ascending ghosts, fill the air above, and their screams follow the weird wild songs of the medicine-men. The caverns answer back to bird and beast——no more to savage war-whoop, or bursting shell. The cannon are cooled by a winter’s frost, while a winter’s storms have given one coating to the scars left on the lava rocks by the iron hail. The dark spots, painted by mad hands, dipped in the blood of heroes, grow dim. A rude, unfinished gibbet stands out on the deserted promontory of the peninsula, a reproachful proof of a soldier’s unwarranted haste, a token of a nation’s prudence; while another rude scaffold, which justice left half-satisfied, also remains at Fort Klamath, defiant and threatening, and upbraiding her ministers for unfair dispensation in sparing the more guilty, while writing her protest on the blood-stained hands of the felons who provoked her wrath, as she follows them to the land of banishment.

The lone cabins, made desolate by the casualties of war, are again inviting the weary traveller to rest. The ranchmen of the Modoc country follow the cattle trails without fear. The surviving wounded are trying to forget their scars, or hobbling on crutch or cork. Tall grasses meet, fern and flowers bloom over the graves of loved ones, bedewed with the tears of the widows and orphans of a nation’s mistake in refusing to recognize a savage’s power for revenge, until recorded by scars on the maimed hands and mutilated face of his biographer, and proclaimed by the marble shaft whose shadows fall over the breast of the lamented Canby, near _Indiana’s_ capital, and by the tomb of the no less lamented Dr. Thomas, which keeps silent vigils with those of Baker and Broderick, on the hallowed heights of Lone mountain, San Francisco.

The broken chains of the royal chief hang noiseless on the walls of his prison cell. His bones, despised, dishonored, burnished, sepulchred in the crystal catacomb of a medical museum, represent his ruined race in the capital of a conquering nation; and the survivors of his blood-stained band, broken-hearted, mourn his ignominious death, shouting their anguish to listless winds in a land of exile. He lives in memory as the recognized leader in the most diabolical butchery that darkened the pages of the world’s history for the year eighteen hundred and seventy-three.

The Congress of the United States devotes itself to the payment of the cost of the war; while the results stand out ghastly monuments, calling in thunder-tones on a triumphant nation to stop, in its mad career; _to think_; upbraiding it for the inhuman clamor of power for the blood of heroic weakness, until it thwarted President Grant’s policy of doing right, _because it was right_; at the same time applauding him for his courage in proposing, and his success in consummating, a settlement on peaceful terms with a powerful civilized nation, with whom we had cause of estrangement.

If it was bravery that courted the accusation of cowardice, while it grandly defied impeachment by proposing to settle a financial difference, involving questions of national honor, in the case with England, on amicable terms; it was infinitely more patriotic, more humane, more just, and more godlike, boldly to declare that a weak and helpless people should be treated as men,——should be tendered the olive-branch, while the cannon were resting from their first repulse.

The civilized world joins in honoring him in the former case; cowardly America burns in effigy his Minister of the Interior for failure in the latter; while on neither magistrate nor minister should fall the blame. On whom, then, should it fall? Where it belongs,——on the American people as a nation. If you doubt it, read the history written by our own race, and you will blush to find from Cape Cod bay to the mouth of the Oregon, the record of battle-grounds where the red man has resisted the encroachments of a civilization that refused him recognition on equal terms before the law. You will find that these battle-grounds have been linked together by trails of blood, marked out by the graves of innocent victims of both races, who have fallen in vindication of rights that have been by both denied, or have been slain in revenge by each. You will find scarce ten miles square that does not offer testimony to the fact that it has been one continuous war of races, until the aborigines have been exterminated at the sacrifice of an equal number of the aggressive race.

You will find that in almost every instance where the white man and the Indian have met in conference, the latter has been overmatched with diplomatic schemes, plausible and captivating on the surface, while behind and beneath has always lurked a hidden power, that he dared not resist in open council.

You will find that notwithstanding the Indian has made compacts under such circumstances as have alienated his home and the graves of his fathers, he has been almost always true and faithful to his agreements, until justified by _his_ ethics, in abandoning them on account of the _breach_ by the _other party_ to the compact.

You will find that a few bad white men, who have always swung out in the van of advancing immigration, and have without commission or authority represented the white race socially, have offered the Indian the vices, and not the virtues, of Christian civilization; and when the facts are known, you will find that these few bad white men have been the real instruments of blood and treachery, nearly always escaping unpunished, while the brave and enterprising frontiersman has unjustly borne the stigma and censure of mankind; if, surviving the tomahawk and scalping-knife, he has stood up in defence of a home, to which his government invited him.

