USA > California > Lassen County > Fairfield's pioneer history of Lassen County, California; containing everything that can be learned about it from the beginning of the world to the year of Our Lord 1870 Also much of the pioneer history of the state of Nevada the biographies of Governor Isaac N. Roop and Peter Lassen and many stories of Indian warfare never before published > Part 21
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As Numaga was making this last appeal to them to keep from going to war with the whites, an Indian dashed up to the council ground on a "foam flecked" pony and he stopped in his talk. "The newcomer walked into the circle; and pointing to the southeast, said : 'Moguannoga (He was chief at the Humboldt Meadows and the whites called him Captain Soo.) last night with nine braves burned Williams' station on the Carson river and killed four whites.'" Numaga then looked sadly in the direction the warrior had pointed and told them there was no longer any use for council, they must prepare for war, for the soldiers would now come there to fight them.
On the seventh of May while the council among the Indians was going on and the great influence of Numaga was beginning to make an impression upon the Indians in favor of peace, Cap- tain Soo's party left secretly, reached Williams' station about sundown, killed the men and burned the station. This station was on the Carson river and on the overland road about ten miles northeast of where Fort Churchill was afterwards built. Captain Soo was smart enough to know what the result of this act would be. It was like burning the bridges behind them.
Captain Weatherlow has this to say in regard to the begin-
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ning of the war: "While these events (outrages committed by the Pah-ute Indians on the settlers in the neighborhood of Honey Lake) were taking place we neither saw nor heard of the Indian Agent, Major Dodge. From my knowledge of Winnemucca's character, his sense of right and justice, and his faithful observ- ance of the treaty with the Honey Lake people for years, it is my firm belief as well as the openly expressed opinion of the citizens of Honey Lake that if the great chief Winnemucca had been visited in the early commencement of the misunderstanding between his people and the whites, or even after hostilities had actually commenced he had been visited by Major Dodge, or some other authorized agent of the general government who came with full power to treat and perform the promises of the government, the whole war with its subsequent massacres and scenes of blood could have been easily averted. But unfortunate- ly for the whites as well as for the Pah-utes no such mediator came and the war with all its horrors raged on."
When the report of what had been done at Williams' station reached Dayton, Silver City, and Virginia City it created great excitement and the news was soon carried to the outlying towns. There were prospectors scattered all through the mountains and men took their lives in their hands to warn them and the outside ranchers of their danger. The one thought was to punish the Indians and companies were organized in Genoa, and in Carson, Silver, and Virginia Cities. They left the latter place on the ninth of May and on the tenth reached the scene of the murder and buried three of the victims. They then took a vote to see whether they should go back or go ahead into the Indian country.
This force consisted of four companies numbering one hun- dred and five men, or something like that. Each company had its own officers, but there was no one selected to command the whole force although Major Ormsby and others urged them to do this. They went into the fight without any leader although Major Ormsby is usually regarded as having been the commander of the entire party. It was a body of poorly armed, undisciplined men. Probably the general opinion among them was that the Indians would not fight, and some of them would have stayed at home if they had thought there was going to be any fighting done. Others thought that all there was to do was to capture some squaws and ponies and run the Indians out of the country
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without any danger to themselves. But the most of them were brave men and boys, some of them heroes when the occasion came, and with a little discipline and under good leadership would have made a brave fight.
THE BATTLE OF PYRAMID LAKE, GENERALLY CALLED "THE ORMSBY MASSACRE "
This battle, fought on the 12th of May about two miles south of Pyramid lake, was no battle at all-it was a massacre.
