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.