Wigwam and War-path Or the Royal Chief in Chains Part 59

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, flashing 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.

The three worthies look out now upon a scene that very few, if any three men in the world ever did--that of the digging of their own graves. It is but a thin part.i.tion that separates these convicts from their chiefs, Captain Jack and Schonchin, who are aroused from the condition into which the parting scene had left them, by a tapping on the wall. If the last trial was crushing on them, what must have been the force of Boston's speech, through that wall, telling them that the earth was already opening to receive their bodies.

The sheriff of Jackson County, Oregon, is on hand, and he has a business air about him too.

Justice sent him on this mission, after the red demons, who want a front seat at the show to-morrow. Will justice or power triumph? We shall see, when he presents his credentials to Gen. Wheaton, whether a State has any rights that the _United States_ is bound to respect.

An offer of _ten thousand_ dollars is made to Gen. Wheaton for the body of Captain Jack. He indignantly spurns it. This accounts for the future home of the Modoc chief being located under the eyes of Uncle Sam's officers.

It is now nearly ready for occupation; the mechanics are putting on the finishing touches to his narrow bed; he is not quite ready yet to take possession; he is waiting for Uncle Sam to arrange his _neck-tie_, and read to him his t.i.tle-deed.

Boston looks out through the iron bars, and sees the sods up-thrown, that are to fall on his lifeless heart to-morrow.

What a contemplation for a sentient being; watching the grave digger hollowing out his own charnel-house!

Barncho and Slolux also share in this unusual privilege. How the thud of the pick, with which the earth was loosed, must have driven back to the remotest corner of each heart the quickened blood!

The retreat sounds out far and wide over the camp and fortress, and sweeps its music through the cracks of the stockade and prison cells, mingling with the weird, wild shrieks of the despairing Modoc women and children.

Midnight comes, and still the prayers are offered up, and incantations are going on; sleep does not come to weary limbs.

The morning breaks. Fortress and camps, stockade and prison cells, are giving signs of life.

The sun is climbing over the pine-tree tops, and sending rays on the just and the unjust, the guilty and the innocent.

The roads leading to the fort are lined with the curious, of all colors, on wheels and horse. At 9.30 A.M., the soldiers form in line, in front of the guard-house.

Col. Hoge, officer of the day, enters and unlocks the doors of the cells, and bids the victims come forth. Every day, from the 20th of February to the 11th of April, had this command, and even invitation, been extended to them. _Then_ it was to come forth to _live_ free men; _now_ it is to come forth to die as felons. To the former they turned a deaf ear, and answered back with insult, strange as it may appear. To the latter they arose with chains rattling on their limbs, and, with steady nerve, turned their backs on their living tombs, to catch a sight of their new-made graves yawning to receive them.

Then they were surrounded with daring desperadoes, whose crimes bade them resist. Now, by no less brave men, whose polished arms compel submission.

Then the chief was pleading for his people, surrounded, overruled by traitorous villains. Now, he is surrounded by men who will soon take his life, and let the villains live to chide justice by their blood-covered garments and double-dyed treason.

A four-horse team stands in front of the guard-house, in which are four coffins; the six prisoners mount the wagon. The chief sits down on one of these boxes, Schonchin on another, Black Jim on the third, and Boston Charley on the fourth, Barncho and Slolux beside him. A glance over the heads of the guards shows six open graves; there are but four coffins in the wagon. What means this difference? But few of all the vast a.s.sembly can tell. The chief's thoughts are busy now trying to solve the problem.

Perhaps he is not to die; an uncertain glimmering of hope lights up his heart. The cavalcade moves out in line pa.s.sing near the stockade. The prisoners catch sight of their loved ones; they hear the cries of heart-broken anguish.

Gen. Wheaton refrains from the use of the Dead March. The column goes steadily on, marching for one hundred yards, then turns to the right, and the scaffold comes in view; it marches square to the front, then turning to the left, directly towards it, and when within a few yards, the column opens right and left, while the team with the victims of crime drives to the foot of the steps that lead to the ropes dangling in the air above. It stops. Again the stern, manly voice of Gen. Wheaton commands. The first time the Modocs heard that voice was on the 17th of June, 1873, when supported by loud-talking guns. Then they answered back defiance from the caverns of the stronghold. All day long he coaxed them then with powder and sh.e.l.l; now he speaks with the silent power of a hundred glittering sabres backing his words, and the Modocs answer with the clashing chains on their legs. "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first."

This royal-blooded chief was the _last_ to enter the vortex of crime; he is the _first_ to rise on the ladder of justice.

The chains are now cut from his limbs. He stood unmoved when they were riveted there; he is equally firm now.

Again the problem of the four coffins and six graves engages his mind, while the chisel parts the rivets. Schonchin is next to stand up while his fetters are broken. Then Boston, next Black Jim; and the good blacksmith wipes the perspiration from his brow with his leathern ap.r.o.n, straightens himself ready for this kindly work to Barncho and Slolux.

Behind are _six_ graves,--above are _six_ ropes,--in the wagon are _four_ unchained men and _four_ empty coffins. The suspense is ended by a word from General Wheaton to the blacksmith, and a motion with his sword towards the ladder, while his eyes meet first the Chief, then Schonchin, next Black Jim, and rest a moment on Boston Charley. Steadily the four men march up the seven steps that lead to the _six_ dangling ropes. Barncho, with Slo-lux, still sits in the wagon below.

The mourning Modoc captives in the stockade have an un.o.bstructed view of the scene, three hundred yards away; they count _four_ men going up the ladder,--they see _six_ ropes hanging from the beam above them.

"_Four loyal Modoc lions, who did so much to bring the war to a close_,"

are standing with folded arms within the hollow square near the scaffold.

Scar-faced Charley is sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the stockade, with his face buried in his hands. He will not witness the death-struggles of his dying chieftain.