University of Virginia Library

I do not like this bit of impatience, nor do I expect any one else to like it and only preserve it here as a sort of landmark or journal in my journey through life. It is only an example of almost an entire book, written in Italy. I had, after a long struggle with myself, settled down in Italy to remain, as I believed, and as you can see was very miserable, and wrote accordingly.

Parties with Indian depredation claims against the Government desiring exact information touching the first trouble with the Modocs, now nearly forty years ago, the venerable leader of the volunteers in the first battle made out, with his own hand, the following quaint account of it, swore to it before a Notary, and sent it to Washington. The italics, capitals, and all are as he set them down in his crude but truthful way.—

I Reuben P. Gibson Was Born in Lowell Mass in 1826 of American Parents, shiped on board a whaler of New Bedford in 1846, Rounded Cape Horn, spent several years on the Pacific Ocean, and in 1846 landed in California. Came to the Mines in Shasta County California, and have lived here in Shasta County more than 40 years, most of which time I have been and am now a Magistrate. I have had much to do with Indians, and in 1855 they became Very Restless, and some of them took to the Castle Rocks, Called Castle del Diablo, at that time by the Mexicans, and they—the Hostiles began to destroy our Property, and Kill White people. Troops of the Regular Army tried to engage them, but found them inaccessible. I then raised a Company of Twenty-Nine White men and thirty Indian (friendly) Scouts and after hard Perilous Marches by Night. We engaged and destroyed the Hostiles, having taken Many Scalps. This battle was Fought in the Castle Rocks in this Shasta County and was in June 1855. The hostiles were Modocs and Other Renegades and this was the first Battle in a war that Spread all over the Coast I had Some Indians hurt, and one man mortally wounded, James Lane by name. Some Others were more or less hurt with Arrows. Joaquin Miller Received an Arrow in the face and Neck at my Side and we thought would die but at last got Well. He and Mountain Joe had a Post at Soda Springs below Castle Rocks, and their property had been destroyed and made untenable. In all My Experience I know of nothing in Indian warfare so effectual for good as this Campaign. The indians had Possessions of the lines of travel connecting Middle and Northern California and it Was impossible for the Mails to get through until the Hostiles were destroyed.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 17th day of November, 1892, and I hereby certify that I am well acquainted with said affiant and know him to be a person of veracity and entitled to credit. He is a Justice of the Peace in this Shasta County.

Let me here introduce a line of facts stranger than anything imagined in all these pages. I had not intended to insert these verses and had delivered to my publishers the completed collection without them. Against my objection that the lines were not only too personal, but unequal, it was urged that they would be missed by my readers; besides their preservation was due to my old commander, and as this was the first of my three terrible Indian campaigns, and I had served only as private instead of leader, I could hardly be held guilty of egotism. Deference to the dead made me consent to try and find the lines at once in some library. On my way I met a man whom I knew but slightly as U. S. Marshal under President Hayes. My weary eyes were unequal to the task before me, and I asked him to go with me. This he did, and now let his letter tell the rest.

“Joaquin, my dear fellow, I enclose herewith the copies you expressed a wish for. I think they are exact. I was especially careful in making the affidavit of Old Gib; so where he differs with Webster orthographically, I follow Gib.

“Now my boy, I've a little story. I'll be considerate and make it brief. In the early part of the summer of 1855, I was one of a company of about twenty that left Auburn, Placer Co., on a prospecting expedition, intending, unless we found satisfactory prospects nearer, to go to the Trinity. We crossed the Yuba and Feather, camping a few days on Nelson Creek, then traveling in a northwesterly direction, we reached the headwaters of the Sacramento, where we found a party of white men and Indians who, a day or two previous to our meeting them, had had a desperate fight with Indians. They told us they had lost several men, killed and wounded, but had nearly exterminated the Indians. I saw one of their men, a boy in appearance, who had, as I understood, received two arrow wounds in the face and neck. He was in great pain, and no one believed he could recover.

“Twelve years later I, then Sheriff of Placer Co., had occassion to go to Shasta on official business. W. E. Hopping was then Sheriff of Shasta Co. In the course of conversation with him, I spoke of the incident narrated above. He interrupted me, and said: ‘The Captain of the volunteers at the battle is in town.’ He found him, and introduced me to the man who was doubtless Old Gib, though his name has gone from my memory. I asked about the young fellow who was so desperately wounded. ‘Oh, he pulled through all right, the game little cuss,’ said he, ‘he's up in Oregon, I believe.’ I don't think he mentioned his name, but in copying the affidavit of Old Gib, it dawned upon me who that ‘game little cuss’ was.

This poem is taken from “'49, or the Gold Seekers,” by permission of Funk & Wagnalls, New York, publishers of the book. The words have been set to music and selected as the Song of the Native Sons of California. It was sung in Mining Camps long before it was in print.

