was only two days' journey from this place (Monterey). In consequence, I immediately sent him a communication ordering him, on the instant of its receipt, to put himself on the march and leave the department; but I have not received an answer, and in order to make him obey in case of resistance, I sent out a force to observe their operations, and to-day, the sixth, I march in person to join it and to see that the object is attained. The hurry with which I undertake my march does not permit me to be more diffuse, and I beg that you will inform his excellency, the president, assuring him that not only shall the national integrity of this party be defended with the enthusiasm of good Mexicans, but those who attempt to violate it will find an impregnable barrier in the valor and patriotism of every one of the Californians. Receive the assurance of my respect, etc. God and liberty. TO THE MINISTER OF WAR AND MARINE. JOSE CASTRO. The American consul at Monterey became seriously alarmed for the safety of Fremont's command and Americans generally, on account of his operations, and forwarded letters to our consul at Mazatlan, asking, if any United States war-vessels were there, for one to be sent immediately to their assistance. Commodore Sloat received the dispatch, and at once ordered Captain Montgomery to sail for Monterey with the Portsmouth. The consul maintained communication with Fremont, arranged for a sailing vessel to hover along the coast to receive his party if they were driven there, and then anxiously awaited the result. On the tenth, Alexander Cody delivered to him the following communication : MARCH 10, 1846. : MY DEAR SIR: I this moment received your letters, and, without waiting to read them, acknowledge the receipt, which the courier requires immediately. I am making myself as strong as possible, with the intention, if we are unjustly attacked, to fight to extremity, and will refuse quarter, trusting to our country to avenge our deaths. No one has reached our camp, and from the heights we are able to see the troops mustering at St. John's and preparing cannon. I thank you for your kindness and good wishes, and would write more at length as to my intentions, did I not fear that my letters would be intercepted. Very truly yours, J. C. FREMONT. TO THOS. O. LARKIN, Esq., Consul for United States, Monterey. A fear that the letter would be intercepted undoubtedly prevented the writer from saying, "I will abandon my camp to-night, and bivouac in the valley of the San Joaquin without unnecessary delay;" for John Gilroy, visiting it on the night of the tenth, found only the smouldering fires, abandoned packsaddles and unessential camp equipage of Fremont's command. On the eleventh they were in the San Joaquin valley, en route for Oregon, having been joined by Talbot's detachment. They arrived at the trading fort of Peter Lassen, on Deer creek, near the north line of California, on the thirtieth of March, 1846, remaining there and in the vicinity until the fourteenth of April. During his sojourn at Lassen's, a report was circulated that a number of Indians had congregated at a point, since known as Reading's Ranch, with intent to open hostilities against the few settlers scattered through the northern country. The surveying party, joined by five volunteers from the trading post, marched against them, and a slaughter took place of the natives in their rancheria, of not only the braves, but their squaws and little ones, a few only escaping by swimming the river. Let us believe, that we may not blush for our race, that only the Indians accompanying Fremont participated in the slaughter of women and children, and we may rest assured that it was not authorized by the officer in command. Two companies of emigrants, on their way from California to Oregon, had been at Lassen's ranch with Fremont and his party, from which point they made the final start of their journey. They went up the Sacramento river and followed the old Hudson Bay Company trail through Shasta valley. Fremont had about fifty men, having given discharges to a number in the Livermore valley. He turned off the regular trail and proceeded up Pit river, or, as it was then called, the east fork of the Sacramento. He proceeded by way of Goose, Clear and Tule lakes to the west shore of Klamath lake, where he camped for a few days. On the ninth of May, Samuel Neal and M. Sigler rode into camp with the information that a United States officer was on their trail with official dispatches, and would fall a victim to the savages if not rescued, the two messengers having only escaped by the fleetness of their animals. Immediately the Pathfinder, at the head of four Indians, five trappers and the two messengers, eleven as brave men as ever faced an enemy, was galloping away along the west borders of the lake to the south, and before night had placed sixty miles between him and his camp, in his eagerness to reach and rescue from danger the messenger of the government. He crossed the line into California, and camped for the night on the bank of Hot creek, a little stream emptying into Klamath lake from the south. Just at sundown Lieutenant Gillespie, accompanied by Peter Lassen, who had undertaken to guide him to Fremont, rode into camp, and the messenger that had been for six months and six days traveling with the secret orders of his government, at last stood face to face with him to whom the orders were sent. How little those men knew, as they held each other's hands in greeting, how much of the future history of two great nations was to be changed, because they two had met that night. How little they comprehended, as