"They recollected a wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs four years before.
When they was Indian-fightin' up there with the Modoc Indians, a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand.
To be mistaken for a coward--to be played for a
Modoc: these two expressions are one.
The
Modoc War was extensively documented, not only in official military and government records, but in firsthand accounts, including memoirs, letters, lectures, and news stories from daring reporters who managed to interview the besieged
Modocs.
He was one of the seventy-one who were employed by the Government to conquer the
Modocs in 1873.
Sherman, exclaimed that the
Modoc treachery fully justified their "utter extermination." (2) In any event, on 1 June 1873, Kientpoos and his fellow
Modocs were in Army custody.
The writings indicate that the men traveled to the Oregon-Northern California border specifically to witness the execution of the
Modocs, "but we don't know what their motive was in doing it," Kepple said.
One hundred years later, the descendants of the
Modocs are again on the defensive.
Murray, The
Modocs and Their War (Norman:U of Oklahoma P, 1959) 98104, 118-23, 140-43, 188-89.
In the context of Ray's ethnography, the label "primitive pragmatist" is applied variously to describe the
Modocs' emphasis on individual liberty, freedom of choice, and empirical reasoning.
One tribe that did resist was the
Modocs of Northern California.