University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
MY FIRST BATTLE.

ABOUT this time, tiring somewhat of the
monotonous life of the Indian camp, and
wishing to see the face of a white man, I
descended to the settlements on the Sacramento River,
and fell in with Mountain Joe, an old mountaineer
who had been with Fremont. He was a German by
birth and education, and remarkable as it may seem,
was certainly a very learned man. I have heard him
repeat, or at least pretend to repeat, Homer in the
Greek and Virgil in the Latin, by the hour, though
he professed to despise the translations, and would
not give me a line of the English version. Possibly,
his Greek was not Greek, but I think it was, for in
other things in which I could not be utterly deceived
I found him wonderfully well-informed.

We together located and took possession of the
ranch now known as the Soda Springs, and to-day the
most famous summer resort in northern California.

We employed men, built a house, ploughed, planted,

and opened a trading post, all in the short period of
a few weeks. Sometimes I would ride up into the
mountains towards Mount Shasta, as if hunting for
game, and spend a few days with my tawny friends.

Soon the rush of people subsided, and but few
white men were found in the country. All up and
down the streams their temporary shanties were left
without a foot to press the rank grass and abundant
weeds.

One day when our tame Indians, whom we had
employed on the ranch, were out fishing, and Mountain
Joe and I had taken our rifles and gone up the
Narrow Valley to look after the horses, a band of
hostile Indians living in and about the Devil's Castle,
some ten miles away on the opposite side of the
Sacramento, came in and plundered our camp of
all the stores and portable articles they could lay
hands on.

This castle is the most picturesque object in all the
magnificent scenery of northern California. It sits
on a high mountain, and is formed of grey granite
blocks and spires, lifting singly and in groups thousands
of feet from the summit of the mountain. Most
of these are inaccessible. Here the Indians locate
the abode of the devil. Hence its name.

I gathered up some half-tame Indians that could
be relied on, while Mountain Joe went down the
river ten or twenty miles to the little mining camps,

and collected a company of whites. I had had
no connection with these Indians, and was therefore
plundered and treated as they would have treated any
other settler. To have borne with the outrage would
have been to fall into disgrace with the others. They
would have thought I dared not resent it.

The small command moved up Castle Creek under
the guide of friendly Indians. Each man carried his
arms, blankets, and three days' rations. All were
on foot, as the Castle cannot be approached by horsemen.
We reached Castle Lake, a sweet, peaceful
place, overhung by mountain cypress and sweeping
cedars. This is a spot the Indians will not visit, for
fear of the evil spirits which they are certain inhabit
the place. They sat down in the wood overlooking
the lake, while we descended, drank of the cool, deep
water, and refreshed ourselves for the combat, since
the spies had just returned and reported the hostile
camp only an hour distant. This was on the 26th
day of June, 1855. The enemy was not dreaming of
our approach, and we were in position, almost surrounding
the camp, before we were discovered.

Mountain Joe had distributed us behind the rocks
and trees in range of and overlooking the camp.
The ground was all densely timbered, and covered
with a thick growth of black stiff chaparral, save
one spot of a few acres, by the side of which the
Indians were camped, at the foot of a little hill.

This was my first war-path. I was about to take
part in my first real battle. I had been placed by
Mountain Joe behind a large pine, and alone. He
spoke kindly as he left me, and bade me take care of
myself.

I put some bullets in my mouth, primed my pistols,
and made all preparation to do my part. It seemed
like an age before the fight began. I could hear my
heart beat like a little drum.

The Indians certainly had not the least suspicion
of danger. They were, it seemed, as much off their
guard as possible. They evidently thought their
camp, if not impregnable, beyond our reach and discovery.
They owed the latter to their own race.

At last we were discerned, as some of the most
daring and experienced were stealing closer and
closer to the camp, and they sprang to their arms
with whoops and yells that lifted my hat almost from
my head.

The yells were answered. Rifles cracked around
the camp, and arrows came back in showers.

“Close up!” shouted Mountain Joe, and we left
cover and advanced. I think I must have swallowed
the bullets I put in my mouth, for I loaded from my
pouch as usual, and thought of them no more as we
moved down upon the yelling Indians.

A little group of us gathered behind some rocks.
Then a man came creeping to us through the brush

to say that the other side of our company was being
pressed and that we must move on. Then another
came to say that Mountain Joe had been struck
across the face by an arrow, and his eyes were so
injured that he could not direct the fight.

