The Modocs, men, women, and children, who were not placed on trial, were confined in a stockade near the fort, except the traitor scouts, who enjoyed the liberty of the camp, and were the heroes of the day.

At various times between the trial and the execution, the prisoners were permitted to visit the stockade. Their families were also allowed to visit them occasionally in the “guard-house.”

On leaving Fort Klamath, after the trial and before the execution, I visited the prisoners, and shook hands with them, in token of forgiveness as far as I was concerned.

I was satisfied that justice would be meted out to those who had been placed on trial. Captain Jack seemed to correctly anticipate the result, and questioned me as to his fate, expressing a great dread of being hanged.

He said that but one side of the story had been told; that he had no friends to talk for him. I assured him that he had been fairly dealt with; that the officers who had tried him were all good men and had not done and would not do him injustice, and that I would write out a fair statement of all the facts for everybody to read.

He clung to my hand to the last moment. I left him with feelings of commiseration for him, and with a firm resolution to keep my promise, to tell his story for him.

It is now October 2d, 1873. A long scaffold is erected; a more finished machine than the one on the peninsula. Ghastly and gloomy, it stands out on the open plat of meadow, with six ropes hanging from the beams.

The traitor scouts seem to take great interest in this instrument of death, which they have unjustly escaped.

Whether conscience troubles these worthies is a matter of some doubt; but that they were exempt from execution was a very satisfactory arrangement to them,—though to no one else, except their own families.

On the day before the execution, Gen. Wheaton, accompanied by a Catholic priest (Father Huegemborg), Post Chaplain, with Oliver Applegate and Dave Hill, a Klamath Indian, as interpreter, visited the prison for the purpose of informing the doomed men of the sentence.

The venerable father opened the painful interview by shaking hands with the convicts. He told them that Christ died for all men; that if they accepted him they would be saved. The prisoners listened attentively to every word. This was especially the case with Captain Jack, and Schonchin.

Gen. Wheaton then requested the chaplain to inform them of the decision of the President. He did so in a few feeling words. While it was being interpreted to them not a muscle moved; no sound was heard save the voice of the speakers.

The scene was a very impressive one. After a few moments of awful silence, the lips of the fallen chief began to move. His voice was soft, low, and scarcely audible:—

“I have heard the sentence, and I know what it means. When I look in my heart I see no crime. I was in favor of peace: the young men were not ready for peace,—they carried me with them. I feel that while these four men—Bogus, Shacknasty, Hooker, and Steamboat—are free, they have triumphed over me and over the Government. When I surrendered I expected to be pardoned, and to live with my people on Klamath land.”

When asked by Gen. Wheaton, which member of the tribe he wished to take charge of the people, he evinced some emotion. After a short pause, he replied, “I can think of no one; I cannot trust even Scar-faced Charley.” He asked if there was no hope of pardon. When assured that the sentence would be executed, he again asked if both sides of the case had been laid before the President.

On being told that the President had been informed of all that had been done, and that he need not entertain any hope of life, but to pay attention to what the chaplain said, he replied, “I know that what he says is good, and I shall follow his advice. I should like to live until I die a natural death.”

Slolux, one of the young Modocs who carried the rifles to the council tent on the morning of the assassination, was next to speak. He denied any part in the terrible crime, as did Barncho.

Black Jim, half-brother to Captain Jack, spoke next. He was anxious to live that he might take care of the tribe; saying, “I don’t know what Captain Jack and Schonchin think of it.” Jack shook his head. Jim continued, “If the white chief’s law says I am guilty of crime, let me die. I am not afraid to die. I am afraid of nothing. I should like to hear the spirit man’s talk.”

Captain Jack again asked that the execution be delayed until his speech could be laid before the President, as perhaps he did not know who it was that instigated the murder of Canby and Thomas. This request also was denied. Boston Charley was the speaker; he created a sensation:—

Boston’s reference to the part taken by the chief caused Captain Jack to speak once more, and it was his last that has found record. He seemed anxious to have Hooker and Bogus put on trial,—finally concluded, “If I am to die I am ready to go to see my great Father in the spirit world.” Schonchin was the last to speak:—

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 partition 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.

