While we were talking Donald McKay came up and accused the volunteers of the massacre.  I told Gen. Davis that it was impossible that the volunteers could have committed the crime.  McKay was drunk and swaggered around a great deal and finally asked the General to let him take his Indians and follow the volunteers and bring them back.

Becoming angered at the talk and swagger of McKay I told the General to let him go, and plainly told McKay that I would go with him.  That he, McKay, was an arrant coward and could not take any one, much less a company of one hundred men.  I then expressed my belief to Gen. Davis that the killing had been done by some of the settlers whose relatives had been massacred by the savages; that Gen. Ross had gone around the south end of the lake and that Capt.  Hizer must have been many miles on his road towards Linkville.

I told him, however, that I would make an investigation and if possible bring the perpetrators of the act to justice.  Mounting my horse I rode rapidly back to where the wagon was standing in the road.  The women and children were still in the wagon with their dead, not one of them having moved during the night.  It was a most ghastly sight, the blood from the dead Indians had run through the wagon bed, and made a broad, red streak for twenty yards down the road.  Soon after my arrival Donald McKay rode up, and I ordered him to go to the lake and get some water for the women, one of whom had been severely wounded.  Soon after his return with the water Mr. Fairchilds came with the team and all were taken to the camp.  The woman was not seriously hurt, but the four bucks were literally shot to pieces.

I remained several days at the Peninsula, making an excursion into the lava beds in company with Capt.  Bancroft of the artillery, and with Bogus Chancy as guide.  We explored many of the caves, at least as far as we were able with poor lighting material at our command.  I then started to overtake the volunteers, coming up with them before reaching Jacksonville, where Capt.  Hizer’s company was discharged.  Capt.  Rogers, of the Douglas county company, was discharged at Roseburg.  After this I returned to my newspaper work at Salem, Oregon.

The Indians were moved from Boyles’ Camp at the Peninsula to Fort Klamath where five of them, Jack, Sconchin, Black Jim, Hooker Jim and Boston Charley were all executed on the same gallows.  One of the murderers of the Peace Commission, “Curley Headed Doctor,” committed suicide on the road to Klamath.  The remainder of the Indians were then moved to the Indian Territory, where the remnants now live.

Thus ended the farce-tragedy of the Modoc war, a farce so far as misguided enthusiasts and mock humanitarians could make it in extending the olive branch of peace to redhanded murderers.  And a tragedy, in that from first to last the war had cost the lives of nearly four hundred men and about five millions of dollars.