“Then come on!” I cried; “let us push through
here to the camp and drive them into the open
ground.” I took the lead, the men followed, and
without knowing it, I became a leader of my fellows.
We had wound our blankets about our breasts and
bodies so as to guard against arrows, but our heads
were unprotected.

Suddenly the arrows came, whiz, whistle, thud,
right in our faces.

I fell senseless. After a while I felt men pulling
by my shoulders. I could hear and understand but
could not see or rise. It seemed to me they were
trying to twist my neck from my body. Yet I
felt no great pain, only a numbness and utter helplessness.

“Help me pull it out,” said one. They pulled.

“No, you must cut off the point, and then pull it
back.”

Then they cut and pulled, and the blood spurted
out and rattled on the leaves.

“Poor boy, he's done for.”

I could now see, but was still helpless. Half-a-dozen
men stood around leaning on their rifles,

[ILLUSTRATION]

MY FIRST BATTLE.

[Description: 645EAF. Illustration page. This is a battle-scene. A white man is raising a dagger in his hand, and his hat has blown off. He is being shot by an arrow in the throat and he has just dropped his gun. Two other white men are also in the battle. One is aiming a gun off to the rights. The other has his gun in his hands and is looking off tot the right. Three are three Indians in the background which are aiming arrows. There are also arrows flying towards the men. They are in the woods.]

looking at me, then around them, as if for the enemy.
By the side of me, with his head in a man's lap, lay
a young man, James Lane, with an arrow-shot near
the eye. I believe he died of his wound.

The fight was over. An arrow had struck me in
the left side of the face, struck the jaw-bone, and
then glanced around and came out at the back of the
neck. The wound certainly looked as if it must be
mortal, but the jugular vein was not touched and there
was hope. I was dizzy and sometimes senseless. This
perhaps was because the wound was so near the brain.
I constantly thought I was on the mountain slope
overlooking home, and kept telling the men to go
and bring my mother. We had no surgeon, and the
men tied up our wounds as best they could in
tobacco saturated in saliva.

That night the Indian camp was plundered and
burnt. The next morning, as the provisions were out,
preparations were made to descend the mountain. I
here must not forget the kind but half-savage attention
of these rough men. They could do but little,
it is true, but they were untiring in attention and
sympathy. They held my head in their laps, and
talked low and tenderly of early health and my return
home. I saw one man crying, the tears dropping
down into his long grizzly beard; then I thought I
should surely die.

In the morning one kind but mistaken old fellow

brought a leather bag, and held it up haughtily
before my eyes in his left hand, while he tapped it
gently with his bowie knife. The blood was oozing
through the seams of the bag and trickling at his feet.

“Them's scalps.”

I grew sick at the sight.

The wounded were carried on the backs of squaws
that had been taken in the fight. A very old and
wrinkled woman carried me on her back by setting
me in a large buckskin, with one leg on each side of
her body, and then supporting the weight by a broad
leather strap passed across her brow. This was not
uncomfortable, all things considered. In fact, it was
by far the best thing that could be done.

The first half day the old woman was “sulky,” as
the men called it; possibly the wrinkled old creature
could feel, and was thinking of her dead.

In the afternoon I began to rally, and spoke to her
in her own tongue. Then she talked and talked,
and mourned, and would not be still. “You,” she
moaned, “have killed all my boys, and burnt up my
home.”

I ventured to protest that they had first robbed us.

“No,” she said, “you first robbed us. You drove
us from the river. We could not fish, we could not
hunt. We were hungry and took your provisions to
eat. My boys did not kill you. They could have
killed you a hundred times, but they only took

things to eat, when they could not get fish and things
on the river.”

We reached the Sacramento in safety, and pitched
camp on the bank of the river under some sweeping
cedars about a mile below the site of the present
hotel on the Lower Soda Spring ranch. Here I lay a
long time, till able to travel. Those beautiful trees
were still standing when I returned there in 1872.

It was necessary to go to San Francisco to recover
my health; but I tired of the city soon, and longed
for the mountains and my Indian companions.

In the spring I returned, found Mountain Joe
ploughing and planting at Soda Springs, and after
resting and making arrangements for the further improvement
of the ranch, pushed back over the mountains
to my Indians. All were there, Paquita, Klamat,
the chief, and his daughter, who, although she
was much to me I shall barely mention in these
pages. This is a book not of the Indian woman's
love, but of the white man's hate. They had learned
all about my battle, and I think forgave me whatever
blood was on my hands for the part I had borne
in the fight, for an Indian is a hero-worshipper of the
very worst kind.