Page:The Indian History of the Modoc War.djvu/269



but they claimed the owners of the train had commenced the aggression, and that they had these in retaliation. They treated us well and frankly, and we returned to our train in the even- ing. This was the only incident within my personal observa- tion while crossing the plains.

On arriving in California, I located in the mines near Shasta City, where I worked with the pick and shovel until January, 1851, when, with General Joe Lane, I came to Scott's Bar, in this county, where I arrived in February of that year. At the foot of Scott Valley we found a numerous tribe of Indians, who were friendly, and came into camp, and among the rest a young Indian of fine appearance, the brother to the chief, we named Jim. These Indians had a custom of wearing beads or ornaments in their noses. A young man of the train had a brass padlock, which, unbeknown to others of us, he locked into the nose of this young Indian the next evening, who considered it a fine present. The next morning he came into camp, his nose much swollen, and unable to relieve himself of the ornament. He applied to his supposed friend for relief without success, when my attention being attracted to the matter, I compelled his release, which attached him and his tribe to me until this day.

Shortly after that, with a Mr. James McCummings, now living, I think, in Northern Illinois, and another man, whose name I have forgotten, I w r ent on a prospecting tour via Shasta Butte to the western confines of the Modoc country. We passed unmolested through the Shasta Indians, then very nu- merous, and into the Modoc country, and thence back to Yreka. This was in March, 1851. The term Shasta is, I think, attached to this tribe from their residence in the so-called Shasta Valley, as Scott's River, Rogue River, etc., is the distinguishing term for those living in those valleys.

When I first came here the Indians inhabiting the lower end of Scott's Valley, thence to and up the Klamath River to the eastern line of Shasta Valley the Shasta, the Yreka, and Rogue River Indians all talked one language, and claimed to have been formerly under one chief, but were then subdivided into quite a number of tribes; the Rivers under