INCREDIBLE WESTERN DIARIES RECOUNTING MODOC WAR HANGINGS

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Leonard Case and Henry Gilbert Abbey diaries, 1873; 3 vols., 1st 95pp, 2nd 72pp, 3rd 38pp. The Modoc War was a brief, but brutal conflict between the Modoc Indians and overwhelming forces of white settlers and the U.S. Army, the last armed conflict between Indians and the U.S. Army in Oregon and California. The roots of the war can be traced to 1864 when more than a decade of violence between the Modocs and white settlers came to an end when the Modoc leader, Captain Jack, and his band agreed to settle on a reservation in the Upper Klamath River valley. It would not be so easy. Tensions on the reservation between the Modocs and their long-time adversaries, the Klamaths, led Captain Jack and followers to flee the reservation in 1870 and return to their former home in the Lost River Valley. Although the government made a vague promise to establish a separate reservation for the Modocs, the situation deteriorated and in 1872 the army was ordered to return them to Klamath, by force if necessary. In a confusing series of events, a fight broke out when the Modocs were ordered to disarm and although Captain Jack had sought to avoid conflict, conflict came. After a bloody skirmish with the army and a band of militia, the Modocs retreated to the lava beds near Tule Lake, and taking advantage of familiar terrain and the natural defenses, held out effectively, forcing a peace conference in April 1873. Unfortunately, the Modocs split into factions, Captain Jack hoping to negotiate a peaceful solution and a group led by John Schonchin and Hooker Jim wanting to fight. To force the issue, the latter faction ambushed the peace commissioners, killing among others General Edward R.S. Canby, the only general officer killed during the Indian wars. The Army response was relentless and by June, Captain Jack and the other Modoc warriors had surrendered and been taken prisoner and were sent to trial for murder. The three diaries that comprise this collection were written by Leonard Case and Henry Gilbert Abbey from Cleveland. A wealthy young man educated at Yale, Case spent much of his life pursuing his interests in the natural sciences. Although he read law before serving in the Army during the Civil War, he spent much of his energy pursuing collections of birds and geological specimens. One of the founders of the Ark, a club in the city for men interested in the sciences, and a forbearer of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Abbey was one of Case's closest friends and confidantes, executing Case's posthumous intention to found a school for engineering, the school that would eventually become Case Western Reserve University. Educated and well informed, the two traveled to California to witness the trial of Captain Jack and his followers and write about it, apparently for the newspapers. The record they left is one of the fullest and most interesting firsthand accounts of the dramatic events of the late summer 1873 to come to the market in decades and an important addition to history of one of most expensive wars in American history in per capita terms. The first diary (3x5”), kept by Case, begins as his traveling party left Cleveland on July 23, 1873, and continues through the end of the trial on Oct. 25, while Abbey’s larger diary is concentrated on the journey across the Rockies, in which they were led by the famed frontiersman Colorado Charley Utter. Abbey (and to a lesser degree Case) provide nice vignettes of hunting trips and rumors of hostile Utes nearby that caused them to change their course -- Case made the call to move, much to Utter’s relief¸ so that Utter would not be seen as backing down, "which in this country implies a want of 'sand'." Thus follows a long account of Utter’s days as a trapper and his interactions with the Utes, centered on a history of mutual theft of horses. After Utter evened the score by stealing some horses back, Abbey writes, "The Indians were angry and would have put his to death in some one of their ingenious ways, but for the arrival on the scene of an old chief named Nueva, who had grea... read more

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