Passing the guards as we enter the room, a board partition 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 passed 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 space. 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 assuring the convicts that, as far as possible, their wishes should be respected.

In the name of humanity, do we thank God for noble-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 space 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 shells. 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.

God made them too, with all the emotions and passions incident to mortality. Circumstances of birth forbade them the wonderful transmutation that we claim to enjoy. When we pass 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 assistance 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 butting 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 partition 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 title-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 assembly 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 passing 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 shell; 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 apron, 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 unobstructed 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.

It is now 10 A.M., October 3d, 1873. The four men are led on to the drop; their arms and legs are pinioned. Captain Jack is placed on the right; next to him, Schonchin, then Black Jim, and then Boston Charley. Four hempen cords hang beside them,—two swing clear to the left; the two villains who broke the long armistice on the eleventh of April with a war-whoop are resting on other men’s coffins in the wagon below.

The four men are standing on a single strand that holds the drop. One stroke of an axe would end this terrible drama, now. The polished blade is waiting for the dreadful work. Justice perches with folded wings on the beam above. Her face is blanched. She says, “My demands would be satisfied with imprisonment for life for these helpless, blood-stained men,—’twould be more in harmony with my Father’s wishes; but those whom he has sent me to serve, clamor for blood, for life. If this must be, why the two men in the wagon below? Why the four unfettered villains yonder? I cannot understand by what authority I am compelled by my masters to witness this partiality. Here, over these betrayed victims do I enter my solemn protest. I see before me another power that evokes my presence, the State of Oregon, represented by Sheriff McKenzie, in whose hands I see a paper signed by Gov. Grover, and bearing my own countersign.” With faith in the power of the general Government, she folds her wings and sits calmly watching Corporal Ross of Co. G, twelfth Infantry, adjust the instrument of death to Captain Jack’s neck. It differs from the one used by this chief on Gen. Canby, but is equally sure; and the chief’s nerves are even steadier now than they were when he shouted, “Kau-tux-a.”

Corporal Killien measures the diameter of Schonchin’s neck with the end of another rope. The old chief’s eyes do not glare now as they did when he drew from his side a knife with one hand, and a pistol with the other, and shouting, “Blood for blood!”—chock-e la et chock-e la,—fired eleven shots at the chairman of the “Peace Commission.” He was excited then; he is cool now.

Private Robert Wilton is putting a halter on Black Jim’s neck, while Private Anderson is fixing a “neck-tie” that will stop the voice that taunted Dr. Thomas, in his dying moments, with the failure of his God to save him.

Justice smiles on Anderson’s hand while he performs this worthy act in vindication of her honor.

The ropes are all adjusted; the soldiers who have performed this last personal act walk down the steps.

Forty millions of people, through a representative, read a long list of “wherefores” and “becauses,” including the finding and sentence of the courts, to the patient men standing on the drop, thousands of eyes watching every movement.

At last the adjutant reads the following short paper from the forty million, to the four men on the scaffold; the two men in the wagon.

While the words are being interpreted the adjutant draws another paper from a side pocket in his coat. In a clear voice he reads sentence by sentence, while the majestic form of Oliver Applegate repeats, and Dave Hill interprets into the Modoc tongue:—

Justice whispers, “What does that mean?” Those two men voted for the assassination on the morning of the 11th of April, and volunteered to bear the guns to the scene of slaughter.

The chaplain offers a prayer, the last notes of Dave Hill are dying on the air as he finishes the words in the Modoc tongue.

A flash of polished steel in the sunlight and the axe has severed the rope that held the trap, and the thread of four stormy lives at the same instant, and four bodies are writhing in mid-air. An unearthly scream of anguish rises from the stockade, much louder, though no more heart-rending, than escaped the lips of Jerry Crook and George Roberts on the 17th of Jan., or from young Hovey on the 18th of April, while Hooker Jim and Bogus Charley were scalping him and crushing his head with stones.

The four bodies are placed in the four coffins, and Barncho and Slo-lux ride back to the guard-house beside them.

