University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
A NEW DEPARTURE.

I Now saw that I had made a grave mistake.
Indians are clannish. They may fight among
each other like the other people of the earth;
but let them be attacked by the common enemy, and
they make common cause. I had fought against their
brothers, and I was not to be at once forgiven for that.
On the other hand, I had sympathized with the Indians.
That also was a mortal crime, an unpardonable
offence, in the eyes of the whites.

Those of the Northern States who will remember
the feeling that once was held in the Southern States
against those who sympathized with and assisted the
Blacks will understand something of the feeling in
the West against those who took part with the
Indians.

I had attempted to sit on two seats at once, and
had slid between the two. It takes a big man to sit
on two chairs at once. Any man who has the

capacity to do such a thing, has also the good sense
not to attempt it.

The Indians came slowly back into the country;
but some never came. They had gone to the Pit
River war. The rank grass is growing above their
ashes on the hills that look upon that winding,
shining river.

Klamat was never friendly after that. The defeat
of the Indians on all occasions, without being able to
inflict any injury in return, made him desperate, and
to see me among their enemies did not add to his
good nature. But dear little Paquita was the same.
The same gentleness in her manner, the same deep
sadness in her eyes as she tended me. I now began
to think again. I now thought, I surely am awake.
If I had been awake, I should have mounted my mule
as soon as able to ride, and left the country for
ever.

No, I said, after a long debate with myself, I will
remain. I will reconsider this whole matter. I will
gather these Indians together, get arms and ammunition,
and around Mount Shasta make my home, and,
if needs be, defend it to the end. I had done all that
could be done, I thought, to convince the whites and
make them do justice to the Indians and to understand
me. I would try no more.

I returned the horses belonging to our ranch at
Soda Springs, gave up without any consideration all

my interest in the property there, bade Mountain Joe
a final farewell, and returned, casting my lot wholly
and entirely with the Indians.

As I crossed the little stream running through the
Now-aw-wa valley, before reaching the Indian camp,
I dismounted, and on a birch tree with my bowie
knife I cut this word, “Rubicon.”

I never saw Mountain Joe again. I never returned
to the ranch, for fear of involving those there in whatever
misfortune might overtake my enterprise. Dear
old Mountain Joe! he had as warm a heart in him as
ever beat in man, and was a kind, true friend. He
wandered away up to the mines of Idaho, and there
giving way to his old weakness for drink, became a
common hanger-on about the saloons, and at last sunk
down into a tippler's grave, after having faced death
in every form in which it confronts the man of the
border.

He had had his love affairs and adventures with
the brown children of the Sierras, and the story was
current that when he went away a little waif of
humanity was left fatherless in the forest.

There were most stringent regulations and laws
against selling the Indians of the border any ammunition
for any purpose whatever. After the Pit River
war these were enforced with a twofold vigilance.

This was particularly oppressive to the Indians.
It was, in fact, saying to them, “Look here, you

savages! We have superior means for taking your
game. We will enter your forests when we choose.
We will camp there in summer by the cool waters,
and kill game at our pleasure with our superior
arms, but you must only use the bow, and keep
your distance from our camps. We will thin out
and frighten away your game, so that it will be
ever so difficult for you to subsist; but you must
not attempt to compete with us in the chase, even
in your own forests, and in sight of your own
wigwams. You shall have neither fire-arms, powder
nor shot.”

The Indians felt all this bitterly. Month by
month the game grew more scarce, shy, and difficult to
take; the fish failed to come up from the sea, through
the winding waters of the Sacramento, now made
thick with mud by the miners, and starvation stared
them in the face. They wanted, needed amunition.
They needed it to take game now, they wanted it to
defend themselves; they were beginning to want it
to go to war. Any man who attempted to furnish
them with arms and ammunition was liable to the
severest penalties, and likely to be shot down by any
one who chose to do so, with impunity. I resolved
to undertake to furnish them with arms and ammunition.

I visited the Indians in Pit River, and found that
they were determined to fight rather than be taken to

the Reservation, some hundreds of miles away. I
knew this would involve them in war. I knew that
this war would drive the Shastas and the Modocs
into difficulties; for the whites make but little distinction
between what they call tribes of wild Indians.
Every Indian camp taken adds to the laurels of the
officers of the campaigns; there is no one to tell to
the world, or report to head-quarters, the other side,
and they have it pretty much their own way in the
invasion, unless checked by cold lead, which says,
“Don't come this way, this is our ground, and we
purpose to defend it.”

I saw but two paths before me. One was to
abandon the Indians, after all my plans and privations;
the other was to make up such a brief and
argument for our side of the case, when the threatened
time came, as would convince the authorities
that we were in earnest.

Early in the spring I left the mountains with a
few Indians, partly warriors, partly women, and,
partly children, and made my way through the woods
to the vicinity of Yreka, and there pitched camp in
open view of town.

The women and children were taken along, in
order to give to our camp the appearance of an ordinary
party of vagrant, half-civilized Indians, which is
always found moping about the border; and the camp
was made in sight of the settlements, because it was
unsafe to attempt concealment.

