Black Hills Gold Rush

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The Black Hills Gold Rush took place in the Dakotas and parts of Montana and is general considered to have started 1860-70. It reached a peak in 1876.

Rumors and poorly documented reports of gold in the Black Hills go back to the early 1800s. In the 1860s, Catholic missionary Father De Smet is reported to have seen Sioux Indians carrying gold they told him came from the Black Hills.^[1]

Prior to the Gold Rush, the Black Hills were used by Native Americans (primarily bands of Sioux but others also ranged through the area). The United States government recognized the Black Hills as belonging to the Sioux by the Treaty of Laramie in 1868. Despite being within Indian territory, and therefore off-limits, white Americans were increasingly interested in the gold-mining possibilities of the Black Hills.

Prospectors found gold in 1874 near present-day Custer, South Dakota, but the deposit turned out to be small. The large placer gold deposits of Deadwood Gulch were discovered in November 1875, and in 1876, thousands of gold-seekers flocked to the new town of Deadwood, although it was still within Indian land.^[2]

The priority of first gold discovery in the Black Hills was thrown into question in 1887 by the discovery of what has become known as the Thoen Stone [1]. Discovered by Louis Thoen on the slopes of Lookout Mountain, the stone purports to be the last testament of Ezra Kind who, along with 6 others, entered the Black Hills in 1833 (at a time when whites were forbidden by law and treaty from entering the area), "got all the gold we could carry" in June 1834, and were subsequently "killed by Indians beyond the high hill." While it may seem unlikely that someone who has "lost my gun and nothing to eat and Indians hunting me" would take the time to carve his story in sandstone, there is corroborating historical evidence for the Ezra Kind party. This evidence is presented in the book The Thoen Stone by Frank Thomson, published in 1966.

Many of the miners came up the Missouri from Kansas and eventually returned there.

[edit] References

^ Watson Parker (1966) Gold in the Black Hills, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p.12-13.
^ A.L. Slaughter (1968) The Homestake mine, in Ore Deposits of the United States 1933-1967, New York: American Institute of Mining Engineers, p.1437.