When the news was received by Gov.  Grover that the Indians had left the stronghold and that the settlers were again exposed, he ordered out two companies of volunteers, one from Douglas county under Capt.  Rodgers and the other from Jackson county under Capt.  Hizer.  I was not ordered at the time to accompany the volunteers, the “mad-cap from Salem” was to be left behind, but not for long.  In spite of the abuse of enemies, mostly those fellows who sought safety with women and children behind strong stockades, and the declaration of Mr. Meacham that I was responsible for the slaughter of men on the 17th of January, “when the brave, reckless, madcap, Col.  Thompson, drove his men against the lines of the Modocs,” I was again sent to the front.  In my letters and newspaper articles I had severely censured Mr. Meacham and he took revenge in his “Wigwam and Warpath” by declaring the mad-cap was to blame for the slaughter.  I never met him but once after the close of the war and that was in the library of the old Russ House in San Francisco, where I had gone to call upon a couple of friends.  This was in August after the close of the war.  He was walking back and forth in the library, his head yet bandaged where the Indians had started to scalp him, when he suddenly turned and said, “Col.  Thompson.  I want to speak to you.”  I excused myself to Rollin P. Saxe, one of my friends, and walked up to Mr. Meacham.  He said “I had made up my mind to shoot you on sight.”  Then hesitating an instant, continued, “but I have changed my mind.”  “Perhaps,” I replied, “Mr. Meacham, it is fortunate for you or I that you have changed your mind.”  He then went on to detail how I had abused him.  I said, “Mr. Meacham, before God, you are responsible for the death of Gen. Canby, a noble man and soldier, and I don’t know how many others.”  After conversing some time we separated, never to meet again.

But to return to the war.  On the 18th Gen. Gillem sent out Col.  Thomas and Major Wright on a scouting expedition in the lava region to discover if possible the whereabouts of the savages.  The scouting party numbered sixty-two men, including Lieutenants Cranston, Harve, and Harris.  Instead of sending out experienced men, these men were sent to be slaughtered, as the result demonstrated.  Gillem was not only incompetent personally, but was jealous of every man, citizen or regular, who was competent.  The party scouted around through the lava for a distance of several miles.  They saw no Indians or sign of Indians.  The hostiles had fled and were nowhere to be found.  They sat down to eat their lunch.  They were quietly surrounded and at the first fire the soldiers, as is almost always the case, became panic stricken.  The officers bravely strove to stem the tide of panic, but hopelessly.  The panic became a rout and the rout a massacre, and of the sixty-two men who were sent out that morning but two were alive, and they were desperately wounded.

Had any one of the old experienced officers, like Green, Mason, Perry, Bernard or Hasbrook been sent on this duty a massacre would have been impossible.  They would never have been caught off their guard and the sickening massacre would have been averted.  The very fact of no Indians in sight would have taught these men caution.