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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #55088 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55088)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort, by
-Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort
- American Resort Series No. 4
-
-Author: Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-Release Date: July 11, 2017 [EBook #55088]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK HILLS MID-CONTINENT RESORT ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- The Black Hills
- MID-CONTINENT RESORT
-
-
- BY Albert N. Williams
-
- [Illustration: Southern Methodist University Press Logo]
-
- AMERICAN RESORT SERIES NO. 4
-
- Southern Methodist University Press
- 1952
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY
- SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY PRESS
- PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
- BY AMERICAN BOOK—STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK
-
-
- AMERICAN RESORT SERIES
-
- No. 1: Gatlinburg: Gateway to the Great Smokies, _by Edwin J. Foscue_
- No. 2: Taxco: Mexico’s Silver City, _by Edwin J. Foscue_
- No. 3: Estes Park: Resort in the Rockies, _by Edwin J. Foscue and
- Louis O. Quam_
- No. 4: The Black Hills: Mid-Continent Resort, _by Albert N. Williams_
-
-
- For Chris
-
-
-
-
- Acknowledgments
-
-
-The research on early Black Hills and Badlands history was ably assisted
-by Miss June Carothers, whose services were provided the author through
-a generous grant-in-aid by the University of Denver’s Bureau of
-Humanities and Social Development.
-
-Miss Ina T. Aulls, Mrs. Alys Freeze, Mrs. Opal Harber, Miss Margery
-Bedinger, Mrs. Margaret Simonds, Mrs. Elizabeth Kingston, and Mrs. Clara
-Cutright, all of the Denver Public Library, are particularly to be
-thanked for placing the resources of that institution at my disposal.
-
-For assistance in preparing the manuscript, I wish to thank Miss Helen
-Kiamos, Miss Edith Goldfarb, and Miss Lillian Helling.
-
-I am indebted to Bell Photo of Rapid City for the photograph of the
-Needles highway; to Ned Perrigoue of Rapid City for that of Sylvan Lake;
-to the Denver Public Library Western Collection for those of Calamity
-Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Deadwood Gulch in 1881; and to Mr. A. H.
-Pankow of the South Dakota State Highway Commission for that of a Black
-Hills stream.
-
-And finally, as always, thanks go to my wife, Ann, for her patient
-editorial help.
-
- Albert N. Williams
-
- _University of Denver
- Denver, Colorado_
-
-
- Books by Albert N. Williams
-
- LISTENING
- ROCKY MOUNTAIN COUNTRY
- THE WATER AND THE POWER
- THE BOOK BY MY SIDE
-
-
-
-
- Contents
-
-
- I The Black Hills: The Forbidden Land 1
- II The Formation of the Black Hills 15
- III The Hills Today 27
- IV History I: Indians and Gold 47
- V History II: Deadwood Days 78
- VI The White River Badlands 115
- Bibliography 126
- Index 127
-
-
-
-
- Illustrations
-
-
- Along the Needles Highway _facing page_ 34
- Harney Peak—older by ages than the Rockies 35
- The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial 50
- Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an elevation of 6,250
- feet 51
- Calamity Jane, during her carnival days 82
- Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait 82
- Cheyenne—Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded by shotgun
- messengers 82
- Deadwood Gulch in 1881 83
- Modern Deadwood—seventy years later 83
- One of the Black Hills’ many streams 98
- The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared 99
-
-
-
-
- Introduction
-
-
-I have had an opportunity to enjoy one of the most readable accounts of
-the Black Hills I have ever come across. It is written to acquaint
-traveling America with an area which was long off the beaten path of
-tourists, and which has only during the past quarter century been
-recognized as a place where people who wish to “Know America First” may
-profitably spend some time.
-
-Mr. Williams has outlined the historical reason why this small
-wonderland was so long outside the consciousness of America, and he has
-devoted a chapter to telling about the methods of nature in producing
-the intricacies of this formation, older by far than the Alps or the
-Himalayas. He has made the subject live, and he includes enough expert
-terminology to satisfy the reader that he knows whereof he speaks.
-
-In his chapter on “The Hills Today” Mr. Williams outlines what the
-tourist should see, and how to see it. For that chapter alone his book
-would be well worth the attention of every prospective sight-seer. He
-has two chapters pertaining to the history of the region, the first
-speculating on how the whole economic growth of the West might well have
-been altered had a confirmed story of “gold in the Black Hills” been
-released fifty years before it was spread-eagled on the pages of the
-_Chicago Inter-Ocean_. It is an interesting speculation, and he gives it
-a pleasing reality.
-
-Another chapter deals with the lives of some of the characters exploited
-and given semi-permanent fame by the old dime novels. Deadwood without
-these characters would be just another picturesque town set down in a
-mountain valley; with them it becomes one of America’s better-known hot
-spots, vying with the Klondike and Leadville.
-
-Mr. Williams’ last chapter on the Badlands, a neighboring phenomenon, a
-place of amazing mystery and strange disorder, serves to depict what
-might be termed the undepictable in terms exactly calculated to excite
-the reader’s absorbed interest.
-
- Will G. Robinson
-
- _South Dakota State Historical Society
- Pierre, South Dakota
- December 17, 1951_
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER ONE
- The Black Hills:
- The Forbidden Land
-
-
-The thing to remember is that the Black Hills are not hills at all. They
-are mountains, the highest mountains east of the Rockies, with Harney
-Peak rising to a height of 7,242 feet above sea level. Inasmuch as the
-prairie floor averages, at the four entrances to the Hills, only 3,200
-feet in elevation, these are mountains of considerable stature.
-
-The title “hills” was by no means given the area by early white
-settlers. Indeed, if that majestic domain had not already been named the
-Black Hills by the Indians, George Armstrong Custer, who in 1874 made
-the first full-scale exploration of the region, would no doubt have
-dignified it with a more appropriate and properly descriptive name—the
-Sioux or the Dakota Mountains, in all probability.
-
-From time beyond remembrance, however, the region had been known to the
-Indians as Paha Sapa, exactly to be translated as “Black Hills,” and
-very properly that name was accepted by government geographers. The use
-of the word “black” possibly fulfilled several functions, for not only
-do these massive peaks appear decidedly black when seen against the
-horizon across distances as great as a hundred miles, but they were, to
-the superstitious braves of the Teton Sioux, the abode of the Thunders
-and studiously to be avoided.
-
-This taboo fastness was one of the last regions in the great American
-West to be explored and settled. For one reason, it enjoyed an isolation
-from the centers of development that served to discourage any but the
-most hardy of explorers. Lying in the extreme western end of present-day
-South Dakota, the Black Hills were two hundred miles west of the
-settlements around Pierre, on the Missouri River, and two hundred miles
-north of the towns along the North Platte, the valley of the
-Oregon-California Trail. The most important reason, though, for its
-belated opening was that gold was not discovered in the Black Hills
-until 1874, and it was the discovery of gold in various sections which
-more than any other single set of circumstances dictated the pattern of
-the development of the trans-Mississippi West.
-
-Even today this fascinating region remains nearly the most remote of all
-America’s resort and recreation areas. The Grand Canyon lies but an
-hour’s drive from a major east-west transcontinental highway. Estes
-Park,[1] in the Rockies, is only seventy miles from the city of Denver.
-Glacier Park is easily served by the Great Northern Railroad on its
-overland run, and Yellowstone enjoys direct service by three railroads.
-But the Black Hills lie beyond the privileges of railroad stopovers, and
-in order to visit them the tourist has no choice but to plan a vacation
-trip for the sake of the Hills themselves and not as a side venture from
-any of the traditional tours of the West. The Hills are worth the
-effort.
-
-The Black Hills occupy a rectangular realm which is roughly one hundred
-miles long, north to south, and fifty miles across its east-west axis.
-The White River Badlands, which are customarily visited on any Black
-Hills trip, form a depression in the high prairies some forty miles long
-and fifteen miles across the widest part. This stark and empty waste is
-to be found some seventy-five miles east of the Black Hills, or, more
-precisely, east of Rapid on U.S. Highway 14-16.
-
-There are five major access routes to the land of Paha Sapa. From the
-west, which is to say from Yellowstone Park, five hundred miles distant,
-the Hills can be reached by U.S. Highways 14 and 16. These routes come
-in together across the high plains of northern Wyoming, and separate a
-few hours’ drive from the South Dakota border, 14 veering to the north
-and 16 continuing through the central section of the Hills.
-
-From the south, U.S. 85 comes up from Denver, four hundred miles
-distant, crossing the Lincoln Highway at Cheyenne, and continuing along
-the route of the old Cheyenne-Deadwood stage.
-
-From Omaha and points in the southeast, the Hills are best reached over
-U.S. 20 across the top side of Nebraska. Although this route is not a
-major east-west route for interstate tourists, it serves a busy
-agricultural section and is generally in fine repair.
-
- [Illustration: The Black Hills; The Badlands]
-
-From the east U.S. 14 and 16, again, bring the tourist through Pierre,
-on the Missouri River, past the Badlands, and into the Hills through
-Rapid City. From Minneapolis the distance is just over six hundred
-miles, while from Chicago it is very nearly a thousand.
-
-For those entering the region from the north, U.S. 12 from Miles City,
-Montana, is in all probability the best route.
-
-The gateways to the Black Hills are the towns of Hot Springs in the
-south, Rapid City on the eastern edge, Spearfish or Belle Fourche at the
-north, and Custer in the west. All these towns offer entirely acceptable
-accommodations for a touring family; in fact, no one need drive more
-than twenty or thirty miles from any point in the area to find suitable
-lodgings at a desired rate.
-
-Hot Springs, on U.S. 18-85A and State 87, is situated at an altitude of
-3,443 feet and has a population of approximately five thousand. It is
-the one sector of the Black Hills that does not owe its original
-development to the gold rush of the seventies, but was sought out from
-the earliest days for its natural thermal springs.
-
-The town is located in a large bowl of the southern hills known as the
-Vale of Minnekahta, from the Sioux name for “warm waters.” Situated as
-it is on the rim of the Hills region, it was not included in the general
-taboo that cloaked the rest of Paha Sapa to the north; and for nearly a
-century before its discovery by the white man in 1875, it was a favored
-health resort of the Indians. As a matter of fact, Battle Mountain,
-which overlooks the town, takes its name from a legendary war between
-the Sioux and the Cheyenne for the exclusive privileges of the hot
-baths.
-
-Not long after the discovery of the springs a syndicate of investors who
-had come into the Hills from Iowa bought the ranch claims that had been
-taken out in the Minnekahta Canyon, and sought to develop the region as
-a spa. This was in the late eighties when salubrious waters were in high
-fashion as a cure for arthritis and other joint and muscular disorders
-of various degrees of complexity. Colonel Fred T. Evans, who had made a
-fortune operating a bull-team freight line from Fort Pierre to Rapid
-City, built an elaborate resort, the Evans Hotel, which even today is
-imposing in its last-century splendor; and with the arrival in 1890 and
-1891 of two railroads, the Chicago and Northwestern and the Burlington,
-wealthy cure-seekers from all over the United States made it their habit
-to spend the summer months in this pleasant town.
-
- [Illustration: Highways leading into the Black Hills.]
-
-Healing waters have long since gone out of vogue as a form of
-recreation, and although several clinics still treat a modest number of
-visitors for one indisposition or another, the town of Hot Springs has
-ceased to be a tourist center of any consequence. Also, the fact that
-the Springs are located a considerable distance south of U.S. 16, the
-main east-west route through the Hills, has contributed to the
-increasing isolation which this town enjoys, drowsily seeing to the
-wants of the occasional visitor who strays into Paha Sapa from the south
-along U.S. 85. But do not mistake it, it is a pleasant town to stop in,
-with excellent motor courts and a good selection of restaurants.
-
-The town of Custer, a scant fifteen miles from the Wyoming border on
-U.S. 16, is little more today than a tourist stopover. It is almost two
-thousand feet higher than Hot Springs, at an altitude of 5,301 feet, and
-contains, according to the latest estimates, nearly two thousand
-residents.
-
-As the tourist enters the town he will immediately be amazed by the wide
-main street; but if he ponders for a moment the problems of turning a
-freight wagon behind sixteen oxen, the reason will become clear. Custer,
-the western gateway to the Hills, was, until the coming of the
-railroads, a major way station on the busy Cheyenne-Deadwood stage and
-freight route; and for fifteen years the great bull wagons teamed into
-this busy center where, in most cases, the goods were unloaded and
-trans-shipped by lighter wagons into the various mining centers
-throughout the northern and central Hills.
-
-Custer, the oldest of the white man’s settlements in Paha Sapa, was
-founded in 1875 by gold-seekers who flocked into the territory following
-the reports of yellow metal sent back by George Custer after his
-exploratory campaign of 1874. In the first spring and summer of its
-existence more than five thousand miners swarmed into the region to pan
-gold. This invasion was a violation of the government’s treaty with the
-Sioux, and the military forced the argonauts to leave.
-
-By 1876 the Indian problem had come to a head with the defeat of General
-Custer on the Little Big Horn in eastern Montana; and as one phase of
-retaliation the federal government redrafted the Sioux treaty, allowing
-American citizens to enter the Black Hills, until this time reserved for
-the Indians. Although for some time the tribal leaders could not be
-persuaded to sign the revised agreement, the restrictions on settlers
-were removed, and back into the Hills rushed the prospectors—this time
-to the new strikes in Deadwood Gulch, in the north.
-
-By the middle of 1877 Custer, where gold had originally been found, had
-a population of a mere three hundred souls, all of them concerned
-primarily with the operation of the stage stations and hostels. True, a
-few grizzled placer miners still worked the streams near by, and do to
-this day; but hard rock mining in Deadwood was the new order of affairs.
-
-The visitor to this section of the Hills today will find it pleasant to
-stay the night in any one of a wide choice of tourist courts and other
-reasonable billets, and he may see much of historical interest within a
-few miles’ drive of Custer. A settler’s stockade, reconstructed to the
-original model of 1874, is a remarkable site to visit, and the Jewel
-Cave is best reached from this point. For sheer color and pageantry the
-annual celebration of Gold Discovery Days, which is held at Custer late
-in July—near the date of the discovery of gold, July 27—is an affair not
-to be missed during a Black Hills vacation at that time of year.
-
-The town of Spearfish is the point of entrance to the region on U.S. 14,
-or, coming in from the north, on U.S. 85. This tidy metropolis, called
-the Queen City of the Black Hills, never knew the heady history that
-marked the early days of Custer, of Deadwood, of Rapid City, or even of
-fashionable Hot Springs. Lying outside the magnificent natural bowl of
-mineral deposits, Spearfish was founded and exists today for the simple
-purpose of supplying the inner Hills with food and produce. It has a
-population of between three and four thousand people, most of whose
-energies are devoted to agriculture and livestock.
-
-Spearfish has, however, carved for itself a fame and renown even larger,
-in many quarters, than that enjoyed by the gold rush towns of gustier
-memories. It is the home of the Black Hills Passion Play.
-
-This beautiful and stirring performance, which is given in a large
-amphitheater on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday evenings throughout the
-summers, is a resurrection in an American atmosphere of the
-centuries-old Passion of Luenen, in Germany. The man who plays the
-Christus, an inherited responsibility through many generations, is Josef
-Meier, who fled from Europe in 1932. For six years, with a reassembled
-cast, he toured the United States, performing a much trimmed-down
-version of the historic morality on college campuses, in civic
-auditoriums, and at summer encampments. It was at such a performance at
-the Black Hills Teachers College that the citizens of Spearfish were
-inspired to offer the touring company a permanent home. Meier and his
-group eagerly accepted the offer, and the town constructed an outdoor
-theater seating eight thousand people. Now, each winter the Passion Play
-continues its tour of the United States, but all during July and August
-it remains in residence, acting its moving and majestic pageant to
-constantly packed houses.
-
-The eastern gateway to the Hills is Rapid City, a metropolis of thirty
-thousand people which lies on the level prairie just to the east of the
-final ring of foothills. Founded, like Spearfish, not as a mining center
-but to serve the near-by gold regions, Rapid City has developed a maze
-of industrial and commercial enterprises. Shipping, of course, has been
-a basic form of commerce from the earliest days, with the two most
-heavily traveled trails into the Black Hills, that from Fort Pierre and
-that from Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific, entering the gold area
-at Rapid City. Lumbering, manufacture, banking, and livestock quickly
-became prominent as the gold fever subsided and the more permanent
-settlers began coming into the region to take up the rich cattle and
-farming lands in western South Dakota. A final guarantee that Rapid City
-will continue to flourish may be seen in the selection by the Air Force
-of the high, level prairie land just ten miles to the east of the city
-as the nation’s major mid-continent bomber base.
-
-Rapid City is served by U.S. Highway 14-16, and South Dakota state
-highways 40 and 79. Two railroads and a major airline assist in handling
-the heavy summer tourist travel, and from Rapid City practically every
-point of interest in the Black Hills can be reached by car within three
-hours.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER TWO
- The Formation of the Black Hills
-
-
-One of the most rewarding features of a visit to the Black Hills is the
-opportunity for the average individual, who has no technical training,
-to see with his own eyes a museum of the earth’s ages and a living
-sample of practically every one of the many aeons of the planet’s
-history.
-
-The Hills, which is to say the rock substances of the region, are older
-by hundreds of millions of years than the stone out-juttings of the
-Rocky Mountains. Layer after layer of slates and schists from the very
-foundations of this globe lie visibly exposed as the end result of a
-doming of the region, a vast blistering, as it were, which raised the
-entire structure, layer upon layer, several thousand feet in the air.
-Following this doming process, a vigorous program of erosion commenced.
-Stratum by stratum the winds and rains cut across this huge blister in a
-horizontal plane, eventually laying the core open at the height above
-sea level at which we find the Black Hills today. From that core,
-extending in every direction in the general form of a circle, the
-various strata which once lay so smoothly one upon another have been
-laid open as one might slice off the top of an orange.
-
- [Illustration: The Doming of the Black Hills
-
- Rock Strata being shifted into a dome at the time of the great
- continental uplift.
-
- The forces of erosion—wind and water—have levelled the dome and
- opened the seams to view.]
-
-In order to get an even clearer picture of how this amazing phenomenon
-came about through the aeons, let us fold back the ages to the very
-birth of this planet.
-
-For centuries men have attempted to determine the earth’s exact age, but
-except for the famed Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland, who gravely
-calculated that the earth was formed at precisely nine o’clock on the
-morning of the twelfth of October in the year 4004 B.C., no scientist
-has been able to come closer than a few million years in the figures.
-Through a number of trustworthy measurements, however—including, in
-recent years, the examination of the deterioration of radioactive
-elements in rocks—geologists have agreed that the oldest known
-ingredients of the earth’s crust have been in existence at least two
-billion years, and, according to some very recent calculations, possibly
-as long as three and a half billion.
-
-In what is known as the Archean period, the most ancient of which we
-have any geological knowledge, a vast sea covered much of North America,
-bounded by certain masses of land, the extent of which has never been
-discovered. From this land mass remnants of mud and sand were broken
-away by waves and deposited on the floor of the sea. Eventually, under
-the pressure of its own weight, this material formed shales and
-sandstones to an undetermined depth—many thousands of feet. Those
-particular sandstones and shales underlie the entire Black Hills area
-and extend in nearly every direction for a considerable distance,
-suggesting perhaps that the area of the Hills was at one time the bottom
-of this watery bowl.
-
-The Archean period came to an end some five hundred million years ago.
-By then the seas had withdrawn, and the new land formations which had
-lain under the early ocean merged with the vestiges of the first land
-mass. But this metamorphosis, which can be described in such calm
-fashion, was by no means a gentle affair. It took place largely as the
-result of a shifting and rising of certain ocean bottom areas, among
-which was the region where we now find the Black Hills.
-
-At the time of this uplift, and possibly contributing to it, there was a
-tremendous disturbance in the lower regions of the earth which sent
-great streams of molten matter up into the several-mile-thick layer of
-shale, through which it poured toward the surface, breaking through in
-monolithic forms and hardening into granite. The New Mexico writer,
-Eugene Manlove Rhodes, describing a similar geologic phenomenon in the
-valley of the Rio Grande, has called it “like sticking a knife through a
-tambourine,” and indeed it was. Harney Peak, in Custer State Park, is
-just such a granite finger pointing up through the original shales
-toward the sky.
-
-When this disturbance took place the granite juttings did not rise above
-the surrounding landscape as they now do. In many cases they did not
-even reach the surface of the shale beds, but ceased their flow and
-hardened short of the crust of the earth, as it was then to be found.
-When, however, the region was domed, many millions of years later, the
-subsequent weathering of the huge blister did not attack these granite
-formations with anywhere near the vigor with which the softer sandstones
-and limestones were eroded. What actually occurred, then, was a peeling
-away of the softer rocks, leaving the granite formations near their
-original sizes, but at last above the ground level in the form of peaks,
-needles, and spires.
-
-But we have gotten ahead of our story. Following the Algonkian period,
-when the molten matter was injected into the layers of shale, there came
-what is known as the Cambrian period. The Cambrian occupied the first
-80,000,000 years of the Paleozoic era, which in itself covered the
-entire period from 510,000,000 to 180,000,000 years ago.
-
-During the Cambrian period the land subsided again, perhaps because of
-the weight of the uplifted sedimentary formations. During this
-subsidence the waters once again covered vast portions of North America,
-and additional muds and slimes were deposited on the bottom. It was at
-this period that life first appeared on the earth, in the form of simple
-marine organisms which have left fossil remains. These deposits made in
-the Cambrian period can be seen in outcroppings all through the region,
-although they are most notably found in the area about Deadwood. Because
-of their structure they indicate to the geologist that the shoreline of
-the ancient Cambrian sea was near at hand, and also that this covering
-of water was by no means as extensive or as deep as the earlier Archean
-sea.
-
-The deposits of sand and mud, which were eventually pressed into stone,
-occasionally reach a depth of as much as five hundred feet, although
-they were laid down extremely slowly, as eddying mud is laid at the
-bottom of a pond. In the locality of Deadwood they contained a rich
-infiltration of gold, and the entire conglomeration was thoroughly
-intermixed with a vast outcropping of much older rock—this effect
-undoubtedly having taken place later, during the great continental
-uplift, when the final doming occurred.
-
-
- THE AGES OF EARTH
-
- MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO (Pre-Cambrian Existence back to 3½ Billions
- of years)
-
- PALEOZOIC ERA
- 510
- Cambrian Period—First fossils deposited.
- Marine life.
- 430>
- Ordovician Period—Invertebrates increase
- greatly.
- 350>
- Silurian Period—Coral reefs formed. First
- evidence of land life.
- 310>
- Devonian Period—First forests. First
- amphibians.
- 250>
- Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian
- Periods.—Reptiles and insects appear.
- Continental uplift at end of this period.
- 180
- MESOZOIC ERA
- Triassic Period—Small Dinosaurs. First
- mammals.
- 150>
- Jurassic Period—Dinosaurs and marine
- reptiles dominant.
- 125>
- Cretaceous Period—Dinosaurs reach zenith of
- development then disappear. Small mammals.
- Flowering plants and development of hardwood
- forests.
- 60
- CENOZOIC ERA & PERIOD
- Paleocene Epoch—Archaic mammals.
- 50>
- Eocene Epoch—Modern mammals appear.
- 35>
- Oligocene Epoch—Great apes appear.
- 25>
- Miocene Epoch—Grazing types of mammals
- appear.
- 10>
- Pliocene Epoch—Man appears.
- 0
-
-The next period of the earth’s age—the Ordovician period, which extended
-from 430,000,000 to 350,000,000 years ago—has left its mark just as
-visibly upon the Black Hills. It was during this period that the many
-species of invertebrate marine life reached a zenith of development, and
-that a bed of sediment was laid down and later compressed to a pinkish
-limestone. The fact that this Ordovician bed is less than forty feet
-thick indicates that the land mass from which the muds and sands were
-drawn was very low, and that the Cambrian sea was relatively shallow,
-entertaining only minor erosive currents along its shores.
-
-The next two ages, the Silurian and the Devonian, which brought our
-earth down to a scant 250,000,000 years ago, did not see the deposit of
-any silting in the Black Hills region. No doubt the waters which covered
-the locality dried up gradually. The Mississippian period, however, was
-a time of great depositional activity. A layer of limestone between five
-and six hundred feet thick was set down over the entire section. In
-later periods this limestone underwent much decay and water erosion,
-which formed the amazing caverns for which the Black Hills are known.
-Wind Cave, now the site of a National Park, Crystal Cave, and Jewel Cave
-are the best-known tourist attractions among the many, although there
-are a number of lesser ones, some even today only partially explored.
-
-The chemical activity which accomplished this erosion was caused by the
-seeping of rain water down through later accumulations of sediment on
-top of the layer of limestone. As it seeped through rotting vegetation
-and timber the water collected carbonic acid gases which, when it
-reached the level of the Mississippian limestone, eroded the structure
-and ate out huge hollows in it.
-
-The thickness of the Mississippian deposit indicated that at this time
-the earth had again sunk beneath the waters to a considerable depth. The
-shallow sea which had not offered sediment to a greater depth than a few
-feet was replaced by active currents which carried heavier sedimentary
-materials from great distances, laying them down on the floor of the sea
-in various strata to a depth of several hundred feet. Finally, after an
-unknown number of millions of years, but perhaps during the Triassic
-period, the land again rose above the level of the waters. A red shale
-suggests a time of great aridity when the region must have been a near
-desert, and certain discernible patterns in the shales suggest periods
-of rapid evaporation and a consequent change in chemical activity.
-
-Finally the land subsided again, for the last time to date. At times
-salt water covered the region, and at other times fresh water left its
-chemical mark. At some levels in this last layer of sedimentary rocks an
-abundance of fossils can be found, indicating deep water, and at others
-ripple-marked rock indicates very shallow water. It remains a period of
-great mystery. How long this final submersion continued we do not know;
-but in all probability it lasted nearly a hundred million years, and
-then was terminated by the vast upending of North America which created
-the Rocky Mountains. This upheaval did not take place suddenly, as a
-volcanic eruption or a series of earthquakes, but apparently commenced
-about sixty million years ago and lasted, as a continuous series of
-shiftings and slow upheavals, for about twenty million years.
-
-At the beginning of this mighty uplifting the region of the Black Hills
-was covered by the various layers of sedimentary deposits to a depth of
-nearly two miles. Slowly this rectangular area was lifted as a dome over
-the surrounding prairies. We do not know how high above the level lands
-this dome reached, but we do know that several thousand feet of later
-deposits overcapped the granite upthrusts which were planted in the
-fundamental shales. Those granite fingers, which have now been exposed
-to view, stand from five hundred to four thousand feet above the plains,
-and thus the original dome may be assumed to have extended from eight to
-ten thousand feet above our present-day sea level.
-
-Almost as soon as this era of upheaval first started, as soon as the
-first land of the Black Hills was elevated above the great sea, the
-forces of erosion set to work. Wind and rain worked their terrifying
-magic on the slowly rising terrain, carving away the softer rocks and
-the loose dirt and leaving only the granite outcroppings. Down from the
-sides of the great dome poured the waters of melting snows, gushing
-springs, and torrential rainfalls, digging out rivers, canyons, and the
-deep and narrow cuts which characterize this beautiful region. Slowly
-the land continued to rise and the oceans to fall until at last an
-equilibrium was reached, a static state of affairs which remained much
-the same until our own period, when the base of the dome was at last
-revealed, with the surrounding lands drifting away in every direction on
-a gentle incline.
-
-From that day the structure of the Black Hills has changed but little.
-The high winds off the Dakota plains and the annual spring run-off and
-seasonal rains cut their minute etchings in the landscape; but Nature’s
-greatest effort in the Black Hills part of the world has, it seems, been
-made. It must be remembered, though, that Nature has had other
-responsibilities. At the time of the doming of the Black Hills the Alps
-had not yet been formed, nor the Pyrenees, nor the Caucasus. And on the
-site of the mountains we know today as the sky-piercing Himalayas, the
-swampy waters still moldered.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER THREE
- The Hills Today
-
-
-It is this writer’s personal opinion that no other resort area in the
-United States possesses such a wealth of tourist attractions as the
-Black Hills. This profusion of happy endowments can be separated into
-three categories, each of which deserves individual study and enjoyment.
-Two of these, the region’s folklore and its memories of the gold rush,
-belong to the amazing history of the Hills. But of course the visible
-landscape and the natural wonders of the area are the primary objects of
-the tourist’s visits, and it is proper that they be considered
-immediately and in detail.
-
-
- _Wind Cave_
-
-The Wind Cave lies ten miles north of Hot Springs on U.S. 85A. The
-cavern is the focal point of interest in its own National Park, which
-takes in forty square miles. Nearly half of this park is enclosed with a
-high fence, behind which one of the last great bison herds roams
-contentedly. Protected antelope, elk, and deer also enjoy this game
-preserve.
-
-The cavern was discovered, according to legend, by a cowboy who heard a
-continued low whistling noise in the weeds and, investigating, found air
-rushing from a ten-inch hole near the present entrance to the cave. And
-indeed it is this very phenomenon that makes Wind Cave different from
-other notable caverns, such as the one at Carlsbad. Even on the stillest
-of days a steady current of air can be felt rushing in or out of the
-cave’s opening—into the earth if the barometer is rising, and out of the
-ground if the pressure is falling.
-
-The National Park Service conducts tours of the cave, the complete
-excursion lasting some two hours. Fortunately, although the visitor
-descends to a great depth as he searches out the various chambers on the
-route, the tour ends at an elevator which whisks him swiftly to the
-surface near the starting point.
-
-The entire cavern is a little more than ten miles long, although there
-are portions of it which have not even yet been explored so that their
-size may be known with accuracy. It is not graced with the growths of
-stalactites and stalagmites normally to be found in limestone
-formations, but nature has compensated for that lack by fashioning a
-peculiar box-work which looks for all the world as if the cavern had
-been subjected to an interminable frosting process. These beautiful
-fretwork deposits, which are not to be found in any other cave, are the
-result of a strange chemical process that took place in the limestone
-stratum where Wind Cave is located. Surface water seeping into the stone
-became charged with carbon dioxide gas from the decaying organic matter
-through which it passed. This gentle acid then dissolved the limestone
-only to redeposit it in cracks and crevices around other limestone
-fragments. The precipitated limestone was of a different chemical
-composition and resisted later onslaughts by the eroding acids—which,
-however, did eat away the fragments around which the precipitate had
-formed, leaving the maze of hollow crystalline formations that can be
-seen in the various chambers of the cavern.
-
-The National Park, being relatively small, is not equipped with
-overnight facilities; but this does not matter, for the town of Hot
-Springs is but twenty minutes’ drive from the park, and the town of
-Custer is only twenty miles away. There are, however, camping grounds in
-the park, and the Park Service operates a lunchroom at the entrance to
-the cave.
-
-
- _Custer State Park_
-
-Custer State Park is located almost in the center of the Black Hills.
-Containing nearly one hundred and fifty thousand acres, it is one of the
-largest state parks in America. It was originally set aside as a state
-game refuge, and it was not until the advent of summer touring as a
-national pastime that the state of South Dakota purchased additional
-private lands which contained scenic wonders, incorporating all of them
-into the one large area.
-
-Today the park is the center of all tourist activity in the region. A
-number of excellent lodges, camp grounds, and tourist courts along every
-road make it particularly easy for the tourist to stop at will for a day
-or more to enjoy the various recreational facilities as his fancy
-dictates. In every respect the park is effectively administered: food
-and lodging prices are held to a reasonable figure, the cleanliness of
-the buildings and grounds is regularly inspected, and the landscape is
-protected from commercial exploitation.
-
-The center of the park’s activities is the Game Lodge, a monstrous
-Victorian hotel built in 1919 and operated under a private lease. Close
-by the Game Lodge are cabins, stores, eating establishments, the park
-zoo, a museum, and the offices of the state park officials. The Lodge,
-those with a flair for nostalgia will recall, achieved international
-renown in 1927 when President Coolidge made it the summer White House.
-It lies on US. 16, thirty-two miles from Rapid City and seventeen miles
-from the town of Custer.
-
-It behooves the writer to mention at this point that the museum
-connected with the Game Lodge is by no means the drab and dusty sort of
-collection of impedimenta associated with the vicinity that is so often
-found in museums at scenic sites. Indeed, this fine attraction is an
-assemblage of geological, paleontological, and historical items which
-trace with rare discernment the whole history of the Hills through the
-ages, and up to our own day. The visitor who fails to pass an hour in
-this exciting spot will have missed the heart of the Hills entirely.
-
-
- _Harney Peak_
-
-Harney Peak stands like a sentinel in Custer Park. The highest point in
-the Black Hills, it rises to an altitude of 7,242 feet, 4,000 feet above
-the prairie floor outside the Hills. Higher by 900 feet than Mount
-Washington in New Hampshire, it is the highest mountain east of the
-Rockies.
-
-High as it is, Harney Peak is by no means the typical mountain which
-tourists come to expect after a trip through Colorado, for example, or
-western Wyoming. It is older by ages than the precipitous and craggy
-Rockies, and the winds and waters have worked their slow erosion on it,
-cutting away what high shelves and escarpments might originally have
-existed and leaving it, except at the top, a gentle and easy mountain
-that may be climbed over a trail which will scarcely tax the laziest
-tourist.
-
-On the top of the peak will be found the core of granite that originally
-broke through the Archean shales. This granite, subject to the
-mechanical ravages of wind, rain, and frost, is rugged and coarse, a
-steep dome covered with a thick lichen. From this eminence the entire
-Black Hills area can be seen, rolling away in every direction—great
-waves of pinnacle and mountain, gradually subsiding and disappearing in
-the haze of distance which covers the prairies. Especially striking from
-this spot is the view of Cathedral Park, with its hundreds of
-needle-like spires and organ pipes, and, sheltered in a quiet recess,
-that amazing phenomenon, Sylvan Lake.
-
-
- _The Needles_
-
-The Needles Highway, a fourteen-mile stretch of road, branches off U.S.
-16 about five miles west of the Game Lodge. At the time of its
-construction in 1920-21 it was regarded as an engineering marvel,
-although later exploits of American highway builders, such as the road
-to the top of fourteen-thousand-foot Mount Evans in Colorado, have since
-far overshadowed this accomplishment.
-
-The road winds and curves in an interminable pattern, finding its way,
-by trial and error it seems, among the great granite spires that give
-the region its name. These “needles,” through the last of which the
-highway actually plunges in a tunnel, are the remains of a great granite
-plateau which once covered that entire portion of the Black Hills.
-Contrary to popular opinion, the rocks are not outthrusts, the result of
-some ancient upheaval, but the last thin vestiges of this once-solid
-plateau. The age-old process of erosion has carved them into the shapes
-they now have; and the inquiring visitor can see the process still at
-work, for upon close inspection this granite is found to be not the
-impregnable stone it appears, but rock in a late stage of
-disintegration. Rot is the word which actually describes this formation,
-and in many spots whole chunks can be picked from the side of a spire by
-hand. It was, as a matter of fact, this situation which made the
-construction of the Needles Highway possible. Had the granite been
-solid, the task of cutting the Needles and Iron Creek tunnels would have
-been so expensive as to prohibit the entire undertaking.
-
-
- _Sylvan Lake_
-
-Not all of the scenery in the Black Hills was created by Nature. Sylvan
-Lake, in many respects the most beautiful corner of the region, was made
-entirely by hand.
-
-It was near the turn of the century when two hunters, Dr. Jennings of
-Hot Springs and Joseph Spencer of Chicago, got the intriguing idea of
-having an additional tourist attraction in the vicinity of Harney Peak—a
-lake.
-
- [Illustration: Along the Needles Highway]
-
- [Illustration: Harney Peak older by ages than the Rockies]
-
-Some lakes are difficult to construct, while some are relatively easy.
-Sylvan belongs in the latter category. The two imaginative gentlemen
-merely bought a small tract of land between two great granite shields
-and built a dam seventy-five feet high between the boulders. The waters
-of Sunday Creek, which flowed to their dam, together with local springs,
-at last contrived to fill the area back of the dam. Today this loveliest
-of lakes basks peacefully high above the world at an elevation of 6,250
-feet, actually on top of a ridge, at the north terminal of the Needles
-Highway.
-
-It is easy for any lover of water scenes to become enthusiastic as he
-describes the colorations of his favorite lake, so I shall merely state
-that Sylvan never looks the same in two consecutive moments. Not having
-the symmetry of natural lakes or the tremendous depths of glacial pools,
-this body of water plays the role of mirror to the fabulous rock shapes
-which surround it; and indeed it is a source of never-ending delight to
-watch the cloud and sun patterns as they wrestle with the shadows of the
-rocks on its surface.
