Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/465

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WISDOM AND STRENGTH.
453

and Indian departments might be understood, embarrassment removed, and harmony made possible.

That there was some such necessity is apparent from the fact that enmity existed between Knapp of the agency and Goodale of the fort. Knapp, though it was his duty to have called upon the commanding officer of Fort Klamath to brinoj the absconding Indians back, neglected to do so, upon his own belief that the force at that post was insufficient. This neglect caused Goodale to be censured, who placed the blame very promptly where it belonged; though at the same time he was compelled to admit that the judgment of Knapp in this matter was correct, and that he had not force sufficient to compel Jack to return if he did not wish to, as plainly he did not.


A year and a half elapsed, during which nothing was done to bring back the absentees. Captain Jack, grown bolder through success, and the encouragement given to his rebellion by that class of men known in the mines as "squaw men," meaning men who had taken to wife Indian women, either with or without the customary marriage ceremonies, and by other low-class whites, if not by the advice of some more responsible person, made him set up a claim to a tract six miles square, lying on both sides of the Oregon and California line, near the head of Tule lake, where he proposed to establish himself as chief of the 200 or far persuaded to follow him. Superintendent Meacham was too much occupied with Commissioner Brunot in examining into the condition of the Indians of Oregon generally to give his personal attention to the behavior of Captain Jack, whom he the more willingly left to his own devices because he sympathized with him.

In August 1870 Crook was relieved from the command of the department of the Columbia by General Canby, and sent to fight the Indians in Arizona. For