The whites saw a party of Indians about their own number and thirty of them charged up a little hill onto a plateau. When they got up there the Indians had disappeared, but just out of gunshot, just as before, there was a thin circle of mounted Indians. For a short time it was doubtful whether the Indians had got them there by design or not; but that uncertainty vanished when in front and on both flanks Indians arose from behind every bush, gave a yell, and poured in a volley of arrows and bullets. The other members of the command did not come to the aid of those on the plateau and after staying there about ten minutes, during which time they only looked after their animals, some of which bucked the revolvers out of the holsters and made others drop their guns, they all retreated toward their already fleeing companions. They at first retreated towards the timber in the bottom. to the west. This was already the hiding place of Chiquito Winnemucca, a chief from the Black Rock country. A number of Indians now reinforced those in the timber, Numaga among the rest, and as the Indians pressed forward he got between them and the whites, waved them back, and tried to obtain a parley with the white men. Chiquito Winnemucca refused to obey the order and ran past him fol- lowed by the other Indians. Quite a number of times the whites tried to make a stand but with little success. Many of them fought bravely, but in the end it turned out a panic and when they reached the upland it was every one for himself. The Indians chased them as far as where Wadsworth now stands killing them all along the way. When this place was reached it got so dark that the whites were able to hide so the Indians could not find them. Major Ormsby and forty-five other white men were killed. The Indians claimed to have had three war- riors wounded and two horses killed.
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On the morning of May 15th the white men on foot got into Buckland's station and those on horseback reached Dayton, Virginia, and the towns further back and created a great panic wherever they went. The news was telegraphed to San Fran- cisco and soon the whole coast knew about it. The people of the surrounding country gathered at Virginia City, Dayton, Silver City, and other towns and fortified themselves the best they could. Warren Wasson went from Genoa to Carson to find why they could get no dispatch over the telegraph line. He thought that the Indians had cut it. When he got to Carson he found that the telegraph operator there had paid no attention to the calls from Genoa, and thus far no Indian had been seen in Carson or Eagle valleys. T. and W. say: "He also found that a party was being organized, under Theodore Winters, to carry a dispatch from General Wright of California to a company of cavalry supposed to be at Honey Lake valley, ordering that company to march at once for Carson. Wasson volunteered to carry the message alone; and mounting a fleet, powerful horse, rode in fourteen hours through the enemy's country a distance of one hundred and ten miles to Honey Lake, without a change of horse, and without seeing an Indian. He delivered his orders and the company marched south." A. L. Tunison says that a detachment of twenty-six soldiers came into the valley on the 16th of May and it is probable that those were the ones that went to Carson.
THE WAR IN HONEY LAKE AND LONG VALLEYS
Alvaro Evans says that he was in Virginia City when the news of the Ormsby Massacre reached that place. As soon as he heard it, the next day after it happened, he bought a horse and started for his home in the lower end of Long valley. He left town about sundown and when between the Truckee river and Peavine springs he caught up with Cutler Arnold, who was going home to Susanville, and they went along together. They reached the Evans ranch about three o'clock in the morn- ing and found all the residents of that part of the valley col- lected there excepting the Robinsons. They had also gathered in all the cattle and had them on the flat east of the house. The next morning R. E. Ross went up to the Warm Springs ranch and notified the Robinsons that they were all going to Sierra
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valley. He found Mrs. Ambrose Robinson, the only woman in that part of the valley, busily engaged in churning and she said that she could not go until she had finished that work. That same day they all went to Sierra valley and took their cattle with them. The Ross and Evans party took up some land four or five miles from the Summit, built a cabin on it, and stayed there all summer, returning to Long valley in the fall. The Warm Springs ranch house was burned by the Indians that spring, but the other three houses in that part of the valley, the Evans house, the MeKissick house, and the one on the Willow Ranch, were not molested that year.
When the news reached Honey Lake it caused great excite- ment and dismay. As is usual in such cases the further it traveled the larger it grew. It was reported that there were 1500 warriors in the battle with the Ormsby party and men who claimed to know said there were at least 1000 Pah-ute warriors around Pyramid lake ready to fight. It was reported that twenty head of cattle had been stolen, by the Indians it was sup- posed, from Antelope valley near Susanville and the settlers thought it probable that the hills were full of savages who were likely to make a descent upon them at any time.
