Part 4 (1/2)
She replied without recognizing me that I would have to go through camp.
As I pa.s.sed around the wagon I came face to face with Judge Lemley's wife. Her home had been my home for years and next to my mother and sisters I reverenced her above all women of earth. She looked at me. I bowed and she nodded her head and I pa.s.sed on. No sooner had I pa.s.sed out of sight than Mrs. McDaniels, the first lady I met, ran to Mrs.
Lemley and said: ”Did you see that man?” ”O,” replied Mrs. Lemley, ”it was only some old lousy hunter.” I had made my escape and no one had recognized me. I was jubilant, happy. But horror of horrors! At a turn of the road I came full on a whole bevy, flock, troop or herd of young girls, and at their head was my ”best girl.” I here submit and affirm, that had I foreseen this, rivers, mountains, grizzly bears, Indians, all the dangers of the wild would have had no terrors for me at that moment.
My dogs closed round me and the girls at sight of that ”old man of the woods,” that awful apparition, ceased their laughter. With sobered faces they s.h.i.+ed around me as I strode past, and when fairly safe broke into a run for camp. I heard them running, and in imagination could see their scared faces. But I was safe--no one had recognized me and I was again happy.
Arriving at Mr. Allen's, I related to him the story of my misfortunes.
He trimmed my hair, gave me a shave and after changing my ”clothes,” I once more a.s.sumed the semblance, as Mrs. Allen expressed it, ”of a Christian man.”
That evening I saddled a horse and rode back to the camp. I began then to see the full humor of the whole affair, but it required an hour to convince them that I was really the strange apparition that pa.s.sed through camp that morning.
Chapter VII.
Colonel Thompson's First Newspaper Venture.
I remained at the home of Mr. Allen a few days, making frequent visits, you may be sure, to the camp of my friends. I then returned to our camp at the hot springs. My brother had become quite strong and my other brother then decided to return to the valley. Left alone, we indulged in long rambles in the mountains. Taking a pair of blankets each, and baking up a lot of bread, we would strike out. We never knew where we were going, but wandered wherever fancy led. These tramps often lasted a week or ten days. If our bread gave out we simply went without bread until our return to camp. During one of these trips we ascended one of the Three Sisters, snow mountains standing together and reaching to the realms of the clouds. Like mighty sentinels, white as the driven snow, they const.i.tute one of the grandest sights to be seen on this or any other continent. To the north of these mountains and in a valley formed by the angle of the three mountains, we explored the largest glacier to be found in the United States. In this manner the months wore away until the approach of the fall storms admonished us that our wandering life must come to a close, but we had found that which we sought, perfect health. When we went to the mountains in the spring my brother weighed 84 pounds, and when we reached Eugene City on our return he weighed 165, nearly doubling his weight. I had also gained heavily, in fact, nearly 50 pounds. I mention this that others seeking that most precious of all blessings, perfect health, may know how and where to find it--by simply going back to nature.
Soon after my return to civilization I embarked in my first newspaper venture. I was employed in the office as compositor and foreman and at the expiration of the first month had to take the ”plant, fixtures and good will,” for my pay. In fact, I was given the office on a promise to run the paper and keep it alive. I so far succeeded that after a year and a half I sold out, clearing $1200. The paper, the Eugene City Guard, is still in existence.
From there I went to Roseburg and started the Plaindealer. In this I had the moral support and hearty good will of General Joseph Lane, as well as other citizens of the county. My success was phenomenal, my subscription list running up to 1200 in two years. But as in all else in this world, success was not attained without gaining the enmity and bitter hatred of my would-be rivals in business. Theirs was an old established paper, conducted by two brothers, Henry and Thomas Gale.
