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 27
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By the morning of the 27th something like fifty men from all parts of the valley had gathered at the T. C. (Tule) Emerson ranch about a mile and a half northwest of Lathrop and Brad- ley's. They elected Dave Blanchard captain and Henry Arnold and Johnson Tutt lieutenants. Some of those who went on this expedition were William B. Long, Arthur K. Wood, George Tay- lor, William Dow, Samuel Shultz, William H. Hall, Lyman Mer- win, Dave Hare, A. G. Moon, Byron B. Gray, - Keefer, A. L. Harper, Miles Harper, York Rundel, Luther Spencer, John Part- ridge, A. L. Tunison, Stephen White, Warren Lockman, John Bradley, George W. Perry (Buckskin Mose), a Spaniard named Steve Rafael, a young man who worked for Dr. Slater, name unknown, and some say one or two Chinamen. They had horses enough to pack their provisions and blankets and a few of the men, perhaps a fourth of them, were mounted.
As soon as they could get ready they started out across the hills to the northeast. It had been an extremely wet winter and the ground was very soft. Where it was the driest the horses sank into the mud up to their fetlocks and where they crossed the creeks, for there was water in every canyon, they went in up to their bodies. Sometimes the pack horses mired down and their packs had to be taken off before they could get out of the mud. Where the men could not step on the rocks they went into the mud ankle deep. They saw the tracks of only eight Indians and evidently these were too few to handle so many cattle, for every little ways some of them left the band and they could not
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get them back. They crossed the creek that flows from Mud Springs three or four miles east of Secret valley and there they found about sixty head of cattle dead in the mud, and some live ones which they pulled out. The leaders of the band had sunk into the mud and the others had gone over them and mashed them down so deep that they had smothered. That night they camped northwest of Mud Springs, having traveled about twenty miles. It snowed some that night. The next day they went to the northeast across a mountainous country and at night struck Smoke creek seven or eight miles above the station. Every little while during the day they had found a few cattle mired down. These and all the cattle that mired' down or gave out from this time on were mutilated or killed by the Indians. They knocked them on the head, pushed an arrow into their bodies, cut open their sides, hamstrung them, or ruined them in some other way. Sometimes they took the heart and tongue of an animal or per- haps a little of the meat and tallow. It snowed on them all that day and they reached camp, which was where they struck Smoke creek, cold, wet, and hungry, after a march of about twenty miles. Here they found a young steer which they killed and ate. It snowed on them nearly all that night. Harper says they camped that night within a mile and a half of some of the Indians they were after. The next day they concluded that they could get along better without the horses to bother them, so they sent the pack train and the men on horseback by way of the road to Deep Hole, probably thinking that the trail they were following would lead them close to that place. They also wanted to get some more provisions if they could. That same morning Perry, Partridge, and a Chinaman took the road back to Honey Lake because their boots had got stiff and hurt their feet so they could not travel fast enough to keep up with the others. Their force was now reduced to thirty-three men, and each one of these took a pair of blankets and enough food for three or four meals and once more started out on the trail of the cattle which kept to the northeast toward Buffalo Meadows. Late in the forenoon Steve White saw an Indian on a ridge about three quarters of a mile ahead and he fell back and told the others. They thought they had come up with the whole band of Indians and there might be a good many of them, so they stopped and held a consultation. Some of the party wanted to wait until night and then attack
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them and the others wanted to go ahead and overtake them as soon as possible. Finally the majority decided to go on. They went to the foot of the ridge on which White had seen the Indian, sneaked part way up it, and crawled the rest of the way. Long, Harper, Taylor, Keefer, and some of the older men went up a little canyon and the others crawled up on each side of it. The four men named got to the top of the ridge first and though they found no Indians there they found about forty head of cattle. The Indians were driving them in two bands and this was the hind one. Long and Harper went on through the cattle looking for Indians and left the other two men a little behind. When they got through the band and looked over the edge of the ridge they saw three Indians about a hundred yards away. They sneaked up to within seventy-five yards of them and saw one Indian standing up and the other two cutting meat from the body of an animal. Harper drew a bead on one of them, but he didn't shoot at