-
-For many years Sylvan Lake and its environs were operated privately. A
-hotel catered to the tourists who bounced over the privately built road
-in buggies and horse-drawn busses. In 1919 the property was purchased by
-the state of South Dakota, and since that time it has been operated as a
-public facility. When the original hotel burned, in the thirties, the
-state built with funds procured from the federal government a
-comfortable and modern hostelry, the most amazing feature of which is
-the expansive dining room with picture windows looking out over the lake
-to Harney Peak.
-
-The hotel is small, as resort hotels go, containing only fifty rooms,
-and the tourist would do well to arrange for accommodations in advance
-of his visit. There are, however, a number of cabins operated in
-conjunction with the main building, and except at the height of the
-season rooms can probably be found in the annexes. Along the lake shore
-an excellent restaurant, independent of the hotel, serves the needs of
-the traveler who has only a few hours to spend at this stop.
-
-
- _Mount Rushmore_
-
-From Sylvan Lake around back of the north side of Harney Peak it is a
-drive of but a few miles to the second man-made wonder of the Hills—the
-Mount Rushmore Memorial.
-
-Perhaps no one thing has done so much to make the Black Hills known
-throughout the world as this incredible undertaking—the carving in the
-natural granite face of a mountain of the faces of our four most revered
-presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
-“Teddy” is included for his lasting service to the people of the United
-States as the president who saw the Panama Canal project through
-Congress and into being. The military and economic values of that
-enterprise so deeply impressed the sculptor of this mammoth frieze that
-he insisted upon elevating TR into the august company of the other three
-great statesmen.
-
-The whole story of the memorial would fill several volumes, and indeed
-has already done so. Briefly, the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, wished to
-perpetuate a patriotic motif in stone figures so large that they would
-attract visitors from every corner of the country and impress upon them
-the glories of the democracy which the four presidents had done so much
-to build and sustain. The sculptor’s own words were: “I want, somewhere
-in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the continent, a few
-feet of stone that carries the likenesses, the dates, and a word or two
-of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high that it
-won’t pay to pull it down for lesser purposes.”
-
-The actual construction work started in 1926, and the formal dedication
-was made by President Coolidge in the summer of 1927. Between nine
-hundred thousand and a million dollars went into the gigantic task,
-including money for supplies, wages, and the sculptor’s own personal
-needs during the fifteen years he spent on the project. He died in 1941,
-and the work was completed a few months later by his son.
-
-The immensity of the undertaking can be grasped when the dimensions are
-noted. The face of each of the figures, for example, measures sixty feet
-from chin to forehead.
-
-The rough carving was done by dynamite. Borglum, working from a
-carefully constructed model, would mark on the sheer sides of the great
-mountain the lines where he wanted the stone peeled away. Then a blast
-would be set off in the hope that the rock displacement would
-approximate the lines marked out, and from that point the work had to be
-done by hand. At first, taking lessons from the miners working for him
-who had many years of experience in blasting the hard granites of the
-region, Borglum was able to reach only within a foot of the final figure
-by dynamiting. As he became more proficient in the use of the explosives
-he got to the point where his original blasts would shed the stone to a
-matter of an inch or less from the final cut surface. The head of
-Washington was finished in 1930, that of Jefferson in 1936, that of
-Lincoln a year later, and that of Theodore Roosevelt, the final figure,
-in 1941.
-
-There are no tourist facilities at the site of the Memorial. Like every
-other place in the Black Hills, however, Rushmore can be reached in a
-few minutes’ drive from any one of a number of near-by points where a
-tourist might be stopping. Borglum’s studio, situated on a prominence a
-few hundred yards from the carvings, gives the best view of the scene
-and is open to the public.
-
-
- _Crazy Horse_
-
-It is not entirely accurate to refer to the Mount Rushmore Memorial as
-_the_ other man-made wonder in the Hills. At the moment it is the only
-such marvel outside of Sylvan Lake; but in twenty-five or thirty years
-it will have to share that honor with the Crazy Horse Memorial, a statue
-carved on top of Thunderhead Mountain, between Harney Peak and the town
-of Custer. This gigantic carving, which will be an entire figure and not
-a mere bas-relief, will be an equestrian statue of the great Sioux
-chief, Crazy Horse, who led his nation during the desperate years
-between 1866 and 1877. The chief will be mounted on a prancing steed,
-his hair blowing, as if in the wind, behind him.
-
-The Indians themselves can take the credit for this fabulous idea. Chief
-Henry Standing Bear, a resident of the Pine Ridge reservation, is said
-to have had his inspiration after a visit to Mount Rushmore. Why not, he
-wondered, erect some monument to an outstanding red man, so that when
-the last of his people have been assimilated into the white man’s
-society, visitors to what was once the heart of the Indian country can
-reflect for a moment upon the greatness of that lost race?
-
-Standing Bear wrote his idea to Korczak Ziolkowski, an energetic and
-imaginative sculptor, and suggested that Chief Crazy Horse would make a
-fitting symbol of the Indians’ struggle for existence. This was in 1940.
-
-The sculptor took to the idea, but because of the events of World War II
-he was unable to commence work on the project until 1947. Since then he
-has been setting off two blasts of dynamite a day, carving away the rock
-at the top of Thunderhead. But even yet the first faint outlines of the
-eventual statue are only barely discernible. Ziolkowski estimates that
-the entire task will consume a quarter of a century, if not more, and
-will cost not less than five million dollars. If this figure sounds high
-compared with the less than a million spent on Rushmore, perhaps the
-measurements will provide an explanation: the horse upon which the chief
-will be seated will be four hundred feet from nose to tail, and the
-entire work, from pedestal to top, will be more than five hundred feet
-in height.
-
-
- _Mount Coolidge_
-
-In this same general region lies another prominent Black Hills landmark
-which every tourist should take time to visit—Mount Coolidge. With a
-height of 6,400 feet, this peak is by no means an outstanding mountain,
-being ranked by a good half dozen higher within the Hills. But from its
-summit, which can be reached by an auto road leading off U.S. 85A a few
-miles to the north of Wind Cave Park, an amazing vista can be seen. To
-the east, on a clear day, the White River Badlands loom as a great
-valley sixty miles away. To the south one can see across the high
-rolling hills all the way into Nebraska, and to the west landmarks in
-Wyoming are clearly visible. On the summit a stone lookout tower has
-been built for the convenience of visitors.
-
-
- _Jewel Cave and Ice Cave_
-
-Since the Black Hills are underbedded so widely by limestone, it is not
-surprising to find in them not one but several memorable caverns. There
-are, as a matter of fact, a dozen or more well-known large caves; but
-outside of Wind Cave, only Jewel Cave has been opened and fully prepared
-for public visit. The expense of exploring, lighting, and carving trails
-in the others has kept them off the market, so to speak, for in a region
-so packed with scenic delights two great caverns are about as much as
-the traffic will bear.
-
-Jewel Cave lies some fourteen miles west of Custer on U.S. 16, almost at
-the Wyoming-South Dakota border. It is a small cave, with only two tours
-marked out in it, one a mile long and the other two miles. It is noted
-for its wealth of colorful crystalline deposits, totally unlike the
-delicate filigree work to be found in Wind Cave.
-
-The cave was discovered by two prospectors, who proceeded to develop
-their property for commercial gain. In 1934 they sold the cave and such
-of its environs as they owned to the Newcastle, Wyoming, Lions Club and
-the Custer Chamber of Commerce. These two organizations sought to
-popularize it further as a lure to tourists who would have to travel
-through their towns to reach the scene. In 1938 the federal government
-took it over and made a national monument of it.
-
-Not far from Jewel Cave is the famous Ice Cave. This cavern gets its
-name from the current of cold air which blows from its mouth, cold and
-clammy on even the hottest of summer days. The Ice Cave is not
-officially open to the public, and has not even been totally explored.
-Forest rangers and Park Service employees have charted some of it and
-have searched out certain channels in the strange formation, and from
-their meager reports it would seem that if Ice Cave is ever fully opened
-it will vie with New Mexico’s Carlsbad in beauty and grandeur.
-
-For the curious tourist the only possibility at the moment is to take
-the lovely off-route trip to the cave’s entrance, a natural arch twenty
-feet high and seventy-five feet wide.
-
-In addition to Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and Ice Cave, there are a number
-of other caverns of varying interest and underground beauty which have
-been opened and exploited by private individuals. In many cases these
-are but indifferently arranged for public inspection, but can be tracked
-down by the visitor by means of the garish signs which too often manage
-to clutter the otherwise unblemished scenery.
-
-
- _Just Scenery_
-
-The foregoing are only a very few of the scenic wonders of the Black
-Hills. Detailed information on the various other scenic features is
-easily to be had at any of the hotels and tourist courts in the Hills,
-and brochures covering practically every landmark are available gratis,
-thanks to the enthusiasm of the local chambers of commerce, the Black
-Hills and Badlands Association, and the state of South Dakota. The area
-is crisscrossed with good roads, and no matter which route one takes to
-his eventual destination, every mile will be marked by breath-taking
-views and natural wonders.
-
-The region, except at the summits of the peaks, lies at an average
-altitude of some five thousand feet. Cool nights are thus guaranteed,
-regardless of the temperatures by day. The highest mean temperature
-ranges, during the six months between April and November, from 60 to 85
-degrees. Light outing clothes are suggested for day wear, and light
-wraps are always in order after dark.
-
-The rainfall during this same six-month period, averaged over fifty
-years, amounts to three inches per month; what small showers do occur
-take place most usually in an hour or so of the early afternoon, and
-refresh rather than hinder the tourist.
-
-The hillsides are covered with a mass of shrub and tree growth, and an
-earnest searcher can find specimens of no less than fifty-two varieties.
-Yellow pine, spruce, cedar, ash, aspen, alder, dogwood, and cottonwood
-are most in evidence.
-
-The bird lover will find the Black Hills nothing less than a vast
-aviary, more than two hundred species having been seen in the region.
-Animal life is almost as widely represented, although the casual visitor
-is not likely to come upon a native mountain lion or gray wolf. The
-assistance of forest rangers and Park Service employees is available in
-locating the habitats of some of the rarer varieties of wildlife.
-
-As might be expected, the fisherman will find plenty of opportunity to
-ply his pole in this region. There are nearly 150 miles of stream and
-lake frontage in the Black Hills, and the waters are liberally stocked
-by the state hatcheries. In addition to trout, the angler will encounter
-pike, pickerel, bluegills, black bass, and perch.
-
-Finally, there are the annual celebrations and fairs, which are always
-of interest to the outsider, for they help dramatize the particular
-region where they are held and its historical background. July and
-August are the months for these celebrations, and notices of coming
-events will be found posted prominently’ along the tourist routes. Four
-such outstanding occasions are Black Hills Range Days at Rapid City,
-Gold Discovery Days at Custer, the Belle Fourche Round-Up, and the Days
-of ’76 at Deadwood. The Deadwood celebration, it might be added,
-celebrates not the Revolutionary War, but the discovery of gold in
-Deadwood Gulch in 1876.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER FOUR
- History I: Indians and Gold
-
-
-Gold, they say, is where you find it. In California in 1848—in Montana
-in 1852—in Colorado in 1858—in Arizona, in Nevada: when they finally
-found it in the Black Hills in 1874, the Gold Rush West had nearly all
-been settled and the bonanza days were forever gone, for all the likely
-places had been searched.
-
-The question posed is an obvious one. With sourdoughs plowing and
-digging up the bed of every stream and rivulet in the West from 1849 on,
-how did it come about that the Black Hills, lying a considerable
-distance closer to home than California and the other gold rush regions,
-had kept their glittering secret until so late?
-
-The truth of the matter is that the mysterious and brooding dark
-mountain-land was a good place to hide secrets. Gold had been discovered
-there, as a matter of fact, as early as 1834, which was just seven years
-after the country’s first gold strike—the 1827 Georgia rush. But
-unfortunately those first lucky gold-seekers—there were six of them—did
-not live to enjoy their taste of the Black Hills’ incredible wealth.
-Fifty-three years later, not far from the town of Spearfish, one Louis
-Thoen found a piece of limestone upon which was crudely but legibly
-engraved this melancholy message:
-
- came to these hills in 1833, seven of us DeLacompt Ezra Kind G. W.
- Wood T Brown R Kent WM King Indian Crow All ded but me Ezra Kind
- Killed by Indians beyond the high hill got our gold june 1834
-
-On the back of this somber relic were the blunt words: “Got all gold we
-could carry.”
-
-Yes, there was gold in plenty, but Paha Sapa of the Hills was a jealous
-spirit who guarded the forbidden portals with a great vengeance. It is
-interesting, though, to speculate upon how the course of western history
-might have veered had Ezra Kind made his way out of the bleak region to
-report his discovery. Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and most of the Missouri
-Valley would have been skipped over in a rush to the prairie West, left
-to be filled in and settled later. The upriver ports of the Missouri,
-rather than St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Joseph, and Omaha, would have
-been the outposts, and there would have been no Santa Fe Trail, no
-Platte River—Oregon Trail, but rather a heavily traveled National Road
-winding out from St. Paul and from Chicago. Rapid City would have been a
-metropolis the size of Denver, and when eventually the Union Pacific was
-built it would have been three hundred miles north of its present route.
-And the Indians? There would have been a far different story in that
-regard, perhaps a much bloodier and more tragic tale.
-
-But Ezra Kind was killed and his secret slept, and thus we are as we are
-today. Actually it was the Indians who kept the Hills so long
-forbidden—Indians of the Teton Sioux, the same tribe who put Ezra’s
-party to the tomahawk.
-
-Before the California gold rush life on the Great Plains had proceeded
-pretty much on an even keel. The mighty Teton Sioux, all seven tribes of
-them—the Oglalas, the Unkpapas, the San Arcs, the Brules, the
-Minniconjous, the Blackfeet, and the Two Kettle—roamed the prairies at
-will, from the Missouri Valley to the Rocky Mountains. Of course they
-had their misadventures with the fur companies, but just as often their
-dealings with the Mountain Men were profitable, for the Indians, when in
-the mood, scouted, trapped, and hunted, all for the white man’s pay.
-
-With the great exodus to California, though, the situation took on a
-different hue. Immigrants by the hundreds and the thousands poured up
-the rolling valley of the Platte, and it was not many months before the
-haphazard Indian attacks took on a new strength and design. Long burned
-the council fires in the dark nights, and all up and down the great
-plains the war raged. To protect the wagon trains the government sent
-its shrewdest and most experienced Indian agent, Thomas Fitzpatrick, a
-veteran fur trader since 1823, the famed “Broken Hand” of western
-legend. Summoning the tribes to Fort Laramie in 1851, Fitzpatrick
-managed to subdue them, but only by promising that he would confine the
-settlers to specific ranges and would keep them steadfastly out of the
-Dakotas and the Black Hills.
-
-In the meanwhile the eastern tribes, the Santee Sioux, were beginning to
-feel the pressure of settlement in the rich Minnesota valleys. In 1862
-they revolted, and the terrible battle of Wood Lake was fought, with the
-score of massacred settlers reaching into the high hundreds. The leaders
-of this outrage were, of course, apprehended and punished, but whole
-tribes fled into the western plains, into the land of the Black Hills,
-where they eventually joined forces with their Teton cousins.
-
- [Illustration: The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial]
-
- [Illustration: Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an
- altitude of 6,250 feet]
-
-By 1865 matters had come to a head again, because although the great
-Sioux, numbering between thirty and forty thousand, had kept to
-themselves, the white man had broken his side of the bargain and was
-cutting a new route into the forbidden country. This passage was the
-famed Bozeman Trail, which drove north from Fort Laramie, on the Oregon
-Trail, directly through the Sioux country to serve the new gold fields
-of Montana.
-
-To protect the wagon trains on the Bozeman the army called upon General
-Grenville Dodge, who was later to build the Union Pacific. Dodge,
-Commandant of the Department of the Missouri, was an old hand at Indian
-warfare. He rushed into Wyoming a full force, four columns of men, who
-swiftly brought the angered tribes to heel.
-
-The immediate result of this engagement was the signing of a halfhearted
-and inconclusive treaty at Fort Sully, near Pierre, in October of 1865.
-The treaty attempted to settle some old differences of a fundamental
-nature, but inasmuch as neither the Oglala nor the Brule were
-represented it failed of its mission.
-
-A year later a further powwow was staged at Fort Laramie to pursue the
-matter of keeping the Bozeman Trail open through the forbidden Sioux
-country. Perhaps matters might have proceeded equably had not General
-Carrington arrived in the midst of the delicate negotiations to announce
-that he had enough soldiers to protect the trail, treaty or no treaty.
-
-Carrington’s blustery announcement, backed up by a show of seven hundred
-courageous but misguided cavalrymen, brought the talks to an abrupt end
-and sent the two most important Sioux Chieftains, Red Cloud and Crazy
-Horse, scurrying for the council fire and the war paths. In all the
-great plains there were not to be found braver or more single-minded
-Indian strategists than these two. For the better part of two years
-roving bands of tribesmen under Red Cloud and his stalwart colleague
-amply proved that Carrington could not have kept the trail safely open
-if he had had seventy times his seven hundred men. It was, as a matter
-of fact, the only time in our long history that Uncle Sam’s troops ever
-took a downright beating.
-
-At last even Red Cloud could see that the white man, for all his
-braggadocio and poor planning, would eventually win the turn; and
-although his savage troops had tasted victory in almost every
-engagement, he consented in 1868 to negotiate once more. Presumably both
-sides were wiser by then, for a pact, sometimes called the
-Harney-Sanborne Treaty, was dutifully signed and accepted in April of
-that year. The United States agreed to close the Bozeman Trail and to
-abandon the forts. The Black Hills were utterly forbidden to the white
-man, and except for an agreement to let the Northern Pacific rails cross
-the upper prairies unmolested, the high plains from the Missouri to the
-Big Horn were returned by federal order to their historic isolation.
-
-After that fiasco the situation remained comparatively quiet for a few
-years. Eastern Dakota was being settled bit by bit, and the rails were
-pushing forward, ever so slowly but ever so surely. The Missouri River
-was the frontier line, dividing the settled Dakotas from the Sioux
-lands; and Fort Lincoln, on the river (not far from the site of today’s
-Bismarck), was the outpost that overlooked the troubled territory.
-
-From month to month trappers, gold-seekers, and would-be homesteaders
-slipped inside the Sioux curtain from the Cheyenne-Laramie country on
-the south, from the rich Niobrara country in northwest Nebraska, or from
-eastern Dakota itself. There was not much that the army could do about
-these treaty violators except worry, for the borders to be patrolled
-were vast and the forbidden lands inviting.
-
-But the army did worry, endlessly. There were increasingly frequent
-rumors of the existence of gold in the Hills, and year after year
-General Sheridan, commanding the Departments of Dakota, the Platte, and
-the Missouri, urged stronger fortification of the Sioux boundaries to
-prevent trouble. Trouble was particularly to be expected because several
-bands of Sioux, specifically those under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse,
-had not agreed to government supervision in 1868 and seemed thirsting
-for a fight.
-
-Thus it was to make a military survey that Sheridan sent an expedition
-through the heart of the Hills in 1874. His force of more than a
-thousand soldiers moved under the command of George Armstrong Custer;
-and, strange impedimenta for an army, the luggage in the lorries
-included mining picks and pans, the belongings of H. N. Ross and William
-T. McKay, who were officially attached to the command. Presumably Custer
-was looking for something more than mere military sites.
-
-The Indian fighters of an earlier day—Kit Carson, the Bents, or Sibley,
-for instance—would have stood gaping in the stockade as Custer’s force
-moved leisurely onto the empty Dakota prairies. This was no ragtag army
-in buckskin, but an orderly procession of one hundred and ten wagons,
-six ambulances, a dozen caissons, and two heavy field pieces. Each wagon
-and ambulance was drawn by a sprightly hand of six sleek mules.
-
-In addition, three hundred head of beef cattle browsed slowly along the
-way in mooing testimony that this expedition would live off the very
-fattest of the land. The personnel included, in addition to Custer’s
-highly trained troops, a hundred Indian scouts, a platoon of expert
-white guides and trappers, and, mounted upon docile mares, a special
-contingent of botanists, geologists, geographers, and assorted expert
-college professors. Also, as has been reported, there were two miners.
-
-To the north of the Hills, crossing the Belle Fourche River first, the
-army made its gentle way, and then down the west slope of the forbidding
-mountains, seeking for an easy pass into the dark interior. Tall in the
-saddle rode golden-haired George Custer, for he was commanding the
-strongest army ever put into Indian country. It is little wonder that he
-slept quietly at night, or that he wrote in his diary: “It is a strange
-sight to look back at the advancing column of cavalry and behold the men
-with beautiful bouquets in their hands while their horses were decorated
-with wreathes of flowers fit to crown a Queen of the May.”
-
-In that holiday mood the army moved down inside the great bowl of
-mountains on its sightseeing tour, and presently it camped about three
-miles west of the present town of Custer. All this while the miners had
-not been inactive, but had plied their pans here and there as the
-company passed across various streams. Until this bivouac, though, they
-had had no luck, and, as a matter of fact, had actually been expecting
-none. They had come along to quell the rumor of gold as much as to bear
-it out. Preferably to quell it, if General Sheridan were to have his
-way.
-
-On August 2 of that year, 1874, McKay turned out to try his implements
-once again on French Creek. An early account gives this dramatic version
-of the famed discovery: “When the earth [in the pan] was gone, he held
-up his pan in the evening sun and found the rim lined with nearly a
-hundred little particles of gold. These he carried to General Custer,
-whose head was almost turned at the sight.”
-
-Through the magic of his discipline Custer managed to keep his army from
-beating their ration tins into placer pans and “claiming” on the spot.
-Getting under way almost immediately, the men continued their march
-eastward through the heart of the Hills, and on August 30 emerged from
-the great park and headed back to Fort Lincoln.
-
-In the meanwhile a messenger had been sent ahead with the news of gold.
-Scout Charley Reynolds, who was to die with his commander just two years
-later, was detached from the base camp and sent scurrying down to Fort
-Laramie, to the nearest telegraph station. Within an hour of his arrival
-at the post, two hundred miles to the south and west of the Black Hills,
-the tremendous news was burning over the wires to General Sheridan in
-St. Louis.
-
-It was also burning some operator’s ear along the way, for the great
-secret, which was to be handed only to the high command in Washington,
-made its way on that very day into the editorial rooms of the old
-_Chicago Inter-Ocean_—where, naturally, it was treated with great
-respect and splashed across the headlines with all the vigor of an
-announcement of the Second Coming.
-
-There was actually a genuine religious fervor in the proclamation, for
-the locust had been upon the land for many months in the eastern cities,
-and the bread lines had been growing. It had threatened to be a cold
-winter until ... until this last bonanza burst upon the nation.
-
-Men had all but forgotten what a gold rush was like. It had been so long
-since the last great hegira to the Pikes Peak region that a new
-generation had come into manhood, a generation that knew California only
-as a state, Colorado as a prosperous territory, and the Union Pacific as
-the proper way to cross the empty West. There were none of the desperate
-winter marches up the Continental Divide this time, no lost wagon trains
-on the salt deserts, no Indian massacres. This rush left Chicago on the
-“cars,” as noisy and as highhearted as fans following a football club.
-
-And there was another great difference between the foray to the Black
-Hills and the earlier gold rushes. In this case the argonauts did not
-get to the diggings. The troops saw to that. Deploring the untimely leak
-of official intelligence concerning the presence of the yellow metal in
-the Dakota outcropping, the War Department issued stern warnings to all
-settlers to keep away. The existence of the treaty with the Indians was
-proclaimed in every paper—and, though less resoundingly, the danger from
-the Indians was also mentioned.
-
-Nonetheless, before the end of that crucial year a sizable group of
-foolhardy settlers broke through the blockade and made themselves at
-home. Erecting a strong stockade at the scene of the first strike, they
-soon carved themselves a town in the wilderness, gratefully naming it
-Custer, and even that early providing for the wide main street where ox
-teams could make a U-turn. Throughout the first winter these illegal
-townspeople managed somehow to survive the cold, the lack of rations,
-and the danger of Indian attack; but late in the spring General Crook’s
-cavalry arrived to “escort” them out of the Hills and back to the
-railroad at Cheyenne.
-
-Many of the citizens of that first town took their eviction with fair
-grace, turning to other means of employment than gold mining—and there
-were plenty—in Cheyenne, Denver, and the other near-by and rapidly
-growing settlements. One group, though, the Gordon Party, apparently
-enjoyed leadership of a tougher sort. They refused to be intimidated by
-the troops. Setting up camp on the very boundary line between the
-forbidden country and the permitted Platte Valley, they just waited.
-Actually, an increasingly large number of immigrants waited on the
-border only until nightfall, and then set out into the unknown. Some
-were apprehended by the cavalry and returned, some were killed by the
-sullen tribesmen, but hundreds of them managed to find their way to the
-vicinity of French Creek. More than that, they managed to stay.
-
-It might be thought that gold mining, with all its necessary
-paraphernalia, supplies, and general confusion, could not very well be
-carried on in an atmosphere suggesting the more modern practice of
-moonshining; but the truth of the matter was that there were just too
-many settlers and too few soldiers. Time and again the troops would
-swoop down on some busy little gathering and hustle the miners out to
-the nearest courts, where they would hastily be acquitted and released
-to go back to their workings. Under the very fist of forbiddance a score
-of towns had sprung up, among them the reborn Custer City.
-
-Finally the government gave up all hope of keeping the eager immigrants
-out of this last frontier. By the fall of 1875 the border towns of
-Sidney, Nebraska, Yankton, South Dakota, and Cheyenne and Laramie,
-Wyoming, were bursting at the seams with gold-hunters who demanded
-“their rights as citizens.” Bowing to the inevitable, the government
-sent a treaty commission to wait upon the Sioux. This body of earnest
-men offered the Indians six million dollars for the right of entry into
-the Hills. Although the treaty Sioux agreed to sell, the price they
-asked wavered between twenty and one hundred million. Crazy Horse, who
-did not attend the council, refused to sell at any price and solemnly
-warned the white man to stay out.
-
-Frustrated, the treaty commissioners returned to Washington in despair,
-while the embittered Sioux disappeared into the west river country to
-nurse their grievances. Upon this turn of affairs, the government washed
-its hands of the matter and opened the lands to settlement.
-
-That was in June of 1875. Within a matter of weeks after the bars had
-been let down, the Hills were populated by uncounted thousands of men,
-women, and children. Many simply came out of the woods to claim honestly
-the diggings they had been working dishonestly; but many, many more came
-from the East by every train, now that the country was legitimately
-open.
-
-It was a motley assembly that took part in this Black Hills rush. In
-earlier bonanzas the type had been pretty well formalized, for the
-difficulty of the overland journey to California, for example, or across
-to the Pikes Peak region, had kept all but the roughest—and toughest—at
-home. But on this occasion the West was by no means as wild as it had
-been in those earlier days. Distances had been conquered; transportation
-methods, even beyond the railroads, were much safer and more adequate;
-and the Black Hills, although cold in the middle of winter, offered none
-of the climatic ferocities of the Rocky Mountains. Thus, to partake of
-this feast of yellow dust hopeful clerks brushed shoulders with
-desperadoes, professional men of every accomplishment traded rumors with
-crease-faced sourdoughs from the dead land south of the Mogollon, and
-oldsters who had thought they might never again hold a pan in their
-hands dug alongside mere boys from whom the apron strings had been
-relaxed.
-
-In the meantime, even as the good citizens of Custer, Gayville, Central
-City, Golden Gate, Anchor City, and a host of other thriving towns, most
-of which have long been given over to the ghosts, were bustling about
-their exciting business, matters in the west were taking a slow but
-inexorable turn for the worse.
-
-The army had let the situation ride for the summer and fall, keeping a
-careful watch over the enemy Sioux, but feeling fairly assured that they
-would attempt no large-scale raid of the Hills, populated now by at
-least fifty thousand people. Summer and fall were not normally times to
-worry over, in any case, for the buffalo were still on the range and
-forage was plentiful for the tribes. It was in the depths of winter that
-the tale would be told—either the Indians would come docilely to the
-reservations for their rations, or they would steer clear of the white
-man’s soldiers and supply their own necessities by raiding the isolated
-ranch and stage line outposts.
-
-By mid-December the reservations were still empty, and General Terry
-sent out a call to Sitting Bull, ordering him to bring his people in to
-the military posts. January 1, 1876, was given as the deadline. The
-haughty Sioux chief paid scant attention to Terry’s order, replying
-simply that the general knew where to find him if he wanted to come for
-him. Sitting Bull knew that the army would attempt no large maneuvers
-with the weather as it was—one of the bitterest winters in recorded
-history.
-
-Then he simply waited.
-
-But General Terry was no man to take a short answer. Immediately he
-ordered three expeditions to prepare themselves for the field, to move
-as soon as weather should permit, and to take the Indians early in the
-spring when their ponies would still be thin and unrecovered from the
-winter’s rigors. General Crook was to march north from Fort Fetterman,
-on the North Platte River; General John Gibbon was to move south and
-east from Fort Ellis, in Montana; and General Custer was to come west
-from Fort Lincoln.
-
-Unfortunately not only the Indians but the weather as well turned
-against General Terry, for with the thermometer standing most of the
-time at between twenty and forty below and the prairie covered with the
-glaze of incessant blizzards, neither Custer nor Gibbon was able to move
-out of camp.
-
-Crook, though, was able to best the winter when March rolled in and to
-locate one of the most dangerous of the rebel bands, Crazy Horse’s
-renegade Oglalas, deep in the Powder River Valley. This was on March 17,
-1876. Had Crook’s men not made certain grave errors of tactics after a
-brilliant surprise, the battle might have solved the problem. As it
-turned out, the Indians galloped a few circles around the troops and
-made merrily off into the forest. Again the weather closed in.
-
-Three months later, when the summer weather made campaigning possible,
-Crook’s troops were able to take to the saddle again, and again Crazy
-Horse was located, this time encamped on the Tongue River, between
-Powder River and Rosebud Creek. Again the battle was inconclusive, for
-the troops seemed unable to press the advantage of their surprise
-discovery of the Indians.
-
-Eight days later, on June 17, the bewildered but indomitable Crook came
-a third time upon Crazy Horse, now on Rosebud Creek. On this occasion
-the troops were able to euchre the Indians into a pitched battle—and
-were thereupon so thoroughly trounced that Crook’s command was
-essentially immobilized where the bleeding remnant lay at the battle’s
-close.
-
-By the time the harassed cavalrymen had bound up their wounds and
-remounted, Crazy Horse had disappeared over the hills and down into the
-Big Horn Basin, where his cohorts joined a host of other bloodthirsty
-braves in a great Sioux encampment. Black Moon was there, Inkpaduta,
-Gall, and a major roster of other courageous Indian warriors. Counseling
-them and performing their good medicine was none other than Sitting Bull
-himself, who, it should be said, was not a warrior but a medicine man
-and tribal diplomat.
-
-Historians have never been able to agree upon the number of braves
-assembled under this battle flag, but all concur in the belief that the
-camp could have contained no less than three thousand warriors—in all
-probability the greatest single Indian army ever to be put into the
-field against the troops.
-
-By this time other help was coming for Crook, as he lay in the south
-nursing his ill fortune. General Custer, having scouted out Crazy
-Horse’s retreat, had been ordered to stop him from the north and to
-pinch the Indians between the prongs of his force and Crook’s.
-
-But it was Custer rather than Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull who met the
-pincers. Coming upon the headquarters village of the enemy, Custer
-divided his force of 600 men into four groups: Benteen with 140 odd,
-Reno with about 125, McDougall with the ammunition and supplies and
-perhaps 140 men, and Custer himself retaining the balance.
-
-While McDougall stayed to the rear, Benteen was sent off on a fruitless
-errand into a badly broken terrain to the southwest. Custer and Reno in
-the meantime proceeded side by side toward the village. Coming over the
-last remaining hill before the Indian camp, Custer dispatched Reno ahead
-to make a preliminary contact with the enemy, while he rode off in a
-somewhat parallel direction, apparently bent on encircling the savages.
-
-Meanwhile Reno did indeed encounter the Indians, and when he realized
-how tragically outnumbered he was, he immediately dismounted his men to
-fight a delaying action on foot, thereby saving both men and horses. He
-obviously adopted this tactic on the theory that he would be supported
-from the rear by Custer. When he saw that Custer had decided to make a
-diversionary attack on the right flank of the enemy, Reno and his men
-gave up the fight and concentrated on scrambling out of the trap and
-making their way to the hill which overlooked the village.
-
-From that vantage point Custer and his force could be seen across the
-Little Big Horn at a distance of perhaps a thousand yards. Apparently
-thinking that Reno was still successfully engaging the Indians, Custer
-rode his men down into a ravine where he apparently encountered the full
-horde of savages and where he met his death. The details of that last
-action have never been made clear, but most experts think that he
-divided his pitifully weak force into two segments at the time of the
-final charge which took him full into the heart of the great enemy body.
-Thus it was that Custer was caught in the pliers of the attack, in which
-hopeless position his entire force was wiped out to the last man,
-officer, and guide. Custer’s Last Stand, as it has been poetically
-called, was in every respect the greatest defeat of white forces in the
-history of Indian warfare.
-
-Custer’s death marked the end of the Black Hills controversy. Although
-the Indians had been completely victorious, they had spent so heavily of
-their warriors and their supplies that they were never again able to
-mount a major attack against the whites. Swiftly the troops hunted them
-down, village by village, and within a year the great Sioux War had
-ground to a stop.
-
-A second treaty commission had been appointed late in 1876, and by
-February the transfer of the Black Hills from the Sioux Nation to the
-United States had been completed—not for a cash consideration, but only
-for the government’s promise to support the Indians until such time as
-they might learn, under agency supervision, to provide for themselves.
-
-By that time the question of entry was no more than rhetorical. The
-Black Hills were as thickly populated as any region of equal size in the
-West. The stage routes in from Cheyenne, from Sidney, Nebraska, and from
-the Dakota railheads were well traveled. The last frontier had been
-broken.
-
-And besides—there was Deadwood and the Homestake.
-
-The original rush had centered in historic Custer, the scene of the
-first entrance into the country on French Creek, and the terminus of the
-Cheyenne-Black Hills stage line. By Christmas of 1875 the population of
-that wilderness settlement was in excess of ten thousand souls, each of
-them active and bustling about his business.
-
-On the other hand, there was not a great deal of business to bustle
-after. French Creek was a good clue to gold, but that was about all.
-Before long most of the good citizens, having found the little brook
-something of a snare and a delusion, were casting about for some way to
-make their livings from each other. Storekeeping, laundering, ranching,
-hostlering, all were honorable occupations which soon found a plenitude
-of practitioners.
-
-In that fashion the winter was passed. Ice capped the waters and the
-snow hung from the trees, and aside from hoping for spring there was
-little the thronging populace could do. Thus a fruitful field was in
-fallow for the gossip which started blossoming in March and April. The
-tales, whispered—as such stories always are—without definition or
-authority, had it that somewhere in the northern Hills there was another
-stream that had nuggets the size of ... it is unimportant how large the
-nuggets, for a glitter of dust the size of an eye-speck would have been
-a windfall in Custer. Day by day the rumor grew, and as is always the
-case with such gossip, the precise location of this “Deadtree Gulch” was
-never made entirely plain.
-
-The reason for this obfuscation was simple: a rich strike had actually
-been made far in the north part of the Hills, and the claimants were
-doing their level best to keep it a secret. The fact that Custer held
-its population as long as it did was a testament to the sagacity and
-close-lippedness of John Pearson and Sam Blodgett, who had stumbled,
-late the previous winter, into one of the world’s richest gold basins.
-
-The secret held for only a few months. Trappers, prospectors, and mere
-travelers were passing through the spruce trails of the Hills in such
-profusion that sooner or later the activity up Deadwood Gulch, as it
-came to be called, was bound to be observed. Pearson had found his dream
-cache in December of 1875, and he managed to contain the secret only
-until March of 1876. Like a forest fire the news of the strike to the
-north spread, and by May the southern Hills were deserted. Custer, for
-several years the metropolis of the entire region, lost all except
-thirty of its citizens in a matter of weeks, and other settlements in
-the south and west simply dried up and disappeared.
-
-That Deadwood Gulch, so named for the stand of burned-over timber which
-graced its declivitous sides, contained a major deposit was not to be
-denied. The rich sands which Pearson had spaded up testified to that,
-and later comers were by no means disappointed. But the names and
-locations of individual early discoveries have long been lost to all
-save the most assiduous researchers, for there was one claim which
-outshone all the rest. That digging was the mighty Homestake, which,
-from its first days, has produced gold and assorted other precious ores
-in such abundance and with such dependability that it has been accepted
-the world over as one of earth’s great mines, rivaled in munificence
-only by the Portland-Independence of Cripple Creek in Colorado and the
-fabulous workings of the Witwatersrand of South Africa.
