Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/589

 warriors, conducting himself in such a manner as to frighten them back to the agency. The citizens were hardly less alarmed, and talked once more of organizing a militia company. The usual correspondence followed between the Indian and military departments, and the settlers were once more assured that their safety would be looked after.

While the Modoc question was in this critical stage, influences unknown to the department were at work confirming Jack in his defiant course, arising from nothing less than a scheme, proposed by Steele of Yreka, to secure from the government a grant of the land desired by him, on condition that he and his people should abandon their tribal relation, pay taxes, and improve the land, which they promised to do. But no one knew better than Steele that to leave the Modocs in the midst of the white settlements would be injurious to both races, and most of all to the Indians themselves, who instead of acquiring the better part of civilization were sure to take to themselves only the worse; and that the better class of white people must object to the contiguity of a small special reserve in their midst. Not so did the Modocs themselves reason about the matter. Steele, because they could approach him with their troubles, and because he simply told them to go and behave themselves, without seeing that they did so, was the white chief after their own mind, and his word was law, even against the power with which they had made a treaty. They were proud of his friendship, which gave them importance in their own eyes, and which blinded them to their inevitable doom. So said the settlers, with whom I cannot always fully agree.