Curly Headed Doctor & the Magic Tule Rope

Acrylic on Canvas, 40" x 60 Unframed and 42" x 62" Framed.

Modoc lava beds - Northern California - 1872

As the US Army moved against a small band of Modoc Indians (about 50 men and 120 women & children) the Modoc shaman, Curly Headed Doctor, made a long rope out of tule reeds.  He then painted it red and laid it around a section in the lava rocks where they were hiding and proclaimed that not a soldier would ever cross the magic tule rope.

In the first engagement of the war his magic held true and not a single soldier even came near their hideout amongst the lava caves.

However, eventually the soldiers did cross the tule rope and Curly Headed Doctor was "defrocked".

He survived the war (1872 - 1873) dying in 1890.  On the day of his death in Quapaw, Oklahoma (where the recalcitrant Modocs and been moved to) the trees began to fill with thousands of pigeons and Curly Headed Doctor told the people not to shoot them as they were spirits who had come to take him away.

Although the Modoc had been Christianized Curly Headed Doctor asked that they cremate him.  This they did and a Modoc woman named, Jennie gave an account on how the flames went soaring into the sky and  turned many different and vivid colors, something that the Modoc witnesses  had never seen before.

The man in the photograph is Curly Headed Doctor.