-
-As with all rich diggings, an appropriate legend attends the account of
-the original discovery of the Homestake. It seems there were two
-brothers, Fred and Moses Manuel, who had long been addicted to that most
-vicious of all unbreakable habits—gold prospecting. Moses had wound his
-weary way through the West for a full quarter of a century, plodding the
-dusty California gold gulches in ’50, up the steep heights of Virginia
-City in ’60, into Old Mexico, and—although he was a full generation too
-early—into Alaska. But now, in 1875, he was through with it all and was
-going home.
-
-Collecting his brother Fred, who was fruitlessly panning the sands of
-the Last Chance Gulch in the high border country of Montana, Moses
-started east, passing of course through the Black Hills, to scout down
-this one last ray of rumor—that a new strike was in the making. Setting
-out their camp in Bobtail Gulch, a mere pistol shot from certain placer
-claims in Deadwood Gulch, they went to work in midwinter, hoping to
-find, the legend has it, just enough blossom rock to give them a stake
-for their homeward journey.
-
-They seem to have hit it with a vengeance, not mere placer gold in the
-stream bed but a genuine lode, for on April 9, 1876, they patented the
-claim known as the Homestake. Discarding for the moment all idea of
-going on home with whatever meager wealth this “last” try should bring
-them, the Manuel brothers immediately consolidated their position by
-going into partnership with another prospector and taking shares in the
-Golden Terra, an adjoining piece of real estate, the Old Abe, and the
-Golden Star. The immediate returns, by the ton, are not today known, but
-they must have been substantial, for the lucky brothers built an
-arrastra—a crude millstone affair for grinding ore—and managed to pocket
-more than five thousand dollars in their first year of operation.
-
-In the natural run of events the Homestake and the adjoining parcels
-which the Manuel brothers were operating would probably have worked well
-enough for a year or so, and would then have suffered the fate of
-thousands of other diggings throughout the gold-rush West—the surface
-ores would have played out, and because of the high cost of following
-the lodes deeper into the earth than a few dozen feet, the mines would
-have been abandoned. But in this case a San Francisco syndicate came
-into the picture, providing the necessary capital funds for the
-searching out of whatever ultimate wealth the Homestake might have.
-
-This syndicate of Pacific Coast businessmen included James Ben Ali
-Haggin, a partner in the highly solvent Wells Fargo express company, and
-Senator George Hearst, the father of the publisher, William Randolph
-Hearst. These vigorous men sent a mining engineer into the Hills in 1877
-to canvass the location for possible investments; and in the course of a
-detailed examination of whatever properties seemed to be paying well,
-this emissary from Market Street came upon the brothers Manuel. A
-superficial examination of the Homestake and the Golden Terra sufficed
-this engineer, and he optioned them both, the first for seventy thousand
-dollars and the second for half that sum. Returning immediately to
-California, he delivered to his employers samples of this richest gold
-mine in North America, and without delay Senator Hearst went to South
-Dakota to see for himself.
-
-What he saw impressed him most favorably, for upon his return to
-California he owned both the Terra and the Homestake, as well as several
-other claims on the same hill, a total of ten acres of mining property.
-That small figure is significant in the light of the fact that the
-Homestake Mining Company today owns more than six thousand acres of
-mining claims.
-
-With the incorporation of the mining company in San Francisco, the
-aboriginal methods employed by the Manuel brothers were discarded, and
-the latest in mine machinery was laboriously shipped by train to Sidney,
-Nebraska, and then by ox team the two hundred miles to the town of Lead
-(pronounced “Leed”), the precise location of the Homestake, two miles
-from Deadwood City. The first installation was an eighty-stamp mill,
-which began its work in July of 1878. Within five years six additional
-mills were in operation, holding a total of 580 giant stampers.
-
-The mine now handles four thousand tons of ore per day and has, in its
-sighted reserve, twenty million tons yet to work. The two main shafts
-reach into the earth to a depth of more than a mile, with branching
-tunnels piercing the mountain at hundred-foot levels; and there are more
-than a hundred and fifty miles of secondary tunnels, served by more than
-eighty miles of mine railway.
-
-The richness of the Homestake ore has averaged fourteen dollars per ton
-for many years now. This may not sound like any considerable amount of
-wealth—but the most active gold operation in Colorado, the Fairplay
-dredge, is working gravel which pays an average of nine cents per ton.
-
-Finally, the records of the company show that it has mined 70,000,000
-tons of ore, yielding a total of 18,000,000 ounces of gold, which has
-brought a gross price, at various standards, of $450,000,000.
-
-With the opening of the Homestake, the conquest of the Black Hills was
-effectively completed, and the region entered into a period of rapid
-development and expansion. Although the great mine at Lead was run
-solely as a business enterprise, devoid of glamour and excitement, the
-town of Deadwood, two miles away, enjoyed a decade of the lustiest
-history ever to be known by a bonanza town. During its years of activity
-and arrogance Deadwood contributed to our national folklore several
-great figures, among them Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick, Wild Bill
-Hickok, and Preacher Smith.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER FIVE
- History II: Deadwood Days
-
-
- Sam left where he was working
- one pretty morn in May,
- a-heading for the Black Hills
- with his cattle and his pay.
- Sold out in Custer City
- and then got on a spree,
- A harder set of cowboys
- you seldom ever see.
- —“Legend of Sam Bass”
-
-It has become the literary custom to recall our bonanza frontier less as
-an economic phenomenon than as a backdrop for bloodshed, mayhem, and
-assorted turns of vigor and violence. Early California, for example, is
-today known less as the scene of the accomplishments of James Fair,
-Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford than as the arena for the armed
-forays of Joaquin Murietta, Black Bart, Dick Fellows, and various other
-gunmen. Since this is the accepted practice, it is entirely appropriate
-to introduce the gold-rush days of the Black Hills with a brief account
-of the banditry and thuggery which accompanied the early growth of that
-last frontier.
-
-The quotation at the head of this chapter is one verse of an old folk
-ballad, “The Legend of Sam Bass,” the not particularly inspiring saga of
-the life and death of an Indiana-born horse thief and road agent.
-Actually, Bass had little to do with the history of the Hills, and as
-anybody knows who has ever whistled or sung his song, the bulk of the
-chronicle concerns his struggle against the Texas Rangers.
-
-On the other hand, Sam Bass will long live in Black Hills history, for
-regardless of his other accomplishments he went to his glory bearing the
-credit for having originated the fine art of stage robbery in that
-Dakota wilderness. The Black Hills, like every other gold region,
-enjoyed but scant holiday from the pestiferous road agents. During 1875
-and 1876, when the region was filling up, it seemed that there was
-plenty to occupy the imagination of every individual who was able to
-make the tortuous trip from the railroad. But by 1877 the area had
-calmed down to such an extent that idle hands could occasionally be
-counted in the dram shops, and the time was ripe for the devil to get in
-his work.
-
-From the point of view of geography the Hills presented ideal conditions
-for armed assault. The two major stage lines leading into the region
-were the Cheyenne-Black Hills Line, running through two hundred miles of
-desolate emptyland, and the Sidney Short Route, less long by some thirty
-miles, but passing through equally lonely country. In addition, one
-freight and stage line came in from the east, from Fort Pierre, and
-another from the north, following the general heading of Custer’s 1874
-expedition. The gold, though, most often traveled the fastest route, out
-to the Union Pacific at Cheyenne or Sidney.
-
-During the first twenty months or so of the Black Hills gold rush, armed
-guards were not normally counted among the personnel of the stage
-coaches. As a matter of fact, in most instances it was to be questioned
-whether or not any gold rode the stages, for the going was generally
-thin in the diggings, and the average operator accumulated his bullion
-for several months before amassing a shipment large enough to be worth
-the trouble and worry. For all the wealth of the Homestake, the Hills by
-no means repeated California’s early history, when every stage worth
-tying a horse to carried at least some treasure. And yet, in the
-springtime most of the miners cleaned up their winter’s take, it was
-commonly understood, and ... well, Sam Bass must have thought, every
-good thing must have a beginning.
-
-In March, 1877, Bass organized a gang of cutthroats in Deadwood, and the
-brief period when one could ride the coaches in comparative safety came
-to an end. It was not much of a gang that the legendary bandit gathered
-around him, the five other men being mostly cowardly and quite
-worthless, either as adventurers or as strategists. Bass himself was
-little more than a “punk,” as he would be called today, and, as a matter
-of fact, did not earn his immortality until much later, in Texas, where
-he was shot down in a barber chair by a Ranger.
-
-The gang, if they might so be called, foregathered on the snowy night of
-March 25 in Deadwood and, after consuming sufficient whiskey to enable
-them to stand the cold, made their way down the south road to a point a
-few miles from town where they might intercept the incoming stage from
-Cheyenne. What genius of diabolical planning led them to attack an
-inbound conveyance, which could be carrying little more than ordinary
-mail, rather than the “down” stage, which might possibly be loaded with
-bullion, has never been figured out, but at any rate they camped
-themselves in the snow and waited.
-
-At last the stage hove into sight, and Bass, the trusty leader,
-cautioned his hoodlums not to shoot, but merely to stop the coach and
-demand the mail pouch. Presumably the sentiments of the period held that
-robbery without gunfire was quite condonable, and an entirely different
-affair from burglary accompanied by shooting. It is also quite possible
-that Bass was only minding his own safety, for the night had already
-been marked by one misfortune—one of his men had managed to shoot
-himself in the foot while putting on his deadly hardware.
-
-As might be expected, however, Bass’s well-laid plans went very much
-agley. In the excitement of calling “Halt!” one of the bandits proved a
-bit too eager-fingered, and even as the stage driver was reining his
-team to a stop, a shotgun blared out, emptying its charge at close range
-into the driver’s chest.
-
- [Illustration: Calamity Jane, during her carnival days]
-
- [Illustration: Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait]
-
- [Illustration: Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded
- by shotgun messengers]
-
- [Illustration: Deadwood Gulch in 1881]
-
- [Illustration: Modern Deadwood—seventy years later]
-
-With the shot the horses bolted, and shortly thereafter they pounded
-into Deadwood, guided by a hatless passenger who had managed to secure
-the ribbons as they dangled. Within a matter of minutes a posse had been
-formed and riders were making their way into the woods. Inasmuch as Bass
-and his companions had been acting suspiciously during the afternoon and
-evening, the finger of accusation pointed altogether correctly in their
-direction, and before the moon was down Sam Bass was well on his way to
-Texas, escaping Deadwood’s justice only to go to his lathered doom.
-
-This tragic foray against law and order set the stage, so to speak, and
-before long the spruce trails of the Black Hills, once so still and
-harmless, could be passed over safely only in the company of “shotgun
-messengers,” as the armed attendants were called. It did not take the
-stage companies long to come to this way of operating, for Wells Fargo,
-which contracted for the express business, had had a quarter-century of
-rugged experience. Bringing their brave talents swiftly to bear on the
-situation, the Wells Fargo men steel-plated the coaches to be used for
-bullion shipments, and brought into the Hills the famed treasure chests
-which had figured so largely in the history of the coming of law and
-order to California—metal-bound cases too heavy to be transported
-quickly from the scene of crime, and too sturdy to be opened except
-after arduous work with chisels and crowbars. The chests had been
-developed with the idea that a posse could be gathered at the spot where
-a stage had been held up before the gold could be removed from the chest
-or the chest itself taken far away.
-
-A more important safety factor than the chests was the reputation of the
-shotgun messengers. The express companies went to great lengths to
-engage only the most fearless and law-abiding men they could find for
-this dangerous task, and time and time again thousands upon thousands of
-dollars in bullion rode across the lonely trails with no more than one
-man, his shotgun, and his reputation for bravery guarding it.
-
-Wyatt Earp, perhaps the most noted of these messengers, entered his long
-tour of Wells Fargo duty through that firm’s Deadwood office. Earp, as
-any lover of western legend will tell, earned his vigorous reputation as
-marshal in the bloody Kansas cattle towns of Dodge City and Abilene.
-After the excitement of these Gomorrahs had worn off, he made his way to
-Deadwood in 1876—not as a gold-seeker, but apparently merely in search
-of honest and not too dangerous employment. At any rate, his brief stay
-in the Hills was given to the profession of coal and wood dispensing
-rather than to law enforcement. Either the weather or the lethargy of
-the place suited him poorly, for within the year he was casting about
-for some means of making his way back to his own plains country.
-
-Taking advantage of the public clamor against road agents after the Sam
-Bass affair, he offered his services to the express agent and was hired
-for the single trip out for fifty dollars cash and free passage. The
-agent was by no means doling out any charity in this exchange, for he
-knew the value of Earp’s reputation and looked upon the fifty dollars as
-a cheap form of insurance. He advertised in the local newspaper: “The
-Spring cleanup will leave for Cheyenne on the regular stage at 7 AM next
-Monday. Wyatt Earp of Dodge will ride shotgun.”
-
-Bullion shippers were quick to take advantage of this extra protection,
-and it was recorded that no less than two hundred thousand dollars in
-bullion was weighed in for that special trip. It would be most dramatic
-to recount that Earp’s one trip was marked by attempted mass raids,
-burning coaches, and wounded drivers, but the truth of the matter is
-that the journey was made on time and in good order. Only one shot was
-fired, and that by Marshal Earp, who took offense at the suspicious
-actions of a rider whose course seemed to parallel the stage route for
-an unaccountable distance. Without stopping the stage or otherwise
-alarming the passengers Earp dropped the offending horseman a few miles
-out of Deadwood, and the rest of the trip was made without incident.
-
-Despite the vigor with which the treasure coaches were protected, armed
-robbery continued to take place sporadically all during the final decade
-before the rails pushed through from the East. By and large these
-forays, while bloody, were unsuccessful, and not a single desperado was
-able to rise to any sort of fame during that period. On the other hand,
-there was one robbery which must go down in history for the strange way
-in which the loot was recovered.
-
-This particular villainy, remembered as the Canyon Springs robbery, took
-place on September 28, 1878. The locale of the outrage was not far out
-of Deadwood on the rough way through Beaver Creek and Jenney Stockade
-into Wyoming and thence to Cheyenne. The coach, on this fateful
-occasion, was rumored to be carrying nearly one hundred thousand dollars
-in ingots from the Homestake, as well as from other works; and although
-shipments of such size were not altogether rare, they were sufficiently
-out of the ordinary to suggest the services of additional shotgun
-messengers. It may well have been the mere fact of the scheduling of
-additional guards that called the attention of the bandits to this
-particular manifest.
-
-The holdup took place in midafternoon, as the driver was stopping the
-coach to water the horses. In the gunplay three men were killed, and the
-bandits escaped with the loot from the treasure chest, which they
-apparently managed to chisel open. Ten miles away one of the guards came
-upon a party of horsemen, who returned to the scene of the carnage; but
-upon their arrival they found the coach despoiled of its gold.
-
-In many such cases the bandits would have been recognized as local or
-near-local citizens; but in this instance all of the desperadoes
-appeared to be strangers to the Hills, and consequently the law officers
-had very little except guesswork to guide them in their pursuit.
-Guesswork coupled with just plain snooping soon uncovered a trail,
-however, for one of the stage agents turned up a ranch owner who gave
-the information that a small group of men had, on the very evening of
-the holdup, bought a light spring wagon from him. Such a transaction was
-unusual enough to indicate that the purchasers were by no means
-individuals of legitimate calling, and in all probability were the
-actual bandits. Setting out on this trail, the agent managed to trace
-them and their wagon all the way to Cheyenne, where the group had
-apparently turned to the east.
-
-By that time persons who had seen them in passing had recognized them,
-and their names were broadcast to the marshals and sheriffs of all the
-eastern regions of the plains. Day after day the stage agent followed
-their trail east, across the Missouri, across the border of Nebraska,
-and on to the pleasant town of Atlantic, in Iowa. By that time the wagon
-had been discarded and the gang had broken up, and the agent was
-following only one spoor—the track of a young man who was always seen
-with a strange, heavy pack on his back.
-
-In the town of Atlantic the trail came to an abrupt end, and indeed the
-mystery might never have been solved had it not been for a strange
-display in the street window of a local bank. Pausing to see what it
-might be that was engaging the attention of a crowd at the window, the
-agent was astounded to behold part of the very loot he was pursuing—two
-bullion bricks stamped with serial numbers which identified them beyond
-a doubt as part of the Canyon Springs treasure.
-
-Upon questioning, the banker proudly asserted that his son had only the
-day before returned from a successful adventure in the Black Hills, and
-had, as a matter of fact, found a gold mine, which he had sold for the
-very bricks making up the exhibit.
-
-Gently the agent disabused the banker of this sad misapprehension, and,
-enlisting the aid of the local Sheriff, had the prodigal son arrested.
-
-The unfortunate conclusion to this tale of detective expertness is that
-although the gold was eventually returned to the Homestake, the young
-bandit escaped from the train which was carrying him back to Cheyenne,
-and was never thereafter apprehended. As for the other four robbers and
-the rest of the treasure, no further trace of either was ever
-discovered.
-
-Although banditry and skulduggery played a very great part in the tales
-of most of the other bonanza gold fields, the Black Hills story was for
-the most part happily without extraordinary violence. Much more
-conspicuous in the history of the Hills than the desperate adventures of
-bandits are the exploits of the folk heroes who rode the Deadwood legend
-into immortality. Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick,
-Preacher Smith, all of these amazing personalities achieved a lasting
-fame during the early days of this later frontier, not for any deeds of
-derring-do in the Sam Bass fashion, but for the old American custom of
-living and dying in a high and wide manner.
-
-In all probability Deadwood Dick has carried the saga of the Hills
-farther and to a greater audience, both in this country and abroad, than
-any of the others, and for that reason, as well as for the strange
-circumstance that he never existed, it is perhaps well to tell his story
-first.
-
-Dick, who never had a last name, was nothing more nor less than the
-happy creation of an overworked literary side-liner eking out a living
-in the late seventies. Having exhausted the possible plot complexities
-of such heroes as Seth Jones and Duke Darrall, Messrs. Beadle and Adams,
-proprietors of that stupendous literary zoo, The Pocket Library
-(published weekly at 98 William Street, New York, price five cents),
-urged their hack, Edward L. Wheeler, to crank out a new character. This
-Shakespeare of the sensational, having recently heard of the brave
-doings in Deadwood, of the Black Hills, promptly created a latter-day
-Leatherstocking, Deadwood Dick.
-
-Dick’s success was instantaneous, for there was a sense of truth in
-these stories which had theretofore been missing. Dispatches in every
-post brought the news of Deadwood as it was happening, and thus the
-weekly appearance of another Deadwood story was able to hang itself
-firmly on the coattails of reality. In one episode Dick courts Calamity
-Jane, who actually existed at the time, and finally marries her. In
-another, Our Hero is a frontier detective, fighting bravely on the side
-of law and order. In still another he has turned to robbery, and at one
-point is actually strung by his neck from a cottonwood gallows.
-
-After exhausting the many plot possibilities of the Black Hills, Dick,
-who had become as real to his readers as George Washington, began to
-work both backward and forward in time and space. In one set of
-adventures he is shown to be an active Indian fighter; in another he
-turns up with Calamity Jane in the town of Leadville, Colorado, which
-came into its glory not long after the strike in Deadwood.
-
-At last the many loose ends of the story so entangled author Wheeler
-that he gave up Deadwood Dick as a lost cause and out of nowhere fetched
-him a son, Deadwood Dick, Jr., who marched on to the turn of the century
-and down into our own time. Indeed, his noble features can still
-occasionally be found staring gravely up from a pile of old and dusty
-magazines in attic corners.
-
-With such a heritage it is little wonder that as the town of Deadwood
-grew away from its infancy, and as its modern Chamber of Commerce turned
-to summer pageants as a source of tourist interest, Deadwood Dick should
-be revived and paraded. Deadwood’s summer festivals, the gay “Days of
-’76,” are built around a town-wide re-creation of the gold rush, with
-the natives chin-whiskered, booted, and costumed within an inch of their
-lives. During this gusty week otherwise sober and retiring citizens turn
-themselves out as stage coach drivers, Indians, and pony express riders,
-and the nights are filled with such a bubbling halloo that the tourists,
-who come in ever larger droves, are able to go home and report that they
-have honestly spent time in a frontier town.
-
-To heighten the effect, the impresarios of this gay divertissement many
-years ago decided to raise Deadwood Dick from Beadle’s pages and put him
-on the street like all the other self-respecting Calamity Janes and Wild
-Bills. Locating an oldster who looked not unlike the artist’s original
-concept, they dressed him in an assortment of western oddities and gave
-him time off from his duties as a stable hand while the festival was in
-session. For several years this simple pretense was carried on, and no
-sleep whatsoever was lost over the fact that a mild fraud was being
-perpetrated on the visiting Iowans.
-
-In 1927, though, when South Dakota was negotiating with Calvin Coolidge
-to get him to spend his summer in the Hills, the stable hand, whose name
-happened to be Dick Clarke, was sent to Washington to extend a personal
-welcome to the President. Patently a publicity stunt, it fooled nobody
-but old Dick himself. The rigors of the trip and the succession of
-tongue-in-cheek honors heaped upon him somehow tilted the old man’s
-mind, and from that day until his death a decade later he fully believed
-that he was the original Deadwood Dick. Frowning down any suggestions
-that he doff his beaded finery and return to the care of the oat bins,
-he betook himself far from the gentle safety of the Deadwood that he
-knew and that knew him, and took to touring the backwoods with
-fifth-rate medicine shows and Wild West pageants. Somewhere along the
-line he got up a small pamphlet which he sold to the gawking audiences
-who thought they were seeing a genuine frontiersman. In this amazing
-tract he spelled out such of the facts of Wheeler’s stories as were
-coherent and in logical time sequence. The rest, including a date and
-place of birth, he soberly filled in for himself.
-
-And that was Deadwood Dick. When he finally died, back in Deadwood in
-the early forties, much of the town had come to believe as he did that
-there had been a Deadwood Dick, just as there had been a Calamity Jane,
-and that this gaffer had been the very person. His cortege was solemnly
-followed, and to this day flowers are sprinkled on his grave by confused
-but loyal residents of the Hills.
-
-
-Wild Bill Hickok, on the other hand, actually lived, and actually died
-exactly as the legend goes, with aces and eights in his hand. It was
-this unfortunate occurrence, as a matter of fact, that gave to that
-particular poker hand its gruesome name, Dead Man’s Hand.
-
-Somewhat in the manner of Deadwood Dick, Wild Bill achieved a large part
-of his fame through the earnest efforts of Beadle & Adams. That is to
-say, much of his renown came after his untimely demise, and much of it
-was deliberately generated to satisfy the great western-yearnings of the
-avid book-buying public. In addition to the publishers’ efforts on
-Bill’s behalf, great impetus was given to his posthumous repute by
-Calamity Jane. Nevertheless, in all probability Hickok was actually the
-fearless and sterling character his legendeers have depicted, and had he
-not been brutally done to death by feckless Jack McCall he would
-doubtless have earned even greater fame through his own efforts in later
-years.
-
-James Hickok was born into a farming family in Illinois in the year
-1837, and passed a quiet and respectable boyhood in the ordinary
-pursuits of such an existence. In his nineteenth year he, like so many
-other young men of that day, felt the urgent call of the Far West. He
-hired himself out forthwith as a teamster in a wagon train to the
-Pacific Coast.
-
-Returning at the end of this one visit to the golden shores, he managed
-to land in the Platte Valley of the eastern Rockies in the very year
-when gold was being discovered in that region. The following two years
-he spent in odd jobs around Denver and on the high plains to the east of
-that new city. During all this time, however, it seemed as if his heart
-were hungering for the lower country. He let his drifting carry him
-slowly back into Kansas where, at the beginning of the Civil War, he
-managed a station for Hinckley’s Overland Express Company, which was
-then staging from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Denver and into Central City.
-
-All these adventures gave ample opportunity for any young man of spleen
-to entangle himself a dozen times over in killings, brawls, and assorted
-rough businesses, but through this entire period James Hickok gave
-evidence of being nothing but a stalwart and well-intentioned
-individual.
-
-The harmlessness of his pursuits, though, came to an explosive end after
-one year in this genial work, when he indulged in pistolry with a
-certain McCanles gang. One version of the Wild Bill legend states that
-the “gang” were cutthroats, and that Hickok was only defending his
-company’s property. Another version, equally trustworthy, has it that
-the McCanleses were Confederate sympathizers, attempting to raise a
-cavalry unit in the region and thus offending Hickok with his Unionist
-leanings. Whatever the reason, the outcome was bloody. No one today
-knows for certain how many men were killed, for eyewitness accounts have
-included reports ranging all the way from one to six, all of them
-presumably slain by Hickok.
-
-The doughty station manager, his helper, and another stage company
-employee were speedily brought to trial for the affair, and just as
-speedily acquitted of any crime. Shortly after that Hickok resigned his
-express company affiliation and joined the Union army, fighting the war
-out as a trusted though undistinguished scout.
-
-After his discharge in 1865, he seems to have forsaken forever his once
-peaceful way of life, and thereafter blood was more than occasionally to
-be found upon his hands. His first postwar killing took place in
-Springfield, Missouri, in a duel with a gambler; and later that same
-year he was reported to have mortally wounded another card player in
-Julesburg, Colorado Territory. In the next year another report,
-unofficial like all the rest, had him killing three more men in
-Missouri, and in 1867—this _was_ official—he went to the booming cow
-town of Hays City, Kansas, where he was shortly offered the post of
-marshal.
-
-That his reputation, whether truthful or legendary, was growing there
-can be no question. By 1867 he was accounted to be one of the best
-gunmen of his time and place, quite possibly for the simple reason that
-he had survived so many fights. For all the shadowy overtones of his
-story, he was also reputed to be a devotee of righteousness and order,
-although this facet of his character may or may not actually have
-existed. He was well known to be a gambler, and his victims were all
-(except the McCanleses) supposed to be cheaters at cards. Whether his
-vivacity with Mr. Colt’s revolver was intended to rid the earth of
-dishonest men or merely to avenge a lost hand is beside the point, for
-his acceptance of the position of marshal of Hays City indicates that
-for a time, at least, his inclinations lay in the direction of law and
-order.
-
-From Hays City he went to a similar post in Abilene, where he bore the
-star until 1872. During all this time he was forced to kill but a bare
-minimum of unworthy citizens, his ever growing repute as a dangerous man
-with a gun apparently frightening would-be desperadoes out of his orbit.
-Three notches were all that he placed upon his weapon during his service
-in those two hell cities of the prairies—definitely a world’s record in
-reverse.
-
- [Illustration: One of the Black Hills’ many streams]
-
- [Illustration: The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared]
-
-Apparently the inactivity came to bore him, for he soon gave up police
-work to return to the army for two years as a scout. This harsh calling
-also failed to satisfy whatever inner wants were making themselves felt,
-and in 1874 he resigned to join a traveling show with Buffalo Bill.
-
-In 1875, however, he was to be found no longer behind the chemical
-lights, but idling his time away in Cheyenne. During this restless
-interlude he married a circus rider named Agnes Lake. Shortly after the
-ceremony, which took place in 1876, he followed the trail to Deadwood,
-arriving in April and setting up camp with another ex-army scout. The
-motives which drew him to that thriving boom town were, in all
-probability, those which drew the thousands of others—mere curiosity and
-the hope that something might turn up. Indeed, during the four months of
-his Deadwood hiatus he did very little but play poker in the famed
-saloon known as Number Ten. That he was as accomplished a gambler as he
-was a gunman was doubted by no one, and through his ability with the
-pasteboards he apparently kept himself in such funds as he needed. He
-did not attempt to look for gold, nor did he seek any official post in
-the town. He merely played the long hours away at cards.
-
-One might expect such a man as Wild Bill Hickok to meet his nemesis in
-open battle with a murderous cutthroat seeking to pay off an old score.
-Western legend is filled with such fitting come-uppances. But in this
-rare case our hero was killed in a peaceful moment by a total stranger
-and for reasons which nobody was ever thereafter able to discern.
-
-On the fateful day of August 2, 1876, he entered Number Ten shortly
-after the lunch hour to take up his everlasting hand of cards. Normally,
-being a prudent man, he insisted on a seat with its back to a wall, from
-which vantage point he could keep his eye cocked for trouble; but on
-this day, for some reason, he arrived just too late to take his
-customary position and had to accept a chair with its back to the door.
-The game proceeded amiably enough for a while, and there was nothing in
-the afternoon air to suggest violence of any sort. At last a normally
-inoffensive deadbeat, one Jack McCall, turned from the bar where he had
-been enjoying a quiet drink and, passing the gaming table on his way to
-the door, suddenly and without a word pulled his revolver from his vest
-and put a shot through Wild Bill’s skull.
-
-The effect was instantaneous. When the news spread that Wild Bill had
-been killed, all work stopped in the city and men streamed in from every
-corner, expecting at the very least to find a major battle in progress.
-When finally the crowds were quieted down and it was learned that the
-killing was nothing more than a mere murder, the populace speedily
-hunted up the terrified McCall, whom they found huddled in a near-by
-stable, and arranged a formal trial. The facts that Deadwood was at that
-time still out of bounds to American citizens and therefore under no
-legitimate civil jurisdiction and that the judge, jury, and prosecuting
-attorney were elected on the spot by a show of hands, having therefore
-no official standing, did not dampen the ardor of the crowd. A trial was
-a trial, and its results would presumably be fair and honest.
-
-As a matter of fact, Jack McCall must have been the most surprised
-individual of all at the ultimate fairness of the legal machinery which
-had been set up in his honor. With the acceptance of his fumbling plea
-that Hickok had, at a place unnamed and at a time unnamed, killed his
-brother, McCall was acquitted and turned free, and Wild Bill was
-sorrowfully buried by the admiring populace.
-
-As soon as he was freed, McCall hurried back to Cheyenne to escape the
-reach of any of Hickok’s friends. Unfortunately the story of the killing
-followed him there, and under the mistaken impression that he had
-undergone a legitimate trial and was therefore no longer subject to
-additional jeopardy, McCall took no pains to deny the murder. This was a
-most foolish tactic on his part, for he was speedily rearrested and
-shipped to Yankton, the capital of South Dakota Territory, where he was
-held for a session of the proper court. Inasmuch as he had admitted
-before witnesses not only that he had killed Wild Bill, but also that
-his earlier plea had been fabricated from whole cloth, he had a very
-slender defense indeed, and was quickly found guilty and banged.
-
-To the very end no clue could be found to any sort of sound reason for
-his having fired the fatal shot. It was quite definitely proved that he
-had never had any dealings with his victim and had never been in any way
-offended by him, and that he no more than knew vaguely who he was. It
-was apparently a completely aimless killing, the unhappy inspiration of
-the moment.
-
-On the other hand, Justice seems forever determined to get to the bottom
-of the matter, for _The Trial of Jack McCall_ has become an institution
-of the Black Hills, played, like _Ten Nights in a Barroom_, all the
-summers long in a popular tavern. Where audiences elsewhere hiss their
-Legrees and other purely fictional villains, the proud residents of
-Deadwood have their very own and very real scoundrel for the target of
-their malisons—the miserable McCall. Tourists are cordially invited to
-join in the fun and thereby to spread ever farther the legend of Wild
-Bill Hickok.
-
-On June 21, 1951, the legend was further enhanced and improved upon by
-the presentation to the city of Deadwood of a brand new statue of Hickok
-carved out of a massive chunk of native granite by the ebullient
-sculptor, Ziolkowski. An all-day celebration attended the unveiling of
-this statue upon its pedestal at the foot of Mt. Moriah, and the zenith
-of the day’s gaudy reverence was the reading of an “epic” poem to the
-hushed populace of the town over a loud-speaker system from the top of
-the mount. The statue is plain to be seen about a block from the Adams
-Memorial Museum, and copies of the epic can no doubt be had by
-soliciting the Deadwood Chamber of Commerce.
-
-
-Of a somewhat different character from Wild Bill, but, it is good to
-report, no less revered in the Hills, was Preacher Smith.
-
-Frontier towns have been notorious for their hallowing of persons, both
-male and female, who were either expertly good or expertly bad. This
-strange compounding of affections would suggest that the vice or
-godliness in itself was unimportant, but that the rough and crude
-citizens who populated our earlier settlements held a genuine admiration
-and regard for anyone of any calling who demonstrated authority and
-accomplishment.
-
-And thus it was with the Reverend Henry W. Smith. A man of exceptionally
-little luck in life, he gave up his dwindling congregations in the
-States and journeyed into the frontier in 1875, partly because of a zeal
-in his heart to bring the Word into the lawless and godless gold camps,
-but also, it must be conjectured, to find some form of weekday
-employment which would enable him to care for his wife and two
-daughters. The wolf had been howling at many doors during those years,
-and parsonages which carried even a bare subsistence stipend were few
-and far between.
-
-Smith went first to Custer, where he stayed but a short while, finding
-little in the way of work and less in the way of souls to save, since
-the rush to Deadwood was then in full force. Hiring onto a merchandise
-train as a cook’s helper, he made his way to that newer city, arriving
-early in May of 1876. In a town of such activity it was not difficult to
-locate work, and shortly his hide began to fill out and his purse to
-thicken. That purse, it was discovered after his death, was to be used
-for the purpose of bringing his family out to join him.
-
-Working diligently and, of course, soberly at his menial tasks from
-Monday through Saturday, and bravely setting up his pulpit on the main
-street on Sundays, Preacher Smith soon won the respect and even the
-genial admiration of the roisterous townspeople. At first his
-congregations contained more wandering dogs than people, but week after
-week, as he determinedly kept after his work, an increasingly large
-crowd gathered of a Sunday morning to listen to his sermons.
-
-Thus the entire town was shocked when he was brutally killed by Indians
-while walking to a near-by settlement to preach a sermon. Indians were
-bad enough at best, but killing a harmless and unarmed preacher was an
-act of violence which shook the consciences of the whole citizen body.
-It was on those consciences that the guilt began to press—the guilt of
-the knowledge that they had driven him to his death by their slowness to
-accept him in their own community and that he had gone to his rendezvous
-seeking a congregation, no matter how small, that would house him and
-the Master he served.
-
-Belatedly gathering to his support, the citizens passed a sizable hat
-for the benefit of the unfortunate man’s widow and daughters. In
-addition to the gift of cash, the woman received an invitation to bring
-her grieving family to the Hills, where care would be arranged for them,
-including a teaching post for the eldest daughter. Unfortunately,
-neither the widow nor the daughters were in good enough health to be
-able to make the rigorous trip, and in consequence they could not avail
-themselves of the hospitality and generosity which were so late in
-coming.
-
-Although they had failed to bring the parson’s family to Deadwood, the
-worthy citizens were undaunted in their efforts to memorialize this
-modest itinerant who had stumbled unwittingly into glory. A great chunk
-of sandstone was quarried and a local artist of more verve than ability
-proceeded to hack out the parson’s likeness. The statue was eventually
-propped over his grave atop Mount Moriah, the cemetery-museum where he
-lies alongside Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. Unfortunately souvenir
-hunters carried on their unworthy custom over the years, until finally
-the battered monument, no longer even recognizable, collapsed. In the
-Adams Memorial Hall of Deadwood, however, there can be seen a
-certificate signed in Preacher Smith’s very writing, and thus his
-handiwork lives along with his legend.
-
-
-All stories of Deadwood in the Black Hills come, eventually, to the
-great riddle of Martha Jane Cannary (sometimes spelled Canary), known as
-Calamity Jane.
-
-This gusty female, who rolled around the West for nearly half a century,
-has been the subject of more controversy and speculation than almost any
-other early-day character. In her lifetime she circulated a brief
-autobiography which successfully managed to hide the truth about
-practically every aspect of her history. In addition, she manipulated
-her drab story in such a way that a whole generation of legend-mongers
-accepted her as the “true love” of Wild Bill Hickok, and thus by no
-means to be thought of as the drunken harlot she most certainly was.
-
-By dint of careful searching, however, some few definite facts of her
-early life and adventures have been isolated, and upon them at least the
-framework of her true story has been constructed. She appears to have
-been born in the neighborhood of 1850—add or subtract a year—in
-Missouri. Some accounts have it that her father was a Baptist minister,
-which is an unimportant sidelight, for young Martha Jane did not stay at
-home long enough for any such influence to gnaw its way into her
-personality.[2]
-
-How she managed to get from Missouri to Wyoming while still in her early
-teens remains a mystery, but nonetheless her career as a camp follower
-started when, at the tender age of fourteen, she arrived in the roaring
-outpost of Rawlins. Some tales have it that she had gone west as the
-consort of a young army lieutenant, and that her mother, remarried to a
-pioneer, found her in that boisterous military town and took her to
-Utah. In any event she came back into circulation two years later, for
-in 1866 she was duly married to one George White in Cheyenne. Following
-this felicitous turn of affairs she and her husband journeyed to Denver,
-where he was able to support her in a fine, high style. Unfortunately,
-she did not take to this pleasant existence, but shortly began to yearn
-after the cavalry. Leaving her husband to his Denver duties, she
-appeared all during 1867 and 1868 in various forts throughout Wyoming.
