Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 29

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER XXIX.

MY MISSION OF PEACE.

HE Indians stood behind, the two offi cers came towards me together, and I told them hurriedly that the Indians wanted peace if they could be left alone about the base of Shasta, and that I had come from them to say this.

My Indians, seeing me stand quietly and let the officers approach, had dismounted, and stood watching every movement, lariats in hand.

I began again excitedly, but the officer forgetting himself, called out sharply to his corporal, and then said to me,

"What! are you the - I sprang into my saddle in an instant. a Tokadu ! Kisa /" I called to the Indians, and they laid their hands on their Mexican horses manes, and sprang to their backs even as they ran, for these horses sniff danger as quick as an Indian.

A volley of shots followed us and scattered bits of

bark across our faces from the pines as we disap peared in the forest, but did no further harm. My mission of peace was at an end. Bitterly indeed I deplored its blunt and rough conclusion. I had always hated war and despised warriors. Warriors a re coarse - natured men trained to destroy what refined and gentle men build up.

Men fight for freedom of body. There is no such thing. For six thousand years men have struggled for a mistake. There is a freedom of mind, and a man can have that just as much in a monarchy as in a land even beyond the pale of law. A shoemaker or mender of nets may be as free of mind as a monarch. Give us freedom of mind, or rather let each man emancipate his mind, and all the rest will follow. It is not in the power of kings to enslave the mind, or of presidents to emancipate it. Free the mind and the body will free itself.

Poets, painters, historians, and artists generally, are responsible for the wars they deprecate, the devastation they deplore. Let the poet cease to celebrate men s achievements in battle, men, nine cases out of ten, who have not even the virtues of a bull-dog, men in debt, desperate, who have nothing to lose in the desolation they spread, and everything to gain, and wars will cease at once. Ridicule the warrior as we do the bully of the prize ring, as he deserves to be, and the pen will no longer be the servant of the sword. So long as the world goes on admiring these deeds of ruffianism, so long will wars

continue. Let the historian enter into the heart, the private life of his hero ; let him refuse to be dazzled by the dome of the temple, but enter in and see for himself, and let him give the world the cold, clean truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as he is in duty and in honour bound, and we will find the hero of war is much the more a brute and much the less a man than the bully of the prize ring. The bully harms no one but his single antagonist ; no cities are burned, no fields laid waste, no orphans made; and he risks much and makes but little, at the best. The warrior risks but little, for the chances of being hit are remote indeed. Any soldier who receives half the punishment the man of the ring must receive is sure of promotion and laudation to the skies. Say what you will, your soldier is a ruffian. The greater the ruffian the better the soldier.

Should a man not fight to defend his country I Should he not go around trained and equipped for battle, make a machine of himself in a military system, take all the time he should devote to some natural and pure pursuit, and devote it to the art of destroying cities and slaying men? No, there is not the slightest use or excuse for the soldier. Let all warriors remain at home and there will be no war. Let bullies be treated as they deserve and there will be no warriors.

If a set of men enter my fields in violation of my rights, injure my property and take away my corn, shall I not shoot them down? Shall I not arm my

household, and proceed to their fields and destroy also ? No, you answer, there is a law in the land to protect you, a higher authority to appeal to.

Well, I say to the nations, there is a God in the land. A higher authority. Appeal to Him.

But, you answer, there is no God: or what is much the same thing, you refuse to trust, to believe that nothing can wrong you so long as you do no wrong. Yery well, even admit there is no God, and you will find there is a moral idea of right in the world to-day that will not let one nation long oppress another.

Beasts have gone back to the jungles. Theseus may sleep and Hercules put aside his club and surrender to love. Man is no more in danger from them.

Savage men have passed away. They come not down from the north nor up from the south; and even if they did, I believe they could be won to us by kindness and an appeal to their sense of right. But should that not be possible, I know their favour could be bought with a hundredth part of the time and money that is spent in a single war.

The loss of life in war is not much it is the least of all things to be thought of. Men who fall in battle have mostly seen enough of life. Many have passed its prime, all have seen its spring, and they do not, on an average, lose more than ten or a dozen years. It is the bad moral effect. Towns grow up again; ships rebuild, and nations someh ow drag

through, and are going on in a little time the same as before. But only think how much time, how much talk, how much that is cruel must come out of the memory of a single war so long as any one lives to remember it. If in the great conflagration every book from Homer to the New Testament had been utterly swept away, the world had been another world. The poets, the painters, the historians, have this in their own hands. u Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." If I were a great poet, rather than celebrate the deeds of battle, I would starve.