the gloom of night closed down upon the waters of Lake Klamath, what would have been the forthcoming results ere the morning, to them, and in the years beyond to their country, had not the shades of that particular night found them sitting by the same camp-fire. Long into the night those officers consulted and planned for the future. The secret dispatches were no longer a secret to Fremont, but have remained such till this day to the country, their contents being only known from the results produced. At length the camp was hushed and all of those seventeen men were sleeping, not even a sentinel to watch for danger, when Kit Carson, who always in his slumbers rested on the verge of wakefulness, heard a dull, heavy thud, and in an instant was on his feet calling to Basil Lajeunesse, who was lying on the other side of the camp-fires a little out in the gloom, to know what was the matter there. Getting no response, the next instant his startling cry of "To arms! the Indians! the Indians!" brought every living man in the camp to his feet. There were no orders given; there was no time for orders. Instinctively the trappers, Kit Carson, Lucien Maxwell, Richard Owens, Alex. Godey and Steppenfeldt sprang together. The Modocs, at the alarm, had instantly charged upon the friendly Indians; Denne, the Iroquois, and the brave Lajeunesse were dead, the heroic Crain, a Delaware, was sinking, filled with arrows, three of them in his heart, as the five mountain men rushed to their assistance and killed the Modoc chief, when his followers fled, and the midnight affray was over. The morning revealed the trail of the assailants, showing their numbers to have been about twenty. The dead chief was recognized by Lieutenant Gillespie as the Indian who, the previous morning, had made him a present of a salmon, with which he had broken a fast of forty hours. This act, with others, had led him to believe the donor friendly, and had caused him to go on his way unsuspicious of danger from that source. But the body of the chief lying there showed that had Gillespie failed to reach Fremont's camp that night, he would have met with death at the hands of the savages, who had been following during the day, intent upon his murder ere the morning. Had Gillespie fallen a victim before delivering the message that recalled Fremont to California, that officer would have continued his way into Oregon, and the settlers would not have ventured upon a declaration of war; Commodore Sloat would not have believed that he had a canse sufficient to justify him in seizing the country, and Sir George Seymour would have taken possession of California for the British crown when he sailed into Monterey; and if the Golden State had not remained a province of Great Britain until the present time, it would have been because she was forced to yield it to the United States at the end of a bloody war. On the eleventh of May, Fremont abandoned his main camp and commenced his march toward the south. Some fifteen men were left secreted near the abandoned locality, to intercept any Indians that might visit the place after they had left. A few hours later the detail overtook the main body, having in their possession two scalps. Just before night, the advance guard of ten men, under Kit Carson, came suddenly upon an Indian village. They charged into it, killing many, and burned the place, but spared the women and children. Still later that day another skirmish was had, and Kit Carson's life was saved by Fremont, who rode an Indian down who was aiming an arrow at the scout. The Modocs fought with that same desperate bravery that characterized many of their after encounters, but after this disastrous result of their first attack upon the whites, it would seem as though they would have given them a wide berth in future, but the reverse was the fact. Years afterwards, a Modoc chief related the occurrence to Hon. Lindsay Applegate, and in response to a question as to why they had made the attack upon Fremont, said that these were the first white men they ever saw, and wanted to kill them to keep any more from coming. In the spring of 1846, a company of Oregonians organized a volunteer expedition for the purpose of exploring a route west, from Fort Hall, into southern Oregon, and thence into Willamette valley. This party consisted of Capt. Levi Scott, John Jones, John Owens, Henry Boggus, William Sportsman, Samuel Goodhue, Robert Smith, Moses Harris, John Scott, William G. Parker, David Goff, Benjamin F. Burch, Jesse Applegate and Lindsay Applegate, the last of whom has written an account of their trip from a diary kept by him. It was on the Fourth of July, 1846, that the road party reached Klamath river, nearly two months after the attack on Fremont's camp. Mr. Applegate's narrative says: "Following the river up to where it leaves the Lower Klamath lake, we came to a riffle where it seemed possible to cross. William Parker waded in and explored the ford. It was deep, rocky and rapid, but we all passed over safely, and then proceeded along the river and lake shore for a mile or so, when we came into the main valley of the Lower Klamath lake. We could see columns of smoke rising in every direction; for our presence was already known to the Modocs, and the signal-fire telegraph was already in active operation. Moving southward along the shore, we came to a little stream (Hot creek), coming in from the southward, and there found pieces of newspapers, and other unmistakable evidences of civilized people having camped there a short time before. We found a place where the turf had been cut away, also the willows near the bank of