while encamped at Hot creek the Indians got into a dispute over the ownership of one of them and to end matters the chief caught her by the hair and cut her throat.  Her body, Charley said, was thrown into the rim rock above the Dorris house.  Hearing the story in February, 1873, while we were encamped at Van Bremer’s ranch, Colonel C. B. Bellinger and I made a search for the body of the ill-fated girl.  We found the skull and some bones but nothing more.  Enough, however, to verify the story told by Charley.  What became of the other Charley did not know, but her fate can better be imagined than described.

Chapter IX.

The Ben Wright Massacre.

This so-called massacre has been the source of endless controversy, and during the progress of the Modoc war afforded Eastern sentimentalists grounds for shedding crocodile tears in profusion.  They found in this story ample grounds for justification of the foul butchery of General Canby and the Peace Commission.  According to their view, these “poor persecuted people” were merely paying the white man back in his own coin, and a lot more such rot.

According to this story, Ben Wright had proposed a treaty and while the Indians were feasting, all unconscious of intended harm, were set upon and ninety of their warriors murdered in cold blood.  Captain Jack’s father, they said, was among the victims, and it was to avenge this wrong that Canby and the Peace Commission were murdered under a flag of truce.  The story was without other foundation than the bloody battle fought by Ben Wright and his Yreka volunteers with the Modoc tribe during the fall of 1852.  I will here give the true story as detailed to me by Frank Riddle, one of Ben Wright’s men, and which I believe is absolutely true.

In the fall of 1852 Ben Wright raised a company of thirty-six men around Yreka and went out to guard the immigrants through the country of the Modocs.  The company arrived in time and safely escorted all trains past the danger point.  The lesson taught the year before by Captain Miller had instilled into the savage heart a wholesome fear of the white man’s rifle and revolver.  They dared not attack the ever-watchful white men openly, but determined to effect by strategy what they dared not attempt in the open field.  Accordingly they sent a messenger to Wright proposing a treaty.  The messenger, among other things, told Wright that they held two captive white girls, which they wished to surrender as an evidence of good faith.  Ben Wright was anxious to rescue the girls and readily consented to a treaty, and promised to kill a beef and have a feast.  The Indians in considerable numbers came to the camp, headed by the chief.  Wright was then camped on the peninsula, a place admirably adapted to guard against surprise.  A feast was had and all went well.  The white girls were to be surrendered three days later at the mouth of Lost river, to which