There were eighty men prospecting out near Black Rock and in Susanville the first thought was to warn them of their danger. The business men offered $150 a day to any man who would go, but no one wanted the job. When it was found that no one could be hired to go Ephraim V. Spencer, whose brother Luther was among the prospectors, made up his mind to go himself. He had no saddle horse and when he tried to buy one he found none to sell. Some of the owners of saddle horses wanted them to leave the country with and others would not sell to him because they didn't want him to attempt the trip. They all told him that no man could elude the Indians and get through to Black Rock alive. Finally some man told him there was a saddle horse picketed out on the flat below town. Spencer was head sawyer in the sawmill above town and that night he shut the mill down. (This story was told by Mrs. L. P. Spencer, the widow of E. V. Spencer.)
About midnight he took his saddle on his back, went down on the flat and saddled up the horse, and striking out down the valley reached the Lathrop and Harvey place about daylight.
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His horse had not given out, but he was tired and Spencer saw he was not the horse for such a journey. About a quarter of a mile from the house there was a saddle horse picketed out and he went down there and swapped horses. He then went to the house, called Lathrop up and told him what he was going to do, and asked him for a cup of coffee and something to eat and some food to take along with him. While Lathrop was getting him some breakfast Spencer stood in the door holding the horse by the rope. Pretty soon a man who had been awakened by the noise came out of another room. He looked at the horse at the door, rubbed his eyes and looked again, and then looked at the horse picketed in the field. The horse Spencer was holding was a bay and the one he left in the field was a buckskin so it was very easy to see that the horses had been changed. He then asked Spencer what he was doing with his horse and told him to put him back where he found him. The other man replied that he intended to ride that horse and that if any one interfered with him he would have serious trouble. The man almost cried and said he wanted the horse to ride out of danger from the Indians, but Spencer only answered him by saying that the other one would carry him to Susanville. After eating his breakfast and getting a few provisions Spencer started out and to save time he cut across corners whenever he could. At that time A. W. Worm and Thomas Bear were keeping the trading post at Deep Hole springs and the latter had gone to Susanville for supplies. "Bige" Adams came along and found Worm alone and told him the news of the trouble with the Indians. Spencer must have struck Bear somewhere on the road for they came to Deep Hole together that night. Worm says that about twenty of the Black Rock prospectors also came in that night. At day- light Spencer resumed his journey and succeeded in finding a camp of five men, his brother being one of them. He had not seen an Indian during the entire trip. He had been riding for thirty-six hours without any sleep so he went to bed and those in camp saddled up their horses and started out to find the other men. Whenever they found a camp these men joined in the search and soon they were all together and ready to leave. The Indians had not molested them, but an old man named Smith coming into camp one night with a pack mule had been mistaken for an Indian and killed.
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THE YEAR 1860
On their return they kept out on the desert and saw no Indians excepting once when they saw a large band of them near the edge of the desert. Once, though, when they stopped to water their horses they found Indian tracks made so recently that they were not yet filled with water. Some of the prospectors belonged in this valley and some in the Carson country and when they got almost to Honey Lake they scattered, four or five of them coming in with Spencer.
Many of the emigrants who had settled in the valley the year before immediately picked up and left in haste for the other side of the mountains. A great deal of stock was driven away for safety. The people in the upper end of the valley went to Susanville and used Cutler Arnold's log hotel for a fort, keeping the women and children in at night. They had some idea of hauling logs and building a fort but it was not done. Many of them stayed there and stood guard at night for a long time.
The settlers in the central part of the valley and the lower end of it gathered at Bankhead's. They cut down small pine trees and made a stockade sixty-three by ninety feet and twelve or fourteen feet high around the log house about three fourths of a mile northwest of Bankhead's that Dr. Slater and F. S. Chapman had built the previous December. This was "Fort Janesville." The stockade was loopholed for rifles and at the southwest corner, and perhaps at another one though it doesn't show now, there was a small enclosure set out from the corner that enabled the men in the fort to send in a flank fire on any party that came close to the stockade. Dr. P. Chamberlain, D. I. Wilmans, James Jones, John Bradley, R. D. Bass, Smith J. Hill, W. M. Cain, Malcom Bankhead, and probably many others, with their families, took refuge in the fort. Some stayed a night or two and went over to Quincy, or further, and others went back to their ranches. Some stayed there all summer. Of the families that left the valley some stayed away until the danger was over and others never came back.
