When Major Jackson was en route to the Modoc camp, some twenty-five white men from Linkville and the surrounding country assembled and proposed to accompany the expedition.
It has been said that they went for the purpose of “seeing Major Jackson and his thirty-five men get licked.” At all events they were armed with Henry rifles and revolvers.
Frontier men are fond of sport, and the more it is embellished with danger the more captivating it is to them. I do not say this with disrespect to frontier men, but simply state a fact that is not generally understood.
While it is true that they play with dangerous weapons as carelessly as a city dandy does with a switch cane or ivory opera-glass, they are, nevertheless, as a class, true, honest, enterprising, great brave-hearted men, who would scorn to do a mean thing.
They have among them men who are irresponsible vagabonds, reckless fellows who are driven from the cities and towns on account of their crimes. These latter characters beget strife among the people, and when truth comes to the front and speaks out, it
declares that they are the sole cause of any difficulty between good white men and Indians. They are the first to volunteer on occasions like this. As a class they are brave, fearless, desperate, having little regard for human life, caring not how much bad blood they evoke. But the idea that seems to prevail with eastern people, that all frontier men are rough, bad men, is outrageously false in the premises. Better men, braver men, more honorable, more enterprising men cannot be found on this continent than thousands who ride on the swelling breakers of advancing emigration. A moment’s consultation with justice and right would compel the law-makers, book-writers and newspaper reporters, instead of constant, sweeping insinuations against frontier men, to say encouraging words in their behalf, and to offer them every facility to successfully plant the foundations of prosperous society on the verges of American civilization. Honor to whom honor is due.
The party of citizens who went down Lost river on the morning of the 27th of November, 1872, were, with one or two exceptions, good, responsible settlers. Their motives were honorable, their intentions were good; and if serious results came out of the fact of their presence it was not because they as a party were “bloodthirsty desperadoes.”
They went on the opposite side of the river, and took a commanding position on a bluff overlooking the Modoc camp; which was located on the very spot where my party met Captain Jack in 1869.
The Modoc camp was divided by the river, Captain Jack, and fourteen men with their families, occupying the west bank, where the plain slopes gradually
down to the water’s edge; the background being covered with a growth of sage brush.