As I proposed in the outset to _confine_ myself to facts of personal knowledge, or those well authenticated from other sources, and to write of the Indians of the North-west, and of Oregon especially, I leave it to others to review the history of other portions of the country, and, in pursuance of my own plan, I beg to introduce a witness to sustain the assertion, that civilization has refused the Indian admission on equal terms with other races,——a witness who was born and raised on the frontier line; whose whole life has been spent in Oregon; one whose statement will not be questioned where he is known,——Captain Oliver C. Applegate, who has given me, on paper, a few of the many incidents coming under his own personal observation, which he has in times past related to me around camp-fires in the wild region of the lake country of Oregon.

SWAN LAKE, OREGON, Sept. 10, 1873.

Hon. A. B. MEACHAM:——

_Dear Friend_,... A Klik-a-tat Indian, named Dick Johnson, came
to my father’s house in the Willamette valley, and worked for
him on his farm, prior to the year 1850. In that year my father
removed to the Umpqua valley, and soon after Dick Johnson, with
his wife (an Umpqua), and mother and step-father, called the
“Old Mummy,” followed up and asked permission to cultivate a
small portion of my father’s farm. This they were allowed to do.
They cultivated these few acres in good style, and found time to
labor for father and other farmers, for which they received good
remuneration.

In 1852, Dick Johnson, under the encouragement of my father,
Uncle Jesse, and other friends, took up a claim in a beautiful
little valley about ten miles from Yoncalla, where my people
resided. This place was so environed by hills that it was
thought the whites would not molest Dick there. Aided by the old
man and his brother-in-law, Klik-a-tat Jim, who came from the
upper country to join him, Dick improved his farm in good style,
built good houses and out-buildings, and fenced hundreds of
acres. He was frugal, enterprising and industrious, and
emulated the better white people in every way possible, and was
so successful in his farming enterprises that he outstripped
many of his white neighbors. His character was above reproach,
and, beside sending his little brother to school, he was always
seen with his family at church on the Sabbath day.
Unfortunately, there were greedy, avaricious white men living in
the vicinity of Dick Johnson, who coveted his well-improved
little farm. Eight of them——disguised——went to his place late
one afternoon, and found Dick chopping wood in the front yard.
They shot him in cold blood, and, as his lifeless body fell
across the log on which he was chopping, his step-father ran
from the house unarmed, and was shot also. The women, after
being beat over the heads with guns and revolvers, finally made
their escape to the woods, and took refuge under the roof of a
friendly neighbor.

Klik-a-tat Jim——who came from mill about the time the old man
was shot——was fired on several times, some bullets cutting his
clothing, but, jumping into his house at a window, he got his
gun, and the cowardly assassins fled. Although there was immense
excitement throughout the country when this outrage was
committed, and a hundred men assembled to bury Dick Johnson and
the old man like white men, as they deserved, an ineffectual
attempt was made to bring the offenders to justice, and _they
actually lived for years upon the farm, enjoying the benefits of
poor Dick Johnson’s labor_. Our laws then scarcely recognized
the fact that the Indian had any rights that were worthy of
respect, and this most atrocious crime had to go unpunished,
thus encouraging the Columbia Indians to greater desperation
under Old Kam-i-a-kin, in the war of 1866-1867. Well it would
be, for the good name of the American people, if we could point
to but one isolated case of this kind; but truth and candor
compel us to admit, that too many Indian wars have been
occasioned by the greed and ruffianism of our own race.

* * * * *

Many years ago, during the first Modoc war, the Klamaths say
that a band of Modocs was pursued by troops from the Modoc
country, out by Yainax, and to the vicinity of Silver lake,
where the Modocs managed to elude their pursuers. The troops
(probably a detachment of Gen. Crosby’s California Volunteers),
not liking to be foiled in their efforts to take a few scalps,
returned by Klamath marsh, Williamson river, and Big Klamath
lake, butchering in cold blood several unresisting Klamaths.
Even this did not occasion trouble with the Klamaths, many of
whom tried to incite the nation to a war of revenge....

Ever truly yours,

(Signed) O. C. APPLEGATE.