Four or five years after this Indian war Fort Janesville fell into disuse. People helped themselves to the doors and windows of the building or anything else they wanted. Along in 1866-67 the Indians took the house away, part of it at a time, and used it to build some campoodies about half a mile to the southwest. Perhaps the whites carried some of the logs away and soon the
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building was all gone. The writer went to school near there in 1867 and he doesn't remember any building inside the stockade at that time. The stockade stood for a good many years and fell down a log at a time.
During this panic Governor Roop again made application to General Clark for troops to be stationed in the valley to protect the settlers, or at least for arms and ammunition to enable the few settlers who remained to protect themselves and their prop- erty. Weatherlow's company was reorganized and ordered to hold themselves in readiness to take to the field at a moment's warning. About this time Lieutenant Chapman came in from Fort Crook with a detachment of U. S. dragoons. He stayed in the valley three days and then received orders to return to Fort Crook, and this he did without having accomplished anything here. This left the valley as unprotected as before. Some of the settlers wanted to raise a company and join Colonel Jack Hays at Carson and help fight the Pah-utes. Others wanted all the men to stay at home and protect the few women and children who remained and also the property. John Byrd raised a com- pany of twenty men in the lower end of the valley and J. C. Wemple remembers the following names of those who were among them : John Byrd, Captain, Dr. P. Chamberlain, Wm. H. Clark, Wm. N. Crawford, George Greeno, T. H. Fairchilds, Charles Kingman, Fred. Kingman, Henry Arnold,-Anderson, A. G. Eppstein, and J. C. Wemple.
On the 29th of May Weatherlow's company went down to the Jack Byrd ranch eight miles below where Milford now stands. Byrd and his company were there and Weatherlow proposed to him that they join forces and wait for the Indians at a canyon north of Pyramid lake where, when beaten by Hays, they would pass in their retreat. He believed that in this way they might receive a blow that would direct them away from the unpro- tected settlements. Byrd agreed with him, but the younger members of his company objected to this arrangement so he went on the next day. Weatherlow stayed there a couple of days and jerked some beef and on the first of June set out for Pyramid lake with his command of thirty-five well armed men, he says, but Tunison, who was with him, says there were only twenty-six men when they left the Byrd place.
We will now return to the country around Carson and Vir-
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ginia Cities. As a result of the Ormsby Massacre hundreds of people left the territory of Nevada and went to California. Many of those who remained were so badly frightened that they would have been of no use in helping to fight the Indians.
In California the news produced intense excitement and every one was willing to go to the assistance of the people of Nevada. Within thirty-six hours after the news reached Downieville 165 men were raised, armed, and equipped. In five days they marched over the mountains to Virginia City. Organized companies came from Nevada City, San Juan, Sacramento, and Placerville. The Governor of California sent the men of Nevada for their own use 500 Minnie muskets with plenty of ammunition. All the towns of Nevada furnished their share of men and the citizens contributed to provision the forces.
These forces were organized into eight companies of infantry and six of cavalry. Colonel John C. Hays was the Colonel com- manding and the whole force consisted of 544 men. They left Virginia City on the 24th of May and on the 31st had reached the place where Wadsworth now stands. There they were joined by 207 United States troops under Captain Stewart. By mutual consent, Colonel Jack Hays assumed command of both divisions.
