Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/661

521 just above the Natural Bridge on Lost river, we came on to them. Some were fishing, some were cooking the fish they had caught, and others were eating fish. It seemed that each one of them caught, cooked and ate their own fish. Seeing no arms we rode up to them. There were twelve of them, and among them was Sconchin, the other councilman who the General was so anxious to get hold of. Sconchin said: "Go Fort Klamath, all Injun heap hungry, now ketchem fish, eat plenty, by and by go to fort."

I had George Jones turn and ride back to hurry the soldiers up, for I did not deem it a safe plan for two of us to try to take the whole crowd prisoners, for even though they had no arms they might scatter all over the country and then we could not get them only by killing them, and that I did not want to do. While I am in no wise a friend to a hostile; I believe in giving even an Indian that which is justly due him, and I must admit that all through this Modoc war I could not help, in a measure, feeling sorry for the Modocs, particularly Captain Jack, for I knew that through the negligence of one agent and the outrageous attack upon Jack by the squad of soldiers on Lost river, while there catching fish to keep his people from starving, he had been driven and dragged into this war, and I do not believe to-day, nor never did believe, that Captain Jack ought to have been hanged.

I have often been asked, since, what I thought of the arrangements Mr. Berry made for the meeting of Gen. Canby, Col. Thomas and Captain Jack, but I have always refrained from answering that question any farther than that it seemed to me that a school boy ten years of age