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

In Part I of this post, I shared a bit about the history of Fort Klamath, including why it was established in 1863 and the role its soldiers played in helping to protect emigrants traveling along the Applegate Trail to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. That protection was needed due to tensions that arose with indigenous tribes in the area, including the Paiute, Klamath, and Modoc Indians. 

It was during the Modoc Wars of the 1870s that the fort played an especially important role as it was in a key position to supply soldiers and hold Modoc prisoners. The four Modoc Indians mentioned in the photo caption above were held and tried at the fort for the murder of Gen. Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, who had served as a Union general during the Civil War, and Rev. Eleazor Thomas. Both were killed during a peace negotiation on April 11, 1873. Two others were wounded.

Canby was the only U.S. Army general to be killed during the western Indian Wars. At the time, he was serving as the commander of the Department of the Columbia, which he had been doing since August 1870. The Department of the Columbia included the state of Oregon and the territories of Washington, Idaho, and Alaska.

At the start of the Civil War, Canby had been appointed commander of the Department of New Mexico. There, by defeating Confederate forces at the battle of Glorieta Pass on March 28, 1862, he had successfully prevented Confederate forces from occupying the New Mexico Territory. Following that victory, he was promoted to brigadier general and sent east. He served as commanding general of New York City following the draft riots in July 1863; then, the following year, he was promoted to major general and assigned command of the Military Division of Western Mississippi, where he helped oversee the capture of Mobile, Alabama, in April 1863. In early May, he accepted the surrenders of Confederate Lt. Gen Richard Taylor, Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, and Commodore Ebenezer Farrand and their men.

I found this especially interesting because Canby actually comes up in my recently published book, A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri. After accepting these surrenders in May, he was ordered by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to prepare a Federal expedition to confront the last major Confederate army still in the field: Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi army. 

As I explain in A State Divided, Benjamin Petree writes in one of his letters about how his “hopes for an imminent discharge had been improved by the surrender of Gen. Kirby Smith, the last Confederate general with a large army, to Union Gen. Edward Canby in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 26. Smith had served as commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, which included Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, western Louisiana, Arizona Territory, and the Indian Territory.” [1]

After the war, Canby served as commander of various military departments before landing in the Department of the Columbia. I hadn’t known before that Canby had such a tragic end. His and Thomas’s deaths resulted in six Modoc men being tried for murder and four found guilty – Captain Jack, John Schonchin, Boston Charley, and Black Jim. They were the only Native Americans tried and executed for war crimes. [2]

During my husband’s and my visit to Fort Klamath in July, one of the first sights that stood out to us was four graves lined up near the fence, standing between us and the scenic Cascade Range in the distance. We soon learned these were the graves of these four Native American men. A very informative, costumed docent greeted us and gave us a quick overview of the graves, the fort, and the museum. He also encouraged us to walk around and read the various interpretive panels placed there by the Klamath County Rotary Club Centennial Project, which we did.

As explained on this first panel: “The museum grounds contain a small portion of Fort Klamath, a frontier military post that operated from 1863 to 1889. The number of troops stationed or garrisoned here varied, from several dozen to several hundred. The museum building before you, constructed in 2002, was designed as a replica of the original Fort Klamath guardhouse that stood in this location. The guardhouse was one of dozens of buildings at the fort. None of the original buildings remain on the site today. The guardhouse routinely held U.S soldiers who were being disciplined, as well as other individuals ordered to be incarcerated from time to time. The most notable prisoners to be kept in the Fort Klamath guardhouse were 13 Modoc Indian warriors who were leaders of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government. Four of the Indians were executed and buried at this fort in 1873. Their graves remain marked to this day on the museum grounds.” [3] 

The road to their execution began years earlier. 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 (even though they had previously been enemies) 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. While Captain Jack initially agreed to move to the reservation, “he later repudiated it when he found conditions on the reservation intolerable and the government unwilling to address the Modocs’ grievances.” [4]

In April 1870, Captain Jack left the reservation with approximately 160 of his followers and led them back to their homelands along the Lost River in northern California. There they lived peacefully for a time until other white settlers who wanted the land pushed for their removal. This resulted in the army moving in to force them back onto the reservation. 

As explained on the “Modoc Graves” panel at Fort Klamath: “At one point [Captain Jack] declared he would rather be killed quickly by a bullet than starve to death on the reservation. A small detachment of soldiers from Fort Klamath set out in November 1872 in an attempt to apprehend Captain Jack and return him to the reservation. The army effort, poorly planned and executed, resulted in the first battle of the Modoc War near the present-day town of Merrill. When the battle resulted in a standoff, the soldiers retreated here to Fort Klamath, while Captain Jack took up refuge in the Lava Beds. About 55 Modoc warriors gathered in the Lava Beds, along with their families. Army troops gradually closed in on the Modocs. An effort to dislodge the Indians on Jan. 17, 1873, resulted in a humiliating defeat for the Army, with a dozen soldiers killed and more wounded. The Modocs suffered no losses. A siege continued for nearly three months.” [6]

Initially, news reports of Captain Jack and his small band of Modoc warriors holding off up to 1,000 U.S. soldiers for five months in a fight to keep their homeland won the sympathies of many American people. However, those sympathies quickly dissipated after Captain Jack killed Canby, supposedly under a flag of truce. After that, Captain Jack and his warriors fled, but with the army in hot pursuit and many of the Modocs starving, a large number surrendered on May 22, 1873. After six weeks of evading capture, Captain Jack finally surrendered on June 1 – the last of the Modoc warriors to do so. He and five other warriors were chained together and held in the Fort Klamath Guardhouse until their trial.

