Scattered through Potter, Little Lake, Ukiah, and other valleys, they were earning their living, and a number of farmers of that region have assured me that it was a serious disadvantage to them to lose the help of these Indians. Nor was it even necessary to speak their language in order to use their labor, for the agent told me that, of the Potter Valley tribe, nine-tenths speak English; of the Pitt Rivers, four-fifths; of the Little Lakes, two-thirds; of the Redwoods, three-quarters; of the Concows and Capellos, two-thirds. The Wylackies and Ukies speak less; they have been, I believe, longer on the reservation. As I walked through the Indian camp, English was as often spoken in my hearing as Indian.
The removal of the useful and self-supporting part of the Indian population to the reservation was brought about by means which are a disgrace to the United States Government. There is in all this northern country a class of mean whites, ignorant, easily led to evil, and extremely jealous of what they imagine to be their rights. Among these somebody fomented a jealousy of the Indians. It was said that they took the bread out of white men's mouths, that their labor interfered with the white men, and so forth. In fact, I suspect that the Indians were too respectable for these mean whites; and you can easily find people in California who say that it is to the interest of the Indian Bureau to make the whites hate the Indians.
The Indians were an industrious and harmless people; even the squaws worked; the Indian men had learned to take contracts for clearing land, weeding fields, and so forth; and many of them were so trustworthy that the farmers made them small advances where it was necessary. They were not turbulent, and I was surprised to be told that drunkenness was rare among them.
After secret deliberations among the mean whites, incited by no one knows who, and headed by the demagogues who are never found wanting when dirty work is to be done, a petition was sent to the State Superintendent of Indian Affairs at San Francisco for the removal of the Indians; but the more decent people immediately prepared and sent up a counter-petition, stating the whole case. This was in the spring of 1872.
I do not know the State Indian agent, but I am told that he hesitated, did not act, and, in May of the same year, a mob, without authority from him or from any body else, without notice to the Indians, and without even giving these poor creatures time to gather up their household goods or to arrange their little affairs, drove them out of their houses, and sixty miles, over a cruel road, to the reservation.
Against this act of lawless violence toward peaceable and self-supporting men and women, who are, I notice, officially called "the nation's unfortunate wards," the proper officer of the United States Government, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, did not protest, and for it no one has ever been punished.
But this was not all. The Indians being thus driven out, a meeting was called, at which it was announced that if they dared to return they would be killed; and, in fact, three unfortunates, who ventured back after some months to see their old homes, were shot down in cold blood; and, though the men are known who did this, for it no one has ever been punished. Why should they be? The mob was only carrying out the prevailing "Indian policy," and the United States Government looked on with its hands folded.
It happens that the Indians of these little valleys are a mild race, not prone to war. When the white settlers first came to this region they lived unmolested by the Indians, who were numerous then, and might easily have "wiped out," to use a California phrase, the intruding white men. It happens that the Indians of the interior are braver and more warlike; and, accordingly, among them there were forty-five resolute Modocs, unwilling to be driven to a reservation, defying the United States for half a year. But from what I have written one can see how the Modoc war came about; for it arose from an attempt to force Captain Jack on to the Klamath Reservation—an attempt made, not by United States troops, as it ought to have been if it was to be done, but in their absence, and by men who purposely and carefully kept the military ignorant of what they intended to do; for there exists the utmost jealousy on the part of the Indian agents, of the War Department and the military authorities; and I repeat that the removal of the Modocs was planned and attempted to be carried out by the Indian Bureau officers, they keeping the military in careful ignorance of their designs.