once, and never could tell why he didn't do it. In the meantime the other men had come up and just then Long motioned for them to come on. Taylor, who had his dog Bob with him, was the first one of them to get where he could see over the ridge. When he saw the Indians he yelled "There they are. See the sons of --. Sic 'em, Bob!" The Indians dropped to the ground as quick as a flash and rolled down the steep side hill into the canyon out of sight, and when next seen they were run- ning up the side of a hill three or four hundred yards away. A good many shots were fired at them, but the snow was blowing and they were so far away that none of them were hit. All of the men then threw down their loads and started on the run after them. When they had gone a couple of miles they concluded to send a party back to bring up the loads so they would not have so far to come back to camp. Eight or ten men returned and got the blankets, etc., and left two men to guard the cattle that the Indians had left on the ridge. The others went on after the three Indians who followed the trail of those ahead. At the lower end of Buffalo Meadows, or near there, they came to a place where evidently the Indians in the lead intended to camp for the night and wait for the others to come up, but for some reason they had taken alarm and gone on. Until they reached this place the Indians had killed only the cattle that could go no further, but after this they killed all of them that they could. Some of the cat-
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tle left behind by them were found standing up, but they were so badly mutilated that they had to be killed. The trail went north- west from Buffalo Meadows. Since losing sight of the three Indians with the hindmost cattle not an Indian had been seen, but about half an hour before sundown when they had chased them ten or twelve miles they saw them a mile and a half away on the other side of a big canyon. They had seventeen head of the strongest cattle and they were running them as fast as they could. Some say there were only five Indians with the cattle, others tell all the way from that number up to fifteen. Harper says they saw the tracks of only nine Indians at any time.
It was getting late and there was no hope of catching up with the Indians that night and they didn't know how far back they would have to go to find the men who were bringing up the loads that were left behind. Besides this they had very little food left and they concluded to give up the pursuit. It was long after dark when they reached camp. The men sent back had brought the outfit up to where the Indians intended to camp and they stayed there that night. They traveled about as far as usual that day. It snowed all day and during the night nearly a foot of snow fell. They built sagebrush fires and heated up the ground, and then spread down brush and made their beds on it. Between the warm ground and the snow on their beds they were so warm that they all took colds the next day. That night they stood guard for the first time since leaving home. Dow, who slept with Hall, stood guard the first part of the night, and when he came to bed he crawled in just as he was and with his boots covered with snow. Hall wasn't used to hunting Indians and he had undressed when he went to bed. The snow felt pretty cold to him and he com- plained to Dow about coming to bed with ten pounds of snow on his boots. When Dow found that the other man had taken off his clothes he asked him what he would do without any clothes or boots on if the Indians attacked them suddenly in the night and he had to get out of bed and run or fight. Probably that ended the conversation. The next morning Long, Dow, and Tunison (the latter says there were ten of them) went across to Deep Hole to turn back the pack train. The others went back to Smoke creek, picking up the cattle as they went along, and camped about two
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miles above the station, being too tired to go any further. It snowed nearly all that day and night. The next day they moved down to the station and waited for the pack train to join them.
The Spaniard and the man who worked for Dr. Slater had a fight that day. There had been some trouble between them before that and some little thing brought on a row. The Spaniard had no scabbard for his knife and he had made one by cutting slits, one above the other, in a piece of rawhide. During the fight he tried to draw his knife, but the rawhide had dried and shrunk down on it and he could not get it out and probably that saved the other man's life.
That night the pack train and the mounted men came in and also a party of thirty or forty men under the command of Jack Byrd. They intended to follow the trail, but after talking with the men who went back the third day they concluded to follow the road. The next day, April 1st, they all went to the valley excepting a few men who stayed to drive in the cattle. Byrd and his party went on toward home. Some of the Honey Lakers stayed that night at the Lathrop and Bradley ranch, some at Emerson's, and some went on home. It was no trouble for men like Dow and Tunison to go on to Toadtown after having walked in from Smoke creek that day.