They soon saw their business slipping away and sought to regain it by indulging in abuse of the coa.r.s.est character. I paid no further attention to their attacks than to occasionally poke fun at them. One Sat.u.r.day evening I met one of the brothers in the post office. He began an abusive harangue and attempted to draw a pistol. I quickly caught his hand and struck him in the face. Bystanders separated us and he left. I was repeatedly warned that evening to be on my guard, but gave the matter little concern. The next morning, Sunday, June 11, 1871, I went to my office as was my custom, to write my letters and attend to some other matters before going to church. On leaving the office I was joined by a young friend, Mr. Virgil Conn. As we proceeded down the street towards the post office I saw the brothers standing talking on the street. One looked up and saw me, evidently spoke to his brother, and they then started toward me. I saw at once that it was to be a fight and that I must defend myself. Some said I could have avoided a meeting by turning in a different direction. Probably I could, at least for a time, but I had started to the post office and there I intended to go. As we approached the young men, one of them dropped behind, and as I pa.s.sed the first one he dealt me a blow with a heavy cane. At the same instant the other drew a pistol and fired, the bullet taking effect in my side and pa.s.sing partly through. Stunned by the blow on my cheek, I reeled and drawing my pistol fired point blank at the breast of the one who had shot me. I was then between the men, and turning on the one with the cane, he threw up his hands, as if to say ”I am unarmed.” As I again turned he quickly drew his revolver and shot me in the back of the head, and followed it up with another shot which was aimed at the b.u.t.t of my ear. I felt the muzzle of the revolver pressed against my ear, and throwing up my head the bullet entered my neck and pa.s.sed up through my mouth and tongue and lodged back of my left eye. As I rushed at him he fired again, the bullet entering the point of my shoulder while another entered my body. That was his last shot.
I was taken to my home in a blanket and few thought that I would live to reach it. I was not, however, done for yet, and the next Thursday was out riding with one of my physicians. The affair created the wildest excitement, a noted surgeon, Dr. Sharples, coming from Eugene City to attend me. Throughout the Eastern States there was various comment by various publications, referring to the affair as ”The Oregon Style.” I refer to the matter here because of the many distorted and unfair stories that have appeared from time to time. It is in no spirit of braggadocio, but simply to give the facts. That I deplored the affair, and deeply, too, I freely confess, but only for the necessity which compelled me to defend my life.
On the following February 1 received an offer to take charge of the Salem Mercury. Leaders of the party, among them three ex-Senators, the Governor of the State and many others prominent in the affairs of Oregon, purchased the paper and plant and tendered me a bill of sale for the same. Ex-Senator Nesmith, ex-Senator Harding, Governor Grover, ex-Governor Whitaker, General Joseph Lane and many others urged me to the step. They argued that I could unite all the factions of the party in support of a party paper at the capital of the State. To a young man scarcely twenty-three this was a tempting and flattering offer. I sold my paper, therefore, at Roseburg and with $4000 in money and good paper, and a bill of sale of an office costing $2500, started to Salem. My success there as a newspaper man was all that could be desired. A large circulation was rapidly built up, and a daily as well as weekly started.
In November of the same year occurred the first outbreak of the Modoc Indians and a score of settlers and a few soldiers had been killed.
Governor Grover had ordered out two companies of volunteers under General John E. Ross, a veteran of the Rogue River war, to a.s.sist the regular army in quelling the insurrection. The outbreak, only for the butchery of the citizens along the Lost river and Tule lake, was not regarded as at all serious, as a few weeks would suffice to crush or destroy the savages. But as weeks rolled on and still no surrender, nor even a fight, the Governor became uneasy, since he could not understand the delay. Finally, early in January, Judge Prim arrived from Jackson county and had a conference with the Governor. It was scarcely 9 o'clock in the morning when Mr. Gilfrey, private secretary to the Governor, came to my office with a message that Governor Grover wished to see me at his office at once. When I arrived there I found the Governor, Judge Prim and General John F. Miller in consultation. The Governor explained to me that there were stories of needless waste of time, that the Indians had not been attacked, though there were 450 men within a few miles of their camp, that hints of graft were afloat. Would I go in company with General Miller and when could I start? I replied that I would go and by the eleven o'clock train if General Miller was ready.
