The Wars after the War: Canby and Davis vs. Captain Jack and Hooker Jim
By Gould Hagler · Originally published September 2017 · pp. 28–29
The Wars after the War: Canby and Davis vs. Captain Jack and Hooker Jim The first in a series on Union officers who served in the Indian wars By Gould Hagler You people can shoot any Indians any time you want whether we are in war or in peace. I charge the white people with wholesale murder. – Captain Jack, Chief of the Modocs When the Civil War ended in the spring of 1865, the U.S. Army demobilized rapidly. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers went home and re-entered their peacetime occupations. Not so for many regular army officers. These professionals, now reduced to their permanent ranks, stayed on. Many went west to fight in the wars that followed the Civil War, wars of an entirely different character, the wars against the Indian tribes. In this article we take a look at the Modoc War of 1872–1873 and the role played in that conflict by Edward Canby, Jefferson C. Davis, and the lesser known Alvan Gillem.
Edward Canby. (Library of Congress) Edward Canby graduated from West Point in 1835. He served in the Second Seminole and the Mexican Wars and was engaged in fighting Indians in New Mexico when the Civil War began. He commanded the Department of New Mexico, overseeing the forces which defeated the Confederates at the Battle of La Glorieta Pass, which ended Confederate designs on New Mexico, and drove them back into Texas. Canby held a desk job in Washington, and then had more exciting duty commanding the forces arrayed against the July 1863 New York draft rioters. In 1864 he moved west again when he was put in charge of the Military Division of West Mississippi. He captured Mobile on April 12, 1865, and received the surrender of the last Confederate army in the field on May 26. His next duties included commands in the Carolinas and Texas during Reconstruction. Canby logged a lot of miles during his busy career, one marked by quiet competence and lack of controversy, capped with promotion to the permanent rank of brigadier general. General Canby’s final assignment in Oregon was meant to be a peaceful prelude to retirement; it was not. Jefferson C. Davis enlisted to fight in the Mexican War and won a commission in the artillery. Lieutenant Davis was at Fort Sumter at the receiving end of the war’s opening shots. He commanded troops in Western Theater campaigns, including the Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea. In stark contrast to Canby’s service, Davis’s career was marked with serious controversy. Davis is well-known for gunning down a superior officer, General William Nelson, with whom he feuded during the Confederates’ 1862 invasion of Kentucky. He got away with it. He is also famous for the affair at Ebenezer Creek during Sherman’s march through Georgia. Burdened by thousands of slaves following his corps, Davis rid himself of the impediment by hastily taking up a pontoon bridge on the swollen creek, leaving thousands of desperate black men, women, and children on the other side. Many drowned or were slain by Wheeler’s cavalry; many others were returned to slavery. Davis got away with this as well. He finished the war as a brevet major general, then reverted to his permanent rank of colonel.
Alvan Gillem was a Tennessean in the West Point class of 1851. He remained with the old army and fought in the Western Theater, then held positions in Tennessee’s Unionist state government during the war and in the Reconstruction government afterwards. Before going to Oregon he served in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. He achieved the ranks of brevet brigadier in the Regulars and major general of volunteers. The Modocs who would encounter Canby, Davis, and Gillem were a small tribe in Oregon near the California border. As pioneers trekked through their territory and later began to settle there, the Modocs suffered with the coming of the white man, as did all Indian tribes. Some 400 people—half the tribe—died of smallpox in the 1840s. Following an 1852 Modoc raid on a wagon train, settlers retaliated and shocked the tribe into seeking an accommodation with the settlers. It was an uneasy peace, but intermarriage, other (less formal) relationships, and the Indians’ adoption of some white man’s ways made for a modus vivendi. However, like Canby’s quiet path the retirement, a lasting peace was not to be. The Modocs were moved to a reservation with neighboring tribes in 1864. Dissatisfied with the arrangement, they returned to their old home in 1870. Tensions with their white neighbors grew. Canby declined a request to force the Modocs to return to the reservation, believing it more prudent to wait for the Interior Department to find a new home for the tribe. The new superintendent of Indian affairs was less prudent and ordered the commander of Fort Klamath to do the job. Fighting erupted when soldiers arrived at one Indians camp; soldiers were wounded, and one Modoc was killed. Under their chief, Captain
Kintpuash, also known as Captain Jack. Portrait of Kintpuash created shortly before his execution in 1873.
(Wikipedia)
Jack, this group retreated to a natural fortress, the Lava Beds, later known as Captain Jack’s Stronghold. A group of settlers attacked another Modoc camp. After driving off the settlers, these Modocs also retreated to the Lava Beds. Under a leader known as Hooker Jim, the Indians raided settlements along the way and killed several whites.