-It was at this particular time in her career that she was supposed to
-have earned the nickname of Calamity Jane. Undoubtedly the title was
-bestowed upon her by barroom companions who had learned the sad truth
-that Martha Jane’s appearance on the scene boded a long and arduous
-night of drinking; but in her maudlin and confused autobiography she
-tells of assisting in an Indian fight and for her splendid services
-being gratefully given the name by a Captain Pat Egan. In a later
-interview Egan denied this, claiming that the only time he had ever seen
-the woman was while escorting her out of a barracks so that the men
-could get some sleep.
-
-From Wyoming she went to Hays City, Kansas, still following the Seventh
-Cavalry, her chosen military unit. Six years later she turned up again,
-this time disguised as a man and marching with General Crook’s police
-force, which was trying to keep settlers out of the Hills. Her
-autobiography claims that she also accompanied Custer’s command on its
-famous exploratory march, but this does not appear to be true.
-
-After the discovery of gold in Deadwood, she found the high life in that
-town so completely to her liking that she made it her home base. In time
-she fastened herself so securely among the legends of the metropolis
-that she was thereafter known solely as Calamity Jane of Deadwood.
-
-Taking advantage of the high romance which surrounded Wild Bill’s name
-after his death, Calamity made haste to pass the story around that he
-had been her only true love; and although there was no evidence of any
-sort that he even knew who she was, her last words, when she died in
-1903, were a plea to be buried next to him.
-
-In the eighties she became restless again and forsook her beloved
-Deadwood for two decades, roving as far south as El Paso, and on one
-occasion being seen in California. Her activities at this time of her
-life are mostly lost from sight, but it may be presumed that as whatever
-charms she may earlier have had faded, her interest to and in the
-soldiers waned. During this period she married again, this time wedding
-a man named Burke, to whom she bore a daughter. She soon tired of Burke,
-however, and drifted slowly north again, passing considerable time in
-Colorado and then returning briefly to Deadwood in 1895. Even at that
-late date the citizens of the gold town had not forgotten her, nor had
-the esteem in which she had earlier been held dwindled; when it was
-discovered that she lacked funds to care for her daughter, the
-townspeople passed the ever present hat and arranged for the care of the
-child. This act of generosity was purportedly to repay a great sacrifice
-which Calamity Jane had made in the earlier days, braving the dangers of
-the smallpox scourge of 1878 to nurse whoever was ill and without help.
-This particular legend has had wide currency in the West, its closest
-variant being the tale of Silver Heels, a dancing girl who visited the
-mining camps of Colorado’s South Park in the sixties. Silver Heels is
-popularly supposed to have ministered to the miners during a similar
-plague, for which bravery a near-by mountain was named for her.
-
-After placing her child in a school, Calamity, who was destitute, betook
-herself to the vaudeville circuit. Inasmuch as through the dime novels
-she had already become a well-known national figure, she was able for a
-while to draw large crowds. Had it not been for her unfortunate habit of
-getting dead drunk before show time, she might well have amassed a
-competence over the years. But her first contract was not renewed, and
-after a brief whirl at the Buffalo Exposition she returned to the West,
-spending the next several years in Montana.
-
-At last she came home to Deadwood, a sick and broken old roustabout. By
-this time she was nothing more than a bar-fly, and she lived out her
-last days panhandling food and liquor money from strangers. At last, on
-August 2, 1903, she died of pneumonia.
-
-Deadwood turned out in force for her funeral. As she had requested, she
-was buried near Wild Bill Hickok on Mount Moriah, overlooking the town.
-That she had never really known Wild Bill was quite beside the point,
-and anyway, there was none present who knew whether she had or not. The
-shoddy story of her “love” for Hickok was nothing that interested the
-old timers, but was saved for historians to untangle. That she was no
-more than an alcoholic old harlot was of no consequence, either, to the
-good citizens, for with her passing the last of the great names of the
-frontier was coming home to rest. That the townspeople were proud of
-her, and genuinely so, was not to be denied, although there was most
-certainly nobody present at that melancholy service who could have told
-why. The truth of the matter was that they were burying not a broken old
-woman, but the last of the Black Hills legends.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER SIX
- The White River Badlands
-
-
-Any visit to the Black Hills must also be the occasion of a tour, at
-least for a few hours, of the famous South Dakota Badlands. This
-fantastic National Monument is not a part of the Hills, either
-geographically or historically, but because the two regions lie so close
-together—a scant fifty miles apart—they are expediently linked as two
-great natural wonders in the same region.
-
-The term “badlands” has a loose scientific acceptance, meaning any
-region where a specific type of heavy erosion has taken place. Such
-regions usually have subnormal rainfall and sparse vegetation. Those
-rains that do occur, then, find little on the earth’s surface to prevent
-almost complete runoff, which is so vigorous as to act as a powerful
-cutting agent. The final ingredients of a badlands are rock formations
-known as unconsolidated—lacking any general unity of structure which
-might tend to withstand erosion. When all these conditions exist, the
-devastation of the rushing flood waters is without pattern, a great gash
-being carved in one spot while no damage is visible on a near-by
-outcropping. The end result is an almost frightening collection of
-gruesome stone monuments rising to the sky and marking the heights once
-reached by a general plateau.
-
-Actually, much of the high western plain abutting on the Rocky Mountains
-is basic badland formation, and small pockets of distinct erosion can be
-seen all through eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and eastern
-Wyoming, in addition to the vast depression in the valleys of the White
-and Cheyenne rivers in South Dakota. This one region, though, sixty-five
-miles long and five to fifteen miles wide, is the largest and from the
-geologist’s point of view the most important of all such regions in the
-world. Desolate, empty, seared by ages of sun and wind, it is now a
-great gash in the earth’s flesh which exposes to view rock and soil
-strata that measure a great span of earth’s history.
-
-In addition to the splendid opportunity to see and study the various
-layers of the earth’s surface going back as far as sixty million years,
-the very composition of badlands formations makes any such region a
-veritable museum of fossils and petrified animal relics. The South
-Dakota Badlands have turned up absolute treasures of such
-paleontological finds, enabling scientists to trace the evolution of
-mammalian life all the way back to the appearance on earth of the first
-carnivorous animals—the vastly distant ancestors of the dog. And the
-Badlands are noted not only for the great span in geologic time of their
-fossil beds, but also for the number of different types which have been
-found in their ancient soil, more than 250 different prehistoric animals
-having been discovered in various stages of fossilized preservation in
-this general region.
-
-The tourist, though, need not be even an amateur student of geology or
-paleontology to be thrilled and awed by a visit to this grotesque but
-beautiful area. The mere colors of the various rock strata, ever
-changing under the light patterns of sun and cloud, provide a
-never-to-be-forgotten experience. One of the most articulate tributes to
-the grandeur of the Badlands is that of Frank Lloyd Wright:
-
- Speaking of our trip to the South Dakota Badlands, I’ve been about the
- world a lot and pretty much over our own country but I was totally
- unprepared for the revelation called the Badlands. What I saw gave me
- an indescribable sense of the mysterious otherwhere—a distant
- architecture, ethereal, touched, only touched, with a sense of
- Egyptian-Mayan drift and silhouette. As we came closer, a templed
- realm definitely stood ambient in the air before my astonished
- “scene”-loving but “scene”-jaded gaze.
-
- Yes, I say the aspects of the South Dakota Badlands have more
- spiritual quality to impart to the mind of America than anything else
- in it made by Man’s God.
-
-The word “badlands,” which now has a genuine scientific meaning, was
-taken into our vocabulary from the folk name for this very region. In
-the earliest days of North American exploration, far back before the
-Revolution, French trappers had braved this empty wasteland on their
-endless quest for new fur grounds, and had brought back tales of this
-lost world of silence and strange shapes. They were the ones who gave it
-the name Badlands, but they were only translating directly the Sioux
-name, Mako Sika, which meant, precisely, lands bad for traveling.
-
-To the early explorers the badlands meant only that—high escarpments to
-be overcome; twisting, winding, endless canyons from which there were no
-outlets; crumbling rock underfoot on the three-hundred-foot crawls from
-the canyon bottoms to the table-tops; and the hot, shimmering distances
-of this forbidding terrain as far as the eye could see.
-
-It was, as a matter of fact, the existence of this area that helped keep
-the Black Hills nothing more than an empty question mark on maps until
-the rumors of gold began to circulate. The first American explorers, who
-might have discovered the natural wonders of the Hills in the 1820’s,
-found their paths diverted to the north and the south by this impassable
-valley, and consequently missed the Hills.
-
-The first reliable record of the wonders of this lost world was dated
-1847. That year, it will be remembered, was one of great moment in the
-history of the western movement—the year that Brigham Young braved the
-high prairies and pathless mountains with his great exodus, settling an
-empire on the shores of Great Salt Lake. Although the Pacific trails
-were fairly well established by then, his was the first of the true
-migrations, and the gold rush to California, the Oregon excursions, and
-the Pikes Peak mosaid were yet to come.
-
-In this fateful year of 1847 a certain Professor Hiram A. Prout of St.
-Louis came somehow into contact with a representative of the American
-Fur Company, which ran substantial trapping operations all up the wide
-Missouri and its tributaries. How this meeting came about is lost to
-record, but we do know that the fur trader gave Professor Prout a
-souvenir of his recent travels through the Badlands of Dakota—a fragment
-of the lower jaw of a Titanothere, the first fossil ever to be quarried
-out of the region and used for scientific purposes.
-
-In that same year a second Badlands fossil turned up, this one a
-well-preserved head of an ancestral camel, given to or purchased by the
-great scholar, Dr. Joseph Leidy. With true academic ardor both of these
-gentlemen, Leidy and Prout, rushed their discoveries into scholarly
-print, describing in learned journals the nature of their trophies.
-Enjoying the slender circulation of academic publication, the essays
-which described these fossil wonders eventually found their way into the
-offices of the government’s geological survey, which acted quickly to
-dispatch an expedition to the overlooked region of their origin.
-
-That first exploring party, the David Owen Survey, went into the field
-in 1849. A prominent scientist-artist, Dr. John Evans, was attached to
-the group, and from his pen we have several sketches of this pioneer
-adventure into the empty wastelands. If these drawings look more like
-studies of Dante’s Inferno than like the breath-taking Badlands as they
-really are, it must be remembered that such geological formations had
-never before been visited by the members of that party, and, being
-completely alien to the America of their knowledge, impressed them every
-bit as a visit to the moon might have done.
-
-The Owens party was merely the vanguard of the great army of brave men
-and women who have ever since made their dangerous ways into the
-remotest distances of the mountain and desert West, seeking neither
-riches of gold nor riches of land, but only more minute bits of the
-knowledge of the world of our past. Archeologists, geologists, and
-paleontologists from universities and learned societies the world over
-have spent liberally of their time, energies, and personal safety to
-scout out the secrets of mankind’s past in such remote corners of the
-earth as the Badlands. Year after year additional expeditions, both
-governmental and privately organized, made their way into this
-particular area, seeking out the fossil remains which turned up in great
-numbers.
-
-V. F. Hayden of the United States Geological Survey was one of the most
-diligent of the early explorers. He made trips into the Badlands in
-1853, 1855, 1857, and 1866, carrying on detailed and exhaustive studies
-and eventually unraveling the story of the region’s major geologic
-features.
-
-As Hayden’s reports became more and more widely circulated, various
-universities found projects of specific interest in one or another phase
-of the work of uncovering fossil beds; and from year to year Yale,
-Princeton, Amherst, the universities of South Dakota and Nebraska, and
-other institutions sent groups into the Badlands for summer work.
-Gradually, as these several groups exchanged information and reports of
-progress, it became possible for their scientists to trace back, through
-the skeletal remains of prehistoric animals, the very processes of the
-evolution of many entire families in the animal kingdom. Not only are
-the fossil beds of the Badlands as richly stocked with remains as any
-such bed in the world, but in a great many instances entire groups of
-three, four, and five whole skeletons have been found, making it
-possible for museum workers to re-create almost perfectly the animals as
-they existed and to set up models of the terrain at various intervals
-throughout its entire sixty-million-year history.
-
-Perhaps the most noteworthy as well as view-worthy section of the
-Badlands is Sheep Mountain, located at the far west end of the Monument.
-Down from the summit runs a great canyon, the School of Mines Canyon,
-named for the fact that the South Dakota State School of Mines at Rapid
-City long ago chose that location for the bulk of its paleontological
-research. Under the guidance of famed Dr. Cleophas O’Harra, for many
-years president of that institution, groups of Mines students went on
-extended annual encampments on Sheep Mountain, unearthing, among other
-rarities, full skeletons of the prehistoric midget horse, the
-saber-toothed tiger, and camels. It was this last discovery that lent
-considerable support to the concept, conjectural at the time of Dr.
-O’Harra’s discoveries, that a land bridge had once connected North
-America and Asia, allowing the migration of peoples and animals from the
-old world into the new. School of Mines Canyon, while some distance off
-the main highway leading from Pierre to the Black Hills, is by all means
-worth the time required to visit it. The canyon lies only thirteen miles
-from the town of Scenic.
-
-The Badlands are reached by Highway 14-16 and by State Route 40. Coming
-from the west, from Rapid City, the visitor can take route 40 directly
-to the town of Scenic, forty-seven miles distant. From Scenic, in
-addition to connecting with the side trip to Sheep Mountain, 40
-continues along the north wall of the Badlands all the way to Cedar Pass
-and out the east end of the region, merging at Kadoka with Highway 16,
-or, by means of a nine-mile connection, with 14.
-
-Should the weather be bad and State 40 not recommended by local
-informers, the route is out of Rapid City on 14-16, east fifty-five
-miles to the town of Wall, thence by the access road through the
-Pinnacles, down into the Badlands halfway between Scenic and Cedar Pass,
-and joining State 40.
-
-From the east, Highway 16 goes through Kadoka, from which town State 40
-should be taken, leading in through Cedar Pass, and out either through
-Scenic and on to Rapid City, or at the Pinnacles, through Wall and back
-on 14-16. Coming from Pierre on 14, the tourist must leave that highway
-a few miles beyond the town of Philip and make the nine-mile detour on
-16 to Kadoka, from there going on to Cedar Pass as described.
-
-Several railroads serve the Badlands and its general region, notably the
-Chicago & Northwestern, the Burlington, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, and
-St. Paul. This last road, the “Milwaukee,” offers the traveler the best
-view of the region, winding up the White River Valley the entire
-sixty-five miles between Kadoka and Scenic, and providing the passenger
-with unparalleled if hasty views of some of the most rugged and isolated
-portions of all the area.
-
-
-
-
- Bibliography
-
-
-Allsman, Paul T. _Reconnaissance of Gold Mining Districts in the Black
- Hills, South Dakota._ U.S. Bureau of Mines, No. 427. Washington,
- D. C.: U.S. Dept. of Interior, 1940.
-
-Baldwin, G. P., editor. _The Black Hills Illustrated._ Philadelphia:
- Baldwin Syndicate, 1904.
-
-Carpenter, F. R. _The Mineral Resources of the Black Hills._ South
- Dakota School of Mines Preliminary Report, No. 1. Rapid City:
- South Dakota School of Mines, 1888.
-
-Casey, Robert J. _The Black Hills._ New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1949.
-
-Dick, Everett. _Vanguards of the Frontier._ New York: D.
- Appleton-Century Co., 1941.
-
-Eloe, Frank. “Rushmore Cave,” _Black Hills Engineer_, XXIV (December,
- 1938), 274.
-
-Fenton, C. L. “South Dakota’s Badlands,” _Nature Magazine_, XXIV
- (August, 1941), 370-74.
-
-Glasscock, C. B. _The Big Bonanza._ Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.,
- 1931.
-
-Hans, Fred. _The Great Sioux Nation._ Chicago: Donahue, 1907.
-
-Hayden, F. V. and Meek, F. B. “Remarks on Geology of the Black Hills,”
- _Academy of Natural Science Proceedings._ Philadelphia: Academy of
- Natural Science, 1858, X, 41-59.
-
-Hough, Emerson. _The Passing of the Frontier._ New Haven: Yale
- University Press, 1921.
-
-Kingsbury, G. W. _History of Dakota Territory._ Chicago: The S. J.
- Clarke Co., 1915.
-
-Lake, Stuart. _Wyatt Earp._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.
-
-Mirsky, Jeannette. _The Westward Crossings._ New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
- 1946.
-
-Newton, Henry. _Geology of the Black Hills._ Washington, D. C.: United
- States Geographical and Geological Survey, 1880.
-
-O’Harra, C. C. “The Gold Mining Industry of the Black Hills,” _Black
- Hills Engineer_, XIX (January, 1931), 3-9.
-
-——. _The White River Badlands._ Department of Geology, No. 13. Rapid
- City: South Dakota School of Mines, 1920.
-
-Rothrach, E. P. _A Hydrologic Study of the White River Valley. South
- Dakota Geological Survey Report._ Vermillion, South Dakota:
- University of South Dakota, February, 1942.
-
-Todd, James Edward. _A Preliminary Report on the Geology of South
- Dakota._ South Dakota Geological Survey, No. 1. Vermillion:
- University of South Dakota, 1894.
-
-Tullis, E. L. “The Geology of the Black Hills,” _Black Hills Engineer_,
- XXV (April, 1939), 26-38.
-
-
-
-
- Footnotes
-
-
-[1]For an account of the history and natural wonders of Estes Park,
- readers are referred to a previous book in this series, _Estes Park:
- Resort in the Rockies_, by Edwin J. Foscue and Louis O. Quam.
-
-[2]A treasured manuscript journal kept by the author’s great-uncle, who
- was for many years curator of the Colorado State Historical
- Society’s museum in Denver, reports an interview with Calamity Jane
- some time before her death which convinced him that the facts were
- substantially as they are stated here.
-
- On the other hand, Mr. Will G. Robinson, the eminent State Historian
- of South Dakota, reports: “On the authority of Dr. McGillicuddy, who
- was a medico at Ft. Laramie, and whose original letter I have, I
- would be entirely certain that she was born at Ft. Laramie, of a
- couple by the name of Dalton. Dalton was a soldier, was discharged
- and went out a short distance west to LaBonte. Here he was killed by
- Indians, although his wife got back into the fort with one eye
- gouged out, after which she shortly died. Her child got her
- name—Calamity—by reason of this disaster. She was not much over 40
- when she died in 1903.”
-
- The discrepancy between these two accounts, both studiously
- researched and documented by men whose professional careers have
- been given over to solving puzzles of this nature with which western
- history abounds, is typical of the disagreement among
- well-authenticated reports of the birth and early life of this
- female enigma.
-
- In any event, it is a matter which is still subject to a maximum
- amount of conjecture, and for a much more complete account of the
- variant clues readers are enthusiastically referred to Nolie Mumey’s
- _Calamity Jane_ (Denver: Privately printed, 1949).
-
-
-
-
- Index
-
-
- A
- Abilene (Kan.), 84, 98
- Adams Memorial Museum, 103, 107
- Alaska, 73
- Algonkian Period, 19
- American Fur Company, 120
- Amherst College, 122
- Anchor City (S.D.), 63
- Archean Period, 17-18
- Archean sea, 20
- Atlantic (Iowa), 88
-
-
- B
- Badlands, White River, 4, 6, 42, 115-17
- Bass, Sam, 79-81, 82-83, 85, 90
- Battle Mountain, 7
- Beadle & Adams, 90, 95
- Beaver Creek, 86
- Belle Fourche (S.D.), 6
- Belle Fourche River, 56
- Belle Fourche Round-up, 46
- Big Horn Basin, 66
- Big Horn River, 53
- Bismarck (S.D.), 53
- Black Bart, 78
- Black Hills & Badlands Assn., 44
- Black Hills Range Days, 46
- Black Hills Teachers College, 12
- Black Moon (Indian Chief), 66
- Blackfeet tribe, 49
- Blodgett, Sam, 71
- Borglum, Gutzon, 37-39
- Bozeman Trail, 51-53
- Brule tribe, 49, 52
- “Broken Hand.” _See_ Fitzpatrick, Thomas
- Buffalo Bill, 99
- Burlington Railroad, 8
-
-
- C
- Calamity Jane, 77, 90-91, 94, 107-11
- _Calamity Jane_, 109
- California, 47, 50, 62, 75
- Cambrian Period, 19-20
- Cambrian sea, 20
- Canyon Springs, 86, 89
- Carlsbad Caverns, 28, 43
- Carson, Kit, 55
- Cathedral Park, 33
- Central City (S.D.), 63
- Cheyenne (Wyo.), 4, 59-61, 69, 80-81, 86, 89, 99
- Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage, 69, 80
- Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage, 4, 9
- Cheyenne Indians, 7
- Cheyenne River, 116
- Chicago (Ill.), 6, 34, 49
- Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, 7
- Clarke, Dick, 93
- Colorado, 32-33, 47, 58
- Coolidge, President Calvin, 31, 38, 93
- Crazy Horse (Indian Chief), 40, 52, 54, 61, 65-67
- Cripple Creek (Colo.), 72
- Crocker, Charles, 78
- Crook, General, 59, 64-66, 110
- Crystal Cave, 23
- Custer (S.D.), 6, 9, 10-11, 30-31, 40, 42-43, 46, 59, 61, 63,
- 70-71, 105
- Custer, General George Armstrong, 1, 10, 54-57, 64-67, 78, 80
- Custer State Park, 19, 30
- Custer’s Last Stand, 68
-
-
- D
- Darrall, Duke, 90
- Days of ’76, 46, 92
- Dead Man’s Hand (poker), 95
- Deadtree Gulch, 71
- Deadwood (S.D.), 4, 11, 20, 46, 69, 81-84, 86, 91, 99, 101, 105-6,
- 110-11
- Deadwood City (S.D.), 76
- Deadwood Dick, 77, 90-94
- Deadwood Dick, Jr., 92
- Deadwood Gulch, 10, 46, 71, 73
- Denver (Colo.), 3-4, 49, 60, 96, 109
- Devonian Period, 22
- Dodge, General Grenville, 51
- Dodge City (Kan.), 84
-
-
- E
- Earp, Wyatt, 84-86
- Egan, Capt. Pat, 110
- Estes Park, 3
- Evans, Fred T., 7
- Evans Hotel, 7
- Evans, John, 120
-
-
- F
- Fair, James, 78
- Fellows, Dick, 78
- Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 50
- Fort Ellis, 64
- Fort Fetterman, 64
- Fort Laramie, 50-52, 57
- Fort Lincoln, 53, 57
- Fort Pierre, 7, 13, 80
- Fort Sully, 51
- French Creek, 57, 69, 70
-
-
- G
- Gall (Indian Chief), 66
- Game Lodge, 31-33
- Gayville (S.D.), 63
- Gibbon, General John, 64-65
- Gold, discovered in the Black Hills, 3
- Gold Discovery Days, 11, 46
- Golden Gate (S.D.), 63
- Golden Star mine, 73
- Golden Terra mine, 73, 75
- Gordon party, 60
- Great Plains, 49
-
-
- H
- Haggin, James Ben Ali, 74
- Harney Peak, 1, 19, 32, 35-36, 40
- Harney-Sanborne Treaty, 53
- Hayden, V. F., 121
- Hays City (Kan.), 98, 110
- Hearst, Senator George, 74-75
- Hearst, William Randolph, 74
- Hickok, Wild Bill, 90, 94-97, 100-102, 107-8
- Hinckley’s Overland Express, 96
- Homestake Mine, 69, 72-76, 80, 87, 89
- Homestake Mining Co., 75
- Hot Springs (S.D.), 6, 8-9, 11, 29, 34
-
-
- I
- Ice Cave, 43-44
- Inkpaduta (Indian Chief), 66
- _Inter-Ocean_, 58
-
-
- J
- Jefferson, President Thomas, 37, 39
- Jenney Stockade, 86
- Jennings, Dr., 7
- Jewel Cave, 11, 23, 42, 44
- Jones, Seth, 90
- Julesburg (Colo.), 97
-
-
- K
- Kansas, 96
- Kansas City (Mo.), 49
- Kind, Ezra, 48
-
-
- L
- Lake, Agnes, 99
- Laramie (Wyo.), 61
- Last Chance Gulch, 73
- Lead (S.D.), 75
- _Legend of Sam Bass_, 79
- Leidy, Dr. Joseph, 120
- Lincoln, President Abraham, 37, 39
- Lincoln Highway, 4
- Little Big Horn River, 10, 68
- Luenen (Germany), 12
-
-
- Mc
- McCall, Jack, 95, 100-102
- McCanles gang, 96, 98
- McKay, William T., 54, 56
-
-
- M
- Manuel, Fred, 73-75
- Manuel, Moses, 73-75
- Meier, Joseph, 12
- Miles City (Mont.), 6
- Minneapolis (Minn.), 6
- Minnekahta Canyon, 7
- Minnesota, 50
- Minniconjou tribe, 49
- Mississippian Period, 22
- Missouri, 97, 108
- Missouri River, 2, 6, 49, 53, 88
- Missouri Valley, 48, 50
- Mogollon (mountains), 63
- Montana, 10, 47, 51, 64
- Mount Coolidge, 41
- Mount Evans, 33
- Mount Moriah Cemetery, 103, 107, 113
- Mount Rushmore, 37, 39, 40-41
- Mount Washington, 32
- Mumey, Nolie, 109
- Murietta, Joaquin, 78
-
-
- N
- National Park Service, 28, 30, 43, 45
- Nebraska, 42, 54, 88
- Needles, The, 33
- Needles Highway, 33-35
- Nevada, 47
- Newcastle (Wyo.), 43
- Niobrara River, 54
- North America, 17, 20, 24, 75
- North Platte River, 2, 64
- Number Ten, 99-100
-
-
- O
- Oglala tribe, 49, 52, 65
- O’Harra, Dr. Cleophas, 123
- Omaha (Neb.), 4, 49
- Ordovician Period, 22
- Oregon Trail, 51
- Oregon-California Trail, 2
- Owen Survey, 120
-
-
- P
- Paha Sapa (Indian name for Black Hills), 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 48
- Paleozoic Era, 19
- Passion Play, 72
- Pearson, John, 71-72
- Pierre (S.D.), 2, 6, 51
- Pikes Peak, 58, 62
- Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 40
- Platte River, 50
- Platte River-Oregon Trail, 49
- Platte Valley, 60, 96
- Portland-Independence Mine, 72
- Powder River Valley, 65
- Preacher Smith, 90-91, 104-5
- Princeton University, 122
- Prout, Prof. Hiram, 119-20
-
-
- R
- Rapid City (S.D.), 4, 6-7, 11, 13-14, 31, 46, 49
- Rawlins (Wyo.), 109
- Red Cloud (Indian Chief), 52-53
- Reno, Major, 67-68
- Reynolds, Charley, 57
- Rhodes, Eugene Manlove, 18
- Rio Grande Valley, 19
- Robinson, Will, 108
- Rocky Mountains, 1, 3, 15, 34, 37, 50, 62, 96, 116
- Roosevelt, President Theodore, 37, 39
- Rosebud Creek, 65
- Ross, H. N., 55
-
-
- S
- St. Joseph (Mo.), 49, 96
- St. Louis (Mo.), 49, 57
- St. Paul (Minn.), 49
- San Arc tribe, 49
- San Francisco (Calif.), 74-75
- Santa Fe Trail, 49
- Santee Sioux, 50
- School of Mines Canyon, 123
- Seventh Cavalry, 110
- Sheridan, General Phil, 56-57
- Sidney (Neb.), 13, 61, 69, 75, 80
- Sidney Short Route, 80
- Silurian Period, 22
- Silver Heels, 112
- Sioux Indians, 7, 61, 63
- Sioux War, 69
- Sitting Bull (Indian Chief), 54, 64, 66-67
- Smith, Rev. Henry. _See_ Preacher Smith
- South Dakota, 2, 4, 13, 30, 36, 44, 93
- Spearfish (S.D.), 6, 11, 13, 48
- Spencer, Joseph, 34
- Springfield (Mo.), 97
- Standing Bear (Indian Chief), 40
- Stanford, Leland, 78
- Sunday Creek, 35
- Sylvan Lake, 33-36, 39
-
-
- T
- _Ten Nights in a Barroom_, 103
- Terry, General, 63-64
- Teton Sioux, 2, 49
- Texas Rangers, 79
- Thoen, Louis, 48
- Thunderhead Mountain, 40-41
- _Trial of Jack McCall, The_, 103
- Triassic Period, 24
- Two Kettle tribe, 49
-
-
- U
- Union Pacific Railroad, 13, 49, 58, 80
- University of Nebraska, 122
- University of South Dakota, 122
- Unkpapa tribe, 49
- Ussher, Archbishop James, 17
- Utah, 109
-
-
- V
- Vale of Minnekahta, 7
- Virginia City (Nev.), 73
-
-
- W
- War Department, 59
- Washington (D.C.), 58, 61, 93
- Washington, President George, 37, 39, 91
- Wells Fargo, 74, 83-84
- Wheeler, Edward L., 91
- White, George, 109
- White River, 116
- White River Badlands. _See_ Badlands
- Wild Bill Hickok, 90, 94-97, 100-102, 107-8
- Wind Cave, 23, 27-29, 42-44
- Wind Cave Park, 41
- Witwatersrand, 72
- Wood Lake, battle of, 51
- Wright, Frank Lloyd, 117
- Wyoming, 4, 9, 32, 42, 86
-
-
- Y
- Yale University, 122
- Yankton (S.D.), 102
-
-
- Z
- Ziolkowski, Korczak, 40-41, 103
-
-
- $2.50
-
-
- THE BLACK HILLS
- MID-CONTINENT RESORT
-
-From taboo Indian fastness to roaring gold camp to modern resort and
-recreation area—so runs the history of the Black Hills, Paha Sapa of the
-Indians, which are really not hills at all but mountains, the highest
-east of the Rockies. Back through geologic ages the story extends, to
-the thunderous time when Nature fashioned the intricate formations of
-the Hills and their companion geologic marvel, the Badlands.
-
-Here, in racy and fluent prose, Albert N. Williams has brought the full
-sweep of this story to life, from its beginning in the mighty geologic
-upheaval that, before the Alps had been formed, thrust the giant spire
-of Harney Peak up through the ancient shale, to the present quiet rest
-of man-made Sylvan Lake, where it lies peacefully reflecting its great
-granite shields for the delight of the traveler.
-
-On the way he tells of the discovery of gold in this “mysterious and
-brooding dark mountain-land” just when gold-hungry men had decided that
-the bonanza days were gone forever; of the Indian fighting that reached
-its tragic climax at the Little Big Horn; of the development of the
-Homestake, one of earth’s greatest mines; of the hazardous stage-coach
-journeys on which “shotgun messengers” guarded chests of bullion; and,
-most fascinating of all, of the amazing personalities—Sam Bass and Wyatt
-Earp and Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and Preacher Smith—who
-inhabited the Hills in their gaudiest days or, like Deadwood Dick, lived
-a no less vivid life in the pages of dime novels.
-
-If this were all, _The Black Hills_ would be a book for any lover of our
-country’s natural glories and thrilling history to pick up and be unable
-to lay down again until he had finished it. But other chapters directed
-particularly to the tourist make it also a book for the traveler to keep
-always with him and to consult at every point in his journey through the
-Black Hills. All he needs to know is here—the highways to take into the
-Hills, the towns with their historic plays and celebrations, the peaks
-and lakes and caves he will find, the sports he may enjoy, the places
-where he may stay. A trip so guided cannot fail to be filled with the
-excitement the author himself has found in the Black Hills, of which he
-says that in his opinion “no other resort area in the United States
-possesses such a wealth of tourist attractions.”
-
-
-Albert N. Williams was for many years a writer for NBC in New York, and
-for two years Editor-in-Chief of the English features section of the
-Voice of America. He is the author of _Listening_, _Rocky Mountain
-Country_, _The Water and the Power_, and numerous short fiction pieces
-in national magazines. He is at present Director of Development of the
-University of Denver.
-
- [Illustration: Southern Methodist University Press Logo]
-
- Southern Methodist University Press
- Dallas 5, Texas
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
-—Silently corrected a few typos.
-
-—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
- is public-domain in the country of publication.
-
-—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
- _underscores_.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort, by
-Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort, by
-Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort
- American Resort Series No. 4
-
-Author: Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-Release Date: July 11, 2017 [EBook #55088]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK HILLS MID-CONTINENT RESORT ***
-
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-</pre>
-
-<div id="cover" class="img">
-<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="The Black Hills: Mid-Continent Resort" width="484" height="800" />
-</div>
-<div class="img">
-<img id="insidecov" src="images/icover.jpg" alt="The Black Hills: Mid-Continent Resort" width="492" height="799" />
-</div>
-<div class="box">
-<h1><span class="large">The Black Hills</span>
-<br /><span class="smallest">MID-CONTINENT RESORT</span></h1>
-<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span> <span class="large"><b>Albert N. Williams</b></span></p>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/p02.jpg" alt="Southern Methodist University Press Logo" width="200" height="224" />
-</div>
-<p class="center smaller">AMERICAN RESORT SERIES NO. 4</p>
-<p class="center">Southern Methodist University Press
-<br /><span class="small">1952</span></p>
-</div>
-<p class="center smaller">COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY
-<br />SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY PRESS
-<br />PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
-<br />BY AMERICAN BOOK&mdash;STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK</p>
-<p class="tbcenter">AMERICAN RESORT SERIES</p>
-<dl class="undent"><dt>No. 1: <span class="sc">Gatlinburg: Gateway to the Great Smokies</span>, <i>by Edwin J. Foscue</i></dt>
-<dt>No. 2: <span class="sc">Taxco: Mexico&rsquo;s Silver City</span>, <i>by Edwin J. Foscue</i></dt>
-<dt>No. 3: <span class="sc">Estes Park: Resort in the Rockies</span>, <i>by Edwin J. Foscue and Louis O. Quam</i></dt>
-<dt>No. 4: <span class="sc">The Black Hills: Mid-Continent Resort</span>, <i>by Albert N. Williams</i></dt></dl>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_v">v</div>
-<p class="tbcenter">For Chris</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_vii">vii</div>
-<h2><span class="small">Acknowledgments</span></h2>
-<p>The research on early Black Hills and Badlands history
-was ably assisted by Miss June Carothers,
-whose services were provided the author through a
-generous grant-in-aid by the University of Denver&rsquo;s
-Bureau of Humanities and Social Development.</p>
-<p>Miss Ina T. Aulls, Mrs. Alys Freeze, Mrs. Opal
-Harber, Miss Margery Bedinger, Mrs. Margaret
-Simonds, Mrs. Elizabeth Kingston, and Mrs. Clara
-Cutright, all of the Denver Public Library, are particularly
-to be thanked for placing the resources of
-that institution at my disposal.</p>
-<p>For assistance in preparing the manuscript, I wish
-to thank Miss Helen Kiamos, Miss Edith Goldfarb,
-and Miss Lillian Helling.</p>
-<p>I am indebted to Bell Photo of Rapid City for the
-photograph of the Needles highway; to Ned Perrigoue
-of Rapid City for that of Sylvan Lake; to the
-Denver Public Library Western Collection for those
-of Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Deadwood
-Gulch in 1881; and to Mr. A. H. Pankow of the
-South Dakota State Highway Commission for that
-of a Black Hills stream.</p>
-<p>And finally, as always, thanks go to my wife, Ann,
-for her patient editorial help.</p>
-<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">Albert N. Williams</span></span></p>
-<div class="verse">
-<p class="t0"><i>University of Denver</i></p>
-<p class="t0"><i>Denver, Colorado</i></p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_viii">viii</div>
-<h3>Books by Albert N. Williams</h3>
-<p class="center small">LISTENING
-<br />ROCKY MOUNTAIN COUNTRY
-<br />THE WATER AND THE POWER
-<br />THE BOOK BY MY SIDE</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_ix">ix</div>
-<h2 class="center">Contents</h2>
-<dl class="toc">
-<dt><a href="#c1"><span class="cn">I </span>The Black Hills: The Forbidden Land</a> 1</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c2"><span class="cn">II </span>The Formation of the Black Hills</a> 15</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c3"><span class="cn">III </span>The Hills Today</a> 27</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c4"><span class="cn">IV </span>History I: Indians and Gold</a> 47</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c5"><span class="cn">V </span>History II: Deadwood Days</a> 78</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c6"><span class="cn">VI </span>The White River Badlands</a> 115</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c7"><span class="cn">&nbsp; </span>Bibliography</a> 126</dt>
-<dt><a href="#c8"><span class="cn">&nbsp; </span>Index</a> 127</dt>
-</dl>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_xi">xi</div>
-<h1 title="">Illustrations</h1>
-<dl class="toc">
-<dt><a href="#fig1">Along the Needles Highway</a> <i>facing page</i> 34</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig2">Harney Peak&mdash;older by ages than the Rockies</a> 35</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig3">The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial</a> 50</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig4">Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an elevation of 6,250 feet</a> 51</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig5">Calamity Jane, during her carnival days</a> 82</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig6">Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait</a> 82</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig7">Cheyenne&mdash;Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded by shotgun messengers</a> 82</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig8">Deadwood Gulch in 1881</a> 83</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig9">Modern Deadwood&mdash;seventy years later</a> 83</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig10">One of the Black Hills&rsquo; many streams</a> 98</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig11">The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared</a> 99</dt>
-</dl>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_xiii">xiii</div>
-<h2><span class="small">Introduction</span></h2>
-<p>I have had an opportunity to enjoy one of the
-most readable accounts of the Black Hills I
-have ever come across. It is written to acquaint
-traveling America with an area which was long
-off the beaten path of tourists, and which has
-only during the past quarter century been recognized
-as a place where people who wish to
-&ldquo;Know America First&rdquo; may profitably spend
-some time.</p>
-<p>Mr. Williams has outlined the historical reason
-why this small wonderland was so long outside
-the consciousness of America, and he has
-devoted a chapter to telling about the methods
-of nature in producing the intricacies of this
-formation, older by far than the Alps or the
-Himalayas. He has made the subject live, and
-he includes enough expert terminology to
-satisfy the reader that he knows whereof he
-speaks.</p>
-<p>In his chapter on &ldquo;The Hills Today&rdquo; Mr.