Perhaps here is a proper place for a short history of the Modoc Indians; their long series of murders and ma.s.sacres--a series of appalling crimes that have given to their country the name of ”the dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground of the Pacific.” Of all the aboriginal races of the continent the Modocs stand pre-eminent as the most fierce, remorseless, cunning and treacherous. From the day the white man first set foot upon his soil the Modoc has been a merciless foe with whom there could be no peace. The travelers through his country were forced to battle for their lives from the day his country was entered until the boundary was pa.s.sed. Trains of immigrants, consisting of men, women and children, worn and weary with the trials and hards.h.i.+ps of the plains, were trapped and butchered. The number of these victims mount up into the hundreds and const.i.tute one of the saddest chapters in the annals of American pioneers.
Chapter VIII.
History of the Modoc Indians.
Voltaire describes his countrymen as ”half devil and half monkey,” and this description applies with equal force to the Modoc tribe of Indians.
In general appearance they are far below the tribes of the northern country. They did not possess the steady courage of the Nez Perces, nor the wild dash of the Sioux, but in cunning, and savage ferocity they were not excelled even by the Apaches. In war they relied mainly on cunning and treachery, and the character of their country was eminently suited for the display of these tactics.
Our first knowledge of the Modocs was when they stole upon the camp of Fremont in 1845 at a spring not far from the present site of the now prosperous and thriving village of Dorris. It was here that Fremont suffered the loss of some of his men, including two Delaware Indians, in a daylight attack, and it was here that he was overtaken by a courier and turned back to a.s.sist in the conquest of California. From that day to the day when Ben Wright, with a handful of Yreka miners, broke their war power in the so-called ”Ben Wright ma.s.sacre” the Modocs were ever the cruel, relentless foe of the white man, murdering and pillaging without other pretext and without mercy. It has been estimated, by those best capable of giving an opinion, that from first to last not less than three hundred men, women and children had been relentlessly murdered by their hands, up to the beginning of the last war.
The sh.o.r.es of their beautiful lakes and tributary streams are scattered over with the graves and bleaching bones of their victims. Even among neighboring tribes they were known and dreaded for their cunning duplicity and savage ferocity. They are yet known among the Klamaths, Pits, and Piutes as a foe to be dreaded in the days of their power, and these people often speak of them in fear, not because they were brave in open field, but because of their skulking and sudden attacks upon unsuspecting foes.
During the early 50's many immigrants, bound for Southern Oregon and Northern California, pa.s.sed through their country, traveling the road that pa.s.sed round the north end of Rett, or Tule Lake, and crossed Lost river at the then mouth of that stream on a natural bridge of lava. A short distance from where the road comes down from the hills to the lake is the ever-memorable ”b.l.o.o.d.y point.” This place has been appropriately named and was the scene of some of the most sickening tragedies that blacken the annals of this or any other country. At this point the rim rock comes down to the edge of the waters of the lake, and receding in the form of a half wheel, again approaches the water at a distance of several hundred yards, forming a complete corral. Secreted among the rocks, the Indians awaited until the hapless immigrants were well within the corral, and then poured a shower of arrows and bullets among them.
The victims, all unconscious of danger, taken by surprise, and surrounded on all sides, with but the meager shelter of their wagons, were at the mercy of their savage foes.
In 1850, an immigrant train was caught in this trap, and of the eighty odd men, women and children, but one escaped to tell the awful tale. On the arrival of the news at Jacksonville, Colonel John E. Ross raised a company of volunteers among the miners and hastened to the scene of butchery. Arriving at b.l.o.o.d.y Point, the scene was such as to make even that stern old veteran turn sick. The men had died fighting, and their naked bodies lay where they fell. Those of the women not killed during the fight were reserved for a fate ten thousand times worse. The mutilated remains scattered about the ground were fearfully swollen and distorted and partly devoured by wolves and vultures, little children, innocent and tender babes, torn from their mothers' arms, had been taken by the heels and their brains dashed out against the wagon wheels, killed like so many blind puppies. One young woman had escaped out of the corral but had been pursued and butchered in a most inhuman manner.
Her throat was cut from ear to ear, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s cut off, and otherwise mutilated. Her body was found a mile and a half from the wrecked and half-burned train, and was discovered by her tracks and those of her pursuers.