Any party of Indians found hidden away in the
woods and hills too near the settlements, no matter
how peaceful and well-disposed are its members, is
at once suspected of some secret attempt to right
their wrongs, and some fine morning they wake up to
the tune of a volley of shot poured in from the four
sides of their camp.

The plan was to buy arms and ammunition myself
in small quantities, as I could, here and there, and
now and then, without exciting suspicion; and also to
send out the Indians to trade, and pick up as best
they could the desired supplies, until we had procured
as much as we could well carry in a hasty
return to the mountains.

The enterprise was hazardous in the extreme. All
kind of caution was necessary. Ammunition was
only to be had in small quantities, and arms only at
second-hand. The stringent laws and customs compelled
cunning, treachery, and deceit. We used all
these. If there was any other course open, I failed,
and still fail, to see it. We were preparing means
to feed the half-starved children of the forest. We
were preparing, if necessary, to defend homes that
were older than the ancestral halls of earls or kings.

I went over to Deadwood, ten miles away, among
my acquaintances, entered into many kinds of employment
at different places, and procured most of
the desired supplies. Indians carried them to the
camp by night.

Soon we were ready to return. Horses were
needed. I always kept my own horse and saddle,
which was either with me or in some wood near by;
but an Indian seen with a horse in the valleys then
was liable to be shot down the first time he got out
of sight of a house, and plundered. He would
hazard about as much by the attempt to purchase a
horse provided he exhibited the necessary purchase
money.

The whites whenever in an Indian country helped
themselves to game or anything else they needed
without asking anyone. These few Indians were
now in a white settlement and needed horses. It is
a poor rule that will not work both ways. The test
rule was to be applied.

Every year the whites were entering the Indians'
forests, and destroying more game than the value of
a whole herd of horses. They would only use the
choicest and fattest, and carry away only the saddle
of the venison. The Indians would deplore this
waste. They would often, compelled by hunger,
follow these sportsmen and hunters, and sullenly pick
up what was left.

They had no horses now to carry them and the
provisions and ammunition to the camp, nearly a
hundred miles away.

They were equal to the emergency. A time was
fixed for a sudden flight for the mountains with our

supplies. The women and children were to come
over on the hills overlooking Deadwood, and there
remain with one warrior, doing what they could till
our return. The purpose was to keep up this communication
till the Indians were fully armed and
equipped.

Whenever I felt my courage or resolution relax, I
lifted my helpless arm, recalled my life of the last
year, and then grew resolute and reckless, even to
death.

Early one evening I rode into camp. Soon there
came an Indian on a spirited and prancing horse,
looking, in his skins and long black hair, tossed about
by the action of the restless and plunging horse, like
a savage Gaul in the days of Cæsar. Then came
another, and then another, till all were ready. They
had taken their horses from different parts of the
settlements, so as not to excite any suspicion of concert
of action; stolen them, if you prefer the expression,
and under my direction.

Belts, saddle-bags, and catenas were loaded down
with arms and ammunition. What a glorious wild
ride up the Shasta valley in the moon, full against
the grand old mountain. Here the strange, half-savage
men about me exulted, threw back the black
hair from their brows, and like giants striding in the
air stretched their necks and leaned forward with
eyes that were half aflame.

We met a party of miners going in a long string
to the city. They stepped aside and stood so near
the road as we passed that I could see their teeth as
their mouths opened with wonder; but they did not
lift a hand, and we were out of sight in an instant.
Then we met the stage. The driver set his horses
on their haunches, and heads popped out of the windows;
but we were gone like a whirlwind.

We reached the wood by dawn, climbed the mountain,
and made our way through rain and storm to a
small camp on the head of the McCloud. The ammunition
was taken into a lodge, and the delighted
Indians busied themselves examining the arms. I
cautioned them not to unpack the powder till dawn,
but was too tired to do more, and lay down in
another lodge by the fire and fell asleep.

A dull crash, a dreadful sound that has no name,
and cannot be described, started me to my feet.
Bark and poles and pieces of wood came raining on
our roof; then there was not a sound, not even a
whisper.

The poor Indians, so accustomed to arrange and
prepare their arms and such things by the camp fire,
had forgotton my caution perhaps, for somehow the
powder had, while the Indians were unpacking and
arranging it in the lodge, ignited, and they, and all
the fruits of our hard and reckless enterprise, were
blown to nothing.

The Indians of the camp and the three surviving
companions of my venture, were overcome. Their old
superstition returned. They sat down with their
backs to the dead bodies, hid their faces, and
waited till the medicine-man came from the camp on
the lake below.

About midnight the women began to wail for the
dead from the hills. What a wail, and what a night!
There is no sound so sad, so heartbroken and pitiful,
as this long and sorrowful lamentation. Sometimes
it is almost savage, it is loud, and fierce, and vehement,
and your heart sinks, and you sympathize, and
you think of your own dead, and you lament with
them the common lot of man. Then your soul
widens out, and you begin to go down with them to
the shore of the dark water, to stand there, to be
with them and of them, there in the great mysterious
shadow of death, and to feel how much we are
all alike, and how little difference there is in the
destinies, the sorrows, and the sympathies of all the
children of men.