-Williams outlines what the tourist should see,
-and how to see it. For that chapter alone his
-book would be well worth the attention of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_xiv">xiv</span>
-every prospective sight-seer. He has two chapters
-pertaining to the history of the region, the
-first speculating on how the whole economic
-growth of the West might well have been
-altered had a confirmed story of &ldquo;gold in the
-Black Hills&rdquo; been released fifty years before
-it was spread-eagled on the pages of the <i>Chicago
-Inter-Ocean</i>. It is an interesting speculation,
-and he gives it a pleasing reality.</p>
-<p>Another chapter deals with the lives of some
-of the characters exploited and given semi-permanent
-fame by the old dime novels. Deadwood
-without these characters would be just
-another picturesque town set down in a mountain
-valley; with them it becomes one of America&rsquo;s
-better-known hot spots, vying with the
-Klondike and Leadville.</p>
-<p>Mr. Williams&rsquo; last chapter on the Badlands,
-a neighboring phenomenon, a place of amazing
-mystery and strange disorder, serves to depict
-what might be termed the undepictable in
-terms exactly calculated to excite the reader&rsquo;s
-absorbed interest.</p>
-<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">Will G. Robinson</span></span></p>
-<div class="verse">
-<p class="t0"><i>South Dakota State Historical Society</i></p>
-<p class="t0"><i>Pierre, South Dakota</i></p>
-<p class="t0"><i>December 17, 1951</i></p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_1">1</div>
-<h2 id="c1"><span class="small"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER ONE</span></span>
-<br />The Black Hills:
-<br />The Forbidden Land</h2>
-<p>The thing to remember is that the Black
-Hills are not hills at all. They are mountains,
-the highest mountains east of the Rockies,
-with Harney Peak rising to a height of
-7,242 feet above sea level. Inasmuch as the
-prairie floor averages, at the four entrances to
-the Hills, only 3,200 feet in elevation, these
-are mountains of considerable stature.</p>
-<p>The title &ldquo;hills&rdquo; was by no means given the
-area by early white settlers. Indeed, if that
-majestic domain had not already been named
-the Black Hills by the Indians, George Armstrong
-Custer, who in 1874 made the first full-scale
-exploration of the region, would no doubt
-have dignified it with a more appropriate and
-<span class="pb" id="Page_2">2</span>
-properly descriptive name&mdash;the Sioux or the
-Dakota Mountains, in all probability.</p>
-<p>From time beyond remembrance, however,
-the region had been known to the Indians as
-Paha Sapa, exactly to be translated as &ldquo;Black
-Hills,&rdquo; and very properly that name was accepted
-by government geographers. The use
-of the word &ldquo;black&rdquo; possibly fulfilled several
-functions, for not only do these massive peaks
-appear decidedly black when seen against the
-horizon across distances as great as a hundred
-miles, but they were, to the superstitious braves
-of the Teton Sioux, the abode of the Thunders
-and studiously to be avoided.</p>
-<p>This taboo fastness was one of the last regions
-in the great American West to be explored
-and settled. For one reason, it enjoyed
-an isolation from the centers of development
-that served to discourage any but the most
-hardy of explorers. Lying in the extreme western
-end of present-day South Dakota, the
-Black Hills were two hundred miles west of
-the settlements around Pierre, on the Missouri
-River, and two hundred miles north of the
-towns along the North Platte, the valley of
-the Oregon-California Trail. The most important
-reason, though, for its belated opening was
-that gold was not discovered in the Black Hills
-<span class="pb" id="Page_3">3</span>
-until 1874, and it was the discovery of gold in
-various sections which more than any other
-single set of circumstances dictated the pattern
-of the development of the trans-Mississippi
-West.</p>
-<p>Even today this fascinating region remains
-nearly the most remote of all America&rsquo;s resort
-and recreation areas. The Grand Canyon lies
-but an hour&rsquo;s drive from a major east-west
-transcontinental highway. Estes Park,<a class="fn" id="fr_1" href="#fn_1">[1]</a> in the
-Rockies, is only seventy miles from the city of
-Denver. Glacier Park is easily served by the
-Great Northern Railroad on its overland run,
-and Yellowstone enjoys direct service by three
-railroads. But the Black Hills lie beyond the
-privileges of railroad stopovers, and in order to
-visit them the tourist has no choice but to plan
-a vacation trip for the sake of the Hills themselves
-and not as a side venture from any of
-the traditional tours of the West. The Hills
-are worth the effort.</p>
-<p>The Black Hills occupy a rectangular realm
-which is roughly one hundred miles long, north
-to south, and fifty miles across its east-west
-<span class="pb" id="Page_4">4</span>
-axis. The White River Badlands, which are
-customarily visited on any Black Hills trip,
-form a depression in the high prairies some
-forty miles long and fifteen miles across the
-widest part. This stark and empty waste is to
-be found some seventy-five miles east of the
-Black Hills, or, more precisely, east of Rapid
-on U.S. Highway 14-16.</p>
-<p>There are five major access routes to the
-land of Paha Sapa. From the west, which is to
-say from Yellowstone Park, five hundred miles
-distant, the Hills can be reached by U.S. Highways
-14 and 16. These routes come in together
-across the high plains of northern Wyoming,
-and separate a few hours&rsquo; drive from the South
-Dakota border, 14 veering to the north and 16
-continuing through the central section of the
-Hills.</p>
-<p>From the south, U.S. 85 comes up from
-Denver, four hundred miles distant, crossing
-the Lincoln Highway at Cheyenne, and continuing
-along the route of the old Cheyenne-Deadwood
-stage.</p>
-<p>From Omaha and points in the southeast,
-the Hills are best reached over U.S. 20 across
-the top side of Nebraska. Although this route
-is not a major east-west route for interstate
-tourists, it serves a busy agricultural section
-and is generally in fine repair.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_5">5</div>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/p03.jpg" alt="The Black Hills; The Badlands" width="500" height="776" />
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_6">6</div>
-<p>From the east U.S. 14 and 16, again, bring
-the tourist through Pierre, on the Missouri
-River, past the Badlands, and into the Hills
-through Rapid City. From Minneapolis the
-distance is just over six hundred miles, while
-from Chicago it is very nearly a thousand.</p>
-<p>For those entering the region from the
-north, U.S. 12 from Miles City, Montana, is
-in all probability the best route.</p>
-<p>The gateways to the Black Hills are the
-towns of Hot Springs in the south, Rapid City
-on the eastern edge, Spearfish or Belle Fourche
-at the north, and Custer in the west. All
-these towns offer entirely acceptable accommodations
-for a touring family; in fact, no one
-need drive more than twenty or thirty miles
-from any point in the area to find suitable lodgings
-at a desired rate.</p>
-<p>Hot Springs, on U.S. 18-85A and State 87,
-is situated at an altitude of 3,443 feet and has
-a population of approximately five thousand.
-It is the one sector of the Black Hills that does
-not owe its original development to the gold
-rush of the seventies, but was sought out from
-the earliest days for its natural thermal
-springs.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_7">7</div>
-<p>The town is located in a large bowl of the
-southern hills known as the Vale of Minnekahta,
-from the Sioux name for &ldquo;warm waters.&rdquo;
-Situated as it is on the rim of the Hills
-region, it was not included in the general taboo
-that cloaked the rest of Paha Sapa to the
-north; and for nearly a century before its discovery
-by the white man in 1875, it was a favored
-health resort of the Indians. As a matter
-of fact, Battle Mountain, which overlooks the
-town, takes its name from a legendary war between
-the Sioux and the Cheyenne for the exclusive
-privileges of the hot baths.</p>
-<p>Not long after the discovery of the springs
-a syndicate of investors who had come into the
-Hills from Iowa bought the ranch claims that
-had been taken out in the Minnekahta Canyon,
-and sought to develop the region as a spa. This
-was in the late eighties when salubrious waters
-were in high fashion as a cure for arthritis and
-other joint and muscular disorders of various
-degrees of complexity. Colonel Fred T. Evans,
-who had made a fortune operating a bull-team
-freight line from Fort Pierre to Rapid City,
-built an elaborate resort, the Evans Hotel,
-which even today is imposing in its last-century
-splendor; and with the arrival in 1890 and
-1891 of two railroads, the Chicago and Northwestern
-<span class="pb" id="Page_8">8</span>
-and the Burlington, wealthy cure-seekers
-from all over the United States made
-it their habit to spend the summer months in
-this pleasant town.</p>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/p04.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="395" />
-<p class="pcap">Highways leading into the Black Hills.</p>
-</div>
-<p>Healing waters have long since gone out of
-vogue as a form of recreation, and although
-several clinics still treat a modest number of
-visitors for one indisposition or another, the
-town of Hot Springs has ceased to be a tourist
-center of any consequence. Also, the fact that
-the Springs are located a considerable distance
-south of U.S. 16, the main east-west route
-through the Hills, has contributed to the increasing
-isolation which this town enjoys,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_9">9</span>
-drowsily seeing to the wants of the occasional
-visitor who strays into Paha Sapa from the
-south along U.S. 85. But do not mistake it, it
-is a pleasant town to stop in, with excellent
-motor courts and a good selection of restaurants.</p>
-<p>The town of Custer, a scant fifteen miles
-from the Wyoming border on U.S. 16, is little
-more today than a tourist stopover. It is almost
-two thousand feet higher than Hot Springs,
-at an altitude of 5,301 feet, and contains, according
-to the latest estimates, nearly two
-thousand residents.</p>
-<p>As the tourist enters the town he will immediately
-be amazed by the wide main street; but
-if he ponders for a moment the problems of
-turning a freight wagon behind sixteen oxen,
-the reason will become clear. Custer, the western
-gateway to the Hills, was, until the coming
-of the railroads, a major way station on the
-busy Cheyenne-Deadwood stage and freight
-route; and for fifteen years the great bull wagons
-teamed into this busy center where, in most
-cases, the goods were unloaded and trans-shipped
-by lighter wagons into the various
-mining centers throughout the northern and
-central Hills.</p>
-<p>Custer, the oldest of the white man&rsquo;s settlements
-<span class="pb" id="Page_10">10</span>
-in Paha Sapa, was founded in 1875 by
-gold-seekers who flocked into the territory following
-the reports of yellow metal sent back
-by George Custer after his exploratory campaign
-of 1874. In the first spring and summer
-of its existence more than five thousand miners
-swarmed into the region to pan gold. This invasion
-was a violation of the government&rsquo;s
-treaty with the Sioux, and the military forced
-the argonauts to leave.</p>
-<p>By 1876 the Indian problem had come to a
-head with the defeat of General Custer on the
-Little Big Horn in eastern Montana; and as
-one phase of retaliation the federal government
-redrafted the Sioux treaty, allowing
-American citizens to enter the Black Hills,
-until this time reserved for the Indians. Although
-for some time the tribal leaders could
-not be persuaded to sign the revised agreement,
-the restrictions on settlers were removed, and
-back into the Hills rushed the prospectors&mdash;this
-time to the new strikes in Deadwood
-Gulch, in the north.</p>
-<p>By the middle of 1877 Custer, where gold
-had originally been found, had a population of
-a mere three hundred souls, all of them concerned
-primarily with the operation of the
-stage stations and hostels. True, a few grizzled
-<span class="pb" id="Page_11">11</span>
-placer miners still worked the streams near by,
-and do to this day; but hard rock mining in
-Deadwood was the new order of affairs.</p>
-<p>The visitor to this section of the Hills today
-will find it pleasant to stay the night in any
-one of a wide choice of tourist courts and other
-reasonable billets, and he may see much of historical
-interest within a few miles&rsquo; drive of
-Custer. A settler&rsquo;s stockade, reconstructed to
-the original model of 1874, is a remarkable site
-to visit, and the Jewel Cave is best reached
-from this point. For sheer color and pageantry
-the annual celebration of Gold Discovery
-Days, which is held at Custer late in July&mdash;near
-the date of the discovery of gold, July 27&mdash;is
-an affair not to be missed during a Black
-Hills vacation at that time of year.</p>
-<p>The town of Spearfish is the point of entrance
-to the region on U.S. 14, or, coming in
-from the north, on U.S. 85. This tidy metropolis,
-called the Queen City of the Black Hills,
-never knew the heady history that marked the
-early days of Custer, of Deadwood, of Rapid
-City, or even of fashionable Hot Springs. Lying
-outside the magnificent natural bowl of
-mineral deposits, Spearfish was founded and
-exists today for the simple purpose of supplying
-the inner Hills with food and produce. It
-<span class="pb" id="Page_12">12</span>
-has a population of between three and four
-thousand people, most of whose energies are
-devoted to agriculture and livestock.</p>
-<p>Spearfish has, however, carved for itself a
-fame and renown even larger, in many quarters,
-than that enjoyed by the gold rush towns
-of gustier memories. It is the home of the Black
-Hills Passion Play.</p>
-<p>This beautiful and stirring performance,
-which is given in a large amphitheater on Tuesday,
-Thursday, and Sunday evenings throughout
-the summers, is a resurrection in an
-American atmosphere of the centuries-old Passion
-of Luenen, in Germany. The man who
-plays the Christus, an inherited responsibility
-through many generations, is Josef Meier, who
-fled from Europe in 1932. For six years, with
-a reassembled cast, he toured the United
-States, performing a much trimmed-down version
-of the historic morality on college campuses,
-in civic auditoriums, and at summer
-encampments. It was at such a performance
-at the Black Hills Teachers College that the
-citizens of Spearfish were inspired to offer the
-touring company a permanent home. Meier
-and his group eagerly accepted the offer, and
-the town constructed an outdoor theater seating
-eight thousand people. Now, each winter
-<span class="pb" id="Page_13">13</span>
-the Passion Play continues its tour of the
-United States, but all during July and August
-it remains in residence, acting its moving and
-majestic pageant to constantly packed houses.</p>
-<p>The eastern gateway to the Hills is Rapid
-City, a metropolis of thirty thousand people
-which lies on the level prairie just to the east
-of the final ring of foothills. Founded, like
-Spearfish, not as a mining center but to serve
-the near-by gold regions, Rapid City has developed
-a maze of industrial and commercial
-enterprises. Shipping, of course, has been a
-basic form of commerce from the earliest days,
-with the two most heavily traveled trails into
-the Black Hills, that from Fort Pierre and
-that from Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union
-Pacific, entering the gold area at Rapid City.
-Lumbering, manufacture, banking, and livestock
-quickly became prominent as the gold
-fever subsided and the more permanent settlers
-began coming into the region to take up the
-rich cattle and farming lands in western South
-Dakota. A final guarantee that Rapid City
-will continue to flourish may be seen in the selection
-by the Air Force of the high, level
-prairie land just ten miles to the east of the
-city as the nation&rsquo;s major mid-continent
-bomber base.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_14">14</div>
-<p>Rapid City is served by U.S. Highway 14-16,
-and South Dakota state highways 40
-and 79. Two railroads and a major airline assist
-in handling the heavy summer tourist
-travel, and from Rapid City practically every
-point of interest in the Black Hills can be
-reached by car within three hours.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_15">15</div>
-<h2 id="c2"><span class="small"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER TWO</span></span>
-<br />The Formation of the Black Hills</h2>
-<p>One of the most rewarding features of a
-visit to the Black Hills is the opportunity
-for the average individual, who has no
-technical training, to see with his own eyes a
-museum of the earth&rsquo;s ages and a living sample
-of practically every one of the many aeons of
-the planet&rsquo;s history.</p>
-<p>The Hills, which is to say the rock substances
-of the region, are older by hundreds of millions
-of years than the stone out-juttings of the
-Rocky Mountains. Layer after layer of slates
-and schists from the very foundations of this
-globe lie visibly exposed as the end result of
-a doming of the region, a vast blistering, as it
-were, which raised the entire structure, layer
-<span class="pb" id="Page_16">16</span>
-upon layer, several thousand feet in the air.
-Following this doming process, a vigorous program
-of erosion commenced. Stratum by stratum
-the winds and rains cut across this huge
-blister in a horizontal plane, eventually laying
-the core open at the height above sea level at
-which we find the Black Hills today. From
-that core, extending in every direction in the
-general form of a circle, the various strata
-which once lay so smoothly one upon another
-have been laid open as one might slice off the
-top of an orange.</p>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/p05.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="421" />
-<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">The Doming of the Black Hills</span></p>
-<p class="pcapc"><span class="ss">Rock Strata being
-shifted into a dome at
-the time of the great
-continental uplift.</span></p>
-<p class="pcapc"><span class="ss">The forces of erosion&mdash;wind
-and water&mdash;have
-levelled the dome and
-opened the seams to
-view.</span></p>
-</div>
-<p>In order to get an even clearer picture of
-how this amazing phenomenon came about
-<span class="pb" id="Page_17">17</span>
-through the aeons, let us fold back the ages to
-the very birth of this planet.</p>
-<p>For centuries men have attempted to determine
-the earth&rsquo;s exact age, but except for the
-famed Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland,
-who gravely calculated that the earth was
-formed at precisely nine o&rsquo;clock on the morning
-of the twelfth of October in the year 4004
-B.C., no scientist has been able to come closer
-than a few million years in the figures.
-Through a number of trustworthy measurements,
-however&mdash;including, in recent years, the
-examination of the deterioration of radioactive
-elements in rocks&mdash;geologists have agreed that
-the oldest known ingredients of the earth&rsquo;s
-crust have been in existence at least two billion
-years, and, according to some very recent calculations,
-possibly as long as three and a half
-billion.</p>
-<p>In what is known as the Archean period,
-the most ancient of which we have any geological
-knowledge, a vast sea covered much of
-North America, bounded by certain masses of
-land, the extent of which has never been discovered.
-From this land mass remnants of
-mud and sand were broken away by waves and
-deposited on the floor of the sea. Eventually,
-under the pressure of its own weight, this material
-<span class="pb" id="Page_18">18</span>
-formed shales and sandstones to an undetermined
-depth&mdash;many thousands of feet.
-Those particular sandstones and shales underlie
-the entire Black Hills area and extend in
-nearly every direction for a considerable distance,
-suggesting perhaps that the area of the
-Hills was at one time the bottom of this watery
-bowl.</p>
-<p>The Archean period came to an end some
-five hundred million years ago. By then the
-seas had withdrawn, and the new land formations
-which had lain under the early ocean
-merged with the vestiges of the first land mass.
-But this metamorphosis, which can be described
-in such calm fashion, was by no means
-a gentle affair. It took place largely as the result
-of a shifting and rising of certain ocean
-bottom areas, among which was the region
-where we now find the Black Hills.</p>
-<p>At the time of this uplift, and possibly contributing
-to it, there was a tremendous disturbance
-in the lower regions of the earth
-which sent great streams of molten matter up
-into the several-mile-thick layer of shale,
-through which it poured toward the surface,
-breaking through in monolithic forms and
-hardening into granite. The New Mexico
-writer, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, describing
-<span class="pb" id="Page_19">19</span>
-a similar geologic phenomenon in the valley of
-the Rio Grande, has called it &ldquo;like sticking a
-knife through a tambourine,&rdquo; and indeed it
-was. Harney Peak, in Custer State Park, is
-just such a granite finger pointing up through
-the original shales toward the sky.</p>
-<p>When this disturbance took place the granite
-juttings did not rise above the surrounding
-landscape as they now do. In many cases they
-did not even reach the surface of the shale beds,
-but ceased their flow and hardened short of
-the crust of the earth, as it was then to be
-found. When, however, the region was domed,
-many millions of years later, the subsequent
-weathering of the huge blister did not attack
-these granite formations with anywhere near
-the vigor with which the softer sandstones and
-limestones were eroded. What actually occurred,
-then, was a peeling away of the softer
-rocks, leaving the granite formations near their
-original sizes, but at last above the ground level
-in the form of peaks, needles, and spires.</p>
-<p>But we have gotten ahead of our story. Following
-the Algonkian period, when the molten
-matter was injected into the layers of shale,
-there came what is known as the Cambrian
-period. The Cambrian occupied the first 80,000,000
-years of the Paleozoic era, which in
-<span class="pb" id="Page_20">20</span>
-itself covered the entire period from 510,000,000
-to 180,000,000 years ago.</p>
-<p>During the Cambrian period the land subsided
-again, perhaps because of the weight of
-the uplifted sedimentary formations. During
-this subsidence the waters once again covered
-vast portions of North America, and additional
-muds and slimes were deposited on the bottom.
-It was at this period that life first appeared
-on the earth, in the form of simple marine organisms
-which have left fossil remains. These
-deposits made in the Cambrian period can be
-seen in outcroppings all through the region,
-although they are most notably found in the
-area about Deadwood. Because of their structure
-they indicate to the geologist that the
-shoreline of the ancient Cambrian sea was near
-at hand, and also that this covering of water
-was by no means as extensive or as deep as the
-earlier Archean sea.</p>
-<p>The deposits of sand and mud, which were
-eventually pressed into stone, occasionally
-reach a depth of as much as five hundred feet,
-although they were laid down extremely
-slowly, as eddying mud is laid at the bottom
-of a pond. In the locality of Deadwood they
-contained a rich infiltration of gold, and the
-entire conglomeration was thoroughly intermixed
-with a vast outcropping of much older
-rock&mdash;this effect undoubtedly having taken
-place later, during the great continental uplift,
-when the final doming occurred.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_21">21</div>
-<h4>THE AGES OF EARTH</h4>
-<table class="center" summary="">
-<tr class="th"><th>MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO </th><th>(Pre-Cambrian Existence back to 3&frac12; Billions of years)</th></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" class="l">PALEOZOIC ERA</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">510</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Cambrian Period&mdash;First fossils deposited. Marine life.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">430></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Ordovician Period&mdash;Invertebrates increase greatly.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">350></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Silurian Period&mdash;Coral reefs formed. First evidence of land life.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">310></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Devonian Period&mdash;First forests. First amphibians.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">250></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian Periods.&mdash;Reptiles and insects appear. Continental uplift at end of this period.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">180</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" class="l">MESOZOIC ERA</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Triassic Period&mdash;Small Dinosaurs. First mammals.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">150></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Jurassic Period&mdash;Dinosaurs and marine reptiles dominant.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">125></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Cretaceous Period&mdash;Dinosaurs reach zenith of development then disappear. Small mammals. Flowering plants and development of hardwood forests.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">60</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" class="l">CENOZOIC ERA &amp; PERIOD</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Paleocene Epoch&mdash;Archaic mammals.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">50></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Eocene Epoch&mdash;Modern mammals appear.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">35></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Oligocene Epoch&mdash;Great apes appear.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">25></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Miocene Epoch&mdash;Grazing types of mammals appear.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">10></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r"> </td><td class="l">Pliocene Epoch&mdash;Man appears.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="r">0</td></tr>
-</table>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_22">22</div>
-<p>The next period of the earth&rsquo;s age&mdash;the
-Ordovician period, which extended from 430,000,000
-to 350,000,000 years ago&mdash;has left its
-mark just as visibly upon the Black Hills. It
-was during this period that the many species of
-invertebrate marine life reached a zenith of
-development, and that a bed of sediment was
-laid down and later compressed to a pinkish
-limestone. The fact that this Ordovician bed
-is less than forty feet thick indicates that the
-land mass from which the muds and sands were
-drawn was very low, and that the Cambrian
-sea was relatively shallow, entertaining only
-minor erosive currents along its shores.</p>
-<p>The next two ages, the Silurian and the
-Devonian, which brought our earth down to a
-scant 250,000,000 years ago, did not see the
-deposit of any silting in the Black Hills region.
-No doubt the waters which covered the locality
-dried up gradually. The Mississippian period,
-however, was a time of great depositional activity.
-A layer of limestone between five and
-six hundred feet thick was set down over the
-entire section. In later periods this limestone
-<span class="pb" id="Page_23">23</span>
-underwent much decay and water erosion,
-which formed the amazing caverns for which
-the Black Hills are known. Wind Cave, now
-the site of a National Park, Crystal Cave, and
-Jewel Cave are the best-known tourist attractions
-among the many, although there are a
-number of lesser ones, some even today only
-partially explored.</p>
-<p>The chemical activity which accomplished
-this erosion was caused by the seeping of rain
-water down through later accumulations of
-sediment on top of the layer of limestone. As
-it seeped through rotting vegetation and timber
-the water collected carbonic acid gases
-which, when it reached the level of the Mississippian
-limestone, eroded the structure and
-ate out huge hollows in it.</p>
-<p>The thickness of the Mississippian deposit
-indicated that at this time the earth had again
-sunk beneath the waters to a considerable
-depth. The shallow sea which had not offered
-sediment to a greater depth than a few feet
-was replaced by active currents which carried
-heavier sedimentary materials from great distances,
-laying them down on the floor of the
-sea in various strata to a depth of several hundred
-feet. Finally, after an unknown number
-of millions of years, but perhaps during the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_24">24</span>
-Triassic period, the land again rose above the
-level of the waters. A red shale suggests a time
-of great aridity when the region must have
-been a near desert, and certain discernible patterns
-in the shales suggest periods of rapid
-evaporation and a consequent change in chemical
-activity.</p>
-<p>Finally the land subsided again, for the last
-time to date. At times salt water covered the
-region, and at other times fresh water left its
-chemical mark. At some levels in this last
-layer of sedimentary rocks an abundance of
-fossils can be found, indicating deep water, and
-at others ripple-marked rock indicates very
-shallow water. It remains a period of great
-mystery. How long this final submersion continued
-we do not know; but in all probability
-it lasted nearly a hundred million years, and
-then was terminated by the vast upending of
-North America which created the Rocky
-Mountains. This upheaval did not take place
-suddenly, as a volcanic eruption or a series of
-earthquakes, but apparently commenced about
-sixty million years ago and lasted, as a continuous
-series of shiftings and slow upheavals,
-for about twenty million years.</p>
-<p>At the beginning of this mighty uplifting
-the region of the Black Hills was covered by
-<span class="pb" id="Page_25">25</span>
-the various layers of sedimentary deposits to
-a depth of nearly two miles. Slowly this rectangular
-area was lifted as a dome over the
-surrounding prairies. We do not know how
-high above the level lands this dome reached,
-but we do know that several thousand feet of
-later deposits overcapped the granite upthrusts
-which were planted in the fundamental shales.
-Those granite fingers, which have now been
-exposed to view, stand from five hundred to
-four thousand feet above the plains, and thus
-the original dome may be assumed to have extended
-from eight to ten thousand feet above
-our present-day sea level.</p>
-<p>Almost as soon as this era of upheaval first
-started, as soon as the first land of the Black
-Hills was elevated above the great sea, the
-forces of erosion set to work. Wind and rain
-worked their terrifying magic on the slowly
-rising terrain, carving away the softer rocks
-and the loose dirt and leaving only the granite
-outcroppings. Down from the sides of the
-great dome poured the waters of melting
-snows, gushing springs, and torrential rainfalls,
-digging out rivers, canyons, and the
-deep and narrow cuts which characterize this
-beautiful region. Slowly the land continued to
-rise and the oceans to fall until at last an equilibrium
-<span class="pb" id="Page_26">26</span>
-was reached, a static state of affairs
-which remained much the same until our own
-period, when the base of the dome was at last
-revealed, with the surrounding lands drifting
-away in every direction on a gentle incline.</p>
-<p>From that day the structure of the Black
-Hills has changed but little. The high winds
-off the Dakota plains and the annual spring
-run-off and seasonal rains cut their minute
-etchings in the landscape; but Nature&rsquo;s greatest
-effort in the Black Hills part of the world
-has, it seems, been made. It must be remembered,
-though, that Nature has had other responsibilities.
-At the time of the doming of
-the Black Hills the Alps had not yet been
-formed, nor the Pyrenees, nor the Caucasus.
-And on the site of the mountains we know
-today as the sky-piercing Himalayas, the
-swampy waters still moldered.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_27">27</div>
-<h2 id="c3"><span class="small"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER THREE</span></span>
-<br />The Hills Today</h2>
-<p>It is this writer&rsquo;s personal opinion that no
-other resort area in the United States possesses
-such a wealth of tourist attractions as
-the Black Hills. This profusion of happy endowments
-can be separated into three categories,
-each of which deserves individual study
-and enjoyment. Two of these, the region&rsquo;s
-folklore and its memories of the gold rush, belong
-to the amazing history of the Hills. But
-of course the visible landscape and the natural
-wonders of the area are the primary objects of
-the tourist&rsquo;s visits, and it is proper that they
-be considered immediately and in detail.</p>
-<h3><i>Wind Cave</i></h3>
-<p>The Wind Cave lies ten miles north of Hot
-Springs on U.S. 85A. The cavern is the focal
-<span class="pb" id="Page_28">28</span>
-point of interest in its own National Park,
-which takes in forty square miles. Nearly half
-of this park is enclosed with a high fence, behind
-which one of the last great bison herds
-roams contentedly. Protected antelope, elk,
-and deer also enjoy this game preserve.</p>
-<p>The cavern was discovered, according to
-legend, by a cowboy who heard a continued low
-whistling noise in the weeds and, investigating,
-found air rushing from a ten-inch hole near the
-present entrance to the cave. And indeed it
-is this very phenomenon that makes Wind
-Cave different from other notable caverns, such
-as the one at Carlsbad. Even on the stillest of
-days a steady current of air can be felt rushing
-in or out of the cave&rsquo;s opening&mdash;into the earth
-if the barometer is rising, and out of the
-ground if the pressure is falling.</p>
-<p>The National Park Service conducts tours
-of the cave, the complete excursion lasting
-some two hours. Fortunately, although the
-visitor descends to a great depth as he searches
-out the various chambers on the route, the tour
-ends at an elevator which whisks him swiftly
-to the surface near the starting point.</p>
-<p>The entire cavern is a little more than ten
-miles long, although there are portions of it
-which have not even yet been explored so that
-<span class="pb" id="Page_29">29</span>
-their size may be known with accuracy. It is
-not graced with the growths of stalactites and
-stalagmites normally to be found in limestone
-formations, but nature has compensated for
-that lack by fashioning a peculiar box-work
-which looks for all the world as if the cavern
-had been subjected to an interminable frosting
-process. These beautiful fretwork deposits,
-which are not to be found in any other cave, are
-the result of a strange chemical process that
-took place in the limestone stratum where
-Wind Cave is located. Surface water seeping
-into the stone became charged with carbon dioxide
-gas from the decaying organic matter
-through which it passed. This gentle acid then
-dissolved the limestone only to redeposit it in
-cracks and crevices around other limestone
-fragments. The precipitated limestone was of
-a different chemical composition and resisted
-later onslaughts by the eroding acids&mdash;which,
-however, did eat away the fragments around
-which the precipitate had formed, leaving the
-maze of hollow crystalline formations that can
-be seen in the various chambers of the cavern.</p>
-<p>The National Park, being relatively small,
-is not equipped with overnight facilities; but
-this does not matter, for the town of Hot
-Springs is but twenty minutes&rsquo; drive from the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_30">30</span>
-park, and the town of Custer is only twenty
-miles away. There are, however, camping
-grounds in the park, and the Park Service operates
-a lunchroom at the entrance to the cave.</p>
-<h3><i>Custer State Park</i></h3>
-<p>Custer State Park is located almost in the center
-of the Black Hills. Containing nearly one
-hundred and fifty thousand acres, it is one of
-the largest state parks in America. It was
-originally set aside as a state game refuge, and
-it was not until the advent of summer touring
-as a national pastime that the state of South
-Dakota purchased additional private lands
-which contained scenic wonders, incorporating
-all of them into the one large area.</p>
-<p>Today the park is the center of all tourist
-activity in the region. A number of excellent
-lodges, camp grounds, and tourist courts along
-every road make it particularly easy for the
-tourist to stop at will for a day or more to enjoy
-the various recreational facilities as his
-fancy dictates. In every respect the park is
-effectively administered: food and lodging
-prices are held to a reasonable figure, the cleanliness
-of the buildings and grounds is regularly
-inspected, and the landscape is protected from
-commercial exploitation.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_31">31</div>
-<p>The center of the park&rsquo;s activities is the
-Game Lodge, a monstrous Victorian hotel
-built in 1919 and operated under a private
-lease. Close by the Game Lodge are cabins,
-stores, eating establishments, the park zoo, a
-museum, and the offices of the state park officials.
-The Lodge, those with a flair for nostalgia
-will recall, achieved international renown
-in 1927 when President Coolidge made it the
-summer White House. It lies on US. 16,
-thirty-two miles from Rapid City and seventeen
-miles from the town of Custer.</p>
-<p>It behooves the writer to mention at this
-point that the museum connected with the
-Game Lodge is by no means the drab and
-dusty sort of collection of impedimenta associated
-with the vicinity that is so often found in
-museums at scenic sites. Indeed, this fine attraction
-is an assemblage of geological, paleontological,
-and historical items which trace with
-rare discernment the whole history of the Hills
-through the ages, and up to our own day. The
-visitor who fails to pass an hour in this exciting
-spot will have missed the heart of the Hills
-entirely.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_32">32</div>
-<h3><i>Harney Peak</i></h3>
-<p>Harney Peak stands like a sentinel in Custer
-Park. The highest point in the Black Hills,
-it rises to an altitude of 7,242 feet, 4,000 feet
-above the prairie floor outside the Hills.
-Higher by 900 feet than Mount Washington
-in New Hampshire, it is the highest mountain
-east of the Rockies.</p>
-<p>High as it is, Harney Peak is by no means
-the typical mountain which tourists come to
-expect after a trip through Colorado, for example,
-or western Wyoming. It is older by
-ages than the precipitous and craggy Rockies,
-and the winds and waters have worked their
-slow erosion on it, cutting away what high
-shelves and escarpments might originally have
-existed and leaving it, except at the top, a gentle
-and easy mountain that may be climbed
-over a trail which will scarcely tax the laziest
-tourist.</p>
-<p>On the top of the peak will be found the core
-of granite that originally broke through the
-Archean shales. This granite, subject to the
-mechanical ravages of wind, rain, and frost,
-is rugged and coarse, a steep dome covered
-with a thick lichen. From this eminence the entire
-Black Hills area can be seen, rolling away
-<span class="pb" id="Page_33">33</span>
-in every direction&mdash;great waves of pinnacle
-and mountain, gradually subsiding and disappearing
-in the haze of distance which covers
-the prairies. Especially striking from this spot
-is the view of Cathedral Park, with its hundreds
-of needle-like spires and organ pipes,
-and, sheltered in a quiet recess, that amazing
-phenomenon, Sylvan Lake.</p>
-<h3><i>The Needles</i></h3>
-<p>The Needles Highway, a fourteen-mile stretch
-of road, branches off U.S. 16 about five miles
-west of the Game Lodge. At the time of its
-construction in 1920-21 it was regarded as an
-engineering marvel, although later exploits of
-American highway builders, such as the road
-to the top of fourteen-thousand-foot Mount
-Evans in Colorado, have since far overshadowed
-this accomplishment.</p>
-<p>The road winds and curves in an interminable
-pattern, finding its way, by trial and error
-it seems, among the great granite spires
-that give the region its name. These &ldquo;needles,&rdquo;
-through the last of which the highway actually
-plunges in a tunnel, are the remains of a great
-granite plateau which once covered that entire
-portion of the Black Hills. Contrary to popular
-opinion, the rocks are not outthrusts, the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_34">34</span>
-result of some ancient upheaval, but the last
-thin vestiges of this once-solid plateau. The
-age-old process of erosion has carved them into
-the shapes they now have; and the inquiring
-visitor can see the process still at work, for
-upon close inspection this granite is found to
-be not the impregnable stone it appears, but
-rock in a late stage of disintegration. Rot is
-the word which actually describes this formation,
-and in many spots whole chunks can be
-picked from the side of a spire by hand. It was,
-as a matter of fact, this situation which made
-the construction of the Needles Highway possible.
