Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LOST CABIN.
HE snow began to fall, and Paquita
did not return.
Elk came down from the mountain
towards spring, and we could shoot them from the cabin door. At this season of the year, as well as late in the fall, they are found in herds of hundreds together.
It seems odd to say that they should go up further into the mountains as winter approaches, instead of down into the foot-hills and plains below, as do the deer, but it is true. There are warm springs in fact, all mountain springs are warmer in the winter than in the summer up the mountain, where vine- maple, a kind of water-cress, and wild swamp berries grow in the warm marshes or on the edges, and here the elk subsist. When the maple and grasses of one marsh are consumed, they break through the snow in single file, led in turns by the bulls, to another.
Hundreds in this way make but one great track, much as if a great log had been drawn to and fro through the snow. The cows come up last, to protect the calves in the line of inarch from the wolves.
It is a mistake to suppose that elk use their splen did horns in battle. These are only used to receive the enemy upon. A sort of cluster of bayonets in rest. All offensive action is with the feet. An elk s horns are so placed on his head, that when his nose is lifted so a to enable him to move about or see his enemy, they are thrown far back on his shoulders, where they are quite useless. He strikes out with his feet, and then throws his head on the ground to receive his enemy. You have much to fear from the feet of an elk at battle, but nothing from his matchless antlers.
The black bears here also go up the mountain when the winter approaches. They find some hollow trunk, usually the trunk of a sturdy tree, and creep into it close down to the ground. Here they lie till snowed in and covered over, very fat, for months and months, in a long and delightful sleep, and never come out till the snow melts away, or they have the ill-fortune to be smelled out by the Indian dogs, and then called out by the hunters.
Whenever they find a black bear thus, they pound on the tree and call to him to come out. They chal lenge him in all kinds of bantering language, call him a coward and a lazy fat old fellow, t hat would
run away from the squaws, and would sleep all summer. They tell him it is spring-time now, and he had better get up and come out and see the sun. The most remarkable thing, however, is, that so soon as the bear hears the pounding on the tree, he begins to dig and endeavour to get out ; so that the Indians have but little to do, after he is discovered, but to sit down and wait till he crawls out, blinking and blinded by the light in his small black eyes, and despatch him on the spot. Bears when taken in this way are always plump and tender, and fat as pos sible ; a perfect mass of white savoury oil.
Klamat was a splendid hunter, and even without the aid of the Indian dogs, managed to take several bears this first winter, which, after all, was not so long and dull as one would suppose. I sometimes think we partook somewhat of the nature of the bear, in our little snowy cabin among the firs that winter, for before we hardly suspected it, the birds came back, and spring was fairly upon us.
When the snow had disappeared, and our horses grew sleek and fat and strong again, Klamat and I rode far into the pines together and found a lake where the wild geese built nests in the margin among the tules.
The Prince and the Doctor went up the canon in search of gold, for want of something better to do, and by the time the summer set in, had found a deposit in a quartz ledge, looking up towards the mountain. Gold appeared to be not over abundant nor did it
seem to be much prized. No great plans, no excite
ment, that usually attends a discovery. These two
men seemed to care more for it as a proof of their
theory about the origin and growth of gold than for
the gold itself.
They brought in and laid on a shelf in the corner pieces of gold and quartz with as little concern as if they had been geological specimens of slate or granite. You cannot be greatly surprised at this, however, when you remember how plentiful gold was, how little it was worth there, and that at that time it was thought to abound in every canon in the country.
Paquita had not returned. We had come almost not to mention her now at all. Often and often, all through the spring and early summer, I saw the Prince stand out as the sun went down, and shade his brow with his hand, looking the way she had gone. I think it was this that kept him here so faithfully. He would not remain away a single night, either to hunt for gold or game, lest she might return, find him away, and need in some way his assistance.
The Doctor sometimes took long journeys down toward the valley to the south, and even fell in with white men, as well as Indians, after two or three days ride in that direction, and thought of going down that way out of the reach of the snow, and building him a house for the winter. No one objected to this; but when he was ready to go away y
the Prince compelled him to take all the gold they had taken from the mine, even against his utmost remonstrance.
"Take it," said the Prince, " every ounce of it. You may be called to use it. Here it is not worth that much lead." And he put the buckskin bag into the Doctor s catenas, and resolutely buckled them down.
Another incident worth mentioning is their agree ment to never reveal the existence of the mine. Their reasons were of the noblest kind, sufficient, above every selfish consideration.
" In the first place," said they, " the gold is of doubtful utility to the world at best. But if this mine is made known, a flood of people will pour in here; the game, the forests, all this wild, splendid part of nature will disappear. The white man and the red man will antagonize, the massacre of the Klamat will be repeated; and for all this, what will be the consideration? Nothing, whatever, but gold, and we have quite enough of that, and what do we owe the world?"
Back of all this, it was extremely doubtful whether the mine would yield anything better than this little " pocket."
For my own part, I would banish gold and silver, as a commercial medium, from the face of the earth. I would abolish the use of gold and silver alto gether, have paper currency, and but one currency in all the world. I propose to take all the strong
men now in the mines down from the mountains, and build ships and cities by the sea, and make a permanent commonwealth.
