Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/459

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KENTIPOOS, OR CAPTAIN JACK.
447

of this personage to the terms of the treaty. Yet even then, circumstances existed which would make the observance of the conditions of the treaty exceedingly irksome to Captain Jack, who had acquired that love of civilized as well as savage vices which unfitted him for encagement on a reservation. The bad character of the Shastas, Pit Rivers, Lower Klamaths, and other tribes occupying the country in the vicinity of the mines, was not altogether in consequence of their association with vicious white men ; such association, however, gave them every opportunity to practice whatever vices they might have. They were so given to quarreling among themselves, that it was only when at war with others that harmony reigned in the household.

Some of these savages were always hovering about mining camps and were often employed as servants in town houses. They had a good understanding of the English language, and were not unaware of the civil war being carried on at the east, from which they were led to believe the white race, of whose numerical strength they had a feeble idea, was in a condition to be successfully attacked and possibly exterminated. This idea prevailed to a great extent among all the natives, from the Missouri to the Pacific. When Superintendent Steele of California, entered upon the duties of his office, in 1863, he found the Klamaths and the Modocs, under their chiefs Lalake and Schonchin, preparing to make war upon the settlers of northern California and southern Oregon, having already begun stealing cattle and plundering and killing white men travelling through their country. The operations of the 1st Oregon cavalry and the establishment of Fort Klamath to prevent these outrages, are known to the readers of my history. These measures, together with the killing of two of the most vicious of the Klamath sub-chiefs, resulted in bringing these Indians to a realization of the power of the white men, and the necessity of a treaty.