-Had the granite been solid, the task of
-cutting the Needles and Iron Creek tunnels
-would have been so expensive as to prohibit the
-entire undertaking.</p>
-<h3><i>Sylvan Lake</i></h3>
-<p>Not all of the scenery in the Black Hills was
-created by Nature. Sylvan Lake, in many respects
-the most beautiful corner of the region,
-was made entirely by hand.</p>
-<p>It was near the turn of the century when
-two hunters, Dr. Jennings of Hot Springs
-and Joseph Spencer of Chicago, got the intriguing
-idea of having an additional tourist
-attraction in the vicinity of Harney Peak&mdash;a
-lake.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig1">
-<img src="images/p07.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="801" />
-<p class="pcap">Along the Needles Highway</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig2">
-<img src="images/p08.jpg" alt="" width="896" height="600" />
-<p class="pcap">Harney Peak older by ages than the Rockies</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_35">35</div>
-<p>Some lakes are difficult to construct, while
-some are relatively easy. Sylvan belongs in the
-latter category. The two imaginative gentlemen
-merely bought a small tract of land between
-two great granite shields and built a
-dam seventy-five feet high between the boulders.
-The waters of Sunday Creek, which
-flowed to their dam, together with local
-springs, at last contrived to fill the area back
-of the dam. Today this loveliest of lakes basks
-peacefully high above the world at an elevation
-of 6,250 feet, actually on top of a ridge, at the
-north terminal of the Needles Highway.</p>
-<p>It is easy for any lover of water scenes to
-become enthusiastic as he describes the colorations
-of his favorite lake, so I shall merely state
-that Sylvan never looks the same in two consecutive
-moments. Not having the symmetry
-of natural lakes or the tremendous depths of
-glacial pools, this body of water plays the role
-of mirror to the fabulous rock shapes which
-surround it; and indeed it is a source of never-ending
-delight to watch the cloud and sun patterns
-as they wrestle with the shadows of the
-rocks on its surface.</p>
-<p>For many years Sylvan Lake and its environs
-<span class="pb" id="Page_36">36</span>
-were operated privately. A hotel catered
-to the tourists who bounced over the privately
-built road in buggies and horse-drawn busses.
-In 1919 the property was purchased by the
-state of South Dakota, and since that time it
-has been operated as a public facility. When
-the original hotel burned, in the thirties, the
-state built with funds procured from the federal
-government a comfortable and modern
-hostelry, the most amazing feature of which
-is the expansive dining room with picture windows
-looking out over the lake to Harney
-Peak.</p>
-<p>The hotel is small, as resort hotels go, containing
-only fifty rooms, and the tourist would
-do well to arrange for accommodations in advance
-of his visit. There are, however, a number
-of cabins operated in conjunction with the
-main building, and except at the height of the
-season rooms can probably be found in the annexes.
-Along the lake shore an excellent restaurant,
-independent of the hotel, serves the
-needs of the traveler who has only a few hours
-to spend at this stop.</p>
-<h3><i>Mount Rushmore</i></h3>
-<p>From Sylvan Lake around back of the north
-side of Harney Peak it is a drive of but a few
-<span class="pb" id="Page_37">37</span>
-miles to the second man-made wonder of the
-Hills&mdash;the Mount Rushmore Memorial.</p>
-<p>Perhaps no one thing has done so much to
-make the Black Hills known throughout the
-world as this incredible undertaking&mdash;the carving
-in the natural granite face of a mountain
-of the faces of our four most revered presidents:
-Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and
-Theodore Roosevelt. &ldquo;Teddy&rdquo; is included for
-his lasting service to the people of the United
-States as the president who saw the Panama
-Canal project through Congress and into being.
-The military and economic values of that
-enterprise so deeply impressed the sculptor of
-this mammoth frieze that he insisted upon elevating
-TR into the august company of the
-other three great statesmen.</p>
-<p>The whole story of the memorial would fill
-several volumes, and indeed has already done
-so. Briefly, the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum,
-wished to perpetuate a patriotic motif in stone
-figures so large that they would attract visitors
-from every corner of the country and impress
-upon them the glories of the democracy which
-the four presidents had done so much to build
-and sustain. The sculptor&rsquo;s own words were:
-&ldquo;I want, somewhere in America, on or near
-the Rockies, the backbone of the continent, a
-<span class="pb" id="Page_38">38</span>
-few feet of stone that carries the likenesses,
-the dates, and a word or two of the great things
-we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high
-that it won&rsquo;t pay to pull it down for lesser
-purposes.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The actual construction work started in
-1926, and the formal dedication was made by
-President Coolidge in the summer of 1927.
-Between nine hundred thousand and a million
-dollars went into the gigantic task, including
-money for supplies, wages, and the sculptor&rsquo;s
-own personal needs during the fifteen years he
-spent on the project. He died in 1941, and the
-work was completed a few months later by his
-son.</p>
-<p>The immensity of the undertaking can be
-grasped when the dimensions are noted. The
-face of each of the figures, for example, measures
-sixty feet from chin to forehead.</p>
-<p>The rough carving was done by dynamite.
-Borglum, working from a carefully constructed
-model, would mark on the sheer sides
-of the great mountain the lines where he
-wanted the stone peeled away. Then a blast
-would be set off in the hope that the rock
-displacement would approximate the lines
-marked out, and from that point the work had
-to be done by hand. At first, taking lessons
-<span class="pb" id="Page_39">39</span>
-from the miners working for him who had
-many years of experience in blasting the hard
-granites of the region, Borglum was able to
-reach only within a foot of the final figure by
-dynamiting. As he became more proficient in
-the use of the explosives he got to the point
-where his original blasts would shed the stone
-to a matter of an inch or less from the final cut
-surface. The head of Washington was finished
-in 1930, that of Jefferson in 1936, that of Lincoln
-a year later, and that of Theodore Roosevelt,
-the final figure, in 1941.</p>
-<p>There are no tourist facilities at the site of
-the Memorial. Like every other place in the
-Black Hills, however, Rushmore can be
-reached in a few minutes&rsquo; drive from any one
-of a number of near-by points where a tourist
-might be stopping. Borglum&rsquo;s studio, situated
-on a prominence a few hundred yards from the
-carvings, gives the best view of the scene and
-is open to the public.</p>
-<h3><i>Crazy Horse</i></h3>
-<p>It is not entirely accurate to refer to the Mount
-Rushmore Memorial as <i>the</i> other man-made
-wonder in the Hills. At the moment it is the
-only such marvel outside of Sylvan Lake; but
-in twenty-five or thirty years it will have to
-<span class="pb" id="Page_40">40</span>
-share that honor with the Crazy Horse Memorial,
-a statue carved on top of Thunderhead
-Mountain, between Harney Peak and the town
-of Custer. This gigantic carving, which will
-be an entire figure and not a mere bas-relief,
-will be an equestrian statue of the great Sioux
-chief, Crazy Horse, who led his nation during
-the desperate years between 1866 and 1877.
-The chief will be mounted on a prancing steed,
-his hair blowing, as if in the wind, behind him.</p>
-<p>The Indians themselves can take the credit
-for this fabulous idea. Chief Henry Standing
-Bear, a resident of the Pine Ridge reservation,
-is said to have had his inspiration after a visit
-to Mount Rushmore. Why not, he wondered,
-erect some monument to an outstanding red
-man, so that when the last of his people have
-been assimilated into the white man&rsquo;s society,
-visitors to what was once the heart of the Indian
-country can reflect for a moment upon
-the greatness of that lost race?</p>
-<p>Standing Bear wrote his idea to Korczak
-Ziolkowski, an energetic and imaginative
-sculptor, and suggested that Chief Crazy
-Horse would make a fitting symbol of the Indians&rsquo;
-struggle for existence. This was in 1940.</p>
-<p>The sculptor took to the idea, but because
-of the events of World War II he was unable
-<span class="pb" id="Page_41">41</span>
-to commence work on the project until 1947.
-Since then he has been setting off two blasts
-of dynamite a day, carving away the rock at
-the top of Thunderhead. But even yet the first
-faint outlines of the eventual statue are only
-barely discernible. Ziolkowski estimates that
-the entire task will consume a quarter of a century,
-if not more, and will cost not less than
-five million dollars. If this figure sounds high
-compared with the less than a million spent on
-Rushmore, perhaps the measurements will provide
-an explanation: the horse upon which the
-chief will be seated will be four hundred feet
-from nose to tail, and the entire work, from
-pedestal to top, will be more than five hundred
-feet in height.</p>
-<h3><i>Mount Coolidge</i></h3>
-<p>In this same general region lies another prominent
-Black Hills landmark which every tourist
-should take time to visit&mdash;Mount Coolidge.
-With a height of 6,400 feet, this peak is by no
-means an outstanding mountain, being ranked
-by a good half dozen higher within the Hills.
-But from its summit, which can be reached by
-an auto road leading off U.S. 85A a few miles
-to the north of Wind Cave Park, an amazing
-vista can be seen. To the east, on a clear day,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_42">42</span>
-the White River Badlands loom as a great valley
-sixty miles away. To the south one can see
-across the high rolling hills all the way into
-Nebraska, and to the west landmarks in Wyoming
-are clearly visible. On the summit a
-stone lookout tower has been built for the convenience
-of visitors.</p>
-<h3><i>Jewel Cave and Ice Cave</i></h3>
-<p>Since the Black Hills are underbedded so
-widely by limestone, it is not surprising to find
-in them not one but several memorable caverns.
-There are, as a matter of fact, a dozen or
-more well-known large caves; but outside of
-Wind Cave, only Jewel Cave has been opened
-and fully prepared for public visit. The expense
-of exploring, lighting, and carving trails
-in the others has kept them off the market, so
-to speak, for in a region so packed with scenic
-delights two great caverns are about as much
-as the traffic will bear.</p>
-<p>Jewel Cave lies some fourteen miles west of
-Custer on U.S. 16, almost at the Wyoming-South
-Dakota border. It is a small cave, with
-only two tours marked out in it, one a mile
-long and the other two miles. It is noted for
-its wealth of colorful crystalline deposits, totally
-<span class="pb" id="Page_43">43</span>
-unlike the delicate filigree work to be
-found in Wind Cave.</p>
-<p>The cave was discovered by two prospectors,
-who proceeded to develop their property for
-commercial gain. In 1934 they sold the cave
-and such of its environs as they owned to the
-Newcastle, Wyoming, Lions Club and the
-Custer Chamber of Commerce. These two organizations
-sought to popularize it further as
-a lure to tourists who would have to travel
-through their towns to reach the scene. In
-1938 the federal government took it over and
-made a national monument of it.</p>
-<p>Not far from Jewel Cave is the famous Ice
-Cave. This cavern gets its name from the current
-of cold air which blows from its mouth,
-cold and clammy on even the hottest of summer
-days. The Ice Cave is not officially open
-to the public, and has not even been totally explored.
-Forest rangers and Park Service employees
-have charted some of it and have
-searched out certain channels in the strange
-formation, and from their meager reports it
-would seem that if Ice Cave is ever fully
-opened it will vie with New Mexico&rsquo;s Carlsbad
-in beauty and grandeur.</p>
-<p>For the curious tourist the only possibility
-at the moment is to take the lovely off-route
-<span class="pb" id="Page_44">44</span>
-trip to the cave&rsquo;s entrance, a natural arch
-twenty feet high and seventy-five feet wide.</p>
-<p>In addition to Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and
-Ice Cave, there are a number of other caverns
-of varying interest and underground beauty
-which have been opened and exploited by private
-individuals. In many cases these are but
-indifferently arranged for public inspection,
-but can be tracked down by the visitor by
-means of the garish signs which too often
-manage to clutter the otherwise unblemished
-scenery.</p>
-<h3><i>Just Scenery</i></h3>
-<p>The foregoing are only a very few of the
-scenic wonders of the Black Hills. Detailed information
-on the various other scenic features
-is easily to be had at any of the hotels and
-tourist courts in the Hills, and brochures covering
-practically every landmark are available
-gratis, thanks to the enthusiasm of the local
-chambers of commerce, the Black Hills and
-Badlands Association, and the state of South
-Dakota. The area is crisscrossed with good
-roads, and no matter which route one takes to
-his eventual destination, every mile will be
-marked by breath-taking views and natural
-wonders.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_45">45</div>
-<p>The region, except at the summits of the
-peaks, lies at an average altitude of some five
-thousand feet. Cool nights are thus guaranteed,
-regardless of the temperatures by day.
-The highest mean temperature ranges, during
-the six months between April and November,
-from 60 to 85 degrees. Light outing clothes are
-suggested for day wear, and light wraps are
-always in order after dark.</p>
-<p>The rainfall during this same six-month
-period, averaged over fifty years, amounts to
-three inches per month; what small showers
-do occur take place most usually in an hour or
-so of the early afternoon, and refresh rather
-than hinder the tourist.</p>
-<p>The hillsides are covered with a mass of
-shrub and tree growth, and an earnest searcher
-can find specimens of no less than fifty-two
-varieties. Yellow pine, spruce, cedar, ash,
-aspen, alder, dogwood, and cottonwood are
-most in evidence.</p>
-<p>The bird lover will find the Black Hills nothing
-less than a vast aviary, more than two
-hundred species having been seen in the region.
-Animal life is almost as widely represented,
-although the casual visitor is not likely to come
-upon a native mountain lion or gray wolf. The
-assistance of forest rangers and Park Service
-<span class="pb" id="Page_46">46</span>
-employees is available in locating the habitats
-of some of the rarer varieties of wildlife.</p>
-<p>As might be expected, the fisherman will
-find plenty of opportunity to ply his pole in
-this region. There are nearly 150 miles of
-stream and lake frontage in the Black Hills,
-and the waters are liberally stocked by the
-state hatcheries. In addition to trout, the angler
-will encounter pike, pickerel, bluegills,
-black bass, and perch.</p>
-<p>Finally, there are the annual celebrations
-and fairs, which are always of interest to the
-outsider, for they help dramatize the particular
-region where they are held and its historical
-background. July and August are the months
-for these celebrations, and notices of coming
-events will be found posted prominently&rsquo; along
-the tourist routes. Four such outstanding occasions
-are Black Hills Range Days at Rapid
-City, Gold Discovery Days at Custer, the
-Belle Fourche Round-Up, and the Days of
-&rsquo;76 at Deadwood. The Deadwood celebration,
-it might be added, celebrates not the Revolutionary
-War, but the discovery of gold in
-Deadwood Gulch in 1876.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_47">47</div>
-<h2 id="c4"><span class="small"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER FOUR</span></span>
-<br />History I: Indians and Gold</h2>
-<p>Gold, they say, is where you find it.
-In California in 1848&mdash;in Montana in
-1852&mdash;in Colorado in 1858&mdash;in Arizona, in
-Nevada: when they finally found it in the
-Black Hills in 1874, the Gold Rush West had
-nearly all been settled and the bonanza days
-were forever gone, for all the likely places had
-been searched.</p>
-<p>The question posed is an obvious one. With
-sourdoughs plowing and digging up the bed
-of every stream and rivulet in the West from
-1849 on, how did it come about that the Black
-Hills, lying a considerable distance closer to
-home than California and the other gold rush
-regions, had kept their glittering secret until
-so late?</p>
-<p>The truth of the matter is that the mysterious
-<span class="pb" id="Page_48">48</span>
-and brooding dark mountain-land was a
-good place to hide secrets. Gold had been discovered
-there, as a matter of fact, as early as
-1834, which was just seven years after the
-country&rsquo;s first gold strike&mdash;the 1827 Georgia
-rush. But unfortunately those first lucky gold-seekers&mdash;there
-were six of them&mdash;did not live
-to enjoy their taste of the Black Hills&rsquo; incredible
-wealth. Fifty-three years later, not far
-from the town of Spearfish, one Louis Thoen
-found a piece of limestone upon which was
-crudely but legibly engraved this melancholy
-message:</p>
-<blockquote>
-<p>came to these hills in 1833, seven of us DeLacompt Ezra
-Kind G. W. Wood T Brown R Kent WM King Indian
-Crow All ded but me Ezra Kind Killed by Indians beyond
-the high hill got our gold june 1834</p>
-</blockquote>
-<p>On the back of this somber relic were the
-blunt words: &ldquo;Got all gold we could carry.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>Yes, there was gold in plenty, but Paha
-Sapa of the Hills was a jealous spirit who
-guarded the forbidden portals with a great
-vengeance. It is interesting, though, to speculate
-upon how the course of western history
-might have veered had Ezra Kind made his
-way out of the bleak region to report his discovery.
-Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and most of
-the Missouri Valley would have been skipped
-<span class="pb" id="Page_49">49</span>
-over in a rush to the prairie West, left to be
-filled in and settled later. The upriver ports of
-the Missouri, rather than St. Louis, Kansas
-City, St. Joseph, and Omaha, would have been
-the outposts, and there would have been no
-Santa Fe Trail, no Platte River&mdash;Oregon
-Trail, but rather a heavily traveled National
-Road winding out from St. Paul and from
-Chicago. Rapid City would have been a metropolis
-the size of Denver, and when eventually
-the Union Pacific was built it would
-have been three hundred miles north of its present
-route. And the Indians? There would have
-been a far different story in that regard, perhaps
-a much bloodier and more tragic tale.</p>
-<p>But Ezra Kind was killed and his secret
-slept, and thus we are as we are today. Actually
-it was the Indians who kept the Hills so
-long forbidden&mdash;Indians of the Teton Sioux,
-the same tribe who put Ezra&rsquo;s party to the
-tomahawk.</p>
-<p>Before the California gold rush life on the
-Great Plains had proceeded pretty much on
-an even keel. The mighty Teton Sioux, all
-seven tribes of them&mdash;the Oglalas, the Unkpapas,
-the San Arcs, the Brules, the Minniconjous,
-the Blackfeet, and the Two Kettle&mdash;roamed
-the prairies at will, from the Missouri
-<span class="pb" id="Page_50">50</span>
-Valley to the Rocky Mountains. Of course
-they had their misadventures with the fur companies,
-but just as often their dealings with
-the Mountain Men were profitable, for the
-Indians, when in the mood, scouted, trapped,
-and hunted, all for the white man&rsquo;s pay.</p>
-<p>With the great exodus to California, though,
-the situation took on a different hue. Immigrants
-by the hundreds and the thousands
-poured up the rolling valley of the Platte, and
-it was not many months before the haphazard
-Indian attacks took on a new strength and design.
-Long burned the council fires in the dark
-nights, and all up and down the great plains
-the war raged. To protect the wagon trains
-the government sent its shrewdest and most
-experienced Indian agent, Thomas Fitzpatrick,
-a veteran fur trader since 1823, the famed
-&ldquo;Broken Hand&rdquo; of western legend. Summoning
-the tribes to Fort Laramie in 1851, Fitzpatrick
-managed to subdue them, but only by
-promising that he would confine the settlers
-to specific ranges and would keep them steadfastly
-out of the Dakotas and the Black Hills.</p>
-<p>In the meanwhile the eastern tribes, the Santee
-Sioux, were beginning to feel the pressure
-of settlement in the rich Minnesota valleys. In
-1862 they revolted, and the terrible battle of
-Wood Lake was fought, with the score of massacred
-settlers reaching into the high hundreds.
-The leaders of this outrage were, of course,
-apprehended and punished, but whole tribes
-fled into the western plains, into the land
-of the Black Hills, where they eventually
-joined forces with their Teton cousins.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig3">
-<img src="images/p09.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="745" />
-<p class="pcap">The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig4">
-<img src="images/p10.jpg" alt="" width="924" height="600" />
-<p class="pcap">Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an altitude of 6,250 feet</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_51">51</div>
-<p>By 1865 matters had come to a head again,
-because although the great Sioux, numbering
-between thirty and forty thousand, had kept
-to themselves, the white man had broken his
-side of the bargain and was cutting a new route
-into the forbidden country. This passage was
-the famed Bozeman Trail, which drove north
-from Fort Laramie, on the Oregon Trail, directly
-through the Sioux country to serve the
-new gold fields of Montana.</p>
-<p>To protect the wagon trains on the Bozeman
-the army called upon General Grenville
-Dodge, who was later to build the Union Pacific.
-Dodge, Commandant of the Department
-of the Missouri, was an old hand at Indian
-warfare. He rushed into Wyoming a full force,
-four columns of men, who swiftly brought the
-angered tribes to heel.</p>
-<p>The immediate result of this engagement
-was the signing of a halfhearted and inconclusive
-treaty at Fort Sully, near Pierre, in October
-<span class="pb" id="Page_52">52</span>
-of 1865. The treaty attempted to settle
-some old differences of a fundamental nature,
-but inasmuch as neither the Oglala nor the
-Brule were represented it failed of its mission.</p>
-<p>A year later a further powwow was staged
-at Fort Laramie to pursue the matter of keeping
-the Bozeman Trail open through the forbidden
-Sioux country. Perhaps matters might
-have proceeded equably had not General Carrington
-arrived in the midst of the delicate negotiations
-to announce that he had enough
-soldiers to protect the trail, treaty or no treaty.</p>
-<p>Carrington&rsquo;s blustery announcement, backed
-up by a show of seven hundred courageous but
-misguided cavalrymen, brought the talks to an
-abrupt end and sent the two most important
-Sioux Chieftains, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse,
-scurrying for the council fire and the war
-paths. In all the great plains there were not to
-be found braver or more single-minded Indian
-strategists than these two. For the better part
-of two years roving bands of tribesmen under
-Red Cloud and his stalwart colleague amply
-proved that Carrington could not have kept
-the trail safely open if he had had seventy times
-his seven hundred men. It was, as a matter of
-fact, the only time in our long history that
-<span class="pb" id="Page_53">53</span>
-Uncle Sam&rsquo;s troops ever took a downright
-beating.</p>
-<p>At last even Red Cloud could see that the
-white man, for all his braggadocio and poor
-planning, would eventually win the turn; and
-although his savage troops had tasted victory
-in almost every engagement, he consented in
-1868 to negotiate once more. Presumably both
-sides were wiser by then, for a pact, sometimes
-called the Harney-Sanborne Treaty, was dutifully
-signed and accepted in April of that year.
-The United States agreed to close the Bozeman
-Trail and to abandon the forts. The Black
-Hills were utterly forbidden to the white man,
-and except for an agreement to let the Northern
-Pacific rails cross the upper prairies unmolested,
-the high plains from the Missouri
-to the Big Horn were returned by federal
-order to their historic isolation.</p>
-<p>After that fiasco the situation remained comparatively
-quiet for a few years. Eastern Dakota
-was being settled bit by bit, and the rails
-were pushing forward, ever so slowly but ever
-so surely. The Missouri River was the frontier
-line, dividing the settled Dakotas from the
-Sioux lands; and Fort Lincoln, on the river
-(not far from the site of today&rsquo;s Bismarck),
-<span class="pb" id="Page_54">54</span>
-was the outpost that overlooked the troubled
-territory.</p>
-<p>From month to month trappers, gold-seekers,
-and would-be homesteaders slipped inside
-the Sioux curtain from the Cheyenne-Laramie
-country on the south, from the rich Niobrara
-country in northwest Nebraska, or from eastern
-Dakota itself. There was not much that
-the army could do about these treaty violators
-except worry, for the borders to be patrolled
-were vast and the forbidden lands inviting.</p>
-<p>But the army did worry, endlessly. There
-were increasingly frequent rumors of the existence
-of gold in the Hills, and year after year
-General Sheridan, commanding the Departments
-of Dakota, the Platte, and the Missouri,
-urged stronger fortification of the Sioux
-boundaries to prevent trouble. Trouble was
-particularly to be expected because several
-bands of Sioux, specifically those under Sitting
-Bull and Crazy Horse, had not agreed to government
-supervision in 1868 and seemed thirsting
-for a fight.</p>
-<p>Thus it was to make a military survey that
-Sheridan sent an expedition through the heart
-of the Hills in 1874. His force of more than a
-thousand soldiers moved under the command
-of George Armstrong Custer; and, strange
-<span class="pb" id="Page_55">55</span>
-impedimenta for an army, the luggage in the
-lorries included mining picks and pans, the belongings
-of H. N. Ross and William T. McKay,
-who were officially attached to the
-command. Presumably Custer was looking for
-something more than mere military sites.</p>
-<p>The Indian fighters of an earlier day&mdash;Kit
-Carson, the Bents, or Sibley, for instance&mdash;would
-have stood gaping in the stockade as
-Custer&rsquo;s force moved leisurely onto the empty
-Dakota prairies. This was no ragtag army in
-buckskin, but an orderly procession of one
-hundred and ten wagons, six ambulances, a
-dozen caissons, and two heavy field pieces.
-Each wagon and ambulance was drawn by a
-sprightly hand of six sleek mules.</p>
-<p>In addition, three hundred head of beef cattle
-browsed slowly along the way in mooing
-testimony that this expedition would live off
-the very fattest of the land. The personnel included,
-in addition to Custer&rsquo;s highly trained
-troops, a hundred Indian scouts, a platoon of
-expert white guides and trappers, and,
-mounted upon docile mares, a special contingent
-of botanists, geologists, geographers, and
-assorted expert college professors. Also, as
-has been reported, there were two miners.</p>
-<p>To the north of the Hills, crossing the Belle
-<span class="pb" id="Page_56">56</span>
-Fourche River first, the army made its gentle
-way, and then down the west slope of the forbidding
-mountains, seeking for an easy pass
-into the dark interior. Tall in the saddle rode
-golden-haired George Custer, for he was commanding
-the strongest army ever put into Indian
-country. It is little wonder that he slept
-quietly at night, or that he wrote in his diary:
-&ldquo;It is a strange sight to look back at the advancing
-column of cavalry and behold the men
-with beautiful bouquets in their hands while
-their horses were decorated with wreathes of
-flowers fit to crown a Queen of the May.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>In that holiday mood the army moved down
-inside the great bowl of mountains on its sightseeing
-tour, and presently it camped about
-three miles west of the present town of Custer.
-All this while the miners had not been inactive,
-but had plied their pans here and there as the
-company passed across various streams. Until
-this bivouac, though, they had had no luck,
-and, as a matter of fact, had actually been
-expecting none. They had come along to quell
-the rumor of gold as much as to bear it out.
-Preferably to quell it, if General Sheridan
-were to have his way.</p>
-<p>On August 2 of that year, 1874, McKay
-turned out to try his implements once again
-<span class="pb" id="Page_57">57</span>
-on French Creek. An early account gives this
-dramatic version of the famed discovery:
-&ldquo;When the earth [in the pan] was gone, he
-held up his pan in the evening sun and found
-the rim lined with nearly a hundred little particles
-of gold. These he carried to General Custer,
-whose head was almost turned at the
-sight.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>Through the magic of his discipline Custer
-managed to keep his army from beating their
-ration tins into placer pans and &ldquo;claiming&rdquo; on
-the spot. Getting under way almost immediately,
-the men continued their march eastward
-through the heart of the Hills, and on August
-30 emerged from the great park and headed
-back to Fort Lincoln.</p>
-<p>In the meanwhile a messenger had been sent
-ahead with the news of gold. Scout Charley
-Reynolds, who was to die with his commander
-just two years later, was detached from the
-base camp and sent scurrying down to Fort
-Laramie, to the nearest telegraph station.
-Within an hour of his arrival at the post, two
-hundred miles to the south and west of the
-Black Hills, the tremendous news was burning
-over the wires to General Sheridan in St.
-Louis.</p>
-<p>It was also burning some operator&rsquo;s ear
-<span class="pb" id="Page_58">58</span>
-along the way, for the great secret, which was
-to be handed only to the high command in
-Washington, made its way on that very day
-into the editorial rooms of the old <i>Chicago
-Inter-Ocean</i>&mdash;where, naturally, it was treated
-with great respect and splashed across the
-headlines with all the vigor of an announcement
-of the Second Coming.</p>
-<p>There was actually a genuine religious fervor
-in the proclamation, for the locust had
-been upon the land for many months in the
-eastern cities, and the bread lines had been
-growing. It had threatened to be a cold winter
-until ... until this last bonanza burst upon the
-nation.</p>
-<p>Men had all but forgotten what a gold rush
-was like. It had been so long since the last great
-hegira to the Pikes Peak region that a new
-generation had come into manhood, a generation
-that knew California only as a state, Colorado
-as a prosperous territory, and the Union
-Pacific as the proper way to cross the empty
-West. There were none of the desperate winter
-marches up the Continental Divide this time,
-no lost wagon trains on the salt deserts, no
-Indian massacres. This rush left Chicago on
-the &ldquo;cars,&rdquo; as noisy and as highhearted as fans
-following a football club.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_59">59</div>
-<p>And there was another great difference between
-the foray to the Black Hills and the earlier
-gold rushes. In this case the argonauts did
-not get to the diggings. The troops saw to that.
-Deploring the untimely leak of official intelligence
-concerning the presence of the yellow
-metal in the Dakota outcropping, the War
-Department issued stern warnings to all settlers
-to keep away. The existence of the treaty
-with the Indians was proclaimed in every
-paper&mdash;and, though less resoundingly, the danger
-from the Indians was also mentioned.</p>
-<p>Nonetheless, before the end of that crucial
-year a sizable group of foolhardy settlers broke
-through the blockade and made themselves at
-home. Erecting a strong stockade at the scene
-of the first strike, they soon carved themselves
-a town in the wilderness, gratefully naming it
-Custer, and even that early providing for the
-wide main street where ox teams could make
-a U-turn. Throughout the first winter these
-illegal townspeople managed somehow to survive
-the cold, the lack of rations, and the danger
-of Indian attack; but late in the spring
-General Crook&rsquo;s cavalry arrived to &ldquo;escort&rdquo;
-them out of the Hills and back to the railroad
-at Cheyenne.</p>
-<p>Many of the citizens of that first town took
-<span class="pb" id="Page_60">60</span>
-their eviction with fair grace, turning to other
-means of employment than gold mining&mdash;and
-there were plenty&mdash;in Cheyenne, Denver, and
-the other near-by and rapidly growing settlements.
-One group, though, the Gordon Party,
-apparently enjoyed leadership of a tougher
-sort. They refused to be intimidated by the
-troops. Setting up camp on the very boundary
-line between the forbidden country and the
-permitted Platte Valley, they just waited. Actually,
-an increasingly large number of immigrants
-waited on the border only until
-nightfall, and then set out into the unknown.
-Some were apprehended by the cavalry and
-returned, some were killed by the sullen tribesmen,
-but hundreds of them managed to find
-their way to the vicinity of French Creek.
-More than that, they managed to stay.</p>
-<p>It might be thought that gold mining, with
-all its necessary paraphernalia, supplies, and
-general confusion, could not very well be carried
-on in an atmosphere suggesting the more
-modern practice of moonshining; but the truth
-of the matter was that there were just too
-many settlers and too few soldiers. Time and
-again the troops would swoop down on some
-busy little gathering and hustle the miners out
-to the nearest courts, where they would hastily
-<span class="pb" id="Page_61">61</span>
-be acquitted and released to go back to their
-workings. Under the very fist of forbiddance
-a score of towns had sprung up, among them
-the reborn Custer City.</p>
-<p>Finally the government gave up all hope of
-keeping the eager immigrants out of this last
-frontier. By the fall of 1875 the border towns
-of Sidney, Nebraska, Yankton, South Dakota,
-and Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming, were
-bursting at the seams with gold-hunters who
-demanded &ldquo;their rights as citizens.&rdquo; Bowing
-to the inevitable, the government sent a treaty
-commission to wait upon the Sioux. This body
-of earnest men offered the Indians six million
-dollars for the right of entry into the Hills.
-Although the treaty Sioux agreed to sell, the
-price they asked wavered between twenty and
-one hundred million. Crazy Horse, who did
-not attend the council, refused to sell at any
-price and solemnly warned the white man to
-stay out.</p>
-<p>Frustrated, the treaty commissioners returned
-to Washington in despair, while the
-embittered Sioux disappeared into the west
-river country to nurse their grievances. Upon
-this turn of affairs, the government washed its
-hands of the matter and opened the lands to
-settlement.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_62">62</div>
-<p>That was in June of 1875. Within a matter
-of weeks after the bars had been let down, the
-Hills were populated by uncounted thousands
-of men, women, and children. Many simply
-came out of the woods to claim honestly the
-diggings they had been working dishonestly;
-but many, many more came from the East by
-every train, now that the country was legitimately
-open.</p>
-<p>It was a motley assembly that took part in
-this Black Hills rush. In earlier bonanzas the
-type had been pretty well formalized, for the
-difficulty of the overland journey to California,
-for example, or across to the Pikes Peak
-region, had kept all but the roughest&mdash;and
-toughest&mdash;at home. But on this occasion the
-West was by no means as wild as it had been
-in those earlier days. Distances had been conquered;
-transportation methods, even beyond
-the railroads, were much safer and more adequate;
-and the Black Hills, although cold in
-the middle of winter, offered none of the
-climatic ferocities of the Rocky Mountains.
-Thus, to partake of this feast of yellow dust
-hopeful clerks brushed shoulders with desperadoes,
-professional men of every accomplishment
-traded rumors with crease-faced
-sourdoughs from the dead land south of the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_63">63</span>
-Mogollon, and oldsters who had thought they
-might never again hold a pan in their hands
-dug alongside mere boys from whom the apron
-strings had been relaxed.</p>
-<p>In the meantime, even as the good citizens of
-Custer, Gayville, Central City, Golden Gate,
-Anchor City, and a host of other thriving
-towns, most of which have long been given
-over to the ghosts, were bustling about their
-exciting business, matters in the west were taking
-a slow but inexorable turn for the worse.</p>
-<p>The army had let the situation ride for the
-summer and fall, keeping a careful watch over
-the enemy Sioux, but feeling fairly assured
-that they would attempt no large-scale raid of
-the Hills, populated now by at least fifty thousand
-people. Summer and fall were not normally
-times to worry over, in any case, for the
-buffalo were still on the range and forage was
-plentiful for the tribes. It was in the depths
-of winter that the tale would be told&mdash;either
-the Indians would come docilely to the reservations
-for their rations, or they would steer
-clear of the white man&rsquo;s soldiers and supply
-their own necessities by raiding the isolated
-ranch and stage line outposts.</p>
-<p>By mid-December the reservations were still
-empty, and General Terry sent out a call to
-<span class="pb" id="Page_64">64</span>
-Sitting Bull, ordering him to bring his people
-in to the military posts. January 1, 1876, was
-given as the deadline. The haughty Sioux chief
-paid scant attention to Terry&rsquo;s order, replying
-simply that the general knew where to find him
-if he wanted to come for him. Sitting Bull
-knew that the army would attempt no large
-maneuvers with the weather as it was&mdash;one of
-the bitterest winters in recorded history.</p>
-<p>Then he simply waited.</p>
-<p>But General Terry was no man to take a
-short answer. Immediately he ordered three
-expeditions to prepare themselves for the field,
-to move as soon as weather should permit, and
-to take the Indians early in the spring when
-their ponies would still be thin and unrecovered
-from the winter&rsquo;s rigors. General Crook
-was to march north from Fort Fetterman, on
-the North Platte River; General John Gibbon
-was to move south and east from Fort Ellis, in
-Montana; and General Custer was to come
-west from Fort Lincoln.</p>
-<p>Unfortunately not only the Indians but the
-weather as well turned against General Terry,
-for with the thermometer standing most of the
-time at between twenty and forty below and
-the prairie covered with the glaze of incessant
-<span class="pb" id="Page_65">65</span>
-blizzards, neither Custer nor Gibbon was able
-to move out of camp.</p>
-<p>Crook, though, was able to best the winter
-when March rolled in and to locate one of the
-most dangerous of the rebel bands, Crazy
-Horse&rsquo;s renegade Oglalas, deep in the Powder
-River Valley. This was on March 17, 1876.
-Had Crook&rsquo;s men not made certain grave errors
-of tactics after a brilliant surprise, the battle
-might have solved the problem. As it turned
-out, the Indians galloped a few circles around
-the troops and made merrily off into the forest.
