Exploring Fort Klamath in Southern Oregon – Its History, Civil War Ties, and Connection to Gen. Edward R.S. Canby’s Death (Part I)

On a recent road trip through Oregon and Washington, I had the opportunity to visit both Fort Vancouver and Fort Klamath. The first lies on the northern side of the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington; the second, about 275 miles to the southwest in Klamath County, Oregon.While each fort initially served primarily to protect American settlers from Indian attacks, they also have ties to the Civil War in both the years leading up to it and afterward, and my visits prompted me to look further into their histories.

In my last post, I described Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, which was originally founded in 1825 by the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company to serve as a fur trapping headquarters. During both the Civil War and the Indians wars, it served as a major headquarters and supply depot. It also served as something of a training ground for future Civil War generals – including Ulysses S. Grant, Philip H. Sheridan, George B. McClellan, and George Pickett. You can read my previous post for more details on Fort Vancouver and Grant’s time at the fort between 1853-54.

When President Abraham Lincoln put out the call in May 1861 for army recruits after the firing on Fort Sumter, many soldiers left Fort Vancouver behind for action in the East. In order to replace these departing soldiers – as well as to later recruit soldiers for the newly-established Fort Klamath – posters advertised for volunteers to join the 1st Oregon Cavalry. The Fort Klamath Museum features one of these recruitment posters, which laid out all the requirements and rewards for service. 

Established in 1863, Fort Klamath also served as a supply depot during the Civil War, but its primary purpose was to protect emigrants passing through the region. That need had increased as more emigrants – miners, merchants, settlers, gamblers, adventurers, and others – began following a southern route to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. This new route took them through indigenous territory among tribes that had seen few white emigrants before. Soon, conflicts arose with Native groups who feared losing their land to these encroaching arrivals. 

Most emigrants who set out for Oregon initially followed the Oregon Trail that ended in Oregon City, but this involved a perilous journey down the Columbia River rapids. In 1846, Jesse Applegate – who had lost two of his sons to those rapids in 1843 – joined his brother Lindsay and thirteen others in looking for a new, safer route into the Willamette Valley.

The trail, however, involved crossing California’s rugged northeastern volcanic Modoc Plateau – and the Modoc who lived in the area were not happy to see these new settlers passing through their land. Applegate and his party were the first white men to enter what is now Lava Beds National Monument – and it was along this stretch of the Applegate Trail (also known as the Southern Emigrant Trail) that many of the events in the later Modoc War took place.

It was during a peace negotiation attempting to put an end to the Modoc War that Civil War Gen. Edward Richard Sprigg Canby was killed by the Modoc leader Kintpuash, also known as Keintpoos and Captain Jack, on April 11, 1873. Captain Jack initially fled the scene, but surrendered two months later. He was put on trial, executed, and buried at Fort Klamath in 1873 along with three other Modoc warriors – but more on that story in Part II of this post.

Almost as soon as emigrants began using the new Applegate Trail in 1843, Modoc Indians began harassing their passage. The Modoc numbered about 600 warriors and inhabited the northern California/southern Oregon region around Lower Klamath Lake, Tule Lake, and Lost River. Conflicts heated up significantly in 1852, when Modoc Indians massacred a group of emigrants at a place later named Bloody Point.

As described in NPS History’s Nature Notes, “In September the Modocs destroyed an emigrant train at Bloody Point on the east shore of Tule Lake. Of the 65 persons in the train only three escaped immediate death: two young girls, taken prisoners and killed several years later by jealous Modoc women, and one man who made his way to Yreka, California. Hearing the news of the massacre, Yreka settlers organized a party, under the leadership of Jim Crosby, to go to the scene of the massacre to bury the dead and avenge their death. Crosby’s party had one skirmish with a band of Modocs.” [2]

After continued “depredations and massacres of emigrants by the Modoc Indians,” Yreka settlers again prepared to confront the Modoc, this time at Lost River. There, led by Ben Wright, they attacked and killed approximately 80 Indians, scalping and mutilating many of their bodies. While their attack “broke the power of the tribe,” it also “kindled the Modoc hatred for the white people, a hatred which flamed up many times in the years following.” [3] One of those killed, according to some reports, was Captain Jack’s father. One of the few to escape was Schonchin John – one of the other three Modoc warriors later executed with Captain Jack. [4]

In response to the ongoing tensions and attacks, army officials sent Colonel C. S. Drew of the 1st Oregon Cavalry in 1862 to scout a location for a new Army post to help protect emigrants along the trail and new settlers in the west. Drew chose a site “42 miles north of present-day Klamath Falls for its abundant water, timber, pastureland, and beauty,” and in the fall of 1863, “Troop C, First Oregon Cavalry, led by Captain William Kelley, moved into the area … and began building the fort. The troops then constructed a sawmill and, ultimately, close to 50 buildings and structures.” [5]

