The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age

by Robert Aquinas McNally

On a cold, rainy dawn in late November 1872, Lieutenant Frazier Boutelle and a Modoc Indian nicknamed Scarface Charley leveled firearms at each other. Their duel triggered a war that capped a decades-long genocidal attack that was emblematic of the United States’ conquest of Native America’s peoples and lands. Robert Aquinas McNally tells the wrenching story of the Modoc War of 1872–73, one of the nation’s costliest campaigns against North American Indigenous peoples, in which the army placed nearly one thousand soldiers in the field against some fifty-five Modoc fighters.

Although little known today, the Modoc War dominated national headlines for an entire year. Fought in south-central Oregon and northeastern California, the war settled into a siege in the desolate Lava Beds and climaxed the decades-long effort to dispossess and destroy the Modocs.

The war did not end with the last shot fired, however. For the first and only time in U.S. history, Native fighters were tried and hanged for war crimes. The surviving Modocs were packed into cattle cars and shipped from Fort Klamath to the corrupt, disease-ridden Quapaw reservation in Oklahoma, where they found peace even more lethal than war.

The Modoc War tells the forgotten story of a violent and bloody Gilded Age campaign at a time when the federal government boasted officially of a “peace policy” toward Indigenous nations. This compelling history illuminates a dark corner in our country’s past. 
 

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, Indigenous, American History, Military History, Native Americans

432 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2017

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of the war that the United States waged against the Modoc Indians in the Lava Beds of southern Oregon in the late 19th century. The author has done a great job of bringing to life the main players of the story, both Americans and Indians, and discussing their motivations. The Americans were determined to destroy the Modocs largely for the purposes of profit but also because of the mindset at the time that saw the Indians as little better than animals. I appreciated the author’s dip into the history of how this attitude came about in the culture of the time. I found this story to be riveting and thoroughly researched. It still surprises me that as a culture we know so much about the atrocities committed against blacks, but almost nothing about what was committed against the Indians. This is an excellent book in its category and I highly recommend it.

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

GNab I received an electronic copy of this history from Netgalley, Robert Aquinas McNally, and University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.

This history covering the Lost River Modoc Tribe seems more evenhanded than anything I have read before concerning these times. This country, so starkly beautiful, and these democratic and moral people receive an honest and empathetic hearing. It is long overdue. The bibliography is impressive.
I have looked for Modoc related works over the years and found very few. With this list and the internet I will be able to expand my reading. This will go on my research shelf for sure.

Pub date November 1, 2017

[Jifu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before picking up this top-notch work, I had never heard of the Modoc War or the near-destruction of the Modoc people. Now that I've finished it, I now genuinely don't think it's plausible for me to know this chapter of history in any finer detail than I do right now.

[Mike Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written so well it was almost impossible to put down, this is the story behind an horrific event that occurred just downstate from me and yet I had never heard of it. There must be dozens of these across the country--most of them left out by the history books as too incendiary to the pioneer mythology of the invading white settlers. Without altering the flow, the author deftly examined each item of "historical" data for its incipient racist, sexist, and jingoistic elements. While this event took place 150 years ago, it is shameful to consider how little progress our society has made since then.

[Kevin Keating · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written as sympathetic to the Modocs, this book tries to factor in the biases written in the newspaper accounts of the 1870s. Lots of good citations. Reads very well. Fleshes out the whole story much better than most. Only criticism is the lack of maps of what was a pretty confusing timeline and geography. Could've used more and better pictures, including pictures of what the site looks like now.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covered an amazing amount of material, and the narrative was nicely structured. I was impressed with the thoughtful, balanced way McNally navigated the heavy topics covered within. Ultimately, I am left with a sense of closure after having lived in the region where many of the events discussed took place for just over a year.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free Kindle copy of The Modoc War: A Story of Fenocide at the Dawn of America's Guilded Age by Robert Aquinas McNally courtesy of Net Galley and University of Nebraska Press , the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review to Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as I have an interest in Native American history and I currently live in Oregon where a good deal of this book took place. This is the first book by Robert Aquinas McNally that I have read.

This is a well researched and interesting read. It depics the conflict between the Modocs and the federal and state government. They lived in southern Oregon and northern California and like numerous tribes occupied land that white settlers wanted. They were a small band of Indians that were continually harrased until they surrendered. While the sub title of the books indicates that this is a rant about Indians being all good and whites are all evil, the author does a good job of balancing the reality of the times.

I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in native american history.

