Modoc War: Its Military History & Topography

Thompson, Erwin

From the very beginning, encounters between American whites and the Modoc Indians were classical in nature. The high, cool, lake—dotted borderland between California and Oregon witnessed somnolent days of peacefulness broken sharply by moments of fierce violence. Beneath the shining perfection of Mount Shasta, death came to both Indian and white in the form of whining bullets. An observer might have predicted the outcome to be a wretched remnant of the redman struggling against total extermination.It came to that in the end. But not before a handful of Modocs stunned America by winning bloody fights against incredible odds. The battle flags were theirs; yet, final victory, if such there was, belonged to the whites. That time is called the Modoc War.Capt. John Charles Frémont (though it could have been anyone) established the precedent for violence. In May 1846, he was moving along the dim trail that joined California to the Columbia River, when he was overtaken by a courier whose message urged him to return south to partake in the defeat of Mexican rule. Frémont reversed his footprints near Upper Klamath Lake and headed back. That night the Modocs' neighbors, the Klamath Indians, slipped through the shadows and attacked the young explorer's camp with arrows and axes, killing three men. Though Frémont was in a hurry he still found time and opportunity for revenge by raiding a village as he headed toward his troubled destiny. [1]Later that year a group of fifteen Oregon settlers, including Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, passed through the Klamath and Modoc country working its way eastward to carve a new route for the Oregon Trail. They hoped this South Road would allow future overland immigrants to reach the Willamette Valley of Oregon with less difficulty than they themselves had experienced on the Columbia River route. When they reached the north shore of Tule Lake on July 6, they found the lower end of Lost River too deep to ford. Lindsay Applegate described how they surprised an Indian and forced him to disclose a crossing place: "he led the way up the river about a mile and pointed out a place where an immense rock crossed the river." The group was delighted to find that "the sheet of water running over the rock was about fifteen inches deep, while the principal part of the river seemed to flow under." Known as Stone Bridge, this unusual ford served travelers through the Modoc country for the next several years. [2]