Lava Beds National Monument is a very remote place in northern California not far from the Oregon border. It was a three to four hour drive from Redding.
I first read about Lava Beds while I was working at the Madison County Museum in Edwardsville, IL. I found a rusty, old knife in their collection that has a very dated typed tag saying it belonged to Captain Jack from the Modoc War, so my investigation started with research of the Modoc War that happened here.
Modoc War
In 1864 the Council Grove Treaty sees that the Klamath and Modocs cede their lands to the government and move to a reservation. The Modocs ancestral land was around the Lava Beds and Tule Lake.
Shortly after the Modoc started building their homes, however, the Klamath, longtime rivals, began to steal the Modoc lumber. The Modoc complained, but the US Indian agent could not protect them against the Klamath. Captain Jack’s band moved to another part of the reservation. Several attempts were made to find a suitable location, but the Klamath continued to harass the band.
In 1870 Captain Jack and his band of nearly 200 left the reservation and returned to Lost River. During the months that his band had been on the reservation, a number of settlers had taken up former Modoc land in the Lost River region.
Acknowledging the bad feeling between the Modoc and the Klamath, Meacham recommended to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. that Captain Jack’s Modoc band be given a separate reservation at Yainax, in the lower southern part of the reservation. Pending a decision, Meacham instructed Captain Jack to remain at Clear Lake. Oregon settlers complained that Modoc warriors roamed the countryside raiding the homesteads; they petitioned Meacham to return the Modoc to the Klamath Reservation. In part, the Modoc raided for food; the US did not adequately supply them. Captain Jack and his band did better in their old territory with hunting.
When the Modocs refused to leave the Army was sent in to remove them from the territory.
Captain Jack’s Stronghold
For some months, Captain Jack had boasted that in the event of war, he and his band could successfully defend themselves in an area in the lava beds on the south shore of Tule Lake. The Modoc retreated there after the Battle of Lost River. Today it is called Captain Jack’s Stronghold. The Modoc took advantage of the lava ridges, cracks, depressions, and caves, all such natural features being ideal from the standpoint of defense. At the time the 52 Modoc warriors occupied the Stronghold, Tule Lake bounded the Stronghold on the north and served as a source of water.
On December 21, a Modoc party scouting from the Stronghold attacked an ammunition wagon at Land’s Ranch. By January 15, 1873, the U.S. Army had 400 troops in the field near the Lava Beds.
Kintpuash—Captain Jack led 52 warriors in a band of more than 150 Modoc people who left the Klamath Reservation. Occupying defensive positions throughout the lava beds south of Tule Lake (in present-day Lava Beds National Monument), those few warriors resisted for months the more numerous United States Army forces sent against them, which were reinforced with artillery. In April 1873 at a peace commission meeting, Captain Jack and others killed General Edward Canby and Rev. Eleazer Thomas, and wounded two others, mistakenly believing this would encourage the Americans to leave. The Modoc fled back to the lava beds. After U.S. forces were reinforced, some Modoc warriors surrendered and Captain Jack and the last of his band were captured. General Davis prepared to execute Captain Jack and his leaders, but the War Department ordered the Modoc to be held for trial. The Army took Captain Jack and his band as prisoners of war to Fort Klamath, where they arrived July 4.
Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, Boston Charley, Brancho (Barncho) and Slolux were tried by a military court for the murders of Canby and Thomas, and attacks on Meacham and others. The six Modoc were convicted, and sentenced to death on July 8.
On September 10, President Ulysses S. Grant approved the death sentence for Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim and Boston Charley; Brancho and Slolux were committed to life imprisonment on Alcatraz. Grant ordered that the remainder of Captain Jack’s band be held as prisoners of war.
On October 3, 1873, Captain Jack and his three lead warriors were hanged at Fort Klamath. The remainder of the band of Modoc Indians, consisting of 39 men, 64 women, and 60 children, as prisoners of war were sent to the Quapaw Agency in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). In 1909, after Oklahoma had become a state, members of the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma were offered the chance to return to the Klamath Reservation. Twenty-nine people returned to Oregon; the Modoc of Oregon and their descendants became part of the Klamath Tribes Confederation. The remaining 153 Modoc of the band were sent to Indian Territory (pre-statehood Oklahoma), where they were held as prisoners of war until 1909, settled on reservation land with the Shawnee. Some at that point were allowed to return to the Klamath Reservation in Oregon. Most Modoc (and their descendants) stayed in what became the state of Oklahoma. They achieved separate federal recognition and were granted some land in Oklahoma. There are two federally recognized Modoc tribes: in Oregon and Oklahoma.
After the bodies were buried, Captain Jack’s was exhumed and taken by freight train to Yreka. Some reports state his body was embalmed and then sent to Washington, D.C. Others suggest it was decapitated and his head then used in carnival side shows. The cost of the Modoc War was enormous compared to its results. The tribe requested a reserve of land with a value of approximately $20,000, according to most sources. As Britt explains in Great Indian Chiefs, the government spent $500,000 on the war, in addition to losing “the lives of eight officers, thirty-nine privates, sixteen volunteers, two Indian scouts, and eighteen settlers—a trumpery affair, as wars go.” The remaining Modocs were escorted to a reservation on Shawnee land in the Indian Territory. They arrived at their destination, Seneca Springs on the Quapaw Agency, almost one year after the war began.