Although most of the “49ers” missed the Modoc country, in March 1851 Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Yreka while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. The discovery sparked the California Gold Rush from California’s Sierra Nevada into Northern California.
By April 1851, 2,000 miners had arrived in “Thompson’s Dry Diggings” through the southern route of old Emigrant Trail to test their luck, which took them straight through Modoc territory. Although the Modoc initially had no trouble with European Americans, after the murders of settlers in a raid by the Pit River Tribe, militia, not familiar with the Indian peoples, in revenge attacked an innocent Modoc village, killing men, women and children.
Kintpuash, the future chief also known as Captain Jack, survived the attack but lost some of his family. In retaliation and to try to end encroachment, some Modoc chose to attack the next whites they came across.
In September 1852 a wagon train of some 65 men, women, and children on their way to new homes in California were ambushed by the Modoc Indians. Only one badly wounded man, made his escape to the Oregon settlements in Willamette Valley and told of the attack.
His report spread quickly and Oregon volunteers, reaching the scene later, found bodies of men, women and children mutilated and scattered for more than a mile along the lake shore and their wagons plundered and burned. The location became known as Bloody Point.
In another round of retaliation, California militia led by an Indian fighter named Ben Wright killed 41 Modoc at a peace parley.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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