As explained on the same panel mentioned above: “[In July] Captain Jack and five other Modocs were tried in a military tribunal here at Fort Klamath. They were not provided with legal representation during the trial. The jury included men who had fought against the Modocs during the war. All were found guilty in the murder of Canby and Thomas, and sentenced to death. Two Modocs had their sentences commuted. Captain Jack, Schonchin John (sometimes called Schonchiss), Black Jim and Boston Charley were led to gallows a few hundred yards to the southwest of this panel, and hanged on Oct. 3, 1873.” [7]

Every Modoc who had been involved in the war – forty-five men, forty-nine women, and sixty-two children – was forcibly marched to Fort Klamath after Captain Jack’s surrender, where they were confined to a small stockade. All were forced to watch the executions. They were then transported to exile in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory. They were not allowed to return to Oregon and the Klamath Reservation until 1909. [8] 

If you noticed three paragraphs earlier, I stated these murders “supposedly” happened under a flag of truce. “Supposedly,” because testimony at the Modoc warriors’ trial, as well as later books documenting the incident, called some of Canby’s actions into question: “The most dramatic witness to appear at the Modoc war crimes trial was Alfred Meacham, the former Oregon Indian commissioner and head of the Peace Commission. The Modoc defendants were shocked to see Meacham enter the courtroom, since they had left him for dead with the bodies of Canby and Thomas. Meachum testified that he had been shot several times and knocked unconscious. At the trial, his right hand was still useless, paralyzed by a pistol shot through the wrist, and his forehead was scarred by a long knife wound where a Modoc had tried to scalp him with a pocketknife, a difficult task as Meacham was bald. Since the Modocs had disfigured him, one would expect, if anything, that he would be biased against them. In fact, Meacham later offered damaging evidence against Canby. According to Meacham, Canby was the first to violate the armistice. Unfortunately, this was not revealed at the trial and was not publicized until nearly three years after the trial when Meacham wrote two lengthy books about the Modoc War.” [9]

Whether you see Captain Jack as a hero, a savage, a victim, or a war criminal very much depends on your perspective and the historical records you read. However, I found this description quite compelling: “Captain Jack and his band were fighting for their preservation as a people in a David-and-Goliath war. Jack’s warriors were outnumbered on the battlefield more than twenty to one. And this imbalance doesn’t begin to reflect just how lopsided this war was. In 1870, The US population numbered nearly 40 million, while the entire Modoc tribe numbered less than 4,000; the United States encompassed nearly forty million square miles, while Captain Jack’s band fought for the rights to a six square-mile reservation on their ancestral homeland; and the US army numbered more than 37,000 active-duty soldiers, while Jack’s band had about 50 warriors.” [10]

Fort Klamath closed in 1889, with the last soldiers leaving in 1890. Most of the abandoned buildings fell into ruin, so they were dismantled and the land sold to the state. By 1905, only “a few of the old buildings still remain[ed], uncared for and unoccupied, save by an occasional company of Indians from the reservation.” [11]

But during its heyday, “Fort Klamath was the most beautiful frontier post that it was ever permitted a soldier to occupy. Historic interest, exquisite scenery and streams of crystal purity cast a charm over Fort Klamath which haunts a visitor to its solitude for many days after his departure. Though the soldier has left it in solitude, the eye quickens none the less at its charm.” [12]

The Fort Klamath site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Today, the eight-acre reconstructed historic site – which lies just sixteen miles south of the Southern Entrance to Crater Lake National Park – is open to visitors Memorial Day through September. The fort holds historical reenactments during its Heritage Days, Living History Days, and various Civil War-related events. And, if you travel just 80 miles further south, you can also visit Lava Beds National Monument and tour Captain Jack’s Stronghold, as well as see “Canby’s Cross,” a monument commemorating Gen. Edward R.S. Canby and marking the place where he was killed. Canby is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Endnotes:

1. McQuade, Tonya. A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Menjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri, 1862-1865. McQuade, 2024.
2. “Edward R.S. Canby (U.S.” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/people/edward-r-s-canby.htm. Accessed 1 September 2024.
3. “Station 1: Fort Klamath Guardhouse.” Klamath County Museum Interpretive Panel, Fort Klamath, Oregon, 5 July 2024. Photo by Tonya McQuade.
4. Cothran, Boyd. “Kintpuash (Captain Jack) (c. 1837-1873).” The Oregon Encyclopedia, 18 March 2024, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/kintpuash_captain_jack/. Accessed 1 September 2024.
5. 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.
6. “Station 3: Modoc Graves – Fort Klamath Interpretive Trail.” Klamath County Museum Interpretive Panel, Fort Klamath, Oregon, 5 July 2024. Photo by Tonya McQuade.
7. Ibid.
8. Donnelly, Robert. “Fort Klamath.” Oregon History Project, https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/fort-klamath/. Accessed 25 August 2024.
9. 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.
10. Ibid.
11. “KLAMATH ECHOES.” Klamath County Historical Society, https://www.klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org/images/Echoes/Klamath-Echoes-No.-6—Fort-Klamath.pdf. Accessed 25 August 2024.
12. Ibid.