Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 2

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER II.

EL VAQUERO.

JESCENDING the mountain range that then divided California from Oregon, I fell in with a sour, flinty-faced old man, with a band of horses, which he was driving to the lower settlements of California. He was short of help, and proposed to take me into his employ for the round trip, promising to pay me whatever my services were worth. Glad of an opportunity to do something at least in a new land, I scarcely thought of the consideration, but eagerly accepted his offer, and was enrolled as a vaquero along with a motley set of half Indians from the north, and Mexicans from the south.

Our duties were light, and the employment pleasant and congenial to my nature. It was, in fact, about the only thing I was then fit for in that strange new country, boiling and surging with hosts of strong men, rushing hither and thither in search of gold. Our work consisted in keeping the saddle eight or

ten hours a day, leading or following after the horses, camping under the trees, and now and then keep ing alternate watch over the stock by night.

We were miserably fed, and half frozen while in the mountains, but we soon descended into the quiet Sacramento valley, where the nights are warm with perpetual summer.

The old drover, whose great vice was avarice, quarrelled with his men at Los Angelos, whither he had gone to get a herd of Mexican horses after dis posing of the American stock, to take with him on the back trip, and only escaped by adroitly suing out warrants, and leaving them all there in gaol for threatening his life. The cause of the trouble was the old man s avarice. He had made a loose contract with the roving vaqueros, and on settlement refused to pay them scarcely a tithe of their earnings. I remained with him. We returned to the north with a great herd of half-wild horses, driven by a band of almost perfectly wild men : men of all nationalities and conditions, though chiefly Mexicans, all anxious to reach the rich mines of the north.

Drovers in this country always leave the line of travel and all frequented roads that they may obtain fresh grass for their stock. In the long, long journey north we passed through many tribes of Indians, and except in the mountains, I noticed that all the Indians from Southern to Northern California were low, shiftless, indolent, and cowardly. Th e moment

you touched the mountains you seemed to touch a new current of blood.

The old man left his motley army of vaqueros mostly to me, and I was practically captain of the caravan. Not unfrequently, of a morning, we would find ourselves short of a Mexican, who had dis appeared in the night with one of the best horses. Sometimes in the daytime these men would get sulky and cross with the cold and cruel old master, and ride off before his face. These men would have to be replaced by others, picked up here and there, of a still more questionable character.

We reached Northern California after a long and lonely journey, through wild and fertile valleys, with only the smoke of wigwams curling from the fringe of trees that hemmed them in, or from the river bank that cleft the little Edens to disprove the fancy that here might have been the Paradise and here the scene of the expulsion.

We crossed flashing rivers, still white and clear, that since have become turbid yellow pools with barren banks of boulders, shorn of their overhanging foliage, and drained of flood by ditches that the resolute miner has led even around the mountain top.

On entering Pit River Valley we met with thou sands of Indians, gathered there for the purpose of fishing, perhaps, but they kindly assisted us across the two branches of the river, and gave no signs of ill -will.

We pushed far up the valley in the direction of Yreka, and there pitched camp, for the old man wished to recruit his horses on the rich meadows of wild grass before driving them to town for market.

We camped against a high spur of a long timbered hill, that terminated abruptly at the edge of the valley. A clear stream of water full of trout, with willow-lined banks, wound through the length of the narrow valley, entirely hidden in the long grass and leaning willows.

The Pit River Indians did not visit us here, neither did the Modocs, and we began to hope we were entirely hidden, in the deep narrow little valley, from all Indians, both friendly and unfriendly, until one evening some young men, calling themselves Shastas, came into the camp. They were very friendly, how ever, were splendid horsemen, and assisted to bring in and corral the horses like old vaqueros.

Our force was very small, in fact we had then less than half-a-dozen men ; and the old man, for a day or two, employed two of these young fellows to attend and keep watch about the horses. One morning three of our vaqueros mounted and rode off, cursing my sour old master for some real or fancied wrong, and then he had but one white person with him beside myself, so that the two young Indians had to be retained.

Some weeks wore on pleasantly enough, when we began to prepare to strike camp for Yreka. Thus far we had not seen the sign of a Modoc Indian.

It was early in the morning. The rising sun was streaming up the valley, through the fringe of fir and cedar trees. The Indian boys and I had just re turned from driving the herd of horses a little way down the stream. The old man and his companion were sitting at breakfast, with their backs to the high bare wall with its crown of trees. The Indians were taking our saddle-horses across the little stream to tether them there on fresh grass, and I was walking idly towards the camp, only waiting for my tawny young companions. Crack ! crash ! thud ! !

The two men fell on their faces and never uttered a word. Indians were running down the little lava mountain side, with bows and rifles in their hands, .and the hanging, rugged brow of the hill was curling in smoke. The Ben Wright tragedy was bearing its fruits.