THE BATTLE OF THE TRUCKEE
On the morning of the 2nd of June eighty men were sent down the river on a scouting expedition. When they got down where the land sloped abruptly to the valley part of them stayed on the upland and the others went on down into the valley. In a short time those on the hill signaled that the enemy were in sight. Three hundred Indians were coming and they chased the whites back to the main body. The Indians kept firing at the whites with a rifle of long range, probably the one taken from a man named Elliott who was killed in the Ormsby fight. One man was wounded by these shots. When the fight began the Indians had the advantage in the ground. They were on the hill in a place cut up by gullies and the whites were out on the open ground. About two thirds of the whites were in the fight and the rest were held in reserve. The Indians fought for five hours, but at last were driven from the field. There was a large force of Indians-no one knows how many-and it was the most stub- born fight ever made by the Indians on this coast. The whites
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lost three men killed and one wounded. The Pah-utes never acknowledged the loss of but four killed and seven wounded. No white man in the fight ever saw more than three dead Indians; but Joseph F. Triplett of Elko, who was in the fight, claims that several of the leading Indians told him soon after the war that forty-six Indians were killed.
On the fourth of June the command marched on towards Pyramid lake burying the bodies of the Ormsby men wherever they found them. The Indian village was deserted and not an Indian could be found in the country, but the trail led north and on the fifth the pursuit was resumed. They passed along on the east side of the chain of mountains between Pyramid and Mud (Winnemucca) lakes. While going along this range five men were sent up the side of the mountain as scouts. When they got near the top one of the men was killed by the Indians. The cavalry went there as fast as they could, but when they reached the place the Indians had taken his horse, arms, and clothes and fled. This was the last hostile act of the campaign.
On the sixth they started to return. On the seventh the volunteer forces under Hays were disbanded; but the troops under Captain Stewart remained at Pyramid lake where earth- works were thrown up that received the name of Fort Haven, in honor of General Haven of California who had volunteered as a private in Colonel Hays' command. T. and W. say "After the battle the Pah-utes remained in considerable force in the vicinity of Pyramid lake, maintaining a hostile attitude, and committing depredations, but the punishment given and the force displayed admonished them to keep the peace." They also say that Major Frederick Dodge, the Indian Agent, aided by Mr. Wasson, who had been engaged by Captain Stewart as a scout, tried to pacify the Indians, entice them to their reserva- tions, and supply them with provisions, blankets, etc.
MOVEMENTS OF THE NEVER SWEATS
J. C. Wemple says it was reported here that the Indians lost about forty men in the last fight. The Byrd company reached Pyramid lake two days after the battle took place. They stayed there a day and a half and then started for home. Nothing of particular interest took place during the entire trip which lasted something like two weeks.
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T. and W. say: "There was a force of possibly thirty men under Captain Weatherlow from Honey Lake valley, in the mountains west of and toward the north end of Pyramid lake; and the following letter of confident power and prowess tells all concerning him and his command :
"June 4th, 1860.
"Dear Gov .: With my small party I am scouting around Pyra- mid lake. The last two days have been on the north side of it, and am now on the west side and within two miles of the lake. I have not seen an Indian, although I am in view of the ground on which Major Ormsby fought the Indians. Would to God I had fifty men, I would clean out all the Indians from this region. Thus far I have been waiting for the troops from Carson to attack them, and then cut off retreating parties, but the movements of the troops are so desultory that I fear the Indians will scatter off before anything is done. If there is any more men in the valley who will come, and can get a fit-out, send them along for my party is too small to venture much; yet all are anxious for a brush with the red-skins. You need feel no alarm of being attacked in the valley; there is no Indians to make it, at least on the north.
Respectfully yours, etc.,
Capt. Weatherlow. Gov. Isaac Roop."
"It would seem that the Captain got out of the way just in time, from the north end of the lake, to escape an opportunity of having the brush his men seemed so desirous of; and if his courage was equal to his assertion, it is fortunate that he did not have fifty men." Weatherlow's courage was equal to almost anything, and if he and his thirty men had been lying in wait in that canyon when the Indians went through it, he might have fired on them small as his force was.
The first day after leaving the Byrd ranch Weatherlow's company went to High Rock Springs. It rained all that day. The next day they went on to Pyramid lake and occupied the canyon. Weatherlow says "So much was I impressed with the necessity of striking the Indians in their retreat north that I sent a message to Col. Hays asking him to reinforce me. This he never received, or at least the reenforcement never came. In the meantime the battle at Pyramid lake did not take place on the
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