Modoc Chief Kintpuash (Captain Jack): A California Indian Hero

Modoc Chief Kintpuash (“Captain Jack”) in 1864

Creative Commons 

As Native American Heritage Month draws to a close, so, too, do our related exhibitions, Sensational Portrayals of the Modoc War, 1872–73 and Native Portraits: Contemporary Tintypes by Ed Drew. The Modoc War connects these two shows: one features the intense interest the war created throughout the United States and the other displays contemporary portraits of native peoples of the Klamath region—some of them descendants of those who fought in the war.

This blog post commemorates a hero of the Modoc War, Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack (1837–1873). In 1872–73, this Modoc resistance leader led his people from the confines of the Klamath Indian Reservation back to their homeland to fight for the right to live as free people on their ancestral land in the Tule Lake area of northern California.

Klamath Indian Reservation, 1879

US Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Basin Office

The Klamath Indian Reservation had its beginnings in the Treaty of 1864, in which the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin peoples agreed to live together as what was referred to as the “Klamath Tribe” on a reservation in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon. In exchange for their land—almost 20 million acres—they would be provided necessary provisions on land about one-tenth the size.

Klamath and Modoc Territories and Subgroups in the 19th Century with Modern Town Locations

Courtesy College of the Siskiyous

In the annals of the militarization of the West in the nineteenth century, many promises were made by the federal government, and many were not honored. For one band of Modoc Indians living in the Klamath Reservation the arrangement became untenable.

After a number of years without help and provisions, and under the leadership of Kintpuash with Jim Schonchin, a small group of Modoc men and their families left the reservation and returned to their ancestral lands in today’s Lava Beds National Monument in northern California. Federal troops attempted to push them back to the reservation. As Indian Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan, acknowledged about the government’s long-standing policy, “The Indians must conform to ‘the white man’s ways,’ peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must.” But the Modocs refused to abandon their homeland.

Louis H. Heller, Modoc Leaders Jim Schonchin and Captain Jack, 1873

California Historical Society

Louis H. Heller, Captain Jack’s Family, 1873

California Historical Society

War erupted in November 1872 between the Modocs—about 55 men and their families—and the United States Army. The volcanic landscape of the 47,000-acre lava beds (called the Land of Burnt Out Fires), with its nearly 700 caves, became a natural fortress that the Modocs reinforced to give them an upper hand in battles.

Eadweard Muybridge, The Lava Beds, 1872–73

California Historical Society

In January 1873, as U.S. troops from Fort Vancouver and Fort Klamath pressed the first major assault on Captain Jack’s Stronghold (the Modoc fortress), fog rolled in from nearby Tule Lake, blinding the soldiers as they inched across the rocky terrain. The Modocs moved unseen through lava tubes, killing or wounding dozens of soldiers from below while suffering no casualties of their own.

For about six months, the Modocs successfully fought off U.S. troops, capturing the attention and imagination of people across the country, many of whom were sympathetic to the Modocs for humanitarian reasons.

Captain Jack himself became somewhat of a folk hero. He was then “a man of 30 years of age, a man of square mold, 5 feet, 10 inches in height—a royal-blooded man of more than common heritage,” observed Col. Alfred B. Meacham of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

According to the May 30, 1873, issue of the New York Times, “Each mail brings also to camp an extensive correspondence for Capt. Jack . . . . One wishes Jack to come there and scalp the fellow who wants to win his girl away from him, another assures him he will get plenty of volunteers if he comes to his village, still again he is congratulated on his heroism and told to go on and conquer.”

But the adulation was short-lived. On April 11, 1873, the Army and Modocs held a peace commission. In his bid for a settlement, Captain Jack requested a reservation of 6 square miles on the lava beds. Indians could live there, he reasoned, white men couldn’t. When it became clear that the two sides would not come to terms, Captain Jack opened fire and a battle ensued, resulting in the deaths of General Edward R. S. Canby—the only U.S. general lost in an Indian conflict—and Reverend Eleazer Thomas.