the creek, and horses had been repeatedly driven over the place. As there were many places where animals could get water without this trouble, some of the party were of the opinion that some persons had been buried there, and that horses had been driven over the place to obliterate all marks, and thus prevent the Indians from disturbing the dead. The immense excitement of the Indians on our arrival there strengthened this opinion. * * * At this place we arranged our camp on open ground, so that the Indians could not possibly approach us without discovery. It is likely that the excitement among the Modocs was caused, more than anything else, by the apprehension that ours was a party sent to chastise them for their attack on Fremont." The next morning the expedition left Fremont's unfortunate camp on Hot creek, found and crossed the famous natural bridge at Lost river, and located the emigrant road, known as the northern route, by way of Black Rock and Rabbit-Hole springs, to the Humboldt river and Fort Hall, which point they reached in August. Here they found a large number of emigrants, some bound for California, but the Of these latter they persuaded one hundred and fifty, with forty-two wagons, to majority for Oregon. try the new route they had just laid out. Among others who declined to go this way and kept on down the Humboldt was the ill-fated Donner party, whose terrible sufferings on the shore of Donner lake that long and cruel winter form such a sorrowful page in the history of California. The road party hastened back to the Willamette valley, and sent oxen and horses back to assist the emigrants and get them safely to the valley. The Modocs scored one more white victim that fall, for one of the emigrants loitered behind the train near Lost river, and the Indians pounced upon him and took his scalp to their island home in the lake. From that year this road has been largely used by emigrants to southern Oregon and northern California. In 1848 the old pioneer, Peter Lassen, led a company of emigrants with twelve wagons over the road, turning off at Pit river and going down that stream, and crossing over to the head of Feather river, which he followed down to the valley. This route has been much used, and is known as the Lassen road. After his disastrous adventure in the Modoc country, Fremont continued his journey south, and without further adventure reached Butte creek, in the vicinity of the Buttes, on the twenty-seventh of May, where he camped for several days, and was visited by a number of settlers. The next move of his little force was to the junction of the Yuba and Feather rivers, where they were found on the eighth of June by William Knight, after whom a landing on the Sacramento river, in Yolo county, and a ferry on the Stanislaus river were named. He informed the settlers, some twenty of whom he found there, that Lieut. Francisco De Arce, General Castro's private secretary, had the day before crossed the river at his place with some eighty horses, which he was taking from Sonoma to Santa Clara, to be used in mounting men to expel the Americans from the country. 66 News had just reached camp that Captain Sutter had the day before (the seventh) returned to his fort from what is now San Joaquin county, after having had an encounter with the Mokelumne Indians, and had been glad to draw off and get safely on his own side of the Cosumnes river. It was supposed that General Castro was at the bottom of all the trouble with the natives in the valley. This was probably not true, yet the settlers believed it, and the result was the same as though the statement had been correct. On the morning of the ninth of June, eleven men, led by Ezekiel Merritt, left Fremont's camp in pursuit of Lieutenant De Arce. On the way four others joined the party, and at break of day, on the morning of the tenth, the fifteen settlers charged into De Arce's camp and captured the whole party. Castro's lieutenant was allowed to retain his arms and riding-horse, as was each member of his party, and to continue the journey to San José, but the extra horses were taken and the next morning were driven by the captors into Fremont's camp on Bear river, he having moved to that point in their absence. This was the first overt act of hostilities by the American settlers in what is termed the Bear-Flag war," and its being planned in Fremont's camp, advised by him, starting from within his picket-lines and returning to his headquarters with the spoils of success, make the transaction conclusive evidence of what were the secret instructions conveyed by Lieutenant Gillespie to that officer on the banks of the Klamath lake. Interpret those instructions by their effects and they would read, "War will soon be inaugurated with Mexico. By advices from Consul Thomas O. Larkin, at Monterey, we are led to believe that England is using strenuous efforts, through Vice-Consul J. Alex. Forbes, to become possessed of California. To prevent the consummation of such a result you will immediately incite those favorable to the United States to take up arms and declare that territory a republic, such position being maintained until the opening of hostilities between the United States and Mexico warrants this government in openly taking possession of that country. Remember, always, that until such time shall come, you are not, by word or act, to make it possible to trace the responsibility of what is done with certainty to this department, etc., etc." After Merritt's return to camp, the question of what, under the then supposed state of affairs, was best to be done, was discussed, and it was finally deter |
