Our first knowledge of the Modocs was when they stole upon the camp of Fremont in 1845 at a spring not far from the present site of the now prosperous and thriving village of Dorris.  It was here that Fremont suffered the loss of some of his men, including two Delaware Indians, in a daylight attack, and it was here that he was overtaken by a courier and turned back to assist in the conquest of California.  From that day to the day when Ben Wright, with a handful of Yreka miners, broke their war power in the so-called “Ben Wright massacre” the Modocs were ever the cruel, relentless foe of the white man, murdering and pillaging without other pretext and without mercy.  It has been estimated, by those best capable of giving an opinion, that from first to last not less than three hundred men, women and children had been relentlessly murdered by their hands, up to the beginning of the last war.

The shores of their beautiful lakes and tributary streams are scattered over with the graves and bleaching bones of their victims.  Even among neighboring tribes they were known and dreaded for their cunning duplicity and savage ferocity.  They are yet known among the Klamaths, Pits, and Piutes as a foe to be dreaded in the days of their power, and these people often speak of them in fear, not because they were brave in open field, but because of their skulking and sudden attacks upon unsuspecting foes.

During the early 50’s many immigrants, bound for Southern Oregon and Northern California, passed through their country, traveling the road that passed round the north end of Rett, or Tule Lake, and crossed Lost river at the then mouth of that stream on a natural bridge of lava.  A short distance from where the road comes down from the hills to the lake is the ever-memorable “Bloody point.”  This place has been appropriately named and was the scene of some of the most sickening tragedies that blacken the annals of this or any other country.  At this point the rim rock comes down to the edge of the waters of the lake, and receding in the form of a half wheel, again approaches the water at a distance of several hundred yards, forming a complete corral.  Secreted among the rocks, the Indians awaited until the hapless immigrants were well within the corral, and then poured a shower of arrows and bullets among them.  The victims, all unconscious of danger, taken by surprise, and surrounded on all sides, with but the meager shelter of their wagons, were at the mercy of their savage foes.

In 1850, an immigrant train was caught in this trap, and of the eighty odd men, women and children, but one escaped to tell the awful tale.  On the arrival of the news at Jacksonville, Colonel John E. Ross raised a company of volunteers among the miners and hastened to the scene of butchery.  Arriving at Bloody Point, the scene was such as to make even that stern old veteran turn sick.  The men had died fighting, and their naked bodies lay where they fell.  Those