With the tide now turned against the Modocs, the government renewed its attempts to drive the Modocs out of the lava beds. Joined by 70 Warm Springs Indian scouts, 675 U.S. soldiers with four batteries of artillery besieged Captain Jack’s Stronghold for two days, but as few as eight Modoc men continued to fend them off.

Eadweard Muybridge, Warm Springs Indian Scouts in Camp, 1872–73

California Historical Society

Add captioEadweard Muybridge, The Modoc Stronghold after Its Capture, 1872–73

California Historical Society

 

The Modocs were nevertheless driven from their advantageous position. A loss of morale led several men to desert Captain Jack and help the forces hunting him. It was not until the first of June, a remarkable six months after the conflict began, that Captain Jack and his closest allies finally surrendered. They were brought to Fort Klamath, where they were sentenced to death for the murders of General Canby and Reverend Thomas.

Fort Klamath Graves of Boston Charley, Black Jim, John [Schonchin] Schonchiss, and Captain Jack, Executed October 3, 1873

Courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Shelly Kale

Publications and Strategic Projects Manager

skale@calhist.org

Sources

Boyd Cothran, Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press)

Cheewa James, The Tribe That Wouldn’t Die (Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph Publishers, 2008)

The Oregon Experience: The Modoc War, documentary, Oregon Public Broadcasting and the Oregon Historical Society; http://www.californiaindianeducation.org/famous_indian_chiefs/captain_jack/  

Jeff C. Riddle, The Indian History of the Modoc War; http://www.archive.org/details/indianhistoryofm00riddrich

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Closing Soon!

http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions

For Native Americans, History, Like a River, Runs Deep

Contemporary Modoc Memorial, Lava Beds National Monument, 2016

Photo courtesy Alison Moore

The landscape of northern California’s Lava Beds National Monument is stark, arid, beautiful, and complex, befitting both its geologic and human history. Consisting of over 30 separate lava flows—some as old as 2 million years—the rugged area includes great lava fields, lava tube caves, cinder cones, fumaroles, and pit craters. Hiking, even on designated trails, can be a challenge. Jagged basaltic outcroppings can make it difficult to find a footing amidst the cratered terrain.

Lava Beds National Monument, 2016

Photo courtesy Alison Moore

The landscape that trips up modern hikers is also the ancestral territory of the Modoc people, and remains a sacred place for the tribe. During the Modoc War of 1872–73 the most challenging area of this landscape provided haven to a group of Modoc Indians engaged in battle with federal troops. Captain Jack’s Stronghold, one designated area of the monument, is the site of deep natural depressions, rock walls, and lava caves that became temporary homes for about 60 Modoc men and their families seeking escape from the troops during the five-month standoff.

 

Captain Jack’s Cave, Lava Beds National Monument, 2016

Photo courtesy Alison Moore

In a situation reminiscent of countless tragic clashes between native peoples and encroaching settlers, the Modocs, led by Kintpuash, also known as Captain Jack, returned to their homeland on the shores of Tule Lake after living nearly a decade on a reservation in southern Oregon. In 1872 the government attempted to push them back to the reservation, and when the Modocs refused, the opening battle of the Modoc War ensued. The war came to a bitter end in the spring of 1873 after negotiations between a peace commission and the Modocs failed and a well-known Civil War general, E. S. Canby, was killed, the only general to be killed in the so-called Indian Wars.

Louis H. Heller (Photographer), Captain Jack, 1873

California Historical Society 

Canby’s Cross, Lava Beds National Monument, 2016

Photo courtesy Alison Moore

Ultimately all of those who had escaped capture among the lava beds were arrested, and the leaders, Captain Jack included, were put to death in October of 1873. Years of treaties signed and treaties abrogated leading up to Canby’s murder led to the circumstances that found native peoples strangers in their own lands.

