ures to return these Indians, which effort for some time, however, remained unattempted. In the meantime misunderstandings arose between the superintendent and the agent, the former accusing the latter of allowing the Klamaths to ceaselessly annoy and insult the Modocs, whom he had ordered to change their location, and surrounded them with Klamaths, to their great dissatisfaction, under a pretense of preventing their escape.
If there was one thing more than another on which Superintendent Meacham prided himself, it was his knowledge of and influence over Indians, Like Steele, who had accepted the chieftainship of Jack's band in 1864, he was flattered by being looked up to by savages. He had a theory that if a man only felt sufficiently his common brotherhood with the wild men, he would be able to control them through their affections; and although Jack seemed rather an unpromising subject for such practise, he anticipated the greater distinction from success. He was, therefore, indignant when it was reported to him that Knapp had done anything to displease Captain Jack, who, he said, could not be blamed for leaving the reservation under the circumstances.
The circumstances as alleged by Jack were, that his people were obliged to labor at making rails, that they had little to eat, that the water on the reservation was frozen, and that Captain Knapp moved them from place to place; to which Knapp replied that they were placed at Modoc point at their own request, and their proposed removal, about the 1st of April, was to a suitable place for opening farms and for obtaining wood and grass. It was this prospect of having to allow his men to be degraded by labor, instead of living off the sale of women and children, which hastened Captain Jack's departure. Meacham thought differently; and in his dissatisfaction requested that some distinct special regulations should be promulgated, whereby the relative positions of the military
