Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXL
MY FIKST BATTLE.
BOUT this time, tiring somewhat of the monotonous life of the Indian camp, and wishing to see the face of a white man, I descended to the settlements on the Sacramento River, and fell in with Moun tain Joe, an old mountaineer who had been with Fremont. He was a German by birth and education, and remarkable as it may seem, was certainly a very learned man. I have heard him repeat, or at least pretend to repeat, Homer in the Greek and Virgil in the Latin, by the hour, though he professed to despise the translations, and would not give me a line of the English version. Possibly, his Greek was not Greek, but I think it was, for in other things in which I could not be utterly deceived I found him wonderfully well-informed.
We together located and took possession of the ranch now known as the Soda Springs, and to-day the most famous summer resort in northern California.
We employed men, built a house, ploughed, planted,
and opened a trading post, all in the short period of
a few weeks. Sometimes I would ride up into the
mountains towards Mount Shasta, as if hunting for
game, and spend a few days with my tawny friends.
Soon the rush of people subsided, and but few white men were found in the country. All up and down the streams their temporary shanties were left without a foot to press the rank grass and abundant weeds.
One day when our tame Indians, whom we had employed on the ranch, were out fishing, and Moun tain Joe and I had taken our rifles and gone up the Narrow Valley to look after the horses, a band of hostile Indians living in and about the Devil s Castle, some ten miles away on the opposite side of the Sacramento, came in and plundered our camp of all the stores and portable articles they could lay hands on.
This castle is the most picturesque object in all the magnificent scenery of northern California. It sits on a high mountain, and is formed of grey granite blocks and spires, lifting singly and in groups thou sands of feet from the summit of the mountain. Most of these are inaccessible. Here the Indians locate the abode of the devil. Hence its name.
I gathered up some half-tame Indians that could be relied on, while Mountain Joe went down the river ten or twenty miles to the little mining camps, and collected a company of whites. I had had
no connection with these Indians, and was therefore plundered and treated as they would have treated any other settler. To have borne with the outrage would have been to fall into disgrace with the others. They would have thought I dared not resent it.
The small command moved up Castle Creek under the guide of friendly Indians. Each man carried his arms, blankets, and three days rations. All were on foot, as the Castle cannot be approached by horse men. We reached Castle Lake, a sweet, peaceful place, overhung by mountain cypress and sweeping cedars. This is a spot the Indians will not visit, for fear of the evil spirits which they are certain inhabit the place. They sat down in the wood overlooking the lake, while we descended, drank of the cool, deep water, and refreshed ourselves for the combat, since the spies had just returned and reported the hostile camp only an hour distant. This was on the 26th day of June, 1855. The enemy was not dreaming of our approach, and we were in position, almost sur rounding the camp, before we were discovered.
Mountain Joe had distributed us behind the rocks and trees in range of and overlooking the camp. The ground was all densely timbered, and covered with a thick growth of black stiff chaparral, save one spot of a few acres, by the side of which the In dians were camped, at the foot of a little hill.
This was my first war-path. I was about to take part in my first real battle. I had been placed by Mountain Joe behind a large pine, and alone. He
spoke kindly as he left me, and bade me take care of
myself.
I put some bullets in my mouth, primed my pistols, and made all preparation to do my part. It seemed like an age before the fight began. I could hear my heart beat like a little drum.
The Indians certainly had not the least suspicion of danger. They were, it seemed, as much off their guard as possible. They evidently thought their camp, if not impregnable, beyond our reach and dis covery. They owed the latter to their own race.
At last we were discerned, as some of the most daring and experienced were stealing closer and closer to the camp, and they sprang to their arms with whoops and yells that lifted my hat almost from my head.
The yells were answered. Rifles cracked around the camp, and arrows came back in showers.
u Close up!" shouted Mountain Joe, and we left cover and advanced. I think I must have swallowed the bullets I put in my mouth, for I loaded from my pouch as usual, and thought of them no more as we moved down upon the yelling Indians.