I started to run, and ran with all my might to wards where I had left the Indian boys. I remem ber distinctly thinking how cowardly it was to run and desert the wounded men with the Indians upon them, and I also remember thinking that when I got to the first bank of willows I would turn and fire, for I had laid hold of the pistol in my belt, and could have fired, and should have done so, but I was thoroughly frightened, and no doubt if I had suc ceeded in reaching the willows I would have thought it best to go still further before turning about.

How rapidly one thinks at such a time, and how distinctly one remembers every thought.

All this, however, was but a flash, the least part of an instant. Some mounted Indians that had been stationed up the valley darted out at the first shot, and one of them was upon me before I saw him, for I was only concerned with the Indians pouring down the little hill out of the smoke into the camp.

I was struck down by a club, or some hard heavy object, maybe the pole of a hatchet, possibly only a horse s hoof, as he plunged in the air.

When I recovered, which must have been some minutes after, an Indian was rolling me over and pulling at the red Mexican sash around my waist. He was a powerful savage, painted red, half-naked, and held a tomahawk in his hand. I clutched tight around one of his naked legs with both my arms. He tried to shake me off, but I only clutched the tighter. I looked up, and his terrible face almost froze my blood. I relaxed my hold from want of strength. I shut my eyes, expecting the tomahawk to crash through my brain and end the matter at once, but he only laughed, as much as an Indian ever allows himself to laugh, and winding the red sash around him strode down the valley.

My pistol was gone. I crept through the grass into the stream, then down the stream to where it nearly touched the forest, and climbed over and slipped into the wood.

From the timber rim I looked back, but could see nothing whatever. The band of horses was gone r the Indians had disappeared. All was still. It was truly the stillness of death.

The Indian boys, my companions, had escaped with the ponies into the wood, and I stole up the edge of the forest till I struck their trail, and following on a little way, weak and bewildered, I met them stealing back on foot to my assistance.

My mind and energy both now seemed to give way. We reached the Indian camp somehow, but I have but a vague and shadowy recollection of what passed during the next few weeks. For the most part, as far as I remember, I sat by the lodges or under the trees, or rode a little, but never summoned spirit or energy to return to the fatal camp.

I asked the Indians to go down and see what had become of the two bodies, but they would not think of it. This was quite natural, since they will not revisit their own camp after being driven from it by .an enemy, until it is first visited by their priest or medicine man, who chaunts the death-song and appeases the angered spirit that has brought the calamity upon them. The Indian camp was a small one, and made up mostly of women and chil dren. It was in a vine-maple thicket, on the bend of a small stream called by the Indians Ki-yi-mem, or white water. By the whites I think it is now called Milk Creek. A singular stream it is; sometimes it flows very full, and then is nearly dry; sometimes it is almost white with ashes and fine sand, and then it is perfectly clear with a beautiful white sand border and bottom. The Indians say, that it is also some times so hot as to burn the hand, and then again is as

cold as the McCloud; but this last phenomenon I never witnessed. The changes however, whatever they are, are caused by some internal volcanic action of Mount Shasta, from which the stream flows in great springs.

The camp was but a temporary one, and pitched here for the purpose of gathering and drying a sort of mountain camas root from the low marshy springs of this region. This camas is a bulbus root shaped much like an onion, and is prepared for food by roasting in the ground, and is very nutritious. Sometimes it is kneaded into cakes and dried. In this state if kept dry it will retain its sweetness and fine properties for months.

I could not have been treated more kindly even at home. But Indian life and Indian diet are hardly suited to restore a shattered nervous system and or ganization so delicate as my own, and I got on slowly. Perhaps after all I only needed rest, and it is quite likely the Indians saw this, for rest I certainly had, such as I never had before or since. It was as near a life of nothingness down there in the deep forest as one well could imagine. There were no birds in the thicket about the camp, and you even had to go out and climb a little hill to get the sun.

This hill sloped off to the south with the woods open like a park, and here the children and some young women sported noiselessly or basked in the sun.

If there is any place outside of the tomb th at can

be stiller than an Indian camp when stillness is re quired, I do not know where it is. Here was a camp made up mostly of children, and what is usually called the most garrulous half of mankind, and yet all was so still that the deer often walked stately and un conscious into our midst.

No mention was made of my going away or re maining. I was permitted as far as the Indians were concerned to forget my existence, and so I dreamed along for a month or two and began to get strong and active in mind and body.

I had dreamed a long dream, and now began to waken and think of active life. I began to hunt and take part with the Indians, and enter into their de lights and their sorrows.

