this is a bit high and I’m thinking that it is not a part of the Modoc Indian petroglyphs but something created in more recent years.

personally I think the lack of blue in the sky makes  the cliffs even more mysterious!

The petroglyphs run along the bottom of the cliff. Native Americans would canoe to the cliffs and carve their drawings…or prayer/offerings into the soft stone.

I am guessing that this was removed by the park and was carved by modern day graffiti artists vandals.

The cliffs them selves are quite interesting to photograph!

A heart shaped indent!!

The park has put up a fence with barbed wire slanting out….as you can see they have had to add and repair the barbed wire where people insist on trespassing and vandalizing the petroglyphs.

More later

A bit about Modoc history from the National Park Service.

Captain Jack’s Stronghold, part of Lava Beds National Monument, is located at the Perez turnoff, off Highway 139 between Tule Lake and Canby, California. The lava beds made an outstanding stronghold for the Modocs because of the rough terrain, rocks that could be used in fortification, and irregular pathways to evade pursuers. The area originally served as a hunting and gathering area. It is now a national monument managed by the National Park Service.

In 1869, Ulysses S. Grant became president of the United States. During his term of office, there existed conflicting philosophies and policies for dealing with Indian affairs. The policies came from three distinct sources: first, Interior Department officials believed that Indian Agents were more important than Indians; second, the War Department believed it was cheaper to feed Indians than to shoot them; and third, private citizens believed that if Indians adopted Christianity, they would change their habits, folkways, and economic system, and then become peaceable and self-reliant. Grant often referred to the third policy as his “Quaker Policy.” Not knowing which of these policies to use, Grant implemented all three. The result was disastrous. Under these conflicting philosophies, the Modoc Indians were forced to move onto the Klamath Indian Reservation on Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon in 1869.

The Klamath Indians believed that they had allowed the Modocs to relocate onto their land. Moreover, they felt that all resources on the land remained theirs by ancestral right. The retention of land rights was a continuing source of agitation between Klamaths and Modocs. In addition, social conditions at Klamath were distressing. Against official orders, army officers gambled with Indians, often winning as many as 20 or 30 horses from Indian men. Army officers at Klamath also quite openly took Indian women, even from their husbands. Once their wives had been prostituted this way, husbands often refused to take them back. Meanwhile, the agents encouraged Indians to become herdsmen and farmers and to live in log cabins instead of in their traditional wickiups.

Captain Jack watched life at Klamath and became convinced that he should live the way his ancestors had. Others in his band agreed with him and so they returned to their land on Lost River. All they wanted was the right to their traditional homeland. Late in 1869, messengers went to Lost River to ask Jack to come back to Klamath to discuss the possibility of his returning permanently to the reservation. He refused to leave Lost River and told the messengers that people would have to come to him if they wanted to talk.

In the spring of 1871, Jack employed a Klamath Indian shaman to care for a sick Modoc child. He paid the fees in advance and a contract was entered into. Among the Modoc, this type of contract was understood as a guarantee to heal. In the event of failure, the doctor’s life was to be forfeited. The sickness of the child was more serious than originally thought, and she died. In accordance with custom, Captain Jack killed the Klamath shaman for inefficiency. Friends of the shaman informed the local sheriff of the murder, and asked for Jack’s arrest. Under the provisions of the “Great Treaty” of 1864, Indians were bound never to murder again; therefore, the sheriff issued a warrant for Jack’s arrest. Jack, meanwhile, traveled to Yreka to see attorney Elisha Steele, who wrote a letter for him to the Indian Agent advising against his arrest on spiritual and cultural grounds. The agent accepted Steele’s advice and dropped the charges against Jack. Settlers in the area nevertheless used the murder charge to discredit Jack.

In November 1872, soldiers and settlers attacked Captain Jack’s camp on Lost River. After the battle, about 50 Modocs fled to the strategic position of the lava beds. Jack lived in the stronghold and successfully defended it for about one year. The first battle for the stronghold took place in January 1873, and the second in April 1873. During the repeated attacks by soldiers and settlers, Captain Jack was able to use the lava beds to his advantage, and only a few people were ever allowed to enter the stronghold to negotiate with him. After several unsuccessful attempts at resolving the whole problem, negotiators sent word back to Washington that the Modocs must be defeated militarily. Captain Jack surrendered on June 1, 1873, and was executed along with five other Modoc men on October 3, 1873. Those remaining in Jack’s band were removed to Indian territory in Oklahoma. In 1909, most surviving Modocs returned to the Klamath Reservation. It is important to note that Jack never signed a treaty, and that he defended the stronghold with only a few Indians while the number of men fighting against him at times exceeded 300.

Looking out over the battlefield

More on Captain Jack’s stronghold to come

Read the previous post below to learn the Tolowa Legend of the Fall.

In ancient Tolowa mythology, Dead Lake was the scene of the People’s fall from grace. After Baby Sender created the world, a numerous tribe dwelt just inland from Tagian-te, what we today call Point St. George. Many summers they lived in peace. The waters abounded with fish, the forests with game, and the peoples’ hearts were glad. then came the time of sorrow. One day in council the chief became angry at one of the elders and struck him to the ground. This blow led to the destruction of the harmony that had existed. Some of the People began to doubt their leaders, others cried for vengeance. While many remained loyal, their discord allowed one dark-hearted person to practice evil. The heavens covered with menacing clouds of terrible darkness and the wind roared over the shifting sands, blinding everyone. Suddenly a deafening sound broke upon the ears of the people. Like the jaws of a dragon, the earth opened beneath their feet and swallowed them. The gaping abyss opened where Dead Lake is today. The storm broke in wild fury and torrents filled the sepulcher. To this day the Tolowa consider the lake bottomless, infested with enormous serpents, and they will not go there.

