Ed Drew, Modoc Ancestral Run, Lava Beds National Monument, 2014 by © Ed Drew
On October 8,
relay runners will wend their way through seventy-five miles of traditional
Modoc territory in what is today Lava Beds National Monument. This will be the
fifth annual Modoc Ancestral Run, a grassroots event designed to draw people of
Modoc and Pitt River ancestry closer to their heritage and to one another.
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The run
takes place on land where a small band of Modoc Indians led by a man known as
Captain Jack (Kintpuash) made a six-month-long stand against U.S. Government
forces through the winter of 1872–73. The Modocs had been living on a
reservation in southern Oregon, but conditions there deteriorated and they
returned to their homeland on the Lost River near the California-Oregon border.
When federal troops attempted to push them back to the reservation, and the Modocs
refused, war erupted. A group of about sixty Modoc men and their families
retreated to their traditional site of refuge in the lava beds, which became
the scene of a series of battles, nearly all of which the Modocs won, despite
being outnumbered and out-gunned, by using the landscape to their
advantage.
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Eadweard Muybridge, The Lava Beds, 1873
California Historical Society
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This
1873 stereograph by Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) of the lava beds at Tule
Lake on the California-Oregon border shows the topography that was home to a
small band of Modoc Indians during the Modoc War—the only major U.S./Indian
conflict in present-day California.
For
contemporary Modocs, and for descendants of other tribes, the protracted
confrontation in the lava beds stands today as a potent example of Indian
resistance to the forces of colonization. It is also a powerful symbol of the
resilience of their people. The Modoc Ancestral Run honors the bravery and
fortitude of those who fought in the Modoc War, and the generations that
suffered in its aftermath, but it is also speaks to the vitality of native
people today.
Louis H. Heller, Schonchin and Jack, 1873
California Historical Society
The
portraits of imprisoned Modoc warriors by Louis H. Heller (1839–1928)—the first
photographer to arrive at the lava beds—were originally published as engravings
in Harper’s Weekly in June 1873 as engravings based on
his photographs.
Participants
will spend the weekend camping at nearby Indian Wells Campground. The run
itself will begin Saturday at sunrise and continue through the day. For many of
the participants—including tribal elders as well as young children—the weekend
spent in the elements and the long relay through the unforgiving terrain of the
lava beds will be arduous. This test of endurance will be a sacrifice, but one
that connects participants to both the past and to one another.
(Above) Eadweard Muybridge, Gillem’s Camp, Tule Lake, Camp South, from Signal Station, 1873
California Historical Society
(Below) Gillem’s Bluff Bordering the Tule
Lake Basin Today, 2013
Courtesy of National Park Service
(Below) Ed Drew, Charlene, 2014
Courtesy of the artist
Erin Garcia
Managing Curator of Exhibitions
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Read
more about the Modocs and the Modoc War
Boyd Cothran, Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of
American Innocence (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
2014)
Cheewa James, Modoc: The Tribe That Wouldn’t Die (Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph
Publishers, 2008)
Peter Palmquist, “Imagemakers of the
Modoc War: Louis Heller and Eadweard Muybridge,” Journal of California Anthropology 4, no. 2 (1977)
Jeff C. Riddle, The Indian History of the Modoc War and the
Causes That Led to It (San Francisco: Marnell & Company, 1914)
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Now on View at the California Historical Society
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| Two exhibitions of Native Americans bridge the past and present.http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions. |
Native Portraits: Contemporary Tintypes by Ed Drew features portraits of members of the Klamath, Modoc, and Pit
River Paiute tribes, some of them descendants of Modoc War
survivors. A selection of Modoc War images by Eadweard J. Muybridge and Louis
H. Heller from the California Historical Society collection are some of the
objects displayed in Sensationalist
Portrayal of the Modoc War, 1872–73.