To sustain the declaration that the Indian has been overmatched and outwitted in treaty council, I propose to introduce a witness whose long life on the frontier qualifies him to speak; whose great talents, and intimate acquaintance with the politics and wants of the North-west, secured him a seat for six years in the Senate of the United States, and who is now (1874) a member of Congress; one who was also a Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon, and knows whereof he speaks. I refer to Hon. James W. Nesmith. In his official report for the year 1857, page 321 Commissioners’ Report, he says:——

My own observation in relation to the treaties which have been
made in Oregon leads me to the conclusion that in most instances
the Indians have not received a fair compensation for the rights
which they have relinquished to the Government.

It is too often the case in such negotiations that the agents of
the Government are over-anxious to drive a close bargain; and
when an aggregate amount is mentioned, it appears large, without
taking into consideration that the Indians, in the sale and
surrender of their country, are surrendering all their means of
obtaining a living; and when the small annuities come to be
divided throughout the tribe, it exhibits but a pitiful and
meagre sum for the supply of their individual wants. The
Indians, receiving so little for the great surrender which they
have made, begin to conclude that they have been defrauded; they
become dissatisfied, and finally resort to arms, in the vain
hope of regaining their lost rights, and the Government expends
millions in the prosecution of a war which might have been
entirely avoided by a little more liberality in their dealings
with a people who have no very correct notions of the value of
money or property. A notable instance of this kind is exhibited
in the treaty of September 10, 1853, with the Rogue-river
Indians. That tribe has diminished more than one-half in numbers
since the execution of the treaty referred to. They, however,
number at present nine hundred and nine souls.

The country which they ceded embraces nearly the whole of the
valuable portion of the Rogue-river valley, embracing a country
unsurpassed in the fertility of its soil and value of its gold
mines; and the compensation which those nine hundred and nine
people now living receive for this valuable cession is forty
thousand dollars, in sixteen equal annual instalments of two
thousand five hundred dollars each, a fraction over two dollars
and fifty cents per annum to a person, which is the entire means
provided for their clothing and sustenance.

When those Indians look back to the valuable country which they
have sold, abounding, as it does, with fish and game and rich
gold fields, it is but natural that they should conclude that
the $2.50 per annum was a poor compensation for the rights they
relinquished. It is true that the Government can congratulate
itself upon the excellence of its bargains, while the millions
of dollars subsequently spent in subduing those people have
failed to convince them that they have been fairly dealt with.

Even the treaties which have been made remain, with but few
exceptions, unratified, and of the few that have been ratified
but few have been fulfilled.

Those delays and disappointments, together with the unfulfilled
promises which have been made to them, have had the effect to
destroy their confidence in the veracity of the Government
agents; and now, when new promises are made to them for the
purpose of conciliating their friendship, they only regard them
as an extension of a very long catalogue of falsehood already
existing....

That the Indian has been overcome by power may be established by the fact, that in the treaty council of 1855, whereby “_The Confederate Bands of Middle Oregon_” were compelled to accept Warm Springs Reservation as a home, by the threats and presence of an armed force of the Government. This I state on the authority of Dr. Wm. C. McKay, who was secretary for the council.

That the Indian has been faithful to his compacts, I submit the testimony of a veteran, who has fought them forty years,——General Harney.

HUMANE TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS.

General Harney, before the House Committee on Military Affairs,
to-day, gave his opinion that if the Indians were treated fairly
there would never be any difficulties with them. He had known
but two instances in which they ever violated the treaty
stipulations, and in these the Indians were to be excused, for
the treaties had grown old before they were sought to be
enforced, and the chiefs and head men who made them were all
dead. The troubles with the Indians were principally caused by
fraudulent agents and by whiskey dealers.

That the Indian has not been the aggressor in the wars of Oregon, I refer to one of the bloodiest that has ever cursed this young State, in proof.

From Hon. George E. Cole, now Postmaster, Portland, Oregon, I learned some of the facts in this case. No man stands fairer than Mr. Cole as a man of integrity and honor. In proof of this assertion his present position, in one of the most respectable federal offices in the State, is cited.

In the fall of 1851, a party of miners, returning from a
successful gold-hunting expedition to California, encamped on an
island in Rogue River. All was peace and quiet. _No war, no
blood, no treachery._ The Indians were in joint occupation of
the beautiful valley of Rogue river with the white men, whose
cabins and farms dotted the more beautiful portions of the
country.

