Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/412

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as a sworn indictment against the rulers of my country for the destruction of these people.

Here lies a letter giving a long account of the last struggle of the Indians of Mount Shasta. Strange how this one little struggle of the Modoc Indians has got to the ears of the world, while a thousand not much unlike it have gone by in the last century unwritten and unremembered; perhaps it is because it came in a time of such universal peace.

Brave little handful of heroes! if ever I return to Mount Shasta I will seek out the spot where the last man fell; I will rear a monument of stones, and name the place Thermopylae.

And little Calle Shasta, the last of her race ?

At school in San Francisco. Her great black eyes, deep and sad and pathetic, that seem to lay hold of you, that seem to look you through and understand you, turn dreamily upon the strange, strong sea of people about her, but she gazes unconcerned upon it all. She is looking there, but she is living elsewhere. She is sitting there in silence, yet her heart, her soul, her spirit, is threading the dark and fragrant wood. She is listening to the sound ing waterfall, watching the shining fish that dart below the grassy border. Seeing all things here, she understands nothing at all. What will become of her? The world would say that she should become a prodigy, that she should at once become civilized, lay hold of the life around her, look up and climb to eminence; crush out all her nature, forget her childhood; compete with those educated from the