Modoc War - Events Leading Up To The War

Events Leading Up To The War

The first known explorers from the United States to come through the Modoc country were John Charles Fremont together with Kit Carson in 1843. On the night of May 9, 1846, Frémont received a message brought to him by Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, from President James Polk about the possibility of war with Mexico. Reviewing the messages, Frémont neglected the customary measure of posting a watchman for the camp. The neglect of this action is said to have been troubling to Carson, yet he had "apprehended no danger". Later that night Carson was awakened by the sound of a thump. Jumping up, he saw his friend and fellow trapper Basil Lajeunesse sprawled in blood. He sounded an alarm and immediately the camp realized they were under attack by Native Americans, estimated to be several dozen in number. By the time the assailants were beaten off, two other members of Frémont's group were dead. The one dead attacker was judged to be a Klamath Lake native. Frémont's group fell into "an angry gloom."

To avenge the deaths, Frémont attacked a Klamath Tribe fishing village named Dokdokwas, that most likely had nothing to do with the attack, at the junction of the Williamson River and Klamath Lake, on May 10, 1846. Accounts by scholars vary, but they agree that the attack completely destroyed the village structures; Sides reports the expedition killed women and children as well as warriors.

"The tragedy of Dokdokwas is deepened by the fact that most scholars now agree that Frémont and Carson, in their blind vindictiveness, probably chose the wrong tribe to lash out against: In all likelihood the band of native Americans that had killed were from the neighboring Modoc... The Klamaths were culturally related to the Modocs, but the two tribes were bitter enemies."

Although most of the "49ers" missed the Modoc country, in March 1851 Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Yreka while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. The discovery sparked the California Gold Rush from California's Sierra Nevada into Northern California. By April 1851, 2,000 miners had arrived in "Thompson's Dry Diggings" through the southern rout of old Emigrant Trail to test their luck, which took them straight through Modoc territory.