Both Fort Vancouver and Fort Klamath struggled in finding and keeping recruits, for they had to compete with the lure of the gold fields in California and eastern Oregon. Those serving at the forts often found themselves faced with other challenges: “boredom, bad food, and removal from the heart of wartime conflict,” with one Fort Vancouver volunteer soldier lamenting, “Oh this Garrison Life is a wretched way to serve our Lord and Country.” [7]

Those at Fort Klamath faced other issues. Lying between Crater Lake National Park and Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, winters at Fort Klamath can be quite severe, with snow likely from October to May. This meant that “mounds of firewood had to be stored up to heat buildings and cook food during winter, [and] once mountain passes were covered in snow, the fort had no hope of getting fresh supplies until the summer.” [8] 

As the Civil War raged further east, soldiers stationed at Fort Klamath found themselves engaged in the Snake War against the Northern Paiutes, who inhabited much of the area east of the fort. According to a Fort Klamath Museum display, “The war was fought by the soldiers and settlers as a war of extermination, and was openly declared to be so in all concerned levels of American government and in the press. After four years of brutal warfare, the conflict ended in 1868 … two-thirds or more of the entire tribe were killed or perished of starvation.” [9]

As Julia Gilliss, the wife of one Army officer, stated at the time: “This persecution of the Indians goes against the grain with me. I think it is a wretched unholy warfare; the poor creatures are hunted down like wild beasts and shot down in cold blood. The same ball went through a mother and her baby at her breast. One little creature just the size of my baby was shot because he would some day grow up. Ugh! It makes me sick… I do not believe such an enterprise will ever be blessed and I think the Indian depredations are a just retribution on their persecutors.” [10]

Though tensions persisted with both the Paiutes and Modoc, in 1864 the United States signed a treaty with representatives of the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Paiute Indians, merging the tribes together as the Klamath Tribe and establishing the Klamath Reservation. As part of the treaty, the Modoc Indians agreed to give up their lands in the Lost River, Tule Lake, and Lower Klamath Lake regions and move to the reservation in the Upper Klamath Valley. 

However, while Captain Jack initially agreed to move to the reservation, in April 1870 he and approximately 160 of his Indian followers left the reservation to return to their homeland. Unhappy with conditions on the Klamath reservation, Captain Jack “repeatedly asked the government to create a separate reservation for his people on a small portion of their traditional homelands in Northern California … [amounting] to roughly six square miles of lava flows on otherwise unusable land.” [11] The government, however, refused. Captain Jack chose to fight for his homeland.

Endnotes:

1.  “California National Historic Trail (U.S.” National Park Service, 18 July 2023, https://www.nps.gov/cali/index.htm. Accessed 1 September 2024.
2. Fisher, Don C., and John E. Doerr. “Crater Lake National Park: Nature Notes (1937).” NPS History, https://npshistory.com/nature_notes/crla/vol10-1c.htm. Accessed 25 August 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Foster, Doug. “Heroes or Villains? The 1873 Modoc War Crimes Trial.” Trumpeter, Issue 134, Klamath County Historical Society, Fall 2023, https://klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org/images/Trumpeters/2023FallTrumpeter.pdf.
5. Donnelly, Robert. “Fort Klamath.” Oregon History Project, https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/fort-klamath/. Accessed 25 August 2024.
6. “KLAMATH ECHOES.” Klamath County Historical Society, https://www.klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org/images/Echoes/Klamath-Echoes-No.-6—Fort-Klamath.pdf. Accessed 25 August 2024.
7. “The Civil War Era at Fort Vancouver.” National Park Service, 22 December 2017, https://www.nps.gov/articles/civilwarfortvancouver.htm. Accessed 25 August 2024.
8. “KLAMATH ECHOES.” Klamath County Historical Society, https://www.klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org/images/Echoes/Klamath-Echoes-No.-6—Fort-Klamath.pdf. Accessed 25 August 2024.
9. “The Snake War.” Exhibit at Fort Klamath Museum, Klamath County, Oregon, 5 July 2024. 
10. Ibid.
11. Horton, Kami. “150 years ago, the US military executed Modoc war leaders in Fort Klamath, Oregon.” OPB, 3 Oct 2023, https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/03/modoc-war-captain-jack-execution-fort-klamath-oregon/. Accessed 29 Aug 2024.
12. Weiser, Kathy. “Kintpuash, aka: Captain Jack – Modoc Warrior – Legends of America.” Legends of America, https://www.legendsofamerica.com/kintpuash-captain-jack/. Accessed 1 September 2024.