This poem was read, 1896, near the scene of the Whitman massacre at the old Mission. The story of Oregon—Aure il Agua; Hear the Waters—glowing with great deeds, drama, tragedy, surpassing anything in the history of any other State, east or west, old or new. When the paw of the British lion reached down from Canada and laid heavy hand on Oregon, these pioneers met under their great firs and proclaimed to the world that they were not British subjects, but American citizens. Marcus P. Whitman mounted horse in midwinter and set out alone and rode 3,000 miles to lay the facts before the President. Yet the Government never lifted a hand to help save Oregon to the Nation. So far from that, a Senator rose in his place and literally denounced all effort in that direction, saying: “I would to God we had never heard of that country; we do not want a foot of ground on the Pacific Ocean.” Webster was hardly less cruel. But undaunted, Whitman gathered up hundreds of wagons and led back to Oregon; the first that ever crossed the plains. He saved Oregon, but lost his life and all his house. Then the pioneers, to avenge the massacre, declared war on their own account, fought it to a finish without so much as a single man or gun from the Government, made peace on their own account, and then went to work and dug their own gold from their own ground, and with their own hands coined it and paid their war debts and from the first kept their paper with its face in virgin gold. The coins, virgin gold with a sheaf of wheat on one side, showing the richness of the soil, and a beaver on the reverse, typifying the industry of the people. Oregon is the only division of this republic that ever coined gold under authority of law. And even in later Indian wars Oregon was always treated meanly, most meanly. More than once every man and boy who could carry a gun or drive a team was in the field. My father and his three sons, aged ten, twelve and fourteen, were all at one time teamsters in a supply train. And the Government paid for services and supplies but tardily, if at all. The meanness is incredible. There are millions still due Oregon. No, I am not angry, or selfish either; I never received or claimed one cent for services, supplies or losses. But some of these old pioneers are in need now.

In a pretty little village of Louisiana destroyed by shells toward the end of the war, on a bayou back from the river, a great number of very old men had been left by their sons and grandsons, while they went to the war. And these old men, many of them veterans of other wars, formed themselves into a regiment, made for themselves uniforms, picked up old flintlock guns, even mounted a rusty old cannon, and so prepared to go to battle if ever the war came within their reach. Toward the close of the war some gunboats came down the river shelling the shore. The old men heard the firing, and, gathering together, they set out with their old muskets and rusty old cannon to try to reach the river over the corduroy road through the cypress swamp. They marched out right merrily that hot day, shouting and bantering to encourage each other, the dim fires of their old eyes burning with desire of battle, although not one of them was young enough to stand erect. And they never came back any more. The shells from the gunboats set the dense and sultry woods on fire. The old men were shut in by the flames—the gray beards and the gray moss and the gray smoke together.

Born to the saddle and bred by a chain of events to ride with the wind until I met the stolid riders of England, I can now see how it was that Anthony Trollope, Lord Houghton and others of the saddle and “meet” gave me ready place in their midst. Not that the English were daring; but they were less fortunate; may I say less experienced. I recall the fact that I once found Lord Houghton's brother, Lord Crewe, and his son also, under the hands of the surgeon, near York—one with a broken thigh, and the other with a few broken ribs. But in all our hard riding I never had a scratch.

One morning Trollope hinted that my immunity was due to my big Spanish saddle, which I had brought from Mexico City. I threw my saddle on the grass and rode without so much as a blanket. And I rode neck to neck; and then left them all behind and nearly every one unhorsed.

Prince Napoleon was of the party that morning; and as the gentlemen pulled themselves together on the return he kept by my side, and finally proposed a tour through Notts and Sherwood Forest on horseback. And so it fell out that we rode together much.

But he had already been persistently trained in the slow military methods, and it was in vain that I tried to teach him to cling to his horse and climb into the saddle as he ran, after the fashion of Indians and vaqueros. He admired it greatly, but seemed to think it unbecoming a soldier.

It was at the Literary Fund dinner, where Stanley and Prince Napoleon stood together when they made their speeches, that I saw this brave and brilliant young man for the last time. He was about to set out for Africa with the English troops to take part in the Zulu war.

He seemed very serious. When about to separate he took my hand, and, looking me all the time in the face, placed a large diamond on my finger, saying something about its being from the land to which he was going. I refused to take it, for I had heard that the Emperor died poor. But as he begged me to keep it, at least till he should come back, it has hardly left my hand since he placed it there.

Piteous that this heir to the throne of France should die alone in the yellow grass at the hand of savages in that same land where the great Emperor had said, “Soldiers, from yonder pyramids twenty centuries behold your deeds.”