These thousands of men can, at best, in a year s time, only take out a few millions of gold. A ship goes to sea and sinks with all these millions, and there all that labour is lost to the world for ever. Had these millions been in paper, only a few hours labour would have been lost. There are two hundred thousand men, the best and bravest men in the world, wasting the best years of their lives getting out this gold. They are turning over the mountains, de stroying the forests, and filling up the rivers. They make the land unfit even for savages. Take them down from the mountains, throw one half their strength and energy against the wild, rich sea- border of the Pacific, and we would have, instead of these broken mountains, muddied rivers, and ruined forests, such an Eden as has not been seen by man since the days of Adam.
At last Paquita came. The Prince went forth to meet her with his arms held out, but she was too bashful and beautiful to touch.
And why had she not returned before? It is a sad story, but soon told.
When she reached the region of her father s camp, she found the grass growing in the trails. She found no sisters to receive her; no woman to bring her water; not a human being in all the lodges. The weeds grew rank, and the wolves had possession.
The white men in her absence had made another
successful campaign against her people. They had
become dispirited, and, never over-provident, finding
the country overrun, the game made wild and scarce,
and the fish failing to come up the muddied Sacra
mento, they had neglected to prepare for winter, and
so had perished by whole villages.
These singular people perish so easily from con tact with the whites, that they seem to me like the ripened fruit ready to fall at the first shaking.
She had found none of her tribe till she passed away on to the Tula lakes, and then of all her family found only two brothers. These, with some young warriors, had now come with her on her return.
They dismounted and built a fire under the trees and apart from us, and only slowly came to com municate, to smoke, and show any hospitality at all. Paquita was all kindness ; but she had become a woman now; the state of things was changed. Then the eyes of her sober, savage brothers who could ill brook the presence of the white man, much less look with favour on familiarities were upon her, and she became the quiet, silent Indian woman, instead of the lively little maiden who had frolicked on the hill- sides and wandered through the woods the year before.
They remained camped here many days. Klamat took the young chiefs up to the mine, only a little crevice picked out in the rotten quartz, and they looked at it long and curiously. Then they picked
up some little pieces of gold that lay there, looked at
them, put them in their mouths, spit them out, and
threw them down on the ground.
After that they came down to the cabin.
" You have saved our sister," the eldest said, among other things, " and we like you for that, and owe you all that we can give ; but you did not save her from a bear or a flood, you only saved her from your own people, so that it is not so much. But even if you did save one of us in the bravest way, that is no reason why you shall help to destroy us all. If you bring men and dig gold here, we must all die. We know how that is. You may stay here, dig gold, hunt, live here all your lives ; but if you let this be known, and bring men up here, we will shoot them from behind the trees, steal their horses, and destroy them every way we can."
Paquita herself repeated this, interpreted what we did not understand, and told us emphatically that what her brothers said was true. Noble Indian woman! She was right.
The Prince answered very kindly and earnestly. He told them they were right. He told them that no one should hear of the mine ; and at the last, he lifted up his hand to Mount Shasta, and before the God of the white man and the red man, promised that no white men should come there, with his con sent, while he remained.
Paquita returned soon after this with her people to her village, and it was lonely enough to be sure.
The Prince grew restless ; and at last, after we had
carried out some few specimens from the ledge, we
mounted our horses, and set out for the settlement
to procure supplies. We went by a circuitous way
to avoid suspicion.
The Indian boy, our strange manner of dress, and the Prince s lavish use of money, soon excited remark and observation. New rich mines were becoming scarce, and there were hordes of men waiting eagerly in every camp for some new thing to come to the surface. We were closely watched, but did not suspect it then.
One day the Prince met a child in an immigrant camp, the first he had seen for a long long time. He stopped, took from his buckskin purse a rough nug get, half quartz and half gold, gave it to the boy, patted him on the head, and passed on. A very foolish thing.
After obtaining our supplies, we set out to return. The evening of the last day in the settlement we camped under the trees by a creek, close by some prospectors, who came into our camp after the blan kets were spread, and sat about the fire cursing their hard luck ; long-haired, dirty-habited, and ugly- looking men they were. One was a sickly-looking man, a singularly tall, pale man, who had but little to say. There was some gold left. It was of no pos sible use to us. The Prince took him to one side, gave him the purse, and told him to take it and go home. Another extremely silly thing. This man,
meaning no harm of course, could not keep the secret
of the few hundred dollars worth of gold dust, and
soon the whole affair, wonderfully magnified too, was
blown all over the country.
When we found we were being followed, we led a sorry race indeed, and went in all directions. Klamat entered into the spirit of it, and played some strange forest tricks on the poor prospectors.
We eluded them all at last, and reached the cabin. But we had laid the foundation for many a mountain venture. What extravagant tales were told ! There was a perfect army of us half Indians, half white men. Our horses were shod backward an old story. Then, again, our horses feet were bound up in gunny-bags, so as to leave no track. An impossible thing, for a horse will not take a single step with his feet in muffles.