After the miners have made camp two Indians visit them,——a
common thing for Indians to do. They are invited to partake of
the supper,——an act of courtesy never omitted in wild life,——and
they accept. The day passes into night. The Indians prepare to
return to their own camps. The miners object, and, _through fear
that they_ might be surprised in the night, demand that the
Indians remain. The Indians remonstrate. The miners are more
solicitous for them to stay, their anxiety to leave being
_construed_ as ominous of intended treachery. The Indians, also,
suspecting the same thing on the part of the miners, _break to
run_, and both of them are shot down and scalped.

The miners resume their journey. The friends of the Indians miss
them. Their scalpless bodies are found on a timber drift in the
river below. The Rogue-river war, with all its horrors, was the
result.

That it was the most terrible that has ever devastated Oregon, let us call to the stand another unimpeachable witness,——Gen. Joel Palmer,——and we shall learn something of the reasons why it was so. Gen. Palmer, in his annual official report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the year 1856, page 200, says in speaking of this Rogue-river war:——

In every instance where a conflict has ensued between volunteers
and hostile Indians in southern Oregon, the latter have gained
what they regard a victory. It is true that a number of Indian
camps have been attacked by armed parties, and mostly put to
death or flight; but in such cases it has been those unprepared
to make resistance, and not expecting such attack. This, though
lessening the _number_ of the Indians in the country, has tended
greatly to exasperate and drive into a hostile attitude many
that would otherwise have abstained from the commission of acts
of violence against the whites.

The avowed determination of the people to exterminate the Indian
race, regardless as to whether they were innocent or guilty, and
the general disregard for the rights of those acting as friends
and aiding in the subjugation of our real and avowed enemies,
have had a powerful influence in inducing these tribes to join
the warlike bands.

It is astonishing to know the rapidity with which intelligence
is carried from one extreme of the country to another, and the
commission of outrages (of which there have been many) by our
people against an Indian is heralded forth by the hostile
parties, augmented, and used as evidence of the necessity for
all to unite in war against us.

These coast bands, it is believed, might have been kept out of
the war, if a removal could have been effected during the
winter; but the numerous obstacles indicated in my former
letters, with the absence of authority and means in my hands,
rendered it impracticable to effect it.

Continuing the subject, he further says:——

A considerable number of the Lower Coquille bands had been once
induced to come in, but by the meddlesome interference of a few
_squaw men_ and reckless disturbers of the peace, they were
frightened, and fled the encampment. A party of miners and
others, who had collected at Port Orford, volunteered, pursued,
and attacked those Indians near the mouth of Coquille, killing
fourteen men and one woman, and taking a few prisoners. This was
claimed by them as a _battle_, notwithstanding no resistance was
made by the Indians.

This witness clearly establishes the fact, that unarmed and unresisting Indians were attacked and shot down like wild beasts, and that “extermination” was the war cry of the white men. He confirms, too, the statement in regard to the rapidity with which intelligence is transmitted from one tribe to another, and its effect.

Do you wonder at the Modocs refusing to surrender, with so much to remind them of the white man’s bloodthirsty deeds? See the last quotation from Gen. Palmer, and remember that these fourteen men and one woman were killed _after_ the surrender, and in the attempt to escape.

White men were accustomed to regard the Indian as the synonym for treachery and savage brutality. Let us see how this matter stands in the light of what has been already written, after adding one or two other instances from the many that crowd thickly forward for a place on the witness-stand.

Judge E. Steele, a lawyer of high character, a resident of Y-re-ka, Cal., since 1851, and also an ex-superintendent of Indian Affairs, in reporting an Indian difficulty in 1851, relates:——

That while hunting for two Indians who had committed some
offence, we fell in with Ben Wright, who, learning from a squaw
with whom he was living that the Indians had taken that course,
he, with a band of Shastas, had started in pursuit and
intercepted and captured them. We came in together, and took the
Indians to Scott valley, and there gave them a fair trial,
proving their identity by both white men and Indians, and the
Indian testimony and their own story, all of which was received
in evidence. One was found guilty, and the other acquitted and
set at liberty. Our present superintendent of public
instruction, Professor G. K. Godfrey, was one of the jury.
During our absence the people remained under great excitement,
as all kind of rumors were afloat; and our company was so small,
and I had started into a country inhabited by hordes of wild
Indians, and those of Siskiyou mountain and Rogue-river valley
notoriously hostile and warlike. Old Scar-face, learning of the
difficulty at Rogue river, contrary to advice given him when we
left, had come out from the cañon, appeared on the mountain
lying east of Y-re-ka, as the Indians afterward told me, for the
purpose of letting the whites know the trouble, as the roads
were guarded by the Indians on the mountains, so that
travellers could not pass. As soon as he was seen, a wild
excitement ensued, and a company started in pursuit. Scar-face,
seeing the danger, fled up the Shasta valley, on foot, his
pursuers after him, well mounted. After a race along the hills
and through the valleys for about eighteen miles, he was finally
captured and hung upon a tree, at what is now called Scar-face
Gulch.