[Andres Mendoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to literally anyone. It is one of the most riveting, well researched, well written books I have ever read (plus Americans generally know way too little about the nature of the forced removal of native peoples). Admittedly, I sometimes get nervous reading indigenous history written by white authors, but McNally nailed it. The author is not only an expert historian but a masterful storyteller; the book often reads more like a gut-wrenching novel than a history book.

Here, the author details the events of the 1872/3 American war against the Modoc people with painstaking detail. Both the American and Modoc perspectives are reported with accuracy and clarity: the Modocs fought to defend themselves from ethnic cleansing, while the Americans waged a genocidal campaign to extend the tentacles of their empire. The origins of the war, its trajectory, and aftermath are discussed thoroughly, as are the ideologies that drove the Americans to wage such a conflict (spoiler alert: it's unapologetic white supremacy dressed up in Christianity and "civilization").

While the valor they demonstrated is impressive, McNally does not reduce the Modocs to a tragic people resisting the inevitable march of empire; described is a complex society with its own rules and norms and politics. This book explores the Modoc War not as a hiccup in America's westward expansion, but as a battle reluctantly taken up by a vibrant indigenous society as it did its best to weather a cosmic war instigated by self-interested Americans who saw fortunes to be made on Modoc land.

If you're an apologist for the American Empire, you probably won't love this book. But to everyone else, you'll definitely get something out of it.

[M- S__ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book through NetGalley in exchange for feedback and review.

I did not have experience with this history before. McNally's book is about as thorough and fair-handed a piece of historical writing as I have ever read. This is the kind of necessary history we need. So much of the history of American conflicts with native tribes is opaque and colored by historical prejudices. This book does a great job of giving us both perspectives and painting with more grays.

Being so thorough and cataloguing a blow-by-blow of the collection of conflicts we call the Modoc War, this book is also a pretty exhausting read. I blew through it in a month because NetGalley starts to get antsy when you take too long to review, but I would not say I finished this book. I will definitely be revisiting and branching out into many of the sources provided for the work.

I think this book works as a general history worth reading, but would only recommend if you have a pretty serious interest in the Modoc Tribe or if you're used to reading history that's a little deeper than the traditional mass market stuff.

[Kevin Mittge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley.

The Modoc War by Robert McNally is the second Modoc war book to come out this year, following the late Jim Compton's Spirit in the Rock: the Fierce Battle for Modoc Homelands. Both are long needed updates to Keith Murray's 1976 The Modocs and Their War. I have visited and hiked the Lava Beds area many times and McNally captures the feeling for the natural landscape that the Modocs inhabited, from their villages along Lost River as well as their stronghold in the lava.

I haven't read Compton's book yet, but I greatly enjoyed McNally's The Modoc War. He has a very fair minded approach to the subject, sympathetic to the Modocs and their cultural viewpoints about land, honor, and justice, which was completely alien to the majority of white settlers and soldiers, many of whom had genocide on their minds. If you haven't read anything before about the Modoc War, this book is an excellent introduction.

[Rick Joosten]

Terrific and valuable history. The completeness and detail of the removal and extermination of this tribe is astounding, and conveyed in an engaging and energetic style. McNally not only brings this tragic and fascinating "war" and its many actors to authentic and compelling life, but artfully expands his treatment of these specifics with context and historical background that makes this a must-read for those whose historical education left them with an incomplete understanding of how the native peoples of America were eliminated under the march of white European Manifest Destiny.

[Tyler Snortum-phelps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear, but not sensational. A perspective for sure, but not propaganda. I really appreciate this book. And not surprised to learn that Native American genocide just kept on keepin' on, long after the more well-known episodes in the east and mid-west.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accessible, well-document account of the gencocidal campaign in the early 1870s against Modoc Indians in northeast Calfornia and Oregon, at a time when the federal government boasted of "peace policy" toward Indigenous nations.

[Patty Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

very well researched and an important history

I want to give 5 stars because of the incredible research on the Mosoc War and the principal people involved. The author is very biased, rightfully so but it distracts from the work he’s done.

[Justin Reeder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interpretations aren't wrong but the book is poorly organized and has a ton of history which has very little to do with the Modoc War. A much better history on the Modoc War is "Spirit in the Rock" by Jim Compton!

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book caught my interest because I did not remember of ever hearing of the Modoc's. This book was interesting, insightful and well researched. The author did an amazing job of writing not only the good on both sides but also the bad. The insight in to the motivations of people that were involved in this war was well done. This book brings to light an area that has been in the shadows of other more highly profiled encounters with the Native American nation. There is a lot of lost and missing history from this period of time. Wonderful book for an one to read.