A little group of us gathered behind some rocks. Then a man came creeping to us through the brush to say that the other side of our company was being pressed and that we must move on. Then another came to say that Mountain Joe had been struck across the face by an arrow, and his eyes were so injured that he could not direct the fight.
" Then come on! " I cried; u let us push through here to the camp and drive them into the open ground." I took the lead, the men followed, and without knowing it, I became a leader of my fellows. We had wound our blankets about our breasts and bodies so as to guard against arrows, but our heads were unprotected.
Suddenly the arrows came, whiz, whistle, thud, right in our faces.
I fell senseless. After a while I felt men pulling by my shoulders. I could hear and understand but could not see or rise. It seemed to me they were trying to twist my neck from my body. Yet I felt no great pain, only a numbness and utter help lessness.
" Help me pull it out," said one. They pulled.
" No, you must cut off the point, and then pull it back."
Then they cut and pulled, and the blood spirted out and rattled on the leaves.
u Poor boy, he s done for."
I could now see, but was still helpless. Half-a- dozen men stood around leaning on their rifles, looking at me, then around them, as if for the enemy. By the side of me, with his head in a man s lap, lay a young man, James Lane, with an arrow-shot near the eye. I believe he died of his wound.
The fight was over. An arrow had struck me in the left side of the face, struck the jaw-bone, and then glanced around and came out at the back of the
MY FIRST BATTLE.
neck. The wound certainly looked as if it must be mortal, but the jugular vein was not touched and there was hope. I was dizzy and sometimes senseless. This perhaps was because the wound was so near the brain. I constantly thought I was on the mountain slope overlooking home, and kept telling the men to go and bring my mother. We had no surgeon, and the men tied up our wounds as best they could in tobacco saturated in saliva.
That night the Indian camp was plundered and burnt. The next morning, as the provisions were out, preparations were made to descend the mountain. I here must not forget the kind but half-savage atten tion of these rough men. They could do but little, it is true, but they were untiring in attention and sympathy. They held my head in their laps, and talked low and tenderly of early health and my re turn home. I saw one man crying, the tears dropping down into his long grizzly beard ; then I thought I should surely die. In the morning one kind but mistaken old fellow brought a leather bag, and held it up haughtily before my eyes in his left hand, while he tapped it gently with his bowie knife. The blood was oozing through the seams of the bag and trickling at his feet.
" Them s scalps."
I grew sick at the sight.
The wounded were carried on the backs of squaws that had been taken in the fight. A very old and wrinkled woman carried me on her back by setting
me in a large buckskin, with one leg on each side of
her body, and then supporting the weight by a broad
leather strap passed across her brow. This was not
uncomfortable, all things considered. In fact, it was
by far the best thing that could be done.
The first half day the old woman was u sulky," as the men called it ; possibly the wrinkled old creature could feel, and was thinking of her dead.
In the afternoon I began to rally, and spoke to her in her own tongue. Then she talked and talked, and mourned, and would not be still. " You," she moaned, u have killed all my boys, and burnt up my home."
I ventured to protest that they had first robbed us.
u No," she said, " you first robbed us. You drove us from the river. We could not fish, we could not hunt. We were hungry and took your provisions to eat. My boys did not kill you. They could have killed you a hundred times, but they only took things to eat, when they could not get fish and things on the river."
We reached the Sacramento in safety, and pitched camp on the bank of the river under some small cedars about a mile below the site of the present hotel on the Lower Soda Spring ranch. Here I lay a long long time, till able to travel. Those beautiful trees were still standing when I returned there in 1872.
It was necessary to go to San Francisco to recover my health; but I tired of the city soon, and longed for the mountains and my Indian com panions.
In the spring I returned, found Mountain Joe ploughing and planting at Soda Springs, and after resting and making arrangements for the further im provement of the ranch, pushed back over the moun tains to my Indians. All were there, Paquita, Klamat, the chief, and his daughter, who, although she was much to me I shall barely mention in these pages. They had learned all about my battle, and I think forgave me whatever blood was on my hands for the part I had borne in the fight, for an Indian is a hero-worshipper of the very worst kind.