This mysterious lake has no inlet, and yet despite the ceaseless outpouring of Sweetwater Creek from it, retains a constant water level. You might carry angelica root or other protection from evil if you visit Dead Lake…

TV pundit draws attention to “humanitarian crisis at home.”

For 14,000 Native Americans without heat or electricity, one minute of Keith Olbermann’s show was the attention they needed.

Less than a minute of air time. That’s all it took for Keith Olbermann to change the fate of Native Americans suffering one of the worst — and most ignored — natural disasters to hit the continental United States in years.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota experienced debilitating ice storms and blizzards beginning on Jan. 22. The storms knocked out 2,500 utility poles and disrupted electricity and heat for 14,000 people, who were forced to live in sub-zero temperatures for nearly two weeks. Many homes were damaged, food spoiled, supplies dwindled to almost nothing, and all pleas for help seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Most of the media ignored this crisis, and despite calls for aid from the Sioux Nation, only $8,000 in donations had trickled in to help the reservation as of Feb. 9.

That’s when Keith Olbermann over at MSNBC took notice. In a brief segment of his show that night, Olbermann talked about the tragedy and the reservation’s need for immediate help, calling it a “humanitarian crisis at home.”

READ THE REST HERE

A defense lawyer for one of two men charged with the 1975 slaying of
an American Indian Movement member has accused prosecutors of putting
“erroneous and untrue” accusations in a court filing because the
alleged murder weapon was locked up at the time.

John Graham and Richard Marshall pleaded not guilty to charges they
committed or aided and abetted the Dec. 12, 1975, murder of Annie Mae
Aquash on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They are scheduled to
stand trial starting May 12 in Rapid City, S.D.

The government’s theory is that Marshall gave a .32-caliber revolver
and shells to Graham, Arlo Looking Cloud and Theda Clark, who stopped
by Marshall’s house with Aquash around Dec. 12, 1975.

According to court testimony, hours later, after taking her to a cliff
in the Badlands, Looking Cloud gave Graham the gun, he shot Aquash as
she prayed, and then the two men buried the weapon nearby under a
bridge and it never was found.

At the time, Marshall was awaiting trial for killing Martin Montileaux
on March 1, 1975, a crime for which he was later convicted.

Marshall
Prosecutors asked the judge to allow evidence that the .32-caliber
pistol used to kill Aquash could have been the same one seized when
Marshall was arrested for the Montileaux murder.

But Marshall’s attorney, Dana Hanna, responded that his client
couldn’t have had the gun when Aquash was killed because it was in
placed in police custody in March 1975 and offered as evidence at the
April 1976 trial in which Marshall was convicted of killing
Montileaux.

RICHARD MARSHALL

Hanna included with his filing a court transcript of the trial in
which South Dakota Highway Patrolman Merlyn Muir testified he
recovered the gun after Marshall was arrested.

After the shooting, law enforcement officers chased and caught a 1968
Ford carrying Marshall and seven other people.

Muir said he found the .32-caliber revolver under the right front
seat. Four other guns also were seized from the car, including a .22-
caliber pistol used to kill Montileaux.

Hanna argued that the .32-caliber pistol was never directly tied to
Marshall.

And a receipt showing the car’s release to a woman on June 1, 1975,
does not indicate if any of the guns were returned, only the car’s
“contents,” he wrote.

The transcript of Muir’s testimony shows that the .32-caliber gun was
offered as an exhibit. It was not received into evidence because it
played no part in the Montileaux case, Hanna wrote.

The defense lawyer wrote that such “easily discoverable and available
facts” prove Marshall didn’t have access to the gun from March 1975 to
April 1976.

“Obviously, it could not have been the gun that was used to kill Anna
Mae Aquash on December 12, 1975,” Hanna wrote.

“It is demonstrably, provably, false, based upon the court records,”
he said in an interview.

U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley is not allowed to comment on pending
cases.

In his motion, Hanna argued that besides the gun, prosecutors also
should not be allowed to tell jurors about Marshall’s conviction for
the Montileaux murder.

He included the Montileaux trial transcript of neurosurgeon Dr. Edward
James, who testified that Montileaux was shot in the neck from the
front and the bullet severed his spinal cord, which paralyzed him,
then lodged in his shoulder. He died days later of pneumonia.

Hanna argued the government wants to include the Montileaux murder on
grounds the circumstances are similar, but Aquash was killed with a
bullet to the back of the head. The person who shot Montileaux was
facing him, he wrote.

“The facts of the defendant’s prior offense have absolutely no
connection or relevance to the killing of Anna Mae Aquash,” Hanna
wrote.

Clarke, who lives in a western Nebraska nursing home, has not been
charged. Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 for his role in Aquash’s
murder and sentenced to life in prison.

READ PDF FILE AT  O U R   F R E E D O M.