In speaking of a trip to Rogue-river valley he says:——

We had got out of provisions, and when, at the mouth of Salmon
river, we made known our destination to the chief, Euphippa, he
took his spear and caught us some fish, but would take no pay.

In 1854 or 1855 there was one more excitement in Scott’s valley
by the whites fearing an attack from the Indians, from the fact
that they had held a dance and gone back into the hills. Here it
may be well to state a custom among all those upper country
Indians, which, not being generally understood by our people,
has led to much difficulty. It is, at the commencement of the
fishing season, and at its close, they hold what is called a
fish-dance, in which they paint and go through all the
performances of their dances at the opening and closing of war.
They also hold a harvest dance, when the fruits and nuts get
ripe, but this is of a more quiet character, more resembling
their sick dance, when they try to cure their sick by the
influence of the combined mesmerism of a circle of Indians, in
which they are in many instances very successful. But to return
to my subject. Hearing of the gathering of the whites, and
knowing the danger to our people and property if a war was then
inaugurated, I got on my horse and rode to the place of
rendezvous. After consulting, it was determined to fall upon the
Indian camp at about daylight next morning, as it was thought
that at that hour they could be mostly killed and easily
conquered. I returned to my house, took my young Indian, Tom,
and started, by a circuitous trail in the mountains, for the
Indian camp, and before morning had them all removed to a safe
place. In a few days all fears were quieted and harmony restored
without the loss of any lives or destruction of property. About
this time a young Indian from Humbug creek, visiting the
Scott-valley Indians, had stopped at an emigrant camp and stolen
two guns. Word was brought to me. I sent for Chief John, and
required him to bring the guns and Indian, which he did. I tied
and whipped the Indian, and then let him go. Late in the fall,
afterwards, I was sitting near the top of the mountain back of
my house, witnessing a deer drive by the Scott-valley Indians on
the surrounding hills, when I heard a cap crack behind me in a
clump of small trees. Getting up and immediately running into
the thicket, I discovered an Indian running down the opposite
slope of the mountain. I returned to my house, and sent Tom
after Chief John, and from him learned that when he left, this
Humbug Indian was there. I directed him to bring him to my
house, which he did next morning. The Humbug Indian told me it
was not the first time he had tried to kill me, but that his gun
had failed him, and now that he and all the Indians thought that
I had a charmed life. I gave him a good talk, which impressed
him much, and then unbound him, and told him to go and do well
thereafter. He was never known to do a bad act afterward, but
was finally killed by the Klamath-lake Indians, about a year
afterwards.