-Again the weather closed in.</p>
-<p>Three months later, when the summer
-weather made campaigning possible, Crook&rsquo;s
-troops were able to take to the saddle again,
-and again Crazy Horse was located, this time
-encamped on the Tongue River, between Powder
-River and Rosebud Creek. Again the battle
-was inconclusive, for the troops seemed
-unable to press the advantage of their surprise
-discovery of the Indians.</p>
-<p>Eight days later, on June 17, the bewildered
-but indomitable Crook came a third time upon
-Crazy Horse, now on Rosebud Creek. On this
-occasion the troops were able to euchre the Indians
-into a pitched battle&mdash;and were thereupon
-so thoroughly trounced that Crook&rsquo;s
-<span class="pb" id="Page_66">66</span>
-command was essentially immobilized where
-the bleeding remnant lay at the battle&rsquo;s close.</p>
-<p>By the time the harassed cavalrymen had
-bound up their wounds and remounted, Crazy
-Horse had disappeared over the hills and down
-into the Big Horn Basin, where his cohorts
-joined a host of other bloodthirsty braves in a
-great Sioux encampment. Black Moon was
-there, Inkpaduta, Gall, and a major roster of
-other courageous Indian warriors. Counseling
-them and performing their good medicine was
-none other than Sitting Bull himself, who, it
-should be said, was not a warrior but a medicine
-man and tribal diplomat.</p>
-<p>Historians have never been able to agree
-upon the number of braves assembled under
-this battle flag, but all concur in the belief that
-the camp could have contained no less than
-three thousand warriors&mdash;in all probability the
-greatest single Indian army ever to be put into
-the field against the troops.</p>
-<p>By this time other help was coming for
-Crook, as he lay in the south nursing his ill
-fortune. General Custer, having scouted out
-Crazy Horse&rsquo;s retreat, had been ordered to
-stop him from the north and to pinch the Indians
-between the prongs of his force and
-Crook&rsquo;s.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_67">67</div>
-<p>But it was Custer rather than Crazy Horse
-or Sitting Bull who met the pincers. Coming
-upon the headquarters village of the enemy,
-Custer divided his force of 600 men into four
-groups: Benteen with 140 odd, Reno with
-about 125, McDougall with the ammunition
-and supplies and perhaps 140 men, and Custer
-himself retaining the balance.</p>
-<p>While McDougall stayed to the rear, Benteen
-was sent off on a fruitless errand into a
-badly broken terrain to the southwest. Custer
-and Reno in the meantime proceeded side by
-side toward the village. Coming over the last
-remaining hill before the Indian camp, Custer
-dispatched Reno ahead to make a preliminary
-contact with the enemy, while he rode off in a
-somewhat parallel direction, apparently bent
-on encircling the savages.</p>
-<p>Meanwhile Reno did indeed encounter the
-Indians, and when he realized how tragically
-outnumbered he was, he immediately dismounted
-his men to fight a delaying action on
-foot, thereby saving both men and horses. He
-obviously adopted this tactic on the theory that
-he would be supported from the rear by Custer.
-When he saw that Custer had decided to
-make a diversionary attack on the right flank
-of the enemy, Reno and his men gave up the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_68">68</span>
-fight and concentrated on scrambling out of
-the trap and making their way to the hill which
-overlooked the village.</p>
-<p>From that vantage point Custer and his
-force could be seen across the Little Big Horn
-at a distance of perhaps a thousand yards.
-Apparently thinking that Reno was still successfully
-engaging the Indians, Custer rode
-his men down into a ravine where he apparently
-encountered the full horde of savages
-and where he met his death. The details of that
-last action have never been made clear, but
-most experts think that he divided his pitifully
-weak force into two segments at the time of
-the final charge which took him full into the
-heart of the great enemy body. Thus it was
-that Custer was caught in the pliers of the attack,
-in which hopeless position his entire force
-was wiped out to the last man, officer, and
-guide. Custer&rsquo;s Last Stand, as it has been
-poetically called, was in every respect the
-greatest defeat of white forces in the history of
-Indian warfare.</p>
-<p>Custer&rsquo;s death marked the end of the Black
-Hills controversy. Although the Indians had
-been completely victorious, they had spent so
-heavily of their warriors and their supplies
-that they were never again able to mount a
-<span class="pb" id="Page_69">69</span>
-major attack against the whites. Swiftly the
-troops hunted them down, village by village,
-and within a year the great Sioux War had
-ground to a stop.</p>
-<p>A second treaty commission had been appointed
-late in 1876, and by February the
-transfer of the Black Hills from the Sioux Nation
-to the United States had been completed&mdash;not
-for a cash consideration, but only for
-the government&rsquo;s promise to support the Indians
-until such time as they might learn, under
-agency supervision, to provide for themselves.</p>
-<p>By that time the question of entry was no
-more than rhetorical. The Black Hills were as
-thickly populated as any region of equal size
-in the West. The stage routes in from Cheyenne,
-from Sidney, Nebraska, and from the
-Dakota railheads were well traveled. The last
-frontier had been broken.</p>
-<p>And besides&mdash;there was Deadwood and the
-Homestake.</p>
-<p>The original rush had centered in historic
-Custer, the scene of the first entrance into the
-country on French Creek, and the terminus
-of the Cheyenne-Black Hills stage line. By
-Christmas of 1875 the population of that wilderness
-settlement was in excess of ten thousand
-<span class="pb" id="Page_70">70</span>
-souls, each of them active and bustling
-about his business.</p>
-<p>On the other hand, there was not a great deal
-of business to bustle after. French Creek was
-a good clue to gold, but that was about all.
-Before long most of the good citizens, having
-found the little brook something of a snare
-and a delusion, were casting about for some
-way to make their livings from each other.
-Storekeeping, laundering, ranching, hostlering,
-all were honorable occupations which soon
-found a plenitude of practitioners.</p>
-<p>In that fashion the winter was passed. Ice
-capped the waters and the snow hung from the
-trees, and aside from hoping for spring there
-was little the thronging populace could do.
-Thus a fruitful field was in fallow for the gossip
-which started blossoming in March and
-April. The tales, whispered&mdash;as such stories
-always are&mdash;without definition or authority,
-had it that somewhere in the northern Hills
-there was another stream that had nuggets the
-size of ... it is unimportant how large the nuggets,
-for a glitter of dust the size of an eye-speck
-would have been a windfall in Custer.
-Day by day the rumor grew, and as is always
-the case with such gossip, the precise location
-<span class="pb" id="Page_71">71</span>
-of this &ldquo;Deadtree Gulch&rdquo; was never made entirely
-plain.</p>
-<p>The reason for this obfuscation was simple:
-a rich strike had actually been made far in the
-north part of the Hills, and the claimants were
-doing their level best to keep it a secret. The
-fact that Custer held its population as long as
-it did was a testament to the sagacity and close-lippedness
-of John Pearson and Sam Blodgett,
-who had stumbled, late the previous winter,
-into one of the world&rsquo;s richest gold basins.</p>
-<p>The secret held for only a few months. Trappers,
-prospectors, and mere travelers were
-passing through the spruce trails of the Hills
-in such profusion that sooner or later the activity
-up Deadwood Gulch, as it came to be
-called, was bound to be observed. Pearson had
-found his dream cache in December of 1875,
-and he managed to contain the secret only until
-March of 1876. Like a forest fire the news
-of the strike to the north spread, and by May
-the southern Hills were deserted. Custer, for
-several years the metropolis of the entire region,
-lost all except thirty of its citizens in a
-matter of weeks, and other settlements in the
-south and west simply dried up and disappeared.</p>
-<p>That Deadwood Gulch, so named for the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_72">72</span>
-stand of burned-over timber which graced its
-declivitous sides, contained a major deposit
-was not to be denied. The rich sands which
-Pearson had spaded up testified to that, and
-later comers were by no means disappointed.
-But the names and locations of individual early
-discoveries have long been lost to all save the
-most assiduous researchers, for there was one
-claim which outshone all the rest. That digging
-was the mighty Homestake, which, from its
-first days, has produced gold and assorted
-other precious ores in such abundance and with
-such dependability that it has been accepted
-the world over as one of earth&rsquo;s great mines,
-rivaled in munificence only by the Portland-Independence
-of Cripple Creek in Colorado
-and the fabulous workings of the Witwatersrand
-of South Africa.</p>
-<p>As with all rich diggings, an appropriate
-legend attends the account of the original
-discovery of the Homestake. It seems there
-were two brothers, Fred and Moses Manuel,
-who had long been addicted to that most
-vicious of all unbreakable habits&mdash;gold prospecting.
-Moses had wound his weary way
-through the West for a full quarter of a century,
-plodding the dusty California gold
-gulches in &rsquo;50, up the steep heights of Virginia
-<span class="pb" id="Page_73">73</span>
-City in &rsquo;60, into Old Mexico, and&mdash;although
-he was a full generation too early&mdash;into
-Alaska. But now, in 1875, he was through with
-it all and was going home.</p>
-<p>Collecting his brother Fred, who was fruitlessly
-panning the sands of the Last Chance
-Gulch in the high border country of Montana,
-Moses started east, passing of course through
-the Black Hills, to scout down this one last
-ray of rumor&mdash;that a new strike was in the
-making. Setting out their camp in Bobtail
-Gulch, a mere pistol shot from certain placer
-claims in Deadwood Gulch, they went to work
-in midwinter, hoping to find, the legend has it,
-just enough blossom rock to give them a stake
-for their homeward journey.</p>
-<p>They seem to have hit it with a vengeance,
-not mere placer gold in the stream bed but a
-genuine lode, for on April 9, 1876, they patented
-the claim known as the Homestake. Discarding
-for the moment all idea of going on
-home with whatever meager wealth this &ldquo;last&rdquo;
-try should bring them, the Manuel brothers
-immediately consolidated their position by going
-into partnership with another prospector
-and taking shares in the Golden Terra, an adjoining
-piece of real estate, the Old Abe, and
-the Golden Star. The immediate returns, by
-<span class="pb" id="Page_74">74</span>
-the ton, are not today known, but they must
-have been substantial, for the lucky brothers
-built an arrastra&mdash;a crude millstone affair for
-grinding ore&mdash;and managed to pocket more
-than five thousand dollars in their first year of
-operation.</p>
-<p>In the natural run of events the Homestake
-and the adjoining parcels which the Manuel
-brothers were operating would probably have
-worked well enough for a year or so, and would
-then have suffered the fate of thousands of
-other diggings throughout the gold-rush West&mdash;the
-surface ores would have played out, and
-because of the high cost of following the lodes
-deeper into the earth than a few dozen feet,
-the mines would have been abandoned. But in
-this case a San Francisco syndicate came into
-the picture, providing the necessary capital
-funds for the searching out of whatever ultimate
-wealth the Homestake might have.</p>
-<p>This syndicate of Pacific Coast businessmen
-included James Ben Ali Haggin, a partner in
-the highly solvent Wells Fargo express company,
-and Senator George Hearst, the father
-of the publisher, William Randolph Hearst.
-These vigorous men sent a mining engineer
-into the Hills in 1877 to canvass the location
-for possible investments; and in the course of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_75">75</span>
-a detailed examination of whatever properties
-seemed to be paying well, this emissary from
-Market Street came upon the brothers Manuel.
-A superficial examination of the Homestake
-and the Golden Terra sufficed this
-engineer, and he optioned them both, the first
-for seventy thousand dollars and the second
-for half that sum. Returning immediately to
-California, he delivered to his employers samples
-of this richest gold mine in North America,
-and without delay Senator Hearst went
-to South Dakota to see for himself.</p>
-<p>What he saw impressed him most favorably,
-for upon his return to California he owned
-both the Terra and the Homestake, as well as
-several other claims on the same hill, a total of
-ten acres of mining property. That small figure
-is significant in the light of the fact that the
-Homestake Mining Company today owns
-more than six thousand acres of mining claims.</p>
-<p>With the incorporation of the mining company
-in San Francisco, the aboriginal methods
-employed by the Manuel brothers were discarded,
-and the latest in mine machinery was
-laboriously shipped by train to Sidney, Nebraska,
-and then by ox team the two hundred
-miles to the town of Lead (pronounced
-&ldquo;Leed&rdquo;), the precise location of the Homestake,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_76">76</span>
-two miles from Deadwood City. The
-first installation was an eighty-stamp mill,
-which began its work in July of 1878. Within
-five years six additional mills were in operation,
-holding a total of 580 giant stampers.</p>
-<p>The mine now handles four thousand tons
-of ore per day and has, in its sighted reserve,
-twenty million tons yet to work. The two main
-shafts reach into the earth to a depth of more
-than a mile, with branching tunnels piercing
-the mountain at hundred-foot levels; and there
-are more than a hundred and fifty miles of
-secondary tunnels, served by more than eighty
-miles of mine railway.</p>
-<p>The richness of the Homestake ore has averaged
-fourteen dollars per ton for many years
-now. This may not sound like any considerable
-amount of wealth&mdash;but the most active gold
-operation in Colorado, the Fairplay dredge,
-is working gravel which pays an average of
-nine cents per ton.</p>
-<p>Finally, the records of the company show
-that it has mined 70,000,000 tons of ore, yielding
-a total of 18,000,000 ounces of gold, which
-has brought a gross price, at various standards,
-of $450,000,000.</p>
-<p>With the opening of the Homestake, the
-conquest of the Black Hills was effectively
-<span class="pb" id="Page_77">77</span>
-completed, and the region entered into a period
-of rapid development and expansion. Although
-the great mine at Lead was run solely
-as a business enterprise, devoid of glamour and
-excitement, the town of Deadwood, two miles
-away, enjoyed a decade of the lustiest history
-ever to be known by a bonanza town. During
-its years of activity and arrogance Deadwood
-contributed to our national folklore several
-great figures, among them Calamity Jane,
-Deadwood Dick, Wild Bill Hickok, and
-Preacher Smith.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_78">78</div>
-<h2 id="c5"><span class="small"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER FIVE</span></span>
-<br />History II: Deadwood Days</h2>
-<div class="verse">
-<p class="t0">Sam left where he was working</p>
-<p class="t">one pretty morn in May,</p>
-<p class="t0">a-heading for the Black Hills</p>
-<p class="t">with his cattle and his pay.</p>
-<p class="t0">Sold out in Custer City</p>
-<p class="t">and then got on a spree,</p>
-<p class="t0">A harder set of cowboys</p>
-<p class="t">you seldom ever see.</p>
-<p class="lr">&mdash;&ldquo;<span class="sc">Legend of Sam Bass</span>&rdquo;</p>
-</div>
-<p>It has become the literary custom to recall
-our bonanza frontier less as an economic
-phenomenon than as a backdrop for bloodshed,
-mayhem, and assorted turns of vigor and violence.
-Early California, for example, is today
-known less as the scene of the accomplishments
-of James Fair, Charles Crocker, and Leland
-Stanford than as the arena for the armed
-forays of Joaquin Murietta, Black Bart, Dick
-<span class="pb" id="Page_79">79</span>
-Fellows, and various other gunmen. Since this
-is the accepted practice, it is entirely appropriate
-to introduce the gold-rush days of the
-Black Hills with a brief account of the banditry
-and thuggery which accompanied the
-early growth of that last frontier.</p>
-<p>The quotation at the head of this chapter is
-one verse of an old folk ballad, &ldquo;The Legend
-of Sam Bass,&rdquo; the not particularly inspiring
-saga of the life and death of an Indiana-born
-horse thief and road agent. Actually, Bass had
-little to do with the history of the Hills, and as
-anybody knows who has ever whistled or sung
-his song, the bulk of the chronicle concerns
-his struggle against the Texas Rangers.</p>
-<p>On the other hand, Sam Bass will long live
-in Black Hills history, for regardless of his
-other accomplishments he went to his glory
-bearing the credit for having originated the
-fine art of stage robbery in that Dakota wilderness.
-The Black Hills, like every other gold
-region, enjoyed but scant holiday from the
-pestiferous road agents. During 1875 and
-1876, when the region was filling up, it seemed
-that there was plenty to occupy the imagination
-of every individual who was able to make
-the tortuous trip from the railroad. But by
-1877 the area had calmed down to such an
-<span class="pb" id="Page_80">80</span>
-extent that idle hands could occasionally be
-counted in the dram shops, and the time was
-ripe for the devil to get in his work.</p>
-<p>From the point of view of geography the
-Hills presented ideal conditions for armed
-assault. The two major stage lines leading
-into the region were the Cheyenne-Black Hills
-Line, running through two hundred miles of
-desolate emptyland, and the Sidney Short
-Route, less long by some thirty miles, but passing
-through equally lonely country. In addition,
-one freight and stage line came in from
-the east, from Fort Pierre, and another from
-the north, following the general heading of
-Custer&rsquo;s 1874 expedition. The gold, though,
-most often traveled the fastest route, out to
-the Union Pacific at Cheyenne or Sidney.</p>
-<p>During the first twenty months or so of the
-Black Hills gold rush, armed guards were not
-normally counted among the personnel of the
-stage coaches. As a matter of fact, in most
-instances it was to be questioned whether or not
-any gold rode the stages, for the going was
-generally thin in the diggings, and the average
-operator accumulated his bullion for several
-months before amassing a shipment large
-enough to be worth the trouble and worry.
-For all the wealth of the Homestake, the Hills
-<span class="pb" id="Page_81">81</span>
-by no means repeated California&rsquo;s early history,
-when every stage worth tying a horse to
-carried at least some treasure. And yet, in the
-springtime most of the miners cleaned up their
-winter&rsquo;s take, it was commonly understood,
-and ... well, Sam Bass must have thought,
-every good thing must have a beginning.</p>
-<p>In March, 1877, Bass organized a gang of
-cutthroats in Deadwood, and the brief period
-when one could ride the coaches in comparative
-safety came to an end. It was not much
-of a gang that the legendary bandit gathered
-around him, the five other men being mostly
-cowardly and quite worthless, either as adventurers
-or as strategists. Bass himself was little
-more than a &ldquo;punk,&rdquo; as he would be called today,
-and, as a matter of fact, did not earn his
-immortality until much later, in Texas, where
-he was shot down in a barber chair by a
-Ranger.</p>
-<p>The gang, if they might so be called, foregathered
-on the snowy night of March 25 in
-Deadwood and, after consuming sufficient
-whiskey to enable them to stand the cold, made
-their way down the south road to a point a few
-miles from town where they might intercept
-the incoming stage from Cheyenne. What genius
-of diabolical planning led them to attack
-<span class="pb" id="Page_82">82</span>
-an inbound conveyance, which could be carrying
-little more than ordinary mail, rather than
-the &ldquo;down&rdquo; stage, which might possibly be
-loaded with bullion, has never been figured out,
-but at any rate they camped themselves in the
-snow and waited.</p>
-<p>At last the stage hove into sight, and Bass,
-the trusty leader, cautioned his hoodlums not
-to shoot, but merely to stop the coach and
-demand the mail pouch. Presumably the sentiments
-of the period held that robbery without
-gunfire was quite condonable, and an entirely
-different affair from burglary accompanied
-by shooting. It is also quite possible that Bass
-was only minding his own safety, for the night
-had already been marked by one misfortune&mdash;one
-of his men had managed to shoot himself in
-the foot while putting on his deadly hardware.</p>
-<p>As might be expected, however, Bass&rsquo;s well-laid
-plans went very much agley. In the excitement
-of calling &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; one of the bandits
-proved a bit too eager-fingered, and even as
-the stage driver was reining his team to a stop,
-a shotgun blared out, emptying its charge at
-close range into the driver&rsquo;s chest.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig5">
-<img src="images/p11.jpg" alt="" width="412" height="700" />
-<p class="pcap">Calamity Jane, during her carnival days</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig6">
-<img src="images/p12.jpg" alt="" width="481" height="699" />
-<p class="pcap">Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig7">
-<img src="images/p13.jpg" alt="" width="755" height="600" />
-<p class="pcap">Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded by shotgun messengers</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig8">
-<img src="images/p14.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="789" />
-<p class="pcap">Deadwood Gulch in 1881</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig9">
-<img src="images/p15.jpg" alt="" width="775" height="600" />
-<p class="pcap">Modern Deadwood&mdash;seventy years later</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_83">83</div>
-<p>With the shot the horses bolted, and shortly
-thereafter they pounded into Deadwood,
-guided by a hatless passenger who had managed
-to secure the ribbons as they dangled.
-Within a matter of minutes a posse had been
-formed and riders were making their way into
-the woods. Inasmuch as Bass and his companions
-had been acting suspiciously during the
-afternoon and evening, the finger of accusation
-pointed altogether correctly in their direction,
-and before the moon was down Sam Bass was
-well on his way to Texas, escaping Deadwood&rsquo;s
-justice only to go to his lathered doom.</p>
-<p>This tragic foray against law and order set
-the stage, so to speak, and before long the
-spruce trails of the Black Hills, once so still
-and harmless, could be passed over safely only
-in the company of &ldquo;shotgun messengers,&rdquo; as
-the armed attendants were called. It did not
-take the stage companies long to come to this
-way of operating, for Wells Fargo, which
-contracted for the express business, had
-had a quarter-century of rugged experience.
-Bringing their brave talents swiftly to bear on
-the situation, the Wells Fargo men steel-plated
-the coaches to be used for bullion shipments,
-and brought into the Hills the famed treasure
-chests which had figured so largely in the history
-of the coming of law and order to California&mdash;metal-bound
-cases too heavy to be
-transported quickly from the scene of crime,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_84">84</span>
-and too sturdy to be opened except after arduous
-work with chisels and crowbars. The chests
-had been developed with the idea that a posse
-could be gathered at the spot where a stage had
-been held up before the gold could be removed
-from the chest or the chest itself taken far
-away.</p>
-<p>A more important safety factor than the
-chests was the reputation of the shotgun messengers.
-The express companies went to great
-lengths to engage only the most fearless and
-law-abiding men they could find for this dangerous
-task, and time and time again thousands
-upon thousands of dollars in bullion rode across
-the lonely trails with no more than one man,
-his shotgun, and his reputation for bravery
-guarding it.</p>
-<p>Wyatt Earp, perhaps the most noted of
-these messengers, entered his long tour of
-Wells Fargo duty through that firm&rsquo;s Deadwood
-office. Earp, as any lover of western
-legend will tell, earned his vigorous reputation
-as marshal in the bloody Kansas cattle towns
-of Dodge City and Abilene. After the excitement
-of these Gomorrahs had worn off, he
-made his way to Deadwood in 1876&mdash;not as a
-gold-seeker, but apparently merely in search
-of honest and not too dangerous employment.
-<span class="pb" id="Page_85">85</span>
-At any rate, his brief stay in the Hills was
-given to the profession of coal and wood dispensing
-rather than to law enforcement. Either
-the weather or the lethargy of the place suited
-him poorly, for within the year he was casting
-about for some means of making his way back
-to his own plains country.</p>
-<p>Taking advantage of the public clamor
-against road agents after the Sam Bass affair,
-he offered his services to the express agent and
-was hired for the single trip out for fifty dollars
-cash and free passage. The agent was by
-no means doling out any charity in this exchange,
-for he knew the value of Earp&rsquo;s reputation
-and looked upon the fifty dollars as a
-cheap form of insurance. He advertised in the
-local newspaper: &ldquo;The Spring cleanup will
-leave for Cheyenne on the regular stage at
-7 <span class="small">AM</span> next Monday. Wyatt Earp of Dodge
-will ride shotgun.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>Bullion shippers were quick to take advantage
-of this extra protection, and it was recorded
-that no less than two hundred thousand
-dollars in bullion was weighed in for that special
-trip. It would be most dramatic to recount
-that Earp&rsquo;s one trip was marked by attempted
-mass raids, burning coaches, and wounded
-drivers, but the truth of the matter is that the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_86">86</span>
-journey was made on time and in good order.
-Only one shot was fired, and that by Marshal
-Earp, who took offense at the suspicious actions
-of a rider whose course seemed to parallel
-the stage route for an unaccountable distance.
-Without stopping the stage or otherwise
-alarming the passengers Earp dropped the offending
-horseman a few miles out of Deadwood,
-and the rest of the trip was made without
-incident.</p>
-<p>Despite the vigor with which the treasure
-coaches were protected, armed robbery continued
-to take place sporadically all during
-the final decade before the rails pushed through
-from the East. By and large these forays,
-while bloody, were unsuccessful, and not a single
-desperado was able to rise to any sort of
-fame during that period. On the other hand,
-there was one robbery which must go down in
-history for the strange way in which the loot
-was recovered.</p>
-<p>This particular villainy, remembered as the
-Canyon Springs robbery, took place on September
-28, 1878. The locale of the outrage was
-not far out of Deadwood on the rough way
-through Beaver Creek and Jenney Stockade
-into Wyoming and thence to Cheyenne. The
-coach, on this fateful occasion, was rumored
-<span class="pb" id="Page_87">87</span>
-to be carrying nearly one hundred thousand
-dollars in ingots from the Homestake, as well
-as from other works; and although shipments
-of such size were not altogether rare, they were
-sufficiently out of the ordinary to suggest the
-services of additional shotgun messengers. It
-may well have been the mere fact of the scheduling
-of additional guards that called the
-attention of the bandits to this particular manifest.</p>
-<p>The holdup took place in midafternoon, as
-the driver was stopping the coach to water the
-horses. In the gunplay three men were killed,
-and the bandits escaped with the loot from the
-treasure chest, which they apparently managed
-to chisel open. Ten miles away one of the
-guards came upon a party of horsemen, who
-returned to the scene of the carnage; but upon
-their arrival they found the coach despoiled of
-its gold.</p>
-<p>In many such cases the bandits would have
-been recognized as local or near-local citizens;
-but in this instance all of the desperadoes appeared
-to be strangers to the Hills, and consequently
-the law officers had very little except
-guesswork to guide them in their pursuit.
-Guesswork coupled with just plain snooping
-soon uncovered a trail, however, for one of the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_88">88</span>
-stage agents turned up a ranch owner who
-gave the information that a small group of
-men had, on the very evening of the holdup,
-bought a light spring wagon from him. Such a
-transaction was unusual enough to indicate
-that the purchasers were by no means individuals
-of legitimate calling, and in all probability
-were the actual bandits. Setting out on this
-trail, the agent managed to trace them and
-their wagon all the way to Cheyenne, where the
-group had apparently turned to the east.</p>
-<p>By that time persons who had seen them in
-passing had recognized them, and their names
-were broadcast to the marshals and sheriffs of
-all the eastern regions of the plains. Day after
-day the stage agent followed their trail east,
-across the Missouri, across the border of Nebraska,
-and on to the pleasant town of Atlantic,
-in Iowa. By that time the wagon had been
-discarded and the gang had broken up, and
-the agent was following only one spoor&mdash;the
-track of a young man who was always seen
-with a strange, heavy pack on his back.</p>
-<p>In the town of Atlantic the trail came to an
-abrupt end, and indeed the mystery might
-never have been solved had it not been for a
-strange display in the street window of a local
-bank. Pausing to see what it might be that
-<span class="pb" id="Page_89">89</span>
-was engaging the attention of a crowd at the
-window, the agent was astounded to behold
-part of the very loot he was pursuing&mdash;two
-bullion bricks stamped with serial numbers
-which identified them beyond a doubt as part
-of the Canyon Springs treasure.</p>
-<p>Upon questioning, the banker proudly asserted
-that his son had only the day before returned
-from a successful adventure in the
-Black Hills, and had, as a matter of fact, found
-a gold mine, which he had sold for the very
-bricks making up the exhibit.</p>
-<p>Gently the agent disabused the banker of
-this sad misapprehension, and, enlisting the
-aid of the local Sheriff, had the prodigal son
-arrested.</p>
-<p>The unfortunate conclusion to this tale of
-detective expertness is that although the gold
-was eventually returned to the Homestake, the
-young bandit escaped from the train which
-was carrying him back to Cheyenne, and was
-never thereafter apprehended. As for the other
-four robbers and the rest of the treasure, no
-further trace of either was ever discovered.</p>
-<p>Although banditry and skulduggery played
-a very great part in the tales of most of the
-other bonanza gold fields, the Black Hills
-story was for the most part happily without
-<span class="pb" id="Page_90">90</span>
-extraordinary violence. Much more conspicuous
-in the history of the Hills than the desperate
-adventures of bandits are the exploits
-of the folk heroes who rode the Deadwood legend
-into immortality. Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity
-Jane, Deadwood Dick, Preacher Smith,
-all of these amazing personalities achieved a
-lasting fame during the early days of this later
-frontier, not for any deeds of derring-do in
-the Sam Bass fashion, but for the old American
-custom of living and dying in a high and
-wide manner.</p>
-<p>In all probability Deadwood Dick has carried
-the saga of the Hills farther and to a
-greater audience, both in this country and
-abroad, than any of the others, and for that
-reason, as well as for the strange circumstance
-that he never existed, it is perhaps well to tell
-his story first.</p>
-<p>Dick, who never had a last name, was nothing
-more nor less than the happy creation of
-an overworked literary side-liner eking out a
-living in the late seventies. Having exhausted
-the possible plot complexities of such heroes
-as Seth Jones and Duke Darrall, Messrs.
-Beadle and Adams, proprietors of that stupendous
-literary zoo, The Pocket Library
-(published weekly at 98 William Street, New
-<span class="pb" id="Page_91">91</span>
-York, price five cents), urged their hack, Edward
-L. Wheeler, to crank out a new character.
-This Shakespeare of the sensational,
-having recently heard of the brave doings in
-Deadwood, of the Black Hills, promptly created
-a latter-day Leatherstocking, Deadwood
-Dick.</p>
-<p>Dick&rsquo;s success was instantaneous, for there
-was a sense of truth in these stories which had
-theretofore been missing. Dispatches in every
-post brought the news of Deadwood as it was
-happening, and thus the weekly appearance
-of another Deadwood story was able to hang
-itself firmly on the coattails of reality. In one
-episode Dick courts Calamity Jane, who actually
-existed at the time, and finally marries
-her. In another, Our Hero is a frontier detective,
-fighting bravely on the side of law and
-order. In still another he has turned to robbery,
-and at one point is actually strung by
-his neck from a cottonwood gallows.</p>
-<p>After exhausting the many plot possibilities
-of the Black Hills, Dick, who had become as
-real to his readers as George Washington, began
-to work both backward and forward in
-time and space. In one set of adventures he is
-shown to be an active Indian fighter; in another
-he turns up with Calamity Jane in the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_92">92</span>
-town of Leadville, Colorado, which came into
-its glory not long after the strike in Deadwood.</p>
-<p>At last the many loose ends of the story so
-entangled author Wheeler that he gave up
-Deadwood Dick as a lost cause and out of nowhere
-fetched him a son, Deadwood Dick, Jr.,
-who marched on to the turn of the century
-and down into our own time. Indeed, his noble
-features can still occasionally be found staring
-gravely up from a pile of old and dusty magazines
-in attic corners.</p>
-<p>With such a heritage it is little wonder that
-as the town of Deadwood grew away from its
-infancy, and as its modern Chamber of Commerce
-turned to summer pageants as a source
-of tourist interest, Deadwood Dick should be
-revived and paraded. Deadwood&rsquo;s summer festivals,
-the gay &ldquo;Days of &rsquo;76,&rdquo; are built around
-a town-wide re-creation of the gold rush, with
-the natives chin-whiskered, booted, and costumed
-within an inch of their lives. During
-this gusty week otherwise sober and retiring
-citizens turn themselves out as stage coach
-drivers, Indians, and pony express riders, and
-the nights are filled with such a bubbling halloo
-that the tourists, who come in ever larger
-droves, are able to go home and report that
-<span class="pb" id="Page_93">93</span>
-they have honestly spent time in a frontier
-town.</p>
-<p>To heighten the effect, the impresarios of
-this gay divertissement many years ago decided
-to raise Deadwood Dick from Beadle&rsquo;s
-pages and put him on the street like all the
-other self-respecting Calamity Janes and Wild
-Bills. Locating an oldster who looked not unlike
-the artist&rsquo;s original concept, they dressed
-him in an assortment of western oddities and
-gave him time off from his duties as a stable
-hand while the festival was in session. For several
-years this simple pretense was carried on,
-and no sleep whatsoever was lost over the fact
-that a mild fraud was being perpetrated on the
-visiting Iowans.</p>
-<p>In 1927, though, when South Dakota was
-negotiating with Calvin Coolidge to get him
-to spend his summer in the Hills, the stable
-hand, whose name happened to be Dick Clarke,
-was sent to Washington to extend a personal
-welcome to the President. Patently a publicity
-stunt, it fooled nobody but old Dick himself.
-The rigors of the trip and the succession of
-tongue-in-cheek honors heaped upon him somehow
-tilted the old man&rsquo;s mind, and from that
-day until his death a decade later he fully believed
-that he was the original Deadwood Dick.
-<span class="pb" id="Page_94">94</span>
-Frowning down any suggestions that he doff
-his beaded finery and return to the care of the
-oat bins, he betook himself far from the gentle
-safety of the Deadwood that he knew and that
-knew him, and took to touring the backwoods
-with fifth-rate medicine shows and Wild West
-pageants. Somewhere along the line he got up
-a small pamphlet which he sold to the gawking
-audiences who thought they were seeing a
-genuine frontiersman. In this amazing tract
-he spelled out such of the facts of Wheeler&rsquo;s
-stories as were coherent and in logical time
-sequence. The rest, including a date and place
-of birth, he soberly filled in for himself.</p>
-<p>And that was Deadwood Dick. When he
-finally died, back in Deadwood in the early
-forties, much of the town had come to believe
-as he did that there had been a Deadwood Dick,
-just as there had been a Calamity Jane, and
-that this gaffer had been the very person. His
-cortege was solemnly followed, and to this day
-flowers are sprinkled on his grave by confused
-but loyal residents of the Hills.</p>
-<p class="tb">Wild Bill Hickok, on the other hand, actually
-lived, and actually died exactly as the
-legend goes, with aces and eights in his hand.
-It was this unfortunate occurrence, as a matter
-<span class="pb" id="Page_95">95</span>
-of fact, that gave to that particular poker hand
-its gruesome name, Dead Man&rsquo;s Hand.</p>
-<p>Somewhat in the manner of Deadwood Dick,
-Wild Bill achieved a large part of his fame
-through the earnest efforts of Beadle &amp; Adams.
-That is to say, much of his renown came after
-his untimely demise, and much of it was deliberately
-generated to satisfy the great western-yearnings
-of the avid book-buying public. In
-addition to the publishers&rsquo; efforts on Bill&rsquo;s behalf,
-great impetus was given to his posthumous
-repute by Calamity Jane. Nevertheless,
-in all probability Hickok was actually the fearless
-and sterling character his legendeers have
-depicted, and had he not been brutally done
-to death by feckless Jack McCall he would
-doubtless have earned even greater fame
-through his own efforts in later years.</p>
-<p>James Hickok was born into a farming family
-in Illinois in the year 1837, and passed a
-quiet and respectable boyhood in the ordinary
-pursuits of such an existence. In his nineteenth
-year he, like so many other young men of that
-day, felt the urgent call of the Far West. He
-hired himself out forthwith as a teamster in a
-wagon train to the Pacific Coast.</p>
-<p>Returning at the end of this one visit to the
-golden shores, he managed to land in the Platte
-<span class="pb" id="Page_96">96</span>
-Valley of the eastern Rockies in the very year
-when gold was being discovered in that region.
-The following two years he spent in odd jobs
-around Denver and on the high plains to the
-east of that new city. During all this time,
-however, it seemed as if his heart were hungering
-for the lower country. He let his drifting
-carry him slowly back into Kansas where, at
-the beginning of the Civil War, he managed a
-station for Hinckley&rsquo;s Overland Express Company,
-which was then staging from St. Joseph,
-Missouri, to Denver and into Central City.</p>
-<p>All these adventures gave ample opportunity
-for any young man of spleen to entangle
-himself a dozen times over in killings, brawls,
-and assorted rough businesses, but through
-this entire period James Hickok gave evidence
-of being nothing but a stalwart and well-intentioned
-individual.</p>
-<p>The harmlessness of his pursuits, though,
-came to an explosive end after one year in this
-genial work, when he indulged in pistolry with
-a certain McCanles gang. One version of the
-Wild Bill legend states that the &ldquo;gang&rdquo; were
-cutthroats, and that Hickok was only defending
-his company&rsquo;s property. Another version,
-equally trustworthy, has it that the McCanleses
-were Confederate sympathizers, attempting
-<span class="pb" id="Page_97">97</span>
-to raise a cavalry unit in the region and
-thus offending Hickok with his Unionist leanings.
-Whatever the reason, the outcome was
-bloody. No one today knows for certain how
-many men were killed, for eyewitness accounts
-have included reports ranging all the way
-from one to six, all of them presumably slain
-by Hickok.</p>
-<p>The doughty station manager, his helper,
-and another stage company employee were
-speedily brought to trial for the affair, and
-just as speedily acquitted of any crime. Shortly
-after that Hickok resigned his express company
-affiliation and joined the Union army,
-fighting the war out as a trusted though undistinguished
-scout.</p>
-<p>After his discharge in 1865, he seems to have
-forsaken forever his once peaceful way of life,
-and thereafter blood was more than occasionally
-to be found upon his hands. His first postwar
-killing took place in Springfield, Missouri,
-in a duel with a gambler; and later that same
-year he was reported to have mortally wounded
-another card player in Julesburg, Colorado
-Territory. In the next year another report,
-unofficial like all the rest, had him killing three
-more men in Missouri, and in 1867&mdash;this <i>was</i>
-official&mdash;he went to the booming cow town of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_98">98</span>
-Hays City, Kansas, where he was shortly offered
-the post of marshal.</p>
-<p>That his reputation, whether truthful or
-legendary, was growing there can be no question.
