My horror novel, The Modoc Well (first published as The Well, Bantam Books, 1991), is creepy and gory enough to satisfy any aficionado of the genre. But in one chapter I deviate a bit to present a bit of fascinating—and heartbreaking—local history.
The setup: Greg Lowell, wife Janet, teens Allison and Mark are visiting the town of Bonner in northern California, near the Oregon border. Greg was born there, but his parents left under mysterious circumstances when he was an infant. Later on they will move there, but for now they are tourists, and Greg has something he wants his family to see.
As they drove away from town, Janet asked, “Are you going to reveal the big mystery of where we’re going, or do you intend to keep it a secret until we get there?”
“No secret. I’m taking you to see the lava beds.”
“The what?”
“Officially, the Lava Beds National Monument. It’s northwest of here, not far. Most of it is in Siskiyou County.”
“Is that lava, like in volcano?” Mark asked.
“Uh-huh. But you won’t see a volcano there, not like you’re thinking of anyway. Actually, this whole region sits on a sprawling volcanic tableland. Some of those mountains may have once served as primary vents, but during the last eruption—”
“Eruption?” Allison exclaimed.
Greg smiled. “It’s been at least five centuries. When it happened, the lava and pumice escaped wherever it could. Most of it was covered over as time passed, but the lava beds stayed pretty much as they always were.”
“Is that why the area was designated a monument?” Janet asked.
“Not for what it is, but for what happened there. When we were talking about the Modoc Indians, you asked me what became of them. Well, the incident that occurred in the lava beds pretty much marked their end.
“I mentioned that the Modocs fought to save their land. The Fire Valley Massacre was just one of many confrontations. But for a time thereafter the Modocs coexisted with the whites, adopted their ways. Things were comparatively quiet up here during the Civil War years.
“Then, the same old story. White man wanted all the land, wanted the Indians out of his sight. In 1864, the Modocs were moved to the Klamath Indian reservation in Oregon. The Modocs were actually kin to the Klamaths, but generations removed, and at that point not too fond of each other. Tensions grew, until one group of Modocs under Captain Jack left the reservation and returned to their ancestral land.”
“Captain Jack?” Janet was curious.
“A hell-raiser who became their chief. His real name was Kent-push, or something like that. The anglicized Modoc names were colorful: Scarfaced Charley, Shacknasty Jim, Curly-headed Doctor. Anyway, Captain Jack led them home. They were brought back once, but jumped again. The second time, they were damned defiant over their right to exist. They even insisted on money from the settlers for living on their land. Things got pretty ugly again.
“Late in 1872, the army tried to arrest Jack and send the Modocs back to the reservation. Talk turned to violence. The soldiers burned their village, but the Indians managed to escape and headed for the lava beds. This was the start of the Modoc Indian War.
“The Modocs established themselves in an area of the lava beds called the Stronghold. You’ll know why when you see it. From there, with fifty or so warriors, they held off anywhere from three hundred to a thousand soldiers for six months, killing more than their share. And they hardly lost any of their own. It was an unbelievable, courageous stand, and it received world attention, the best there could be at that time. There was even a surge of outrage and sympathy for their cause, until Captain Jack was pressured by his people into an ambush of some government representatives during a peace talk.
“Finally, the Modocs had to leave the Stronghold for water. The troops eventually rounded them up, though not before sustaining many more casualties. Captain Jack and his lieutenants were tried for the murder of an army general and a minister at the peace talk, then hung. The remaining Modocs were sent to a reservation in Oklahoma. After the turn of the century they were allowed to return here if they wanted, strangers in their own land.”
They were all silent for a minute, then Janet shook her head. “How could anyone do that? Man bursts on the scene, takes the land of another man who’s been there for God knows how long, tells him to live where he wants him to live, do what he wants him to do. It’s not right!”
“But how often has it happened?” Greg said. “And not just to Native Americans. It’s an ugly part of our heritage.” He shrugged. “Worst part is, do we learn from it?”
As they passed a farm road, Janet asked, “Greg, how do you know so much about the Modocs?”
The Lava Beds National Monument is near the fictional town of Bonner.
“Read a manuscript a couple of years ago that detailed all of what I just told you. The writing wasn’t too good. I thought it was improbable, corny fiction, but I happened to mention it to Jeremy Hunter. He told me that the Modoc War, the siege in the lava beds, was for real. I checked it out myself. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come up here.”
They followed the Bonner-Oregon Highway farther north, finally turning west onto a graded road that wound through tree-lined hills on its descent to the Lava Beds National Monument. They knew when they had arrived, for the green valleys and cool forests were abruptly left behind. The grim Land of Burnt-out Fires stretched before them.
To nothing else could the appellation Badlands have been more appropriate. A sagebrush wilderness layered with jagged volcanic debris, ominous, cathedral-like buttes, spider webs of cracks and crevices that led into natural caves, and even deeper subterranean passages. A stark, brooding malpais, where an infrequent jumper pine dared to reach upward from the igneous rocks. A place that generations of Indians learned, of necessity, to coexist with, where the last of their kind to have tasted freedom came to relinquish that treasure.
Captain Jack’s Stronghold, an inaccessible natural lava fortress at the top of the monument, stood just south of Tule Lake. Seeing it, the Lowells had some inkling of how anyone, especially those who knew the land, could have withstood the onslaught of twenty times their number. From scores of natural pits, which the Modocs had fortified with stone walls, and from innumerable caves, they could pick off their attackers with impunity as they crossed the open plateau that surrounded the Stronghold.
God, Greg thought, if not for water and food, their children’s grandchildren might still be here, resisting.
Save for the outlying areas, accessible only on foot, the Lowells had seen a lot. They retraced their path and, pensive, drove away from the Lava Beds National Monument.
I became interested in the true story of the Modocs while researching The Modoc Well. This led to my work of historical fiction, Stone Woman: Winema and the Modocs. Both are available in paperback and eBook from Amazon.