Of another affair, occurring in 1855, he says:——

Learning of the difficulty, and judging the Indians were not
wholly to blame, I proposed to Lieutenant Bonicastle, then
stationed at Fort Jones, and Judge Roseborough to accompany me,
and with Tolo, another Indian, to visit their company, and
arrange terms of peace. We went and spent two days with them
before arriving at a solution of the difficulty. During this
time they several times pointed their guns at us with a
determination to shoot, but as often were talked into a better
turn of mind, and finally agreed to go and live at Fort Jones,
and remain in peace with the whites. The third day thereafter
was settled upon for their removal, when Bonicastle was to send
a company of soldiers to escort and protect them. In the next
day a white man, who had a squaw at the cave, went out, unknown
to us, and told the Indians he was sent for them, and thereupon
they packed up and started for Fort Jones with him, one day
ahead of time agreed upon. On their way in at Klamath river,
about twenty miles from Yreka, they were waylaid, and their
chief, Bill, shot from behind the brush and killed. They kept
their faith, nevertheless, and came in, when I explained it, so
they were satisfied. This was _known to the Modocs, and they
talked of it on our last visit to the cave._ Occasionally
thereafter I was applied to only on matters of trifling moment
and easily arranged, until my appointment to the Indian
superintendency, in the summer of 1863, for the northern
district of California. In this narration I have passed over
several Rogue-river wars without notice, as I had nothing to do
with them; also the Modoc war of 1852, which took place whilst I
was away at Crescent City; therefore all I know of that was
hearsay; but I know it was generally known that Ben Wright had
concocted the plan of poisoning those Indians at a feast, and
that his interpreter Indian, Livile, had exposed to the Indians,
so that but few ate of the meat, and that Wright and his company
then fell upon the Indians, and killed forty out of forty-seven
and one other died of the poison afterward. There is one of the
company now in the county who gives this version, and I heard
Wright swearing about Dr. Ferrber, our then druggist (now of
Valejo), selling him an adulterated article of strychnine, which
he said the doctor wanted to kill the cayotes. That the plan was
concocted before they left Yreka defeats the claim now made for
them, that they only anticipated the treachery of the Indians.
Schonchin was one of the Indians that escaped, and in late
interview then he made this as an excuse for not coming out to
meet the commissioners. The story of the Indian corresponds so
well with that I have frequently heard from our own people,
before it became so much of a disgrace by the reaction, that I
have no doubt of the correction in its general details. At the
time others, as well as myself, told Wright that the transaction
would at some time react fearfully upon some innocent ones of
our people; but so long a time had elapsed that I had concluded
that matter was nearly forgotten by all, and nothing would come
of it, until the night of my second visit in the cave, when
Schonchin would get very excited talking of it as an excuse for
not going out. The history of that night you have probably seen
as it was given by an article in the “Sacramento Record” and
“San Francisco Chronicle,” for which paper he was corresponding;
he was made wild; he was with me the whole time after.[5] A
final peace was made with the Modocs, but the year is now out of
my mind; but about 1857 or 1858 they came to Yreka with horses,
money, and furs to trade and get provisions and blankets. On
their way out they were waylaid at Shasta river, as was claimed
by Shasta Indians, and seven killed, robbed and thrown into the
river. Many of our citizens thought white men were connected
with this murder, and it is probably so. The Shasta Indians
retreated; they claim that but few of their people were engaged
in the massacre, but it was mostly done by the white people, in
their negotiations for peace in the spring of 1864, mentioned
hereafter.

[5] Refers to the Ben Wright massacre.

Col. B. C. Whiting, another ex-superintendent of Indian Affairs, says, “In 1858 a party of white men went to an island in Humboldt bay, California, and murdered, in cold blood, one hundred and forty-nine men, women, and children, who were _suspected_ of being connected with other Indians who were at war with white men;” and that “no effort was ever made to bring the murderers to justice.”

One more witness,——one whose statement was made with chains on his limbs, and while he was on trial for his life at Fort Klamath, July, 1873. Captain Jack says:——

I wanted to quit fighting. My people were all afraid to leave
the cave. They had been told that they were going to be killed,
and they were afraid to leave there; and my women were afraid to
leave there. While the peace talk was going on there was a squaw
came from Fairchild’s and Dorris’s, and told us that the peace
commissioners were going to murder us; that they were trying to
get us out to murder us. A man by the name of Nate Beswick told
us so. There was an old Indian man came in the night and told us
again.

The INTERPRETER. That is one of those murdered in the wagon
while prisoners by the settlers.

CAPTAIN JACK (continuing). This old Indian man told me that Nate
Beswick told him that that day Meacham, General Canby, Dr.
Thomas, and Dyer were going to murder us if we came to the
council. All of my people heard this old man tell us so. And
then there was another squaw came from Fairchild’s, and told me
that Meacham and the peace commissioners had a pile of wood
ready built up, and were going to burn me on this pile of wood;
that when they brought us into Dorris’s they were going to burn
me there. All of the squaws about Fairchild’s and Dorris’s told
me the same thing. After hearing all this news I was afraid to
go, and that is the reason I did come in to make peace.

Add to all this the fact, that the popular cry was war, of which the Modocs were aware, as they were of all the incidents referred to in this chapter; and the further discouraging knowledge that no efforts had ever been made to punish offenders for crimes committed on their race; and a candid mind may be enlightened as to the cause of the failure of the Peace Commission sent out by President Grant in 1873.

The seed was sown while he was carrying on business at Galena, or fighting rebels around Vicksburg. The harvest came while he was in power. It was rich in valuable lives. It was costly in treasure.

