A fairly large portion of the population in the U.S. apparently thinks that highlighting the horrible parts of our country’s past is somehow unpatriotic, unnecessary or shameful. To me, the only shame would be not illuminating the periodic darkness that our nation has gone through. To learn from the past and be better people because of that knowledge is to pursue the “more perfect union” described in our Constitution. Thus, learning from our mistakes is the operational definition of “patriotic”.
In that spirit, I’d like to share a posting about the history of a specific time and region of northern California. I received this from my cousin Doozy. She was born and raised in the Klamath River area, near the Oregon border. Her mom, my aunt Evelyn, is a direct descendant of the native people described in this historical account. The only reason I had an aunt Evelyn and still have my cousin Doozy, is because their ancestors were among the few survivors of one such terrible period of our country.
(Credit for the original posting shown below goes to: The Hidden Historian, Facebook Group. I checked the information. It’s accurate.)
In the summer of 1852, far in the volcanic country near today’s California Oregon border, Modoc and Klamath families camped along Tule Lake. They were gathering fish, cattail roots, and tule reeds, the foods that sustained them for generations. The lava beds around the lake were full of secret passages, narrow caves, and jagged cracks carved by ancient fire. Elders told children never to wander into them alone.
But they also said something else:
“If danger ever comes, the stone will breathe for you.”
No one imagined how soon that teaching would save a life.
Settler militias had already attacked Modoc groups that spring. Newspapers openly encouraged driving them out. And in late summer, a volunteer company moved quietly toward a lakeside Modoc camp. They struck at dawn.
Men were away hunting. Only women, elders, and children were in the lodges.
Gunfire echoed across the reeds.
Fires rose from the shelters.
Children ran toward the water but were shot at the shoreline. Among them was a Modoc girl remembered in oral history as Tamalqsga, “Little Smoke.”
Her grandmother had once taken her to a narrow lava opening in the rocks, a place where cold air whispered from deep inside the earth. She told her: “When the world becomes cruel, the old fire will hide you.”
As the militia closed in, Little Smoke did not run toward the water. She ran toward the rocks.
Smoke burned her throat. Ash drifted across the black volcanic ground. Behind her she heard screams and the terrible echo of laughter.
She found the narrow opening, dropped to her stomach, and slid inside. The stone scraped her elbows. Her breath bounced back against her face. Outside, boots crunched.
A man’s voice said:
“Check the cracks they hide in there.”
Light flashed across the cave mouth as someone swung a torch. Heat licked the stone.
Little Smoke pushed herself deeper, into a chamber barely bigger than her own body. She stayed there as long as the earth allowed her, hours that felt like days.
When everything went silent, she crawled out. The lodges were burned. Bodies lay along the water. Smoke drifted across Tule Lake.
She followed a trail toward the higher lava beds where a few Modoc survivors had escaped. They wrapped her in a tule blanket and carried her into the caves that had protected generations before her.
Little Smoke lived into old age. Whenever she placed her palm on volcanic stone, she whispered: “The earth held me.
“So I must hold the memory.”
Today, the 1852 Tule Lake Massacre is recognized by Indigenous historians as one of the first large scale mass killings in the Modoc homelands, a tragedy long ignored in official records, but preserved by the survivors who refused to let the truth die.