I now threw all my energy into the effort to keep faith with the Indians in the mountains.

I reached the Sacramento river and crossed at the ferry near Rock creek. I hid the Indians camp in the willows near the mouth of that stream, and a few miles from Shasta city, while I took lodgings at a wayside hotel hard by, and began at once to pur chase arms and ammunition, which I carried by night to the Indian camp in the willows.

I soon had a good supply, and was only waiting a fine moonlight night to push out, when it became evident one evening at my hotel that my movements were watched. I ordered my horse, left him standing at the rack, and went at the back of the house up the hill, and from a point whence I could not be seen from the hotel, signalled for one of my Indians. He came, and I hastily gave this order : " Pack up at once, three of you, swim your horses, cross the

UHIVEE3ITY

supplies in the Indian canoe, and push out for home up the Pit. One of you will come with me, for we must ride to Shasta city for pistols there, and will then overtake you before dawn."

The Indian and I rode leisurely to Shasta city, waiting for darkness. As I neared town I saw two men cross a ridge behind us, halt, and then, when they thought they were unobserved, push hard after us.

I left the Indian on the hill north of town by the graveyard, and went down to the gunsmith s, where I had some half-dozen revolvers being repaired. I hitched my horse at the rack and went in. The two men rode into town, rode past my horse, eyeing him closely sideways from under their cavalry hats, and I then knew that I had been followed from the mountains, and had something more now than the settlers to deal with. In a few minutes I saw these men watching me from the door of the shop across the narrow street.

It was now nearly dark, but I asked the gunsmith to let me take a brace of the pistols, and go out the back way and fire them into the hill. I buckled the pistols about me over my others, he opened the door, I paid him liberally, and went out, promising soon to return.

I did not discharge a shot, but hurried down a back alley to a barber s shop and had my long and luxuriant hair cut close to the scalp. I then bought a black suit of clothes and new hat at an adjoining Jew s shop, dressed in a back room, ordering the Jew to keep my cast-off clothes carefully till I returned,

OF PEACE. 33a

and then went boldly into the street. My own brother would not have known me.

I walked leisurely along, looking carefully at the hundreds of horses hitched at the racks. At length I found one that looked equal to a long and reckless ride, unhitched him, mounted and rode up past my own horse and out of town unchallenged, to my patient Indian on the hill by the graveyard.

We divided the pistols and struck out up the stage road for the bridge on the Sacramento. We reached the end of the bridge in safety, and I hastily handed the keeper his toll. He took the piece of silver, pro nounced it a bad coin, returned it and demanded another; all the time talking and causing delay. I now handed him a piece of gold, and he professed to be unable to give change. Delay was what he desired. We left him and galloped across the bridge. We did not see the bar at the further end, and while the Indian s horse by some good fortune cleared it, mine struck it with all his force and fell over it, throwing me over his head, and bruising me fearfully. I got on his back again, but was bleeding from my mouth from internal injuries, and could scarcely keep my seat. I had lost one of my pistols in the fall. There was now a sound of horses feet in the rear, men calling in the dark, and horsemen thundering across the bridge. At this point some men came riding down the narrow road, with its precipitous bluff on one side and perpendicular wall on the other, and called out to us to stop.

We set spurs to our horses, and dashed up the hill right into their faces. They did not fire a shot as we approached, but halted, let us pass, and then, as if recovering their senses, sent several random shots after us. An innocent good-night.

I had my pistol in my hand ; and as I could hear but imperfectly, and was otherwise suffering fear fully, I hardly knew what I was doing. I fancied I heard our pursuers upon us, and attempting to wheel and fire, I accidentally discharged my pistol into the shoulder of my own horse as we turned the top of the hill.

The poor beast could only spin around on three legs now, and as we could not get him to follow the road farther, the Indian led him off to a thicket of chaparral, left him, and we hastened on.

I now rode the remaining horse, and the Indian ran along the dusty walk at my side. We reached a little mining camp called Churn Town, a camp which I had visited often before, and there finding a number of horses tied to a rack, we determined to procure another, since it would be impossible to over take our companions half mounted as we were.

