Hell with the Fire Out: A History of the Modoc War

The Modoc War, pivotal in American history, pitted the peace policies of President Ulysses S. Grant and Quaker activist Lucretia Mott against William Tecumseh Sherman - the destroyer of Georgia - and his outspoken desire for the Modocs' "utter extermination." When it ended in 1873, with the execution of the tribal leaders and the relocation of the Modoc tribe to Oklahoma, the federal goverment's Peace Commission was in tatters. The way was paved toward the more famous, but no bloodier, battle at Little Bighorn and the battle at Wounded Knee, the last battle of the western Indian wars and the final closing of the frontier.

A vivid re-creation of an often overlooked episode in the Indian Wars. The Modoc War, fought in 186972, has largely been regarded as a sideshow in light of other, more famous campaigns, such as those against Crazy Horse and Cochise. Berkeley scholar Quinn, the author of several volumes of history (A New World, 1994, etc.), makes a solid case for why the war--really a series of skirmishes, some of them terribly bloody, on the Oregon-California border--should have a more central place in our historical canon. Noting that not all Modocs supported war leader Captain Jack and that not all white residents of the region supported the federal action against his band of warriors, Quinn proposes that the campaign be viewed not as another instance of ethnic-based genocide but as ``fundamentally a war between nations, the one very large, the other very small.'' In this war, the small nation held off the large one rather well, employing guerrilla tactics and fighting in a difficult landscape of lava beds and rough mountains, which led a federal officer to remark, ``I do not believe that a hundred thousand men in a hundred thousand years could construct such fortifications'' as the natural features in which the Modocs took refuge. As a result, the Americans sustained heavy losses and committed horrible atrocities in reprisal; the army also executed Captain Jack and his followers soon after their eventual surrender. Quinn's narrative is fluent, and at times even a little glib. Professional historians will not much like his generous use of invented dialogue, which will prevent the book from being taken as a serious study of these tragic events, but it is clear that the author has done his homework. As an introduction to the Modoc people and its unfortunate encounter with the American nation, Quinn's book serves well. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Quinn's title for his history of the Modoc War of 1870 refers to a description of the lava beds of northern California, in which the Modocs took refuge during the war and from which they were expelled only by starvation and at the cost of many U.S. Army casualties, including a brigadier general. The root cause of the war was the relegation of the Modocs to a reservation that they had to share with the Klamath Indians, whose slaves they had once been and whose enemies they were. This forced marriage quickly dissolved, and eventually the abortive Modoc resistance ended with the hanging of four tribal leaders. Quinn has researched thoroughly and written well, although with occasional overdoses of sentimentality; he also represents as authentic many passages of conversation, which are literarily useful although some sound like byplay between the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Overall, a balanced and worthwhile effort as well as the most recent thorough study of its subject. Roland Green