05/31/2024
The Modoc are an Indigenous American people who historically lived in the area which is now northeastern California and central Southern Oregon. Currently, they include two federally recognized tribes, the Klamath Tribes in Oregon and the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, now known as the Modoc Nation.
Language
The Modoc, like the neighboring Klamath, spoke dialectic varieties of the Klamathan/Lutuamian language, a branch of the Plateau Penutian language family. Both peoples called themselves maklaks, meaning "people". To distinguish between the tribes, the Modoc called themselves Moatokni maklaks, from muat meaning "South". The Achomawi, a band of the Pit River tribe, called them Lutuami, meaning "Lake Dwellers".
Current population and geography
About 600 Modoc live in Klamath County, Oregon, in and around their ancestral homelands. This group includes those who stayed on the reservation during the Modoc War, as well as the descendants of those who chose to return in 1909 to Oregon from Indian Territory in Oklahoma or Kansas. Since that time, many have followed the path of the Klamath. The shared tribal government of the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin in Oregon is known as the Klamath Tribes.
Two hundred Modoc live in Oklahoma on a small reservation in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, that the federal government purchased for them. Originally they were placed on the Quapaw Indian Reservation in Oklahoma's far northeast corner. They are descendants of the band Captain Jack (Kintpuash) led during the Modoc War. The federal government officially recognized the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma in 1978, and its constitution was approved in 1991.
Early population
Further information: Population of Native California
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. James Mooney put the aboriginal population of the Modoc at 400. Alfred L. Kroeber estimated the Modoc population within California as 500 at the year 1770. University of Oregon anthropologist Theodore Stern suggested that there had been a total of about 500 Modoc. In 1846, the population may have included "perhaps 600 warriors (an overestimate, probably)".
History
Until the 19th century, when European explorers first encountered the Modoc, like all Plateau Indians, they caught salmon during salmon runs and migrated seasonally to hunt and gather other food. In winter, they built earthen dugout lodges shaped like beehives, covered with sticks and plastered with mud, near lake shores with reliable sources of seeds from aquatic wokas plants and fishing.
Neighboring groups
In addition to the Klamath, with whom they shared a language and the Modoc Plateau, the groups neighboring the Modoc home were:
Shasta on the Klamath River;
Rogue River Athabaskans and Takelma west over the Cascade Mountains;
Northern Paiute east in the desert;
Karuk and Yurok further down the Klamath River; and
Achomawi or Pit River to the south, in the meadows of the Pit River drainages.
The Modoc, Northern Paiute, and Achomawi shared Goose Lake Valley.
Settlements
The known Modoc village sites are Agawesh, where Willow Creek enters Lower Klamath Lake, of the Gombatwa·s or Lower Klamath Lake People Band; Kumbat and Pashha on the shores of Tule Lake of the Pasganwa·s or Tule Lake People Band; and Wachamshwash and Nushalt-Hagak-ni on the Lost River of the Goġewa·s or Lower Lost River People Band. The Modoc have also been known as the Modok (Brandt and Davis-Kimball xvi).
First contact
In the 1820s, Peter Skene Ogden, an explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, established trade with the Klamath people north of the Modoc.
Applegate Trail established
Brothers Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, accompanied by 13 other white settlers, established the Applegate Trail, or South Emigrant Trail, in 1846. It connected a point on the Oregon Trail near Fort Hall, Idaho, and the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. The new route was created to encourage European-Americans to come to western Oregon, and to eliminate the hazards encountered on the Columbia Route. Since the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the Columbia Route, development of an alternate route enabled migration even if there was trouble between the United States and the United Kingdom. The Applegate brothers became the first known white people in present-day Lava Beds National Monument.
The opening of the Applegate Trail appeared to bring the first regular contact between the Modoc and the European-American settlers, who had largely ignored their territory before. Many of the events of the Modoc War took place along the trail.
Emigrant invasion
From 1846 to 1873, thousands of emigrants entered the Modoc territory. Beginning in 1847, the Modoc raided the invading emigrants on the Applegate Trail under the leadership of Old Chief Schonchin.
In September 1852, the Modoc destroyed an emigrant train at Bloody Point on the east shore of Tule Lake, killing all but three of the 65 people in the party. The Modoc took two young girls as captives. One or both of them may have been killed several years later by jealous Modoc women. The only man to survive the attack made his way to Yreka, California. After hearing his news, Yreka settlers organized a militia under Sheriff Charles McDermit, Jim Crosby, and Ben Wright. They went to the scene of the massacre to bury the dead and avenge their deaths. Crosby's party had a skirmish with a band of Modoc and returned to Yreka.
Wright and a small group stayed on to avenge the deaths. He was a notorious Indian hater. Accounts differ as to what took place when Wright's party met the Modoc on the Lost River, but most agree that Wright planned to ambush them, which he did in November 1852. Wright and his forces attacked, killing approximately 40 Modoc, in what came to be known as the "Ben Wright Massacre."