The Indian took some money, and went through the town, in hope of meeting some Mexican with whom he could deal, and I went down to the saloon to see what I could do in the same direc tion. I found a large number of miners and settlers engaged in a political meeting. A popular lawyer was making a great speech on Popular Sovereignty.

I stood in the doorway a little while, noting the strange proceedings of the strange men in the strange land, till I saw my Indian leading a horse trium phantly out of town, then turned, mounted the other horse, and followed at a good pace. I continued to suffer and grow weak. It was evident I could not keep my saddle for the long hard ride, now necessary from our delay, to overtake our friends.

It was finally decided that when we struck the stage road I should attempt to make the Indian camp at the foot of the high backbone mountains of the McCloud, about twenty-five miles distant, and there remain till recovered, while the Indian pushed on. When we came to separate, the kind-hearted Indian gave me the fresher and stronger horse, mounted his own tired and bruised mustang, and rode away in the dark and dust at a gallop.

What a night I had of it ! It grew chill towards morning, and I could not straighten myself in my saddle. Night birds screamed wickedly in my ears, and it seemed to me that I had almost finished my last desperate ride in the mountains.

At dawn, after slowly threading a narrow bushy trail, around mountains and over gorges, I came down to the deep and dark blue river.

An Indian set me across in a wretched old boat, and I took my course across the mountains for the McCloud. There were some few miners here, and sometimes I would meet half-tame Indians, and then half-wild white men.

At dusk I dismounted at the Indian camp, more dead than alive, and turned the horse out on the luxuriant grass of the narrow valley ; for here the trail ended, and I could use him no further.

I did not like the look of things here altogether. The Indians mixed too much with the whites. They were neither one thing nor the other. I was com pelled to spend the night here, however, but deter mined to go on over the high mountain the following day, on foot, to Hubet Klabul, or u Place of Yellow Jackets," where I knew more noble Indians than these would receive me.

I rose in great pain next morning, and went down to the brook to bathe my head. While leaning over the water, my pistol slid from the scabbard into the stream, and was made useless till it could be taken to pieces and cleaned. I went back, laid down, and was waiting for an Indian woman to prepare me some breakfast, when I saw two suspicious-looking, half-tame Indians coming down the hill ; then three suspicious-looking white men, with the muzzles of their rifles levelled at my head, and I was a prisoner.

My faithful Indian companion of the night before had almost cost me my life by his kindness. We had taken the saddle-horse of an honest settler, then a judge of the Court of Sessions. Some strange hand had led me by his very door the day before, and I had been followed in my slow and painful flight.

They took my arms, tied me, and talked very

savagely. I said in a low tone to one of the men who stood close at my side, " Please don t hang me, but shoot me. That will be better for us all." Maybe it was my boyish face, maybe it was some secret chord in his heart that only my helplessness could touch; I do not know what it was, but he looked at me with a gentleness that I could not mistake, and I knew at once that I had at least one friend among my captors.

I soon found that they had no connection with the soldiers, and that they had no suspicion as to who I was. This was a great relief, and by the time we began to return I began to see a possibility of escape. Soon we came to a little mountain stream. I was feverish and thirsty, and asked for a drink of water. One of the men filled a cup and raised it to my lips. I could not take hold of it, for I was bound like a felon on his way to the gallows. I did not touch the water, but turned away my head, and in spite of all my efforts I broke down utterly and burst into tears.

The men looked the other way for awhile, and then after some consultation they told me if I would promise not to attempt to escape they would unloose my arms. I had never been bound before. To have the spirit of an eagle, and then be fettered like a felon ! That is crucifixion. After two days we reached Shasta city. I could have escaped on the way. I could have dashed down one of the hundred steep and bushy mountain-sides from the trail and

laughed at the shots that would have followed ; could have escaped in spite of my wounds and wasted strength, but I had made a solemn promise to men who were humane and honourable, and I was bound to keep it. I kept my promise, and I kept it at a fearful cost, and I knew the cost at the time. At every rugged and bushy pass on the way to prison I fought a battle with myself against a reckless and impulsive spirit that almost lifted me out of the trail, and almost forced me to dash down the mountain through the chaparral in spite of my resolution and promise.