The Indians had decidedly the best of this affair. Probably the whites would have killed the three Indians they found on the ridge if Taylor had not yelled when he saw them. After having crawled up that ridge they must have been greatly disappointed at the way matters turned out, and without any doubt he was chaffed and "cussed" unmercifully by the other men. For a long time after that "Sic 'em, Bob" was a common expression in Honey Lake. As it was, all that the white men had to show for their trouble and suffering was forty-four or forty-five head of cattle which they recovered, and four or five of them died on the road home. Long claimed that he was out 220 head-lost in this raid by the Indians and before this-and others who had cattle running in this vicinity lost a good many, too. After they got back from this trip Long's herders found that the Indians had camped for a week at the head of the canyon above the Lath- rop and Bradley ranch waiting for the cattle to be gathered up.
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Two INDIANS KILLED AT THE LATHROP AND BRADLEY RANCH
From the narratives of A. L. Harper and William W. Asbury and A. L. Tunison's Diary.
The Honey Lakers got back to the Lathrop ranch, for that is what it was called, on Tuesday, April 1st. During the afternoon of the Sunday before this two Indians were seen coming toward the house on that ranch. In the house at that time, as nearly as can be ascertained, were Lathrop and his Wife, Samuel Marriott, a lame man named Hobbs, and a Chinaman. They thought that the Indians were spies and they planned to get them into the house and question them and then tie them and take them out and kill them. The Indians came into the house and put down their guns when told to do so, but when questioned would only say that there were twelve more of them at the Hot springs. Before long the white men started in to tie them. In the scuffle that followed Hobbs was left alone with the larger Indian while the rest of them were wrestling with the other one. The Indian tried to draw his knife and Hobbs called for help. Lathrop ran to his aid, caught up an old Minnie rifle that belonged to the Indian, and told Hobbs to let go so he could shoot him. But Hobbs was like the man who had the tiger by the tail, he couldn't let go. The Indian was big and strong and he kept his adversary between himself and Lathrop. Once while this was going on Mrs. Lathrop, who had been put into the back room to keep her out of danger, looked through the door and told her husband not to shoot Hobbs. Finally the white man succeeded in pushing the Indian away from him and Lathrop shot him, the bullet going through his body and the side of the house, too. Lathrop then helped tie the other Indian and when this was done he looked around for the one that had been shot. He had gone out of the house and walked a couple of hundred yards north toward the emigrant road and sat down under a sagebrush. Lathrop went out there and when he got close to the Indian the latter's eyes turned green with rage and he cursed the white man and called him vile names. Lath- rop put his pistol to the Indian's head and killed him. He then returned to the house and they took the other Indian outside. The Chinaman wanted to kill him because he knew that the Indians had killed three Chinamen "a long time ago." Marriott shot him with a shotgun, but did not kill him dead and they let
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the Chinaman finish him. They took him out to the other Indian and buried both of them there. They then put the carcass of a steer on the grave, put some brush on it, and burned it. The next day some of them went to Susanville and took the ponies of the two Indians with them as they did not want to keep them on the ranch.
In the pouch of the Indian shot by Lathrop they found some short pieces cut from endgate rods. The Indians managed to get hold of a few guns, but it was hard for them to get any ammuni- tion and these pieces of iron were to be used for bullets.
FIGHT WITH THE INDIANS AT THE LATHROP RANCH
This story is a continuation of the previous one. It is said that a day or two after these Indians were killed two Piutes came to Lathrop's ranch and told him they had seen them killed and buried and that in a few days they were going to kill him and burn his house and kill all the whites in the valley. Whether this is true or not, Lathrop got frightened and sent to Susan- ville for help and Frank Drake, Fielding Long, and Robert Johnston went down there. B. E. Shumway was living there at the time. The afternoon of the 2nd of April the men who were bringing in the cattle recovered from the Indians reached the valley. Part of them stayed that night at the Lathrop ranch and the others went up to the Emerson place. James C. La Tour, William James, John Hyder, "Texas," - Slidell, - Osborn, and George (Dutch) Harris, Shasta county teamsters coming in from the Humboldt, stayed at Lathrop's that night. Lathrop, Bradley, and Tom Harvey were there and perhaps a man or two more. It is impossible to be exact about their number or their names.
