CAPTAIN JACK`S GENEALOGY
The Son of an Old Kentucky Filibuster.
[From the Frankfort (Ky.) Yeoman.]
It is at this time currently reported in this community, and by many believed, that Captain Jack, the celebrated Modoc chief, is the son of Captain Jack Chambers, a native and formerly well-known citizen of the western part of this county. In support of this belief, the following facts are given : About the year 1845-6 a party of emigrants, made up of citizens of Franklin county and other parts of Kentucky, went to California on a fortune-seeking expedition. With this party went Captain Jack Chambers, a bold, daring man, who, though a full-blooded while man, possessed many of the characteristics, physical as well as mental and moral, of the Indian brave.
On reaching California the party gradually broke up and scattered, but it is as well known, and so reported by these who subsequently returned to Kentucky, that Captain Jack Chambers fell in with the Modoc Indians, married the daughter of their head chief, at whose death he (Captain Chambers) succeeded to the chieftainship by election, and so continued to the day of his death, only a few years ago. It is also said that, after living with the Modocs some years, he became so much like the rest of the warriors of that tribe, both in speech and general physique, that the closest observer never suspected that he was other than a full-blooded Indian. Besides, the captain himself favored the delusion, and hence it is that we see it stated in all the sketches of ” Captain Jack,” the present Modoc chief, that he is the son of a full-blooded chief of the tribe. At the time of his joining the Modocs, Captain Jack Chambers was between thirty-five and forty years of age. Previous to his emigration to California, however, he had volunteered in the war for the independence of Texas, where he distinguished himself as a brave soldier and capital officer. It is an interesting and remarkable fact in his personal history that he was one of a family of twenty-four children — twenty-one sons and three daughters — all of whom grew to maturity, most of whom are still living, and nearly all of whom were remarkable for physical qualities closely resembling those of the higher types of the American Indians.
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 45, Number 6918, 5 June 1873