Part 59 (1/2)

I do not want to say my sentence is not right; but after our retreat from Lost river I thought I would come in, surrender, and be secure. I felt that these murders had been committed by the boys, and that I had been carried along with the current. If I had blood on my hands like Boston Charley, I could say, like him, ”I killed General Canby”--”I killed Thomas.” But I have nothing to say about the decision, and I would never ask it to be crossed. You are the law-giving parties. You say I must die.

I am satisfied, if the law is correct.

I have made a straight speech. I would like to see the Big Chief face to face and talk with him; but he is a long distance off,-- like at the top of a high hill, with me at the bottom, and I cannot go to him; but he has made his decision,--made his law, and I say, let me die. I do not talk to cross the decision. My heart tells me I should not die,--that you do me a great wrong in taking my life. War is a terrible thing. All must suffer,-- the best horses, the best cattle and the best men. I can now only say, _let Schonchin, die_!

This was the last speech made by the Modoc convicts.

The chaplain came forward and offered a most eloquent prayer, full of pathos and kindly feeling for the condemned.

Let us look on this scene a moment; it may humanize our feelings. The prison is but a common wooden building, 30 by 40 feet, and known as the ”guard-house.” It is on the extreme left of and facing the open ”plaza” or ”parade-ground,” in the centre of which stands a flag-pole, from whose top floats the stars and stripes. A veranda covers the door-way, before which are pacing back and forth the sentries.

Before entering cast your eye to the right, about one hundred yards, and a square-looking corral arrests your attention. This is the stockade. It is constructed of round pine poles, twenty feet long, standing upright, with the lower ends planted in the ground. Through the openings we see human beings peeping out, who appear like wild animals in a cage. A part.i.tion divides this corral. In the further end Captain Jack's family and a few others are encaged; in the nearer one the Curly-haired Doctor's people. In front walk the sentinels. Outside, at the end of the stockade, nearest the guard-house, there are four army tents; in these four tents are the families of Hooker Jim, Bogus Charley, Steamboat Frank, and Shacknasty Jim, and these Modoc lions are with them, probably engaged in a game of cards. Scar-faced Charley also enjoys the privilege of being outside; but he does not engage in sports, or idle talk, oftenest sitting alone in gloomy silence.

Pa.s.sing the guards as we enter the room, a board part.i.tion stands at our right, cutting off one-third of the guard-house into cells; the first cell has been the home of Boston, Slolux and Barncho, since their arrival at the fort. The next is where Captain Jack and Schonchin have pa.s.sed the long, painful hours of confinement, meditating on the changes of fortune that have come to them.

In front, and running alongside the opposite walls, are low bunks raised twenty inches from the floor. Sitting around on these bunks are the thirteen Modoc Indians,--prisoners,--six of whom have just learned from official authority their doom.

Gen. Wheaton is in full uniform. The white-haired chaplain is near the centre of this curious-looking group. Oliver Applegate and Dave Hill are with him. Officers and armed soldiers fill up the remaining s.p.a.ce. Outside the building are soldiers, citizens, and Klamath Indians, crowding every window.

The tremulous voice of the kind-hearted chaplain breaks the solemn stillness with a short sentence of prayer. Applegate translates the words into Chinook to Dave Hill, who repeats them in the Modoc tongue. Sentence after sentence of this prayer is thus repeated until its close.

The good old man who has performed this holy ministry bursts into tears, and bows his head upon his hands. In this moment every heart feels moved by the eloquence of the prayer, and a common emotion of sympathy for those whose lives were closing up so rapidly.

Gen. Wheaton terminates this painful interview by a.s.suring the convicts that, as far as possible, their wishes should be respected.

In the name of humanity, do we thank G.o.d for n.o.ble-hearted men like Gen.

Wheaton, who rise superior to prejudice, and dare to extend to people of low degree the courtesies that all mankind owe the humblest of our race, when, in life's extremities, the heart is dying within the body. The women and children are coming to take a last farewell of their husbands and fathers. Who that is human could look on this grief-stricken group, while listening to the notes of agony making a disconsolate march for their weary feet on this painful pilgrimage, and not bury all feelings of exultation and thirst for revenge toward this remnant of a once proud, but now humbled race; notwithstanding to the ear come despairing sobs of woe from the lips of Mrs. Boddy, Mrs. Brotherton, Mrs. Canby and Mrs. Thomas, on whom the great calamity of their lives burst like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, shattering their hearts, and leaving them sepulchres of human happiness, illuminated only by the rainbow of Christian faith and hope, spanning the s.p.a.ce from marble tomb to pearly gate?

These semi-savage Modoc women, with crude and jumbled ideas, made up of half-heathen, half-Christian theology, had not the clear, well-defined hopes of immortality that alone bear up the soul in life's darkest hours.

True, they had been cradled through life in storm and convulsions. For eleven months they have heard the almost continuous howl of a terrible tempest surging and whirling around and above them. They have listened to rattling musketry, roaring cannon, and bursting sh.e.l.ls. They have seen the lightnings of war, flas.h.i.+ng far back into their beleaguered homes in the rocky caverns of the ”Lava Beds;” but with all these terrible lessons, they were not prepared to calmly meet this awful hour.

Human nature, unsupported by a living, tangible faith, sunk under the overshadowing grief, and struggled for extenuation through the effluence of agony in wild paroxysms of despair.

We might abate our sympathy for them in the reflection that they are lowly, degraded beings, incapable of realizing the full force of such scenes; but it would be an illusion, unworthy of a highly cultivated heart.

G.o.d made them too, with all the emotions and pa.s.sions incident to mortality. Circ.u.mstances of birth forbade them the wonderful trans.m.u.tation that we claim to enjoy. When we pa.s.s under the clouds of sorrow, the angel Pity walks beside us, arm in arm with sweet-faced Hope, whose finger points to brighter realms; with _them_, Pity, alone.

The sun is setting behind the mountains; the grief-stricken group are returning to the stockade, leaving behind them the condemned victims of treachery.

Their betrayers--Hooker, Bogus, Shacknasty and Steamboat--are invited by the officers to an interview with their victims; all decline, save Shacknasty Jim. This interview roused the nearly dead lion into life again; the meeting was characterized by bitter criminations. The other heartless villains, after declining the interview, requested Gen. Wheaton to give them a position where they could witness the execution on the morrow.

Let us drop the curtain over this sad picture, and turn our attention to the quartermaster and his men, who are just in front of the guard-house.

He has a tape line in his hand, and, with the a.s.sistance of one of his men, is measuring off small lots, squaring them with the plaza; see him mark the spot, while a soldier drives down a peg; and then another, about seven feet from it. He continues this labor until _six_ little pegs are standing in a row, opposite another row of like number.

Hooker, Steamboat, and Bogus Charley are leaning on the fence, looking at the men who are now with spades b.u.t.ting the soil in lines, conforming to the pegs.

Bogus asks, ”What for you do that?”--”Making a new house for Jack,”

answers a grave-digger, lifting a sod on his spade.

This is a little more than Bogus could stand unmoved. He turns away, and, meeting the eyes of Boston, who looks out between the iron bars of his cell, Bogus mutters, in the Modoc tongue, a few words that bring Barncho and Slolux to the window.