Thursday, June 13, 2019

full book online: Life amongst the Modocs written by Joaquin Miller who lived with Modocs for 5 years during the 1800s

The Modoc tribe is one of 6 tribes that live around Mt. Shasta that call the mountain Sacred. One of the medicine men that I studied with in the 1980s and 1990s was Karuk which is one of these 6 tribes. The fact that a Famous American writer lived with the Modocs in the 1800s is an amazing boon to posterity so some of their ways in the 1800s are written down (even though from a white man's point of view which will be different than if you were actually raised a Modoc Native American then.

I read a few pages already and he speaks about people in Sacramento seeing Mt. Shasta because how clear it was then in the 1800s and how sailors at sea could sometimes see Mt. Shasta from the Pacific Ocean too because it stands so tall and so white most of the years during the 1800s and 1900s. Though I suppose it might be possible still to see Mt. Shasta from Sacramento or the Pacific Ocean it is much more unlikely than it was then because of air pollution and slash fires by farmers burning their fields south of Redding to San Francisco than it was then in the 1800s.

His writing style is very poetic but pleasant to read from multiple points of view. However, if you haven't read writings from the 1800s before it might take some time to get used to this style of writing.

My favorite book about Mt. Shasta is "Dweller on Two PLanets" which I read when I was 17 in Santa Fe, New Mexico when I was in boarding school, a private school in Santa Fe then. It really changed my viewpoint of a lot of things. IT was written in I believe the 1880s by an 18 year old young man who lived near Mt. Shasta then. It is about Atlantis and life in between lifetimes in heaven and stuff like that and about reincarnation as a Gold miner near Mt. Shasta. But, it is hard to get used to how they wrote then in the style of the day.



Life Amongst The Modocs

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