Drake got up at daylight the next morning, and happening to look toward the northeast, saw a party of mounted men, Indians as he supposed, outlined against the sky as they came over the hill. He awoke the boys and told them that the Indians were coming and then got on his horse and rode up to the Emerson ranch and told them about it. The men there went to Lathrop's as fast as they could, but being on foot didn't get there until the trouble was over.
The men awakened by Drake arose and dressed, prepared their guns, and got out of sight. Just about this time the Indians,
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twelve in number, who had ridden very rapidly, reached the flat in front of the house and rode around as if looking for some- thing. Finally they stopped at the place where the Indians were buried and then two of them rode toward the house. One of them was "Pike," the young Indian Harvey had almost raised and who had saved the lives of Harvey and Weatherlow in 1860. Harvey told this to the other men and said he hated to see the boy shot and would go out and try to save his life. No one made any objection and he went out to meet the two Indians. Lathrop had met them as they came near the house and one of them asked him what had become of the Indians who came there a few days before that. He was told that they had gone away. The Indian said "You heap lie. Me stay out on the hill. See um come here, no see um go away." Lathrop made no reply to this, but asked them to get off their horses and eat some of the food he had brought out and to ask the other Indians to come there and eat, too. They motioned for the others to come up and then dis- mounted. The rest of the band rode up, got off their horses, put down their weapons, and began to eat. So far things had gone well for the Never Sweats and it looked as though they were going to get some Indians this time. While this was going on Harvey had got out there and told Pike to go with him to the house and get some coffee. When they got close to the door the white men came around the corner of the house and fired on the Indians. Pike started to run and Shumway shot him in the back with a handful of five-shooter bullets; but he kept on running until he got to the corral, and he stayed there until the Indians came to him with the horses. As soon as the whites fired they rushed toward the Indians who all ran away, the most of them taking their guns, but only one getting his horse. They ran out as far as the grave of the Indians, the white men following and shooting at them with their pistols. The Indian with the horse, though the whites were shooting at him all the time, circled around behind them and drove the ponies out to the other Indians and they mounted and rode away. One of them was slow in get- ting on his horse, and Long, Johnston, Harris, and Slidell ran toward him. He raised his gun and fired at them. Those in front had swung out to one side and Harris caught the bullet. Slidell was the only one who had brought his gun along and he snapped it at the Indian, but it failed to go off. It was a rifle with the
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hammer on the under side, the cap had dropped off, and he had no more with him. The Indian kept trying to mount his horse by getting on a sagebrush, but every time he tried it the bush mashed down. Slidell kept following him up and snapping his gun at him until he left his pony and ran away. The whole thing was over in almost no time. The Indians went out to the corral and got Pike and rode off to the east where they gathered up some horses that were running there. Drake rode out toward them and they invited him to come on if he wanted to.
Thus ended what looked like a good chance for the Honey Lakers to get revenge upon the Indians. It seems to have been a very badly managed affair. Harris was mortally wounded and died on the sixth of April. The Indians left four guns and one pony. From their actions it was supposed that seven Indians were wounded and that they died later on, but it was also reported that Pike got well and no one ever knew for certain that any of the others died.
John F. Hulsman says that early this spring Winnemucca and eight or ten warriors came to the Ward and Titherington ranch (the Lassen ranch south of Susanville). Hulsman gave them something to eat and let the chief sleep in his bed. Winnemucca said they could kill no game with their bows and arrows and they must have something to eat. He said that if the white men would give him some ammunition, he would see that it was put to a good use. The Indians would kill game with it and would not have to kill the white men's cattle. Ward and Titherington hitched up and went to town and with the help of Roop and some others got a lot of blankets and ammunition which they brought out and gave to the Indians. They at once packed this on their ponies and went away, the chief saying that they would do no mischief and would not bother anybody.