The sheriff of Jackson County presents to the commanding officer the requisition of the governor of Oregon for Hooker Jim, Curly-haired Doctor, Steamboat Frank, and other Modocs. The following telegrams explain the result:—

To which was received in reply:—

Thus was the matter disposed of, no further action being taken in regard to this question.

Gov. Grover expressed what he believed to be the wishes of the people of the Pacific coast, when he demanded the surrender of the Indians who had been indicted by the local authorities. The President and cabinet were actuated, doubtless, by humane and charitable motives in thus disposing of a serious question.

Knowing all the facts in the case, I do not believe it was just, or wise, to cover the worst men of the Modoc tribe with the mantle of charity, for turning traitors to their own race, and at the same time to sanction the sentence of death on the victims of their treachery.

The terrible tragedy is closed,—it only remains to dispose of the survivors, after having placed the four dead bodies in the ground, and filling up the two empty graves, sending the intended occupants to San Francisco Bay. The living are ordered to the Quaw-Paw Agency, Indian Territory. Here is the official statement:—

Thirty-nine men! Why, Captain Jack had never more than fifty-three men with him, all told. Call the roll, let us see where they are now:—

1. Captain Jack. A voice from—well, it’s uncertain where,—a slanderous rumor says, from a medical museum, Washington city,—answers, “Here.”

2. Schonchin. “Here,” comes up from one of the graves in the parade-ground, Fort Klamath.

3. Boston Charley. “Here,” whispers a spirit, hanging over one of the graves in the same cemetery.

4. Black Jim. “Here,” comes up through the thick sod beside “Boston.”

5. Ellen’s Man. “Here,” answer scattered bones that were drawn off the Dry-lake battle-ground, by a Warm Springs scout, with a reatta, and now bleaching in among the rocks of the Lava Beds.

6. Shacknasty Jake, from a skull which furnished several scalps during the three days’ battle, when its owner was killed in petticoat, comes in hollow voice, “Here.”

7. Shacknasty Frank; the ashes of a warrior who was wounded in a skirmish on the fifteenth of January, and died in the Lava Beds, answers, “Here.”

8. Curly-haired Jack. The answer comes from the bones of a suicide, muttered up through the blood of Sherwood, “Here.”

9. Big Ike. The remnants of a brave who stood too near the valuable shell, on the third day of the big battle, answers in broken accents, “H-e-r-e.”

10. Greasy Boots. “Here,” is answered by the ghost of the brave killed the day before the battle of January 17th.

11. Old Chuckle Head. On a shelf, in a certain doctor’s private medical museum, a skeleton head rattles a moment, and then answers, “Here.”

12. One-eyed Riley. The bones of the only brave who fell in Lost-river battle answer, “Here. I fell in fair battle; I don’t complain.”

13. Old Tales. The ghost of Old Tales answers, that he was killed by a shell, and murmurs, “Here.”

14. Te-he Jack—

15. Mooch—

16. Little John—

17. Poney—

A dark spot in the road between Fairchild’s ranch and Gen. Davis camp shakes, upheaves, and with thunderous voice proclaims in the ears of a Christian nation, “Here we fell at the hands of your sons after we had surrendered. ‘Vengeance!’”

Fifty thousand hearts, in red-skinned tabernacles on the Pacific coast, respond, “Wait.”

Seventeen voiceless spirits have answered the roll-call who were sent off to the future hunting-ground by United States sulphur, saltpetre and strong cords.

Seventeen from fifty-three, leaving thirty-six,—the returns say, thirty-nine.

How is this? Look the matter up, and we shall find that “Old Sheepy” and his son Tom Sheepy, who never fired a shot during the war,—in fact, was never in the Lava Beds,—are compelled to leave their home with Press Dorris and go with the party to Quaw-Paw.

Another,—a son of Old Duffey,—who remained at Yai-nax during the war, sooner than be separated from his friends, joins the exiles on their march. Now all are accounted for, and the record here made is correct.

The other side we have told from time to time in the progress of this narrative. The cost of this war has not yet been footed up.