It was a natural yield. It came true to the planting. The seed was sown broadcast, and harrowed deep into human hearts by the constant repetition of insult and wrong, irrigated often by the blood of the Indian race. It slumbered long (sometimes apparently dead, save here and there an outcropping giving signs of life), so long, indeed, that Judge Steele thought “the matter was nearly forgotten by all,” until Schonchin called it up during one of Steele’s visits to the Lava Beds in 1873.

If the harvest _was_ delayed in part, it was none the less prolific when it came. The _reapers_ were few, but their _sheaves_ were many, and bound together with the lives of the humble, the great, the noble, the good.

Does my reader yet understand why the policy, under which we settled a great matter of difference with a great nation, was not successful in settling a small matter with a small nation? Does he see, now, on whom the blame rests?

I hear some one answer:——

“On the frontier men, of course.”

Not too fast, my friend. While it is true that each succeeding wave of immigration to the border line has borne on its crest a few bad men mixed with the good, it is also true that the great majority of the frontier men were of the latter class,——brave, fearless pioneers as God has ever created for noble work; rough, unpolished men and women, with great hearts that opened ever to their kind. I assert here, in reiteration, that nowhere in all this broad land can be found men and women of larger hearts and nobler aims than frontier people. As far as their treatment of the Indian tribes is concerned, I assert, fearless of contradiction, that three-fourths of them are the Indians’ best friends; and that, if dissensions arise, they are caused by bad white men, who mix and mingle with the Indians, and, by their wilful acts of dissipation, provoke quarrel and bloodshed, thereby involving good citizens. When once blood is spilled, the Indian too often feels justified, by his religion, in wreaking vengeance on the innocent. They retaliate; and hence border warfare reigns, and the bloody chapter is repeated over and over again, until “Extermination” rings along the frontier-line, and both races take up the cry.

The question has been asked twice ten thousand times, What is the remedy? For two hundred years, political economists, statesmen and philosophers have been proposing, experimenting, and failing in schemes and plans for the Indian. Never yet have they come squarely up to duty as American citizens and Christian patriots should, and recognized the manhood of the Indian, treating him _as a man_, dealing justly and fairly with him, redressing his wrongs, while punishing him for his crimes.

In plain words, we have never, as a nation, experimented in our management of the Indian race of America, with a few plain laws that were first written on the marble tablets of Sinai, and sent along down succeeding ages, between the 12th and 19th verses of the 20th chapter of Exodus. Nor have we always remembered the 31st verse of the sixth chapter of St. Luke:——

“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”

If, as we proudly assert, we, as a nation, are the rich inheritors of the priceless boon of liberty, then let us be the champions of human rights.

If we are the friends of the weak and oppressed, let us protect those whose claim upon us is based upon a prior inheritance, and whose weakness has been our strength.

If we would welcome the exiled patriot from other lands, let us give the hand of fellowship to those whose birthright to this land cannot be disputed.

If our civilization is the most exalted on the face of the earth, then let us be the most magnanimous in our treatment of the remnants of a people who gave our fathers the welcome hand.

If we would be just, then let us remember that our civilization has refused them, and _them alone_, its benefit.

If we honor bravery, let us remember that they have resisted _only when oppressed_.

If we reverence the high and noble principles of fidelity in a people, let us not forget that, of all the nations of the earth, the Indian is the most faithful to his compact.

Let us as a nation, reading our destiny in the coming future by the light of the hundred stars upon our flag, be true to God, true to ourselves, and true to the high trust we hold.

While we shake hands with the Briton and our brothers of the South, over the battle-fields of the past, let us not withhold from these people our friendship.

While we forget the crimes of others, let us bury in one common grave all hatred of race, all thirst for revenge.

While we are strong enough and brave enough to defy the taunts of the civilized world for proclaiming the advent of the hour when the song of the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem shall become the motto of a Christian nation,——“Peace and good will to men,”——let us not live a lie, and prove our cowardice by shouting “EXTERMINATION” against a race fast fading away.

Let us not fall from our high estate by debasing a grand national power in a triumph over a civilization inferior to our own.

Let us gather up and care for these people, redeem the covenant of our fathers, fulfilling our high mission.

Let us uphold the hands of our rulers who declare a more humane policy, and let it be the crowning glory of the American statesman to proclaim to the world that the glad time so long foretold has come, when “The wolf, also, shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”