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Photographer: Syd Whittle
Taken: May 11, 2008
Caption: Information Posted at the Cross Site
Additional Description: Over the years, various individuals and groups have made efforts to memorialize the death of General E.R.S. Canby, the only general to be killed in an Indian War. This wooden cross is a replica of an original erected by a U.S. soldier in 1882, just nine years after the event. Some of the very same troops Canby had commanded here in the Lava Beds were still fighting other Indian Wars, and public interest ran high.

Although the inscription on the cross may elicit strong emotions in some modern visitors, it illuminates the point that people see events through the lens of their own culture and time. In 1873, what some Modocs considered a justifiable war tactic, the U.S. Army considered murder. No monument commemorates the places where Modocs may have felt their attempts to live peaceably were betrayed.

More than any other Modoc War site, Canby's Cross represents the vast gulf between the perceptions of the two sides during wartime, and challenges us to look beyond history to the assumptions of our own cultures. As in all wars, there were no innocent parties in this conflict.
Submitted: August 15, 2008, by Syd Whittle of Mesa, Arizona.
Database Locator Identification Number: p31832
File Size: 2.010 Megabytes

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