The 1873 Modoc War was fierce, bloody, and unjust. This riveting narrative captures the dramatic battles, betrayals, and devastating end, delving into underlying causes and schemes to seize ancestral territory. By April 1870, immigrant demands forced the Modoc onto a crowded, distant reservation with their rivals, the Klamath. Led by a charismatic young chief called Captain Jack, they fled to their original Lost River village. The cavalry countered with a surprise attack on November 29, 1872. Survivors escaped to a natural stone citadel--nearby lava beds--and the most expensive Indian conflict in U.S. history began.
In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant sent O.O. Howard, widely known as the "Christian general", as an ambassador of peace to the western Indian tribes. Famous Indians Chiefs I Have Known is Howard's account of his journey. He tells of his peace agreement with the great Apache chief Cochise; describes his pursuit of Joseph and the surrender of the Nez Perce chief, who became his friend; and provides a poignant glimpse of the defeated Apache war leader Geronimo, selling canes and autographs. Equally impressive are his portraits of Winnemucca of the Piutes, the Sioux chiefs Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, and his descriptions of meetings with Washakie of the Shoshones, Pasqual of the Yumas, Antonio of the Pimas, Santos and Pedros of the Apaches, Manuelito of the Navajos, three Indians women--Sarah Winnemucca, granddaughter of the Piute chief, and Mattie, her sister-in-law--both of them powerful peacemakes in their own right. Included are chapters on the Seminole chief Osceola and the Modoc chief Captain Jack, famed for their resistance to white domination. In the introduction, Bruce J. Dinges, editor of publications at the Arizona Historical Society, discusses Howard's career and sets his book in historical context. - Publisher.
Along the shores of Tule Lake in northern California, three small bands of Modoc Indians joined forces in the fall and winter of 1872-73 to hold off more than one thousand U.S. soldiers and settlers trying to dislodge them from their ancient refuge in the lava beds.
In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant sent O.O. Howard, widely known as the "Christian general", as an ambassador of peace to the western Indian tribes. Famous Indians Chiefs I Have Known is Howard's account of his journey. He tells of his peace agreement with the great Apache chief Cochise; describes his pursuit of Joseph and the surrender of the Nez Perce chief, who became his friend; and provides a poignant glimpse of the defeated Apache war leader Geronimo, selling canes and autographs. Equally impressive are his portraits of Winnemucca of the Piutes, the Sioux chiefs Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, and his descriptions of meetings with Washakie of the Shoshones, Pasqual of the Yumas, Antonio of the Pimas, Santos and Pedros of the Apaches, Manuelito of the Navajos, three Indians women--Sarah Winnemucca, granddaughter of the Piute chief, and Mattie, her sister-in-law?both of them powerful peacemakes in their own right. Included are chapters on the Seminole chief Osceola and the Modoc chief Captain Jack, famed for their resistance to white domination. In the introduction, Bruce J. Dinges, editor of publications at the Arizona Historical Society, discusses Howard's career and sets his book in historical context.
Burnt-Out Fires deals with a very dark period of American history, a period that, until recently, had been purposefully forgotten ... a period that hopefully will cause a re-evaluation of the American ideals and dreams. Everyone pointed to the Modocs as "model Indians." Living on the Oregon-California border, they had assimilated the American culture more than any other Indian tribe. They had accepted the white man's way, dressing in cowboy clothes and working as farm hands. The frontier was quiet...until the white culture that the Modocs had adopted asked them to sign an unjust treaty taking away their tribal lands. Not wanting to fight, the Modocs were forced into a corner by trying, in vain, to work out a peaceful settlement. Out of desperation, they fought. Burnt-Out Fires, by Richard Dillon, chronicles the causes and the results of the Modoc War, one of the most tragic and unnecessary campaigns ever fought against American Indians. Dillon, through expert commentary and extensive research, brings to life the hopeless struggle of the Modoc chief, Captain Jack, to retain his high standing within the tribe while countering with peaceful means the force gradually mounting against him in the white world. The author, without moralizing, goes on to enumerate the bruising inefficiencies of the Indian Agencies and the classical unyielding stance adopted by the United States Army concerning Indian affairs. The result of these is understandings, spiced with ambition and the need to make this conflict an "example" to all Indians, led to the tragic Modoc War; the final act was genocide of the Modocs. After reading Burnt-Out Fires, one realizes that, viewing the forces at work at that time, the war was inevitable...anything different was an impossibility.
The vivid imagination, robust humor, and profound sense of place of the Indians of Oregon are revealed in this anthology, which gathers together hitherto scattered and often inaccessible legends originally transcribed and translated by scholars such as Archie Phinney, Melville Jacobs, and Franz Boas.
On October 3, 1873, the U.S. Army hanged four Modoc headmen at Oregon's Fort Klamath. The condemned had supposedly murdered the only U.S. Army general to die during the Indian wars of the nineteenth century. Their much-anticipated execution marked the end of the Modoc War of 1872–73. But as Boyd Cothran demonstrates, the conflict's close marked the beginning of a new struggle over the memory of the war. Examining representations of the Modoc War in the context of rapidly expanding cultural and commercial marketplaces, Cothran shows how settlers created and sold narratives of the conflict that blamed the Modocs. These stories portrayed Indigenous people as the instigators of violence and white Americans as innocent victims. Cothran examines the production and circulation of these narratives, from sensationalized published histories and staged lectures featuring Modoc survivors of the war to commemorations and promotional efforts to sell newly opened Indian lands to settlers. As Cothran argues, these narratives of American innocence justified not only violence against Indians in the settlement of the West but also the broader process of U.S. territorial and imperial expansion.
Cheewa James, a direct Modoc descendant, offers an explosive and personal story of her ancestry-a richly documented, non-fiction narrative with high-energy, fictionalized inserts. This book is the most comprehensive ever written about this remarkable tribe, covering Modoc history from ancestral times to the present. It includes rare photographs, both black & white and color, never before published. Were it not for Custer's Little Bighorn Battle, the Modoc War would probably be remembered as America's most significant Indian confrontation. One of the most costly Indian wars ever fought, the six-month Modoc War pitted some 55 warriors against 1,000 soldiers. The jagged, hostile terrain-today's Lava Beds National Monument-was the scene of a war like none other. Newly revealed evidence awaits readers' eyes and judgment as to why the 1873 California/Oregon Modoc War started. For over 130 years, the voices of two soldiers were locked away in letters in relatives' trunks. Now they speak out. As prisoners of war, the exiled Modocs in Oklahoma survived an enemy whose weapons were more lethal than guns. Book jacket.
The “fascinating” #1 New York Times bestseller that awakened the world to the destruction of American Indians in the nineteenth-century West (The Wall Street Journal). First published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee generated shockwaves with its frank and heartbreaking depiction of the systematic annihilation of American Indian tribes across the western frontier. In this nonfiction account, Dee Brown focuses on the betrayals, battles, and massacres suffered by American Indians between 1860 and 1890. He tells of the many tribes and their renowned chiefs—from Geronimo to Red Cloud, Sitting Bull to Crazy Horse—who struggled to combat the destruction of their people and culture. Forcefully written and meticulously researched, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee inspired a generation to take a second look at how the West was won. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dee Brown including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