Hooker Jim (1851–1879).
(Wikipedia) Gillem’s Jan. 1873 attack on the stronghold failed miserably. The Lava Beds would be hard to penetrate even for troops welltrained and competently led. The U.S. troops were neither. The Modocs were split into two factions. Hooker Jim, who did the indiscriminate killing during the retreat to the Lava Beds, led the war party. The peace party, led by Captain Jack, favored negotiating a surrender. Canby arrived on the scene and took over command from Gillem. He strengthened the besieging U.S. force and, as instructed by Washington, sought a peaceful solution. Buoyed by their initial victory, and believing in the magical power of their shaman, the militants prevailed in the Modocs’ intra-tribal dispute. The negotiations led nowhere. A fourhour parley on April 2 did nothing to break the stalemate. Inside the fortress, the militants threatened to kill anyone who tried to surrender. Canby ignored signs that the militant faction had taken over and continued his efforts to convince the Modocs to give up. Against the advice of those who believed that talk was futile—and dangerous—the general agreed to another meeting on April 11. Toby Riddle, a Modoc woman married to a white settler, had been warned by a cousin that Jack was being pressured to kill Canby at the next parley. She and her husband pleaded with Canby, but to no avail.
When Canby and the other peace commissioners arrived at the meeting, they were faced with six belligerent Modocs armed with pistols. Canby attempted for the last time to convince the Indians to surrender. Jack insisted that the soldiers be withdrawn; Canby of course refused. Suddenly more armed Modocs rushed from their hiding places. Jack pulled out his revolver, fired and wounded Canby. Another Modoc finished him off with a rifle. A second negotiator was killed and a third seriously wounded. Henceforth there would be no talk and no chance of peace. The murders destroyed whatever goodwill and sympathy there was for the Modocs. The war against them would be relentless. Gillem resumed the assault on Captain Jack’s Stronghold. He closed in and bombarded the fortress with mortars. For the first time since the siege began Modocs fell in battle. The U.S. Army was getting serious and the shaman’s medicine was shown to be ineffective. Captain Jack retreated by a secret path with those capable of fighting and left the others behind. Jefferson C. Davis, who replaced the fallen Canby as commander of the Department of the Columbia, relieved Gillem and assumed personal command. With 70 scouts recruited from another tribe, the army pursued the Modocs. With Davis there would be no half measures or hesitation. The Modocs were defeated in a battle on May 10. They split up and were hunted down by cavalry patrols.
Jefferson C. Davis. (Library of Congress) One aspect of the Indian wars that we sometimes overlook is the intertribal and intra-tribal conflicts which weakened the Indians and aided the U.S. As they were chased by Davis’s men, the Modocs turned on each other. Hooker Jim, probably the one Modoc most responsible for the trouble and the one least deserving of mercy, cut a deal with Davis. In return for amnesty, he helped the army find and capture Captain Jack. According to Peter Cozzens, Davis considered Hooker Jim to be a cutthroat who deserved nothing but hanging; however, Davis seized this opportunity not just to capture the chief but to further divide and demoralize the weakened tribe. Captain Jack was captured on June 1. Had the decision been left to Davis, the execution of Jack and other leaders would have been carried out swiftly and without the niceties of a trial, but Washington wanted a show of justice. Jack and two others were tried by a military commission on July 1 and swiftly convicted of murder. They were hanged on October 3. The survivors of the war were packed off to a tiny plot of land in the Indian Territory. Others, who had not engaged in the war, remained in Oregon. Today the Modoc tribe numbers approximately 800, three-quarters in Oregon and the rest in Oklahoma. Hooker Jim was among those sent to the Indian Territory. He died in 1879. Gillem died four years before Hooker Jim. His son, grandson, and great grandson—all sharing his name—were all high ranking officers in the United States armed forces. Davis, who fought against Confederates and Indians, murdered a fellow officer, and callously abandoned runaway slaves counting on his protection, died in the same year as Hooker Jim—killed by one enemy against whom he could not prevail—pneumonia. Sources: Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, 2016; Patricia L. Faust, Editor, Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 1991; “Betrayal at Ebenezer Creek,” http://www.historynet. com/betrayal-at-ebenezer-creek. htm. Various online sources were consulted for information on the three U.S. officers, the Modoc leaders, and the Modoc tribe. Gould Hagler is the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation (Mercer University Press, 2014), available from Mercer University Press, retail outlets, online sellers, and directly from the author (gould.hagler@gmail. com). His new book on Alabama’s Confederate monuments is to be published by Indiana University Press.