The Modoc War - History - http://maxpages.com/modocwar

THE MODOC WAR!
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Captain Jack and His People Take On the U. S. Army.
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Indian Troubles in Northern California.
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President Grant's Peace Policy in Danger.
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Sources, Original News Stories, Editorials.
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Official Reports.

New material is being posted (ir)regularly.
Thanks to everybody who has dropped me a line, voted for my site, or signed my guestbook.

New page: The 1872 Petitions

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Narrative

Prolog
Early Events
Middle Events
Late Events

A-C
D-I
J-R
S-Z

Pointless Facts about the Modoc War
The Modoc War was the only Indian war fought by U.S. troops in California.

It began in November 1872 and ended (more or less) in June 1873.

For most of this time the Modocs were holed up in their natural fortress in the lava beds surrounded by U.S. troops. Unlike most Indian wars, the Modoc War was essentially a prolonged siege.

It was the only Indian war in which reporters interviewed the Indian leaders while the war was still in progress.

E. R. S. Canby was the only U.S. Army general killed in action during the Indian wars. (Custer was a lieutenant-colonel.)

Captain Jack, the Modoc leader, was executed in October 1873, along with John Schonchin, Boston Charley, and Black Jim.

Random Observations
The history of these Indians, their wars and the cause of them, as known to me for twenty-two years, would fill a volume, and be but a publication of the disgrace of our own people. The Indian is not heard . . .
Elijah Steele (1873)
Eastern people, safe in their seclusion, could not understand the danger and suffering of pioneers with wives and children and scanty means, exposed to the mercy of exasperated natives. They felt inclined rather to sympathize with a brave minority apparently fighting for hearth and home . . .
Frances Fuller Victor (1888)
I had been told that I must give up my young men and have them hang and not cry, but I should cry if my men were hung. I never asked you to give up to us the men who shot my people when they were asleep. I don't think my men were so much to blame about it and I can't give them up . . .
Captain Jack (1873)
[The Indian] by his impudence has compelled the Government to pay for his tomahawk title to the land almost as much as it cost to suppress the rebellion [and] has sold, for hundreds of millions, what never belonged to him, what never could, by any possibility, belong to him; land deeded originally by the Creator to the human family in common, and the possession of which he acquired by his profession--butchery. It is difficult to see how there can be any sympathy between these banditti and the American negro or his friends.
Jane Swisshelm (1873)
There never was a more outrageous and unjustifiable thing than this Indian outbreak; there never was a massacre more wholly savage and without provocation than that which signalized the commencement of this wicked affair. But this matters nothing to the sentimental people who have resolved to invest these bloody savages with all that is noble in human character.
Portland Bulletin (1873)
But it is worth while to investigate the matter thoroughly for the truth of history, which no temptations can justify any people, from any cause, in falsifying. . . . When history records the cruel fact that a United States army deliberately slaughtered every man, woman and child of a small but bold and brave tribe of Indians, because five of their chief men treacherously murdered two of our Peace Commissioners, history should also be invoked to show the real causes which led the savages to that fatal act of treachery. . . . We are much in error if the verdict of history shall not be more against the white Christian than the dusky heathen.
Sacramento Union (1873)

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Page Updated Tue Jun 20, 2000 3:15pm EDT