![]() ![]() While they were sometimes guilty of massacres of small emigrant parties and on occasion individual Pit Indians joined renegade bands in battling American soldiers, they offered no organized resistance to white aggression but rather apparently welcomed the protection afforded them against their more warlike neighbors. In their aboriginal state the Pits appear to have been a peaceful people, taking the raids of the Paiutes and Modocs as one of the regular risks of their existence. Sandwiched between the Paiutes and Modocs, life was not pleasant for the Pits even though they occupied an immense stretch of country, well watered and abounding in fish and game. ![]() In habits and culture they were the typical inland Indians of the far West. While more an Idaho and Nevada tribe rather than Californian, the Paiutes considered the present Surprise Valley area as their hunting grounds and bitterly contested for decades the white man's invasion of their territory, just as they had formerly waged war against encroaching tribes in pre-American days. The same can be said of the entire Modoc section, the general Indian term for the entire country so well stocked with fish and wild life meaning, as nearly as possible in its English translation, "The Smiles of God." During the periods when this lake was full of water it was a great fish and game country. The Indians, evidently a branch of the Pits, had migrated from Goose Lake Valley during one of its periodic dry ups, probably early in the eighteenth century. There were none there when the white men came and the puzzle of their absence was solved partly by Indian legend and partly by later visual observation. The numerous artifacts found in that section point to a heavy Indian population in Goose Lake Valley. The latter tribe had a regular habit of making raids on the rather peaceful Pits, killing their warriors and carrying off their women into captivity. Sandwiched between the fierce Paiutes on the east and the even fiercer and more warlike Modocs on the northwest, the Pits lived in deadly terror of their neighboring foes, the Modocs in particular. They ranged from the headwaters of both forks of Pit River all along the reaches of the stream into Fall River Valley. Joaquin Miller, who lived among them for several years in the 1850's mentions their large population. The Pit tribe of Indians - sometimes called Pit Rivers - was one of the most populous of California. Although sprung from the Klamath tribe, a fairly peaceful people as Indians went, the Klamaths and Modocs were bitter enemies, such enmity probably having something to do with the Modocs' separation from their parent tribe, many years before the coming of the first white men. They ranged south and southeast well into what is now Modoc County. Originally they were an offshoot of the Klamaths whose hunting grounds were located further to the west. They occupied northwestern Modoc County around Clear and Tule Lakes, the Lost River section and extended along Sprague River in Oregon. The Modocs were part California and part Oregon Indians - to use present day geographical distinctions. This numerous tribe of the Shoshone Indian nation was distinctly divorced from the Digger Indians, also ranging through Western Nevada and pushing over into Eastern Modoc. The country to the east and Surprise Valley generally was occupied by the fierce Paiutes pushing down from the Idaho mountain country. There is hardly a township of land anywhere within or adjacent to the Modoc Forest which has not given evidence of Indian use and occupancy. In a very short time these bones disintegrated from exposure to the air but gave mute evidence of the swarming population which must have existed in that section. In places the bed of the lake was literally covered with human bones for several hundred yards out from the old shoreline - remains of former Indian occupants of the region. In the summer of 1924 a party of forest officers traversed the south and southeast shoreline of Tule Lake, from parts of which the waters had just recently receded due to reclamation development. Records left by the earliest white explorers and extensive remains of Indian occupancy substantiate this statement. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the Modoc country supported an aboriginal population equal to or perhaps exceeding the total permanent population of the present time. ![]() Neither should it be regarded to represent current scientific knowledge, policies, or practices. *Please do not assume this content reflects current Forest Service attitudes and/or practices. Modoc NF History, 1945 - Chapter II, Early History ![]()
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