Submitted to the ORMULTNO-L maillist by Peter Wasser on
3/30/00
The Dalles Daily Chronicle
The Dalles, Oregon
August 26, 1931
INDIAN TOO OLD FOR BATTLE 59 YEARS AGO STILL PEEVED, FOUND
Portland, Aug. 26 (UP)
Fifty-nine years ago, the white soldiers battling Captain Jack’s Modoc
Indians in the desolate Klamath lava bed country told Wah-mak-ana he was
too old to fight. “You are fifty-seven,” they told him. “Go sit with the
old women.”
Now this made Wah-mak-ana very sore indeed, being an insult both to his
pride and his manhood.
“I’ll show ‘em,” he told himself, and proceeded to muscle right in on
the final battle that saw Captain Jack defeated.
Now 106 years old and still going strong, Wah-mak-ana is still a little
angry about it, he confided to the United Press today as he arose from a
refreshing night’s sleep on a bunk at the police station.
Clad in nondescript clothing, and with a battered sombrero perched
jauntily atop his gray braided hair Wah-mak-ana walked into the police
station last night.
His English wasn’t so good, but by mixing it with his tribal tongue, the
universal Indian jargon and sign language, he finally got over the idea
that is looked like rain outside and that he’s like to sleep inside.
Proudly he presented letters to the effect he was a good Indian and a
Christian.
Captain Jack, the fiery Modoc Indian warrior, was quite a general,
Wah-mak-ana explained. For two years, Jack and his 53 warriors outwitted
a pursuing army of 1,000 federal soldiers. The Modocs killed 65 white
men, and suffered only 13 casualties themselves before they were finally
rounded up.
Wah-mak-ana knows why he came to Portland and how long he’s going to
stay, but no one else does, he explained at length, but in a tongue that
may have been Modoc, or perhaps Chinese. Offhand, he apologized, he
couldn’t think of the English for what he wanted to say.
