Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/461

 Klamaths were informed that they were subject to the inspection, protection, and restraint of the officers at Fort Klamath.

The motive which led the California superintendent to make a treaty with Indians whom, by his own confession, he knew did not belong to his district, might be questioned—indeed was questioned afterward, with severity; but there was no reason to doubt that to his judgment he seemed to be doing what was best at the moment. But he was not unaware that a treaty with the Klamaths and Modocs had for a long time been in contemplation, and was likely to occur at any time, since congress had made an appropriation for that purpose, and the Klamaths had been fed at Fort Klamath during the winter; and his long experience should have told him that savages are never able to comprehend, nor ever willing to consent to receive instructions from two sources.

It is easy to see how the treaty made with Steele in February, which permitted the Indians to visit the settlements, where, in spite of their promises, they found means to carry on their former nefarious trade in prostitution, should have affected the attitude of Captain Jack and band toward the treaty authorized by the government, and made with the Klamaths and Modocs in October following. This band of Modocs was composed in part of vicious renegades from other tribes, and had their home about Tule and Clear lakes, in what was known as the Lost River country, where formerly they used to lie in wait for parties of emigrants whose road lay around the shores of the lake, and from which they now had an easy and short road into Yreka and the mining settlements. Admitting the attachment of aboriginals to particular localities, which would make them reluctant to remove from Lost River, Captain Jack could not willingly have resigned the advantages which the treaty with Steele gave him over that which Sconchin, the head chief of the Modocs, agreed to accept from Huntington;