The Modoc are an Indigenous American people who historically lived in the area which is now northeastern California and central Southern Oregon.

[4] The Achomawi, a band of the Pit River tribe, called them Lutuami, meaning "Lake Dwellers".

This group includes those who stayed on the reservation during the Modoc War, as well as the descendants of those who chose to return in 1909 to Oregon from Indian Territory in Oklahoma or Kansas.

[13] In winter, they built earthen dugout lodges shaped like beehives, covered with sticks and plastered with mud, near lake shores with reliable sources of seeds from aquatic wokas plants and fishing.

In the 1820s, Peter Skene Ogden, an explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, established trade with the Klamath people north of the Modoc.

[20] The opening of the Applegate Trail appeared to bring the first regular contact between the Modoc and the European-American settlers, who had largely ignored their territory before.

[12] In September 1852, the Modoc destroyed an emigrant train at Bloody Point on the east shore of Tule Lake, killing all but three of the 65 people in the party.

After hearing his news, Yreka settlers organized a militia under Sheriff Charles McDermit, Jim Crosby, and Ben Wright.

The Modoc requested a separate reservation closer to their ancestral home, but neither the federal nor the California government approved it.

[13][33] In 1870 Kintpuash (also called Captain Jack) led a band of Modoc to leave the reservation and return to their traditional homelands.

These Modoc had not been adequately represented in the treaty negotiations and wished to end the harassment by the Klamath on the reservation.

A battle broke out, and the Modoc escaped to what is called Captain Jack's Stronghold in what is now Lava Beds National Monument, California.

[35] The U.S. Army tried, convicted and executed Kintpuash and three of his warriors in October 1873 for the murder of Major General Edward Canby earlier that year at a parley.

The tribe's spiritual leader, Curley Headed Doctor, was also forced to remove to Indian Territory.

The number five figured heavily in ritual, as in the Shuyuhalsh, a five-night dance rite of passage for adolescent girls.