Did the world ever stop to consider how an Indian who has no theatre, no saloon, no whisky shop, no parties, no newspaper, not one of all our hundreds of ways and means of amusement, spends his evening ? Think of this ! He is a human being, full of passion and of poetry. His soul must find some expression ; his heart some utterance. The long, long nights of darkness, without any lighted city to walk about in, or books to read. Think of that! Well, all this mind, or thought, or soul, or whatever it may be, which we scatter in so many directions, and on so many things, they centre on one or two.

What if I told you that they talk more of the future and know more of the unknown than the Christian ? That would shock you. Truth is a great galvanic battery.

No wonder they die so bravely, and care so little for this life, when they are so certain of the next.

After a time we moved camp to a less dangerous quarter, and out into the open wood. I now took rides daily or hunted bear or deer with the Indians. Yet all this time I had a sort of regretful idea that I must return to the white people and give some account of what had happened. Then I reflected how inglorious a part I had borne, how long I had remained with the Indians, though for no fault of my own, and instinctively knew the virtue of silence on the subject.

In this new camp I seemed to come fully to my strength. I took in the situation and the scenery and began to observe, to think, and reflect.

Here, for the first time, I found myself alone in an Indian camp without any obligation or anything whatever binding me or calling me back to the Saxon. I began to look on the romantic side of my life, and was not displeased. I put aside the little trouble of the old camp and became as careless as a child.

The wood seemed very very beautiful. The air was so rich, so soft and pure in the Indian summer, that it almost seemed that you could feed upon it. The antlered deer, fat, and tame almost as if fed in parks, stalked by, and game of all kinds filled the woods in herds. We hunted, rode, fished and rested beside the rivers.

What a fragrance from the long and bent fir boughs ;

what a healthy breath of pine ! All the long sweet moonlight nights the magnificent forest, warm and mellow-like from sunshine gone away, gave out odours like burnt offerings from censers swinging in some mighty cathedral.

If I were to look back over the chart of my life for happiness, I should locate it here if anywhere. It is true that there was a little cast of concern in all this about the future, and some remorse for wasted time ; and my life, I think, partook of the Indian s melan choly, which comes of solitude and too much thought, but the memory of these few weeks always appeals to my heart, and strikes me with a peculiar gentle ness and uncommon delight.

The Indians were not at war with the whites, nor were they particularly at peace. In fact, they assert that there has never been any peace since they or their fathers can remember. The various tribes, sometimes at war, were also then at peace, so that nothing whatever occurred to break the calm repose of the golden autumn.

The mountain streams went foaming down among the boulders between the leaning walls of yew and cedar trees toward the Sacramento. The partridge whistled and called his flock together when the sun went down ; the brown pheasants rustled as they ran in strings through the long brown grass, but nothing else was heard. The Indians, always silent, are un usually so in autumn. The majestic march of the season seems to make them still. They moved

like shadows. The conflicts of civilization were beneath us. No sound of strife ; the struggle for the possession of usurped lands was far away, and I was glad, glad as I shall never be again. I know I should weary you, to linger here and detail the life we led; but as for myself I shall never cease to relive this life. Here I go for rest when I cannot rest elsewhere.

With nothing whatever to do but learn their language and their manners, I made fast progress, and without any particular purpose at first, I soon found myself in possession of that which, in the hands of a man of culture would be of great value. I saw then how little we know of the Indian. I had read some flaming picture books of Indian life, and I had mixed all my life more or less with the Indians, that is, such as are willing to mix with us on the border, but the real Indian, the brave, simple, silent and thoughtful Indian who retreats from the white man when he can, and fights when he must, I had never before seen or read a line about. I had never even heard of him. Few have. Perhaps ten years from now the red man, as I found him there in the forests of his fathers, shall not be found anywhere on earth. I am now certain that if I had been a man, or even a clever wide-awake boy, with any particular business with the Indians, I might have spent years in the mountains, and known no more of these people than others know. But lost as I was, and a dreamer, too ignorant of danger to fear,

they sympathized with me, took me into their inner life, told me their traditions, and sometimes showed me the u Indian question " from an Indian point of view.

After mingling with these people for some months, I began to say to myself, Why cannot they be permitted to remain here? Let this region be un- traversed and untouched by the Saxon. Let this be a great national park peopled by the Indian only. I saw the justice of this, but did not at that time conceive the possibility of it.

No man leaps full-grown into the world. No great plan bursts in full and complete magnificence and at once upon the mind. Nor does any one sud denly become this thing or that. A combination of circumstances, a long chain of reverses that refuses to be broken, carries men far down in the scale of life, without any fault whatever of theirs. A similar but less frequent chain of good fortune lifts others up into the full light of the sun. Circumstances which few see, and fewer still understand, fashion the destinies of nearly all the active men of the plastic west. The world watching the gladiators from its high seat in the circus will never reverse its thumbs against the successful man. Therefore, succeed, and have the approval of the world. Nay! what is far better, deserve to succeed, and have the approval of your own con science.