Eadweard Muybridge (Photographer), The Modoc Stronghold after Its Capture, Lava Beds National Monument, 1873

California Historical Society

Recent events in North Dakota near the reservation of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe mirror the human history at Lava Beds. In a New York Times story on protests over a pipeline seen as encroaching on sacred native lands, residents recall a long history of destruction of their lands and communities, first by their burial under a reservoir and then by excavation for the pipeline:

Verna Bailey stared into the silvery ripples of a man-made lake, looking for the spot where she was born. “Out there,” she said, pointing to the water. “I lived down there with my grandmother and grandfather. We had a community there. Now it’s all gone.”

History, like a river, runs deep here. And residents like Ms. Bailey say the pipeline battle has dredged up old memories and feelings about lost lands and broken treaties with the United States government, as well as their worries about the future of land and water they hold sacred.

Standing Rock Controversy, North Dakota, 2016

Photo courtesy No Dakota Access

Like North Dakota, the landscape at Lava Beds is intertwined with the lives of the many tribes that called the area home. Petroglyph Point is a large rocky outcropping, or tuff, which arose from the waters of Tule Lake about 275,000 years ago. It gets its name from the numerous native carvings found on the face of the cliff—one of the largest panels of native rock art in the country.

At one time, the waters of Tule Lake surrounded this piece of land and Indians would moor their boats to its base, carving drawings into the rock at the waterline. Between 1904 and 1970 a series of federal irrigation projects reduced Tule Lake to a fraction of its natural size, turning this former island into the landlocked hunk of rock seen below. Water remains a contentious issue in the Klamath Basin today. The drawings remain an enduring symbol of the native community that once thrived here.

(Above) Petroglyph Point, 2016

(Below) Wall on Petrolglyph Point, 2016

Photos courtesy Alison Moore

With Mt. Shasta as a backdrop, and the waters of Tule Lake a haven for birds and other wildlife (it is part of the Pacific Flyway), this was once fertile ground for native people and wildlife alike.

The multiple designations bestowed on the area speak to its complicated past: Lava Beds was designated a National Monument in 1925; a portion of the Monument became a National Wilderness Area on October 13, 1972; and the area became a part of the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. 

This area—at the southern boundary of the Cascades and the edge of the Modoc Plateau - has much to offer wilderness tourists. On a recent June day, visitors had the monument - adorned with wildflowers, grasses, and stunning vistas - nearly to themselves, the ghosts of the past in evidence along the lava-strewn paths.

(Above) Wildflowers, Captain Jack’s Stronghold, Lava Beds National Monument, 2016

(Below) Rock Fortification, Lava Beds National Monument, 2016

Photos courtesy Alison Moore

Today the native peoples of the Klamath Basin speak poignantly of their long spiritual ties to the land of southern Oregon and northern California. As part of the California Historical Society’s current exhibition on the Modoc War and the contemporary native people of the area, a number of tribal members were interviewed by StoryCorps. As some recompense for a long and fraught history with the federal government, the words and voices of the Klamath people now have a permanent home in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress.

StoryCorps Gift Bags, 2016

Photo courtesy Alison Moore

Louis H. Heller, Jack’s Family—Lizzy (young wife), Mary (his sister), Old Wife & Daughter, 2016

California Historical Society

Alison Moore

Strategic Initiatives Liaison

amoore@calhist.org

Sources

• California Historical Society, Sensational Portrayals of the Modoc War, 1872–73, Exhibition Text Panels, 2016
• National Park Service, Lava Beds National Monument “A Brief History of the Modoc War”; https://www.nps.gov/labe/planyourvisit/upload/MODOC%20WAR.pdf
• National Park Service, Lava Beds National Monument https://www.nps.gov/labe/index.htm
• New York Times, ‘I want to win someday’: Tribes make stand against pipeline,  September 8, 2016; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/dakota-access-pipeline-protests.html?_r=0 
• Wikipedia, “Lava Beds National Monument”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_Beds_National_Monument

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Now on View at the California Historical Society

Two exhibitions of Native Americans bridge the past and present.

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.

http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions.