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Chief Kintpuash Modoc
"Captain Jack"
Modoc Tribe, 1837-1873
 
Kintpuash, son of a Modoc chief, was commonly known as "Captain Jack" because of his penchant for wearing a blue military jacket with brass buttons. Captain Jack (ca 1837-1873) was a major figure in the Modoc War of 1872-1873. Protesting unsuitable conditions on the Klamath Reservation, he led a band of about 50 warriors, resisting forced removal by U.S. troops from their former ancestral lands.
The protestors secluded themselves in the Lava Beds and held off the army for nearly a year. Captain Jack was captured in June 1873 and charged with the murder of General Edward Canby during negotiations. He was executed by hanging on October 3, 1873. His death marked the end of a story of discrimination and conflict between Indians and whites, the Modocs and other northern California tribes, and different factions within the Modoc tribe.
Little is known about Captain Jack's life prior to the age of 25. He was born along the lower Lost River, near the California-Oregon border, in the Wa'chamshwash Village, around 1837. The Modocs lived relatively peacefully in the territory surrounding Clear Lake, Tule Lake and the Lost River. By the 1850s, however, white pressure on the Indian lands, aggravated by the 1848 California Gold Rush, led to conflict. In the early 1850s, Indians attacked a wagon train of immigrants on their way to the West Coast. Because the horses from the train ended up in the possession of the Modocs, the tribe was blamed for the raid. A reprisal party led by the miner, Jim Crosby, did not find the responsible parties, who were members of the Pit River tribe, and took out their frustrations on the Modocs instead. The Modocs, including Captain Jack's father, responded with violence. In 1856 the Modocs ambushed another wagon train at a place called Wagakanna, which the white survivors later labelled "Bloody Point." In response to the massacre, the well-known mountain man and Indian fighter, Ben Wright, organized a vigilante group specifically to stalk and kill Indians. In an attempt to preserve the peace, 45 of the Modoc leaders were invited to a conference and were ambushed by Wright and his men. Wright himself shot Captain Jack's father with a revolver.
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