Judge Roseborough arrived in camp, and came on after we had reached the council tent.
Captain Jack was on the ground, accompanied by
his wives and seven or eight men. On this occasion he talked freely, saying, substantially, that he felt afraid of Gen. Canby, on account of his military dress; and, also, of Dr. Thomas, because he was a Sunday doctor; but “now I can talk. I am not afraid. I know you and Fairchild. I know your hearts.” He reviewed the circumstances that led to the war, nearly in the order they have been referred to in this volume, and differing in no material point, except that he blamed Superintendent Odeneal for not coming in person to see him while on Lost river, saying, “that he would not have resisted him. Take away the soldier, and the war will stop. Give me a home on Lost river. I can take care of my people. I do not ask anybody to help me. We can make a living for ourselves. Let us have the same chance that other men have. We do not want to ask an agent where we can go. We are men; we are not women.”
I replied, that, “since blood has been spilled on Lost river, you cannot live there in peace; the blood would always come up between you and the white men. The army cannot be withdrawn until all the troubles are settled.”
After sitting in silence a few moments, he replied, “I hear your words. I give up my home on Lost river. Give me this lava bed for a home. I can live here; take away your soldiers, and we can settle everything. Nobody will ever want these rocks; give me a home here.”
Assured that no peace could be had while he remained in the rocks, unless he gave up the men who committed the murders on Lost river for trial, he
met me with real Indian logic: “Who will try them,—white men or Indians?”
“White men, of course,” I replied, although I knew that this man had an inherent idea of the right of trial by a jury of his peers, and that he would come back with another question not easy to be answered by a citizen who believed in equal justice to all men.
“Then will you give up the men who killed the Indian women and children on Lost river, to be tried by the Modocs?”
I said, “No, because the Modoc law is dead; the white man’s law rules the country now; only one law lives at a time.”