It happens that the Indians of these little valleys are a mild race, not prone to war.  When the white settlers first came to this region they lived unmolested by the Indians, who were numerous then, and might easily have “wiped out,” to use a California phrase, the intruding white men.  It happens that the Indians of the interior are braver and more warlike; and, accordingly, among them there were forty-five resolute Modocs, unwilling to be driven to a reservation, defying the United States for half a year.  But from what I have written one can see how the Modoc war came about; for it arose from an attempt to force Captain Jack on to the Klamath Reservation—­an attempt made, not by United States troops, as it ought to have been if it was to be done, but in their absence, and by men who purposely and carefully kept the military ignorant of what they intended to do; for there exists the utmost jealousy on the part of the Indian agents, of the War Department and the military authorities; and I repeat that the removal of the Modocs was planned and attempted to be carried out by the Indian Bureau officers, they keeping the military in careful ignorance of their designs.

I do not say too much when I say that if General Schofield had been informed and consulted beforehand, there would have been no Modoc war, and General Canby and Mr. Thomas might have been alive to-day.

Accordingly, these “unfortunate wards of the nation” are driven on the reservation.  If their agent happens to be honest and kindly, like Mr. Burchard, they get enough to eat and to wear.  If he is not, they do not fare quite so well.  Captain Jack said he was “tired of eating horse-meat.”

But if you are a guardian, and have a ward, you are not satisfied if your ward, presumedly an ignorant person in a state of pupilage, merely has enough to eat and to wear.  You endeavor to form his manners and morals.  Well, the Indian camp at Round Valley is in a deplorable state of disorder.  No attempt is made to teach our wards to be clean or orderly, or to form in them those habits which might elevate, at least, their children.  The plain around the shanties is full of litter, and overgrown with dog-fennel.  As Mr. Burchard, the superintendent, walked about with me, half-grown boys sat on the grass, and even on the school-house steps, gambling with cards for tobacco, and they had not been taught manners enough to rise or move aside at the superintendent’s approach.  As we sat in the school-house, one, two, three Indian men came in to prefer a request, but not one of them took off his hat.  We entered a cabin and found a big he-Indian lying on his bed.  “Are you sick?” inquired Mr. Burchard, and the lazy hound, without offering to rise, muttered “No; me lying down.”

The agent, in reply to my questions, said that they gambled a good deal for money and beads during the week, but he had forbidden it on Sundays; and he would not allow them to gamble away their clothing, as they formerly did.