Reminiscences of a PioneerThompson, William, Colonel
History
Reminiscences of a Pioneer
Thompson, William, Colonel
Frontier and pioneer life -- Oregon; Modoc Indians -- Wars
The next morning at daylight the orderly to Gen. Davis came to my tent
and awaking me said that the General wanted to see me at once. Hastily
dressing I walked over to the General's tent. He was sitting on the side
of his camp bed, partly undressed. Jas. Fairchilds was sitting in the
tent talking as I entered. The General asked him to repeat to me what he
had been saying. Mr. Fairchilds then proceeded to relate that a bunch of
Indians, four bucks and a lot of women and children, had come in to the
ranch and surrendered. He had loaded them into a wagon and started to
the Peninsula to turn them over to the military authorities. When within
about six miles of his destination he was headed off by two men who were
disguised past identification. They ordered him to stop and unhitch his
team and after doing so was told to drive the horses up the road. When
about thirty yards away he was ordered to stop. The men then began
killing the Indians while he stood looking on and holding to his team.
After firing a dozen shots into the wagon, the men rode away, telling
him to remain there and not to leave. He remained until dark and then
mounting one of his horses rode to camp.
While we were talking Donald McKay came up and accused the volunteers of
the massacre. I told Gen. Davis that it was impossible that the
volunteers could have committed the crime. McKay was drunk and swaggered
around a great deal and finally asked the General to let him take his
Indians and follow the volunteers and bring them back.
Becoming angered at the talk and swagger of McKay I told the General to
let him go, and plainly told McKay that I would go with him. That he,
McKay, was an arrant coward and could not take any one, much less a
company of one hundred men. I then expressed my belief to Gen. Davis
that the killing had been done by some of the settlers whose relatives
had been massacred by the savages; that Gen. Ross had gone around the
south end of the lake and that Capt. Hizer must have been many miles on
his road towards Linkville.
I told him, however, that I would make an investigation and if possible
bring the perpetrators of the act to justice. Mounting my horse I rode
rapidly back to where the wagon was standing in the road. The women and
children were still in the wagon with their dead, not one of them having
moved during the night. It was a most ghastly sight, the blood from the
dead Indians had run through the wagon bed, and made a broad, red streak
for twenty yards down the road. Soon after my arrival Donald McKay rode
up, and I ordered him to go to the lake and get some water for the
women, one of whom had been severely wounded. Soon after his return with
the water Mr. Fairchilds came with the team and all were taken to the
camp. The woman was not seriously hurt, but the four bucks were
literally shot to pieces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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