On the 5th of April a man out hunting stock was chased by three Indians. He was within a hundred yards of them when he first saw them, but he had a good horse and soon was out of their reach.
.
This spring a few soldiers were stationed at Smoke creek, probably under the command of Lieutenant Wells. They stayed there until the following spring and then a much larger force was sent to that place.
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HALL'S TRIP TO THE HUMBOLDT
April 8th William H. Hall and fifty-four others left Lath- rop's ranch for the Humboldt mines, there being a great mining excitement in that section. On the third day out they fell in with Thomas Bare, who traveled along with them, and the next day they reached the station at Deep Hole. Here a sad spectacle met their view. The Indians had returned and dug up the body of Dave -, whom they had killed about a month previous to that time, and pieces of it were scattered around. This sight drove Bare almost crazy and he swore that henceforth he would kill every Indian he could, no matter where he was.
It rained the following night and they could not cross the desert on account of the sticky mud, so Hall and James Bailey, the Father of William R. Bailey of Janesville, this county, went out hunting for mountain sheep. They could not find any and at eleven o'clock they started for the station. As they were going along about half a mile from camp Bailey said "You go over the hill and I will go around it, and we may strike something here." When Hall reached the summit of the hill he saw a pile of rocks seventy-five yards ahead of him and there was an Indian's head sticking up above it. The Indian stood up and they both took aim and fired at the same time. The bullet from the Indian's gun struck the ground about three feet behind Hall, but the latter's gun failed to go off. He saw another Indian holding a couple of horses on the side hill below him and he turned and ran down the hill toward the station. He says that he was not afraid himself, but he wanted to get help so they would not kill Mr. Bailey. He must have been in earnest about "getting there," for it is said that he stepped twelve or fifteen feet at a time while he was going down the hill. When he reached camp a dozen men got on their horses and went around the hill to Mr. Bailey and then chased the Indians. But they had too much of a start and the white men never got anywhere near them.
When they resumed their journey Bare, who was also going to the Humboldt, went along with the crowd. He was a little ahead of the rest of the party when they got to Antelope Springs, and captured an Indian whom he found trying to get into the house there. He told the others that he was going to take his cap- tive to the Humboldt river, but instead of going along the road he took him up a trail behind a ledge of rocks. He was punching
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him with his cocked gun to make him go and the Indian turned around and caught hold of the muzzle of it and tried to take it away from him. In the scuffle he got the muzzle of the gun against his body and Bare pulled the trigger and killed him dead. When the party reached the Humboldt river everybody, Indians and all, seemed to know about the affair, and Hall says the Indians in that section kept up a war for three years on account of it.
THE BURNING OF THE MUD FLAT STATION Told by A. L. Harper
Along in December, 1861, Samuel Marriott started for the Humboldt with four or five ox teams loaded with freight. On the evening of their arrival at Rush creek they unyoked their cattle and drove them down on the flat below to feed. When they got back to the wagons they found some Indians plundering them, but they ran away as soon as they saw the teamsters com- ing. The next morning it was raining and snowing by spells and this weather continued for three or four days. When the storm was over the cattle were scattered and all of them could not be found, but Marriott used what he had, and by taking part of a load at a time, managed to get his freight back to the Mud Springs Station and store it in one of the buildings there.
Hobbs, Robert Ross, and two men coming in from the Hum- boldt stayed there that winter. About the middle of March Hobbs came out to Honey Lake valley. Early one morning a few days after he had gone Ross heard the dog bark and a shot fired. An Indian had crawled up behind a bunch of willows until he was only fifty or sixty yards from the house. The ยท dog discovered him, and not liking Indians, made an attack on him and the Indian had to shoot him in self defense. The bullet struck the dog back of the head and went the whole length of his body just under the skin. Ross thought that the Indians might be around and he jumped out of bed, grabbed his gun, and went out without putting on his clothes, for he wanted to get there before the Indian had time to reload his gun. The dog was still fighting the Indian and Ross got a shot at him. He ran a little ways and then dropped his bow and arrows and a rabbit skin cloak. He succeeded in going a short distance further and there was met by two other Indians who helped him
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