-By 1867 he was accounted to be one of
-the best gunmen of his time and place, quite
-possibly for the simple reason that he had survived
-so many fights. For all the shadowy
-overtones of his story, he was also reputed to
-be a devotee of righteousness and order, although
-this facet of his character may or may
-not actually have existed. He was well known
-to be a gambler, and his victims were all (except
-the McCanleses) supposed to be cheaters
-at cards. Whether his vivacity with Mr. Colt&rsquo;s
-revolver was intended to rid the earth of dishonest
-men or merely to avenge a lost hand is
-beside the point, for his acceptance of the position
-of marshal of Hays City indicates that
-for a time, at least, his inclinations lay in the
-direction of law and order.</p>
-<p>From Hays City he went to a similar post
-in Abilene, where he bore the star until 1872.
-During all this time he was forced to kill but
-a bare minimum of unworthy citizens, his ever
-growing repute as a dangerous man with a
-gun apparently frightening would-be desperadoes
-out of his orbit. Three notches were all
-that he placed upon his weapon during his service
-in those two hell cities of the prairies&mdash;definitely
-a world&rsquo;s record in reverse.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig10">
-<img src="images/p16.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="794" />
-<p class="pcap">One of the Black Hills&rsquo; many streams</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig11">
-<img src="images/p17.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="598" />
-<p class="pcap">The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_99">99</div>
-<p>Apparently the inactivity came to bore him,
-for he soon gave up police work to return to
-the army for two years as a scout. This harsh
-calling also failed to satisfy whatever inner
-wants were making themselves felt, and in
-1874 he resigned to join a traveling show with
-Buffalo Bill.</p>
-<p>In 1875, however, he was to be found no
-longer behind the chemical lights, but idling
-his time away in Cheyenne. During this restless
-interlude he married a circus rider named
-Agnes Lake. Shortly after the ceremony,
-which took place in 1876, he followed the trail
-to Deadwood, arriving in April and setting up
-camp with another ex-army scout. The motives
-which drew him to that thriving boom town
-were, in all probability, those which drew the
-thousands of others&mdash;mere curiosity and the
-hope that something might turn up. Indeed,
-during the four months of his Deadwood hiatus
-he did very little but play poker in the famed
-saloon known as Number Ten. That he was
-as accomplished a gambler as he was a gunman
-was doubted by no one, and through his ability
-with the pasteboards he apparently kept himself
-<span class="pb" id="Page_100">100</span>
-in such funds as he needed. He did not
-attempt to look for gold, nor did he seek any
-official post in the town. He merely played the
-long hours away at cards.</p>
-<p>One might expect such a man as Wild Bill
-Hickok to meet his nemesis in open battle with
-a murderous cutthroat seeking to pay off an
-old score. Western legend is filled with such
-fitting come-uppances. But in this rare case
-our hero was killed in a peaceful moment by a
-total stranger and for reasons which nobody
-was ever thereafter able to discern.</p>
-<p>On the fateful day of August 2, 1876, he
-entered Number Ten shortly after the lunch
-hour to take up his everlasting hand of cards.
-Normally, being a prudent man, he insisted on
-a seat with its back to a wall, from which vantage
-point he could keep his eye cocked for
-trouble; but on this day, for some reason, he
-arrived just too late to take his customary
-position and had to accept a chair with its back
-to the door. The game proceeded amiably
-enough for a while, and there was nothing in
-the afternoon air to suggest violence of any
-sort. At last a normally inoffensive deadbeat,
-one Jack McCall, turned from the bar where
-he had been enjoying a quiet drink and, passing
-the gaming table on his way to the door,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_101">101</span>
-suddenly and without a word pulled his revolver
-from his vest and put a shot through
-Wild Bill&rsquo;s skull.</p>
-<p>The effect was instantaneous. When the
-news spread that Wild Bill had been killed, all
-work stopped in the city and men streamed in
-from every corner, expecting at the very least
-to find a major battle in progress. When finally
-the crowds were quieted down and it was
-learned that the killing was nothing more than
-a mere murder, the populace speedily hunted
-up the terrified McCall, whom they found huddled
-in a near-by stable, and arranged a formal
-trial. The facts that Deadwood was at that
-time still out of bounds to American citizens
-and therefore under no legitimate civil jurisdiction
-and that the judge, jury, and prosecuting
-attorney were elected on the spot by a show
-of hands, having therefore no official standing,
-did not dampen the ardor of the crowd. A trial
-was a trial, and its results would presumably
-be fair and honest.</p>
-<p>As a matter of fact, Jack McCall must have
-been the most surprised individual of all at the
-ultimate fairness of the legal machinery which
-had been set up in his honor. With the acceptance
-of his fumbling plea that Hickok had, at
-a place unnamed and at a time unnamed, killed
-<span class="pb" id="Page_102">102</span>
-his brother, McCall was acquitted and turned
-free, and Wild Bill was sorrowfully buried by
-the admiring populace.</p>
-<p>As soon as he was freed, McCall hurried
-back to Cheyenne to escape the reach of any of
-Hickok&rsquo;s friends. Unfortunately the story of
-the killing followed him there, and under the
-mistaken impression that he had undergone a
-legitimate trial and was therefore no longer
-subject to additional jeopardy, McCall took
-no pains to deny the murder. This was a most
-foolish tactic on his part, for he was speedily
-rearrested and shipped to Yankton, the capital
-of South Dakota Territory, where he was held
-for a session of the proper court. Inasmuch as
-he had admitted before witnesses not only that
-he had killed Wild Bill, but also that his earlier
-plea had been fabricated from whole cloth, he
-had a very slender defense indeed, and was
-quickly found guilty and banged.</p>
-<p>To the very end no clue could be found to
-any sort of sound reason for his having fired
-the fatal shot. It was quite definitely proved
-that he had never had any dealings with his
-victim and had never been in any way offended
-by him, and that he no more than knew vaguely
-who he was. It was apparently a completely
-<span class="pb" id="Page_103">103</span>
-aimless killing, the unhappy inspiration of the
-moment.</p>
-<p>On the other hand, Justice seems forever
-determined to get to the bottom of the matter,
-for <i>The Trial of Jack McCall</i> has become an
-institution of the Black Hills, played, like <i>Ten
-Nights in a Barroom</i>, all the summers long in
-a popular tavern. Where audiences elsewhere
-hiss their Legrees and other purely fictional
-villains, the proud residents of Deadwood have
-their very own and very real scoundrel for the
-target of their malisons&mdash;the miserable McCall.
-Tourists are cordially invited to join in
-the fun and thereby to spread ever farther the
-legend of Wild Bill Hickok.</p>
-<p>On June 21, 1951, the legend was further
-enhanced and improved upon by the presentation
-to the city of Deadwood of a brand new
-statue of Hickok carved out of a massive
-chunk of native granite by the ebullient sculptor,
-Ziolkowski. An all-day celebration attended
-the unveiling of this statue upon its
-pedestal at the foot of Mt. Moriah, and the
-zenith of the day&rsquo;s gaudy reverence was the
-reading of an &ldquo;epic&rdquo; poem to the hushed populace
-of the town over a loud-speaker system
-from the top of the mount. The statue is plain
-to be seen about a block from the Adams Memorial
-<span class="pb" id="Page_104">104</span>
-Museum, and copies of the epic can no
-doubt be had by soliciting the Deadwood
-Chamber of Commerce.</p>
-<p class="tb">Of a somewhat different character from
-Wild Bill, but, it is good to report, no less
-revered in the Hills, was Preacher Smith.</p>
-<p>Frontier towns have been notorious for their
-hallowing of persons, both male and female,
-who were either expertly good or expertly
-bad. This strange compounding of affections
-would suggest that the vice or godliness in itself
-was unimportant, but that the rough and
-crude citizens who populated our earlier settlements
-held a genuine admiration and regard
-for anyone of any calling who demonstrated
-authority and accomplishment.</p>
-<p>And thus it was with the Reverend Henry
-W. Smith. A man of exceptionally little luck
-in life, he gave up his dwindling congregations
-in the States and journeyed into the frontier
-in 1875, partly because of a zeal in his heart
-to bring the Word into the lawless and godless
-gold camps, but also, it must be conjectured,
-to find some form of weekday employment
-which would enable him to care for his wife
-and two daughters. The wolf had been howling
-at many doors during those years, and parsonages
-<span class="pb" id="Page_105">105</span>
-which carried even a bare subsistence
-stipend were few and far between.</p>
-<p>Smith went first to Custer, where he stayed
-but a short while, finding little in the way of
-work and less in the way of souls to save, since
-the rush to Deadwood was then in full force.
-Hiring onto a merchandise train as a cook&rsquo;s
-helper, he made his way to that newer city, arriving
-early in May of 1876. In a town of such
-activity it was not difficult to locate work, and
-shortly his hide began to fill out and his purse
-to thicken. That purse, it was discovered after
-his death, was to be used for the purpose of
-bringing his family out to join him.</p>
-<p>Working diligently and, of course, soberly
-at his menial tasks from Monday through Saturday,
-and bravely setting up his pulpit on
-the main street on Sundays, Preacher Smith
-soon won the respect and even the genial admiration
-of the roisterous townspeople. At
-first his congregations contained more wandering
-dogs than people, but week after week, as
-he determinedly kept after his work, an increasingly
-large crowd gathered of a Sunday
-morning to listen to his sermons.</p>
-<p>Thus the entire town was shocked when he
-was brutally killed by Indians while walking
-to a near-by settlement to preach a sermon.
-<span class="pb" id="Page_106">106</span>
-Indians were bad enough at best, but killing
-a harmless and unarmed preacher was an act
-of violence which shook the consciences of the
-whole citizen body. It was on those consciences
-that the guilt began to press&mdash;the guilt of the
-knowledge that they had driven him to his
-death by their slowness to accept him in their
-own community and that he had gone to his
-rendezvous seeking a congregation, no matter
-how small, that would house him and the Master
-he served.</p>
-<p>Belatedly gathering to his support, the citizens
-passed a sizable hat for the benefit of the
-unfortunate man&rsquo;s widow and daughters. In
-addition to the gift of cash, the woman received
-an invitation to bring her grieving family to
-the Hills, where care would be arranged for
-them, including a teaching post for the eldest
-daughter. Unfortunately, neither the widow
-nor the daughters were in good enough health
-to be able to make the rigorous trip, and in
-consequence they could not avail themselves of
-the hospitality and generosity which were so
-late in coming.</p>
-<p>Although they had failed to bring the parson&rsquo;s
-family to Deadwood, the worthy citizens
-were undaunted in their efforts to memorialize
-this modest itinerant who had stumbled unwittingly
-<span class="pb" id="Page_107">107</span>
-into glory. A great chunk of sandstone
-was quarried and a local artist of more verve
-than ability proceeded to hack out the parson&rsquo;s
-likeness. The statue was eventually propped
-over his grave atop Mount Moriah, the cemetery-museum
-where he lies alongside Wild
-Bill and Calamity Jane. Unfortunately souvenir
-hunters carried on their unworthy custom
-over the years, until finally the battered monument,
-no longer even recognizable, collapsed.
-In the Adams Memorial Hall of Deadwood,
-however, there can be seen a certificate signed
-in Preacher Smith&rsquo;s very writing, and thus his
-handiwork lives along with his legend.</p>
-<p class="tb">All stories of Deadwood in the Black Hills
-come, eventually, to the great riddle of Martha
-Jane Cannary (sometimes spelled Canary),
-known as Calamity Jane.</p>
-<p>This gusty female, who rolled around the
-West for nearly half a century, has been the
-subject of more controversy and speculation
-than almost any other early-day character. In
-her lifetime she circulated a brief autobiography
-which successfully managed to hide the
-truth about practically every aspect of her history.
-In addition, she manipulated her drab
-story in such a way that a whole generation of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_108">108</span>
-legend-mongers accepted her as the &ldquo;true love&rdquo;
-of Wild Bill Hickok, and thus by no means to
-be thought of as the drunken harlot she most
-certainly was.</p>
-<p>By dint of careful searching, however, some
-few definite facts of her early life and adventures
-have been isolated, and upon them at least
-the framework of her true story has been constructed.
-She appears to have been born in the
-neighborhood of 1850&mdash;add or subtract a year&mdash;in
-Missouri. Some accounts have it that her
-father was a Baptist minister, which is an unimportant
-sidelight, for young Martha Jane
-did not stay at home long enough for any such
-influence to gnaw its way into her personality.<a class="fn" id="fr_2" href="#fn_2">[2]</a></p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_109">109</div>
-<p>How she managed to get from Missouri to
-Wyoming while still in her early teens remains
-a mystery, but nonetheless her career as a camp
-follower started when, at the tender age of
-fourteen, she arrived in the roaring outpost of
-Rawlins. Some tales have it that she had gone
-west as the consort of a young army lieutenant,
-and that her mother, remarried to a pioneer,
-found her in that boisterous military town and
-took her to Utah. In any event she came back
-into circulation two years later, for in 1866
-she was duly married to one George White in
-Cheyenne. Following this felicitous turn of affairs
-she and her husband journeyed to Denver,
-where he was able to support her in a fine, high
-style. Unfortunately, she did not take to this
-pleasant existence, but shortly began to yearn
-after the cavalry. Leaving her husband to his
-<span class="pb" id="Page_110">110</span>
-Denver duties, she appeared all during 1867
-and 1868 in various forts throughout Wyoming.
-It was at this particular time in her career
-that she was supposed to have earned the
-nickname of Calamity Jane. Undoubtedly the
-title was bestowed upon her by barroom companions
-who had learned the sad truth that
-Martha Jane&rsquo;s appearance on the scene boded
-a long and arduous night of drinking; but in
-her maudlin and confused autobiography she
-tells of assisting in an Indian fight and for her
-splendid services being gratefully given the
-name by a Captain Pat Egan. In a later interview
-Egan denied this, claiming that the only
-time he had ever seen the woman was while
-escorting her out of a barracks so that the men
-could get some sleep.</p>
-<p>From Wyoming she went to Hays City,
-Kansas, still following the Seventh Cavalry,
-her chosen military unit. Six years later she
-turned up again, this time disguised as a man
-and marching with General Crook&rsquo;s police
-force, which was trying to keep settlers out of
-the Hills. Her autobiography claims that she
-also accompanied Custer&rsquo;s command on its famous
-exploratory march, but this does not appear
-to be true.</p>
-<p>After the discovery of gold in Deadwood,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_111">111</span>
-she found the high life in that town so completely
-to her liking that she made it her home
-base. In time she fastened herself so securely
-among the legends of the metropolis that she
-was thereafter known solely as Calamity Jane
-of Deadwood.</p>
-<p>Taking advantage of the high romance
-which surrounded Wild Bill&rsquo;s name after his
-death, Calamity made haste to pass the story
-around that he had been her only true love;
-and although there was no evidence of any
-sort that he even knew who she was, her last
-words, when she died in 1903, were a plea to
-be buried next to him.</p>
-<p>In the eighties she became restless again and
-forsook her beloved Deadwood for two decades,
-roving as far south as El Paso, and on
-one occasion being seen in California. Her activities
-at this time of her life are mostly lost
-from sight, but it may be presumed that as
-whatever charms she may earlier have had
-faded, her interest to and in the soldiers waned.
-During this period she married again, this
-time wedding a man named Burke, to whom
-she bore a daughter. She soon tired of Burke,
-however, and drifted slowly north again, passing
-considerable time in Colorado and then
-returning briefly to Deadwood in 1895. Even
-<span class="pb" id="Page_112">112</span>
-at that late date the citizens of the gold town
-had not forgotten her, nor had the esteem in
-which she had earlier been held dwindled;
-when it was discovered that she lacked funds
-to care for her daughter, the townspeople
-passed the ever present hat and arranged for
-the care of the child. This act of generosity was
-purportedly to repay a great sacrifice which
-Calamity Jane had made in the earlier days,
-braving the dangers of the smallpox scourge
-of 1878 to nurse whoever was ill and without
-help. This particular legend has had wide currency
-in the West, its closest variant being the
-tale of Silver Heels, a dancing girl who visited
-the mining camps of Colorado&rsquo;s South Park
-in the sixties. Silver Heels is popularly supposed
-to have ministered to the miners during
-a similar plague, for which bravery a near-by
-mountain was named for her.</p>
-<p>After placing her child in a school, Calamity,
-who was destitute, betook herself to the vaudeville
-circuit. Inasmuch as through the dime
-novels she had already become a well-known
-national figure, she was able for a while to
-draw large crowds. Had it not been for her
-unfortunate habit of getting dead drunk before
-show time, she might well have amassed a
-<span class="pb" id="Page_113">113</span>
-competence over the years. But her first contract
-was not renewed, and after a brief whirl
-at the Buffalo Exposition she returned to the
-West, spending the next several years in Montana.</p>
-<p>At last she came home to Deadwood, a sick
-and broken old roustabout. By this time she
-was nothing more than a bar-fly, and she lived
-out her last days panhandling food and liquor
-money from strangers. At last, on August 2,
-1903, she died of pneumonia.</p>
-<p>Deadwood turned out in force for her funeral.
-As she had requested, she was buried
-near Wild Bill Hickok on Mount Moriah,
-overlooking the town. That she had never
-really known Wild Bill was quite beside the
-point, and anyway, there was none present
-who knew whether she had or not. The shoddy
-story of her &ldquo;love&rdquo; for Hickok was nothing
-that interested the old timers, but was saved
-for historians to untangle. That she was no
-more than an alcoholic old harlot was of no
-consequence, either, to the good citizens, for
-with her passing the last of the great names of
-the frontier was coming home to rest. That the
-townspeople were proud of her, and genuinely
-so, was not to be denied, although there was
-<span class="pb" id="Page_114">114</span>
-most certainly nobody present at that melancholy
-service who could have told why. The
-truth of the matter was that they were burying
-not a broken old woman, but the last of the
-Black Hills legends.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_115">115</div>
-<h2 id="c6"><span class="small"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER SIX</span></span>
-<br />The White River Badlands</h2>
-<p>Any visit to the Black Hills must also be
-the occasion of a tour, at least for a few
-hours, of the famous South Dakota Badlands.
-This fantastic National Monument is not a
-part of the Hills, either geographically or historically,
-but because the two regions lie so
-close together&mdash;a scant fifty miles apart&mdash;they
-are expediently linked as two great natural
-wonders in the same region.</p>
-<p>The term &ldquo;badlands&rdquo; has a loose scientific
-acceptance, meaning any region where a specific
-type of heavy erosion has taken place.
-Such regions usually have subnormal rainfall
-and sparse vegetation. Those rains that do
-occur, then, find little on the earth&rsquo;s surface
-to prevent almost complete runoff, which is so
-vigorous as to act as a powerful cutting agent.
-<span class="pb" id="Page_116">116</span>
-The final ingredients of a badlands are rock
-formations known as unconsolidated&mdash;lacking
-any general unity of structure which might
-tend to withstand erosion. When all these conditions
-exist, the devastation of the rushing
-flood waters is without pattern, a great gash
-being carved in one spot while no damage is
-visible on a near-by outcropping. The end result
-is an almost frightening collection of gruesome
-stone monuments rising to the sky and
-marking the heights once reached by a general
-plateau.</p>
-<p>Actually, much of the high western plain
-abutting on the Rocky Mountains is basic badland
-formation, and small pockets of distinct
-erosion can be seen all through eastern Colorado,
-western Nebraska, and eastern Wyoming,
-in addition to the vast depression in the
-valleys of the White and Cheyenne rivers in
-South Dakota. This one region, though, sixty-five
-miles long and five to fifteen miles wide,
-is the largest and from the geologist&rsquo;s point
-of view the most important of all such regions
-in the world. Desolate, empty, seared by ages
-of sun and wind, it is now a great gash in the
-earth&rsquo;s flesh which exposes to view rock and
-soil strata that measure a great span of earth&rsquo;s
-history.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_117">117</div>
-<p>In addition to the splendid opportunity to
-see and study the various layers of the earth&rsquo;s
-surface going back as far as sixty million years,
-the very composition of badlands formations
-makes any such region a veritable museum of
-fossils and petrified animal relics. The South
-Dakota Badlands have turned up absolute
-treasures of such paleontological finds, enabling
-scientists to trace the evolution of mammalian
-life all the way back to the appearance
-on earth of the first carnivorous animals&mdash;the
-vastly distant ancestors of the dog. And the
-Badlands are noted not only for the great
-span in geologic time of their fossil beds, but
-also for the number of different types which
-have been found in their ancient soil, more
-than 250 different prehistoric animals having
-been discovered in various stages of fossilized
-preservation in this general region.</p>
-<p>The tourist, though, need not be even an
-amateur student of geology or paleontology
-to be thrilled and awed by a visit to this grotesque
-but beautiful area. The mere colors
-of the various rock strata, ever changing under
-the light patterns of sun and cloud, provide a
-never-to-be-forgotten experience. One of the
-most articulate tributes to the grandeur of the
-Badlands is that of Frank Lloyd Wright:</p>
-<blockquote>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_118">118</div>
-<p>Speaking of our trip to the South Dakota Badlands,
-I&rsquo;ve been about the world a lot and pretty much over
-our own country but I was totally unprepared for the
-revelation called the Badlands. What I saw gave me an
-indescribable sense of the mysterious otherwhere&mdash;a
-distant architecture, ethereal, touched, only touched,
-with a sense of Egyptian-Mayan drift and silhouette.
-As we came closer, a templed realm definitely stood
-ambient in the air before my astonished &ldquo;scene&rdquo;-loving
-but &ldquo;scene&rdquo;-jaded gaze.</p>
-<p>Yes, I say the aspects of the South Dakota Badlands
-have more spiritual quality to impart to the mind of
-America than anything else in it made by Man&rsquo;s God.</p>
-</blockquote>
-<p>The word &ldquo;badlands,&rdquo; which now has a genuine
-scientific meaning, was taken into our
-vocabulary from the folk name for this very
-region. In the earliest days of North American
-exploration, far back before the Revolution,
-French trappers had braved this empty
-wasteland on their endless quest for new fur
-grounds, and had brought back tales of this
-lost world of silence and strange shapes. They
-were the ones who gave it the name Badlands,
-but they were only translating directly the
-Sioux name, Mako Sika, which meant, precisely,
-lands bad for traveling.</p>
-<p>To the early explorers the badlands meant
-only that&mdash;high escarpments to be overcome;
-twisting, winding, endless canyons from which
-there were no outlets; crumbling rock underfoot
-<span class="pb" id="Page_119">119</span>
-on the three-hundred-foot crawls from
-the canyon bottoms to the table-tops; and the
-hot, shimmering distances of this forbidding
-terrain as far as the eye could see.</p>
-<p>It was, as a matter of fact, the existence of
-this area that helped keep the Black Hills nothing
-more than an empty question mark on
-maps until the rumors of gold began to circulate.
-The first American explorers, who
-might have discovered the natural wonders of
-the Hills in the 1820&rsquo;s, found their paths diverted
-to the north and the south by this impassable
-valley, and consequently missed the Hills.</p>
-<p>The first reliable record of the wonders of
-this lost world was dated 1847. That year, it
-will be remembered, was one of great moment
-in the history of the western movement&mdash;the
-year that Brigham Young braved the high
-prairies and pathless mountains with his great
-exodus, settling an empire on the shores of
-Great Salt Lake. Although the Pacific trails
-were fairly well established by then, his was
-the first of the true migrations, and the gold
-rush to California, the Oregon excursions, and
-the Pikes Peak mosaid were yet to come.</p>
-<p>In this fateful year of 1847 a certain Professor
-Hiram A. Prout of St. Louis came somehow
-into contact with a representative of the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_120">120</span>
-American Fur Company, which ran substantial
-trapping operations all up the wide Missouri
-and its tributaries. How this meeting
-came about is lost to record, but we do know
-that the fur trader gave Professor Prout a
-souvenir of his recent travels through the Badlands
-of Dakota&mdash;a fragment of the lower jaw
-of a Titanothere, the first fossil ever to be quarried
-out of the region and used for scientific
-purposes.</p>
-<p>In that same year a second Badlands fossil
-turned up, this one a well-preserved head of an
-ancestral camel, given to or purchased by the
-great scholar, Dr. Joseph Leidy. With true
-academic ardor both of these gentlemen, Leidy
-and Prout, rushed their discoveries into scholarly
-print, describing in learned journals the
-nature of their trophies. Enjoying the slender
-circulation of academic publication, the essays
-which described these fossil wonders eventually
-found their way into the offices of the government&rsquo;s
-geological survey, which acted quickly
-to dispatch an expedition to the overlooked
-region of their origin.</p>
-<p>That first exploring party, the David Owen
-Survey, went into the field in 1849. A prominent
-scientist-artist, Dr. John Evans, was attached
-to the group, and from his pen we have
-<span class="pb" id="Page_121">121</span>
-several sketches of this pioneer adventure into
-the empty wastelands. If these drawings look
-more like studies of Dante&rsquo;s Inferno than like
-the breath-taking Badlands as they really are,
-it must be remembered that such geological
-formations had never before been visited by
-the members of that party, and, being completely
-alien to the America of their knowledge,
-impressed them every bit as a visit to the
-moon might have done.</p>
-<p>The Owens party was merely the vanguard
-of the great army of brave men and women
-who have ever since made their dangerous ways
-into the remotest distances of the mountain
-and desert West, seeking neither riches of gold
-nor riches of land, but only more minute bits
-of the knowledge of the world of our past.
-Archeologists, geologists, and paleontologists
-from universities and learned societies the
-world over have spent liberally of their time,
-energies, and personal safety to scout out the
-secrets of mankind&rsquo;s past in such remote corners
-of the earth as the Badlands. Year after
-year additional expeditions, both governmental
-and privately organized, made their way into
-this particular area, seeking out the fossil remains
-which turned up in great numbers.</p>
-<p>V. F. Hayden of the United States Geological
-<span class="pb" id="Page_122">122</span>
-Survey was one of the most diligent of the
-early explorers. He made trips into the Badlands
-in 1853, 1855, 1857, and 1866, carrying
-on detailed and exhaustive studies and eventually
-unraveling the story of the region&rsquo;s
-major geologic features.</p>
-<p>As Hayden&rsquo;s reports became more and more
-widely circulated, various universities found
-projects of specific interest in one or another
-phase of the work of uncovering fossil beds;
-and from year to year Yale, Princeton, Amherst,
-the universities of South Dakota and
-Nebraska, and other institutions sent groups
-into the Badlands for summer work. Gradually,
-as these several groups exchanged information
-and reports of progress, it became
-possible for their scientists to trace back,
-through the skeletal remains of prehistoric animals,
-the very processes of the evolution of
-many entire families in the animal kingdom.
-Not only are the fossil beds of the Badlands
-as richly stocked with remains as any such bed
-in the world, but in a great many instances
-entire groups of three, four, and five whole
-skeletons have been found, making it possible
-for museum workers to re-create almost perfectly
-the animals as they existed and to set up
-models of the terrain at various intervals
-<span class="pb" id="Page_123">123</span>
-throughout its entire sixty-million-year history.</p>
-<p>Perhaps the most noteworthy as well as
-view-worthy section of the Badlands is Sheep
-Mountain, located at the far west end of the
-Monument. Down from the summit runs a
-great canyon, the School of Mines Canyon,
-named for the fact that the South Dakota
-State School of Mines at Rapid City long ago
-chose that location for the bulk of its paleontological
-research. Under the guidance of
-famed Dr. Cleophas O&rsquo;Harra, for many years
-president of that institution, groups of Mines
-students went on extended annual encampments
-on Sheep Mountain, unearthing, among
-other rarities, full skeletons of the prehistoric
-midget horse, the saber-toothed tiger, and camels.
-It was this last discovery that lent considerable
-support to the concept, conjectural at
-the time of Dr. O&rsquo;Harra&rsquo;s discoveries, that a
-land bridge had once connected North America
-and Asia, allowing the migration of peoples
-and animals from the old world into the new.
-School of Mines Canyon, while some distance
-off the main highway leading from Pierre to
-the Black Hills, is by all means worth the time
-required to visit it. The canyon lies only thirteen
-miles from the town of Scenic.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_124">124</div>
-<p>The Badlands are reached by Highway
-14-16 and by State Route 40. Coming from
-the west, from Rapid City, the visitor can take
-route 40 directly to the town of Scenic, forty-seven
-miles distant. From Scenic, in addition
-to connecting with the side trip to Sheep
-Mountain, 40 continues along the north wall
-of the Badlands all the way to Cedar Pass and
-out the east end of the region, merging at
-Kadoka with Highway 16, or, by means of a
-nine-mile connection, with 14.</p>
-<p>Should the weather be bad and State 40 not
-recommended by local informers, the route is
-out of Rapid City on 14-16, east fifty-five
-miles to the town of Wall, thence by the access
-road through the Pinnacles, down into the
-Badlands halfway between Scenic and Cedar
-Pass, and joining State 40.</p>
-<p>From the east, Highway 16 goes through
-Kadoka, from which town State 40 should be
-taken, leading in through Cedar Pass, and out
-either through Scenic and on to Rapid City, or
-at the Pinnacles, through Wall and back on
-14-16. Coming from Pierre on 14, the tourist
-must leave that highway a few miles beyond
-the town of Philip and make the nine-mile detour
-on 16 to Kadoka, from there going on to
-Cedar Pass as described.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_125">125</div>
-<p>Several railroads serve the Badlands and its
-general region, notably the Chicago &amp; Northwestern,
-the Burlington, and the Chicago,
-Milwaukee, and St. Paul. This last road, the
-&ldquo;Milwaukee,&rdquo; offers the traveler the best view
-of the region, winding up the White River
-Valley the entire sixty-five miles between Kadoka
-and Scenic, and providing the passenger
-with unparalleled if hasty views of some of the
-most rugged and isolated portions of all the
-area.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_126">126</div>
-<h2 id="c7"><span class="small">Bibliography</span></h2>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Allsman, Paul T.</span> <i>Reconnaissance of Gold Mining Districts in
-the Black Hills, South Dakota.</i> U.S. Bureau of Mines, No.
-427. Washington, D. C.: U.S. Dept. of Interior, 1940.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Baldwin, G. P.</span>, editor. <i>The Black Hills Illustrated.</i> Philadelphia:
-Baldwin Syndicate, 1904.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Carpenter, F. R.</span> <i>The Mineral Resources of the Black Hills.</i>
-South Dakota School of Mines Preliminary Report, No. 1.
-Rapid City: South Dakota School of Mines, 1888.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Casey, Robert J.</span> <i>The Black Hills.</i> New York: Bobbs-Merrill
-Co., 1949.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Dick, Everett.</span> <i>Vanguards of the Frontier.</i> New York: D.
-Appleton-Century Co., 1941.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Eloe, Frank.</span> &ldquo;Rushmore Cave,&rdquo; <i>Black Hills Engineer</i>, XXIV
-(December, 1938), 274.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Fenton, C. L.</span> &ldquo;South Dakota&rsquo;s Badlands,&rdquo; <i>Nature Magazine</i>,
-XXIV (August, 1941), 370-74.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Glasscock, C. B.</span> <i>The Big Bonanza.</i> Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
-Co., 1931.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Hans, Fred.</span> <i>The Great Sioux Nation.</i> Chicago: Donahue, 1907.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Hayden, F. V.</span> and <span class="sc">Meek, F. B.</span> &ldquo;Remarks on Geology of the
-Black Hills,&rdquo; <i>Academy of Natural Science Proceedings.</i>
-Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Science, 1858, X, 41-59.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Hough, Emerson.</span> <i>The Passing of the Frontier.</i> New Haven:
-Yale University Press, 1921.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Kingsbury, G. W.</span> <i>History of Dakota Territory.</i> Chicago: The
-S. J. Clarke Co., 1915.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Lake, Stuart.</span> <i>Wyatt Earp.</i> Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Mirsky, Jeannette.</span> <i>The Westward Crossings.</i> New York: Alfred
-A. Knopf, 1946.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Newton, Henry.</span> <i>Geology of the Black Hills.</i> Washington,
-D. C.: United States Geographical and Geological Survey,
-1880.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">O&rsquo;Harra, C. C.</span> &ldquo;The Gold Mining Industry of the Black Hills,&rdquo;
-<i>Black Hills Engineer</i>, XIX (January, 1931), 3-9.</p>
-<p class="book">&mdash;&mdash;. <i>The White River Badlands.</i> Department of Geology,
-No. 13. Rapid City: South Dakota School of Mines, 1920.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Rothrach, E. P.</span> <i>A Hydrologic Study of the White River Valley.
-South Dakota Geological Survey Report.</i> Vermillion,
-South Dakota: University of South Dakota, February, 1942.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Todd, James Edward.</span> <i>A Preliminary Report on the Geology of
-South Dakota.</i> South Dakota Geological Survey, No. 1.
-Vermillion: University of South Dakota, 1894.</p>
-<p class="book"><span class="sc">Tullis, E. L.</span> &ldquo;The Geology of the Black Hills,&rdquo; <i>Black Hills
-Engineer</i>, XXV (April, 1939), 26-38.</p>
-<h2><span class="small">Footnotes</span></h2>
-<div class="fnblock"><div class="fndef"><a class="fn" id="fn_1" href="#fr_1">[1]</a>For an account of the history and natural wonders
-of Estes Park, readers are referred to a previous book
-in this series, <i>Estes Park: Resort in the Rockies</i>, by
-Edwin J. Foscue and Louis O. Quam.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn" id="fn_2" href="#fr_2">[2]</a>A treasured manuscript journal kept by the author&rsquo;s
-great-uncle, who was for many years curator of the Colorado
-State Historical Society&rsquo;s museum in Denver, reports
-an interview with Calamity Jane some time before
-her death which convinced him that the facts were substantially
-as they are stated here.</div>
-<div class="fncont">On the other hand, Mr. Will G. Robinson, the eminent
-State Historian of South Dakota, reports: &ldquo;On the authority
-of Dr. McGillicuddy, who was a medico at Ft.
-Laramie, and whose original letter I have, I would be
-entirely certain that she was born at Ft. Laramie, of a
-couple by the name of Dalton. Dalton was a soldier,
-was discharged and went out a short distance west to
-LaBonte. Here he was killed by Indians, although his
-wife got back into the fort with one eye gouged out, after
-which she shortly died. Her child got her name&mdash;Calamity&mdash;by
-reason of this disaster. She was not much over
-40 when she died in 1903.&rdquo;</div>
-<div class="fncont">The discrepancy between these two accounts, both
-studiously researched and documented by men whose
-professional careers have been given over to solving puzzles
-of this nature with which western history abounds,
-is typical of the disagreement among well-authenticated
-reports of the birth and early life of this female enigma.</div>
-<div class="fncont">In any event, it is a matter which is still subject to
-a maximum amount of conjecture, and for a much more
-complete account of the variant clues readers are enthusiastically
-referred to Nolie Mumey&rsquo;s <i>Calamity Jane</i>
-(Denver: Privately printed, 1949).
-</div>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_127">127</div>
-<h2 id="c8"><span class="small">Index</span></h2>
-<p class="center"><a class="ab" href="#index_A">A</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_B">B</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_C">C</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_D">D</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_E">E</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_F">F</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_G">G</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_H">H</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_I">I</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_J">J</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_K">K</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_L">L</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_Mc">Mc</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_M">M</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_N">N</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_O">O</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_P">P</a> <span class="ab">Q</span> <a class="ab" href="#index_R">R</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_S">S</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_T">T</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_U">U</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_V">V</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_W">W</a> <span class="ab">X</span> <a class="ab" href="#index_Y">Y</a> <a class="ab" href="#index_Z">Z</a></p>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_A"><b>A</b></dt>
-<dt>Abilene (Kan.), <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></dt>
-<dt>Adams Memorial Museum, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></dt>
-<dt>Alaska, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></dt>
-<dt>Algonkian Period, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></dt>
-<dt>American Fur Company, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></dt>
-<dt>Amherst College, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></dt>
-<dt>Anchor City (S.D.), <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
-<dt>Archean Period, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-18</dt>
-<dt>Archean sea, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></dt>
-<dt>Atlantic (Iowa), <a href="#Page_88">88</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_B"><b>B</b></dt>
-<dt>Badlands, White River, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-17</dt>
-<dt>Bass, Sam, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-81, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>-83, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
-<dt>Battle Mountain, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Beadle &amp; Adams, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></dt>
-<dt>Beaver Creek, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></dt>
-<dt>Belle Fourche (S.D.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a></dt>
-<dt>Belle Fourche River, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></dt>
-<dt>Belle Fourche Round-up, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></dt>
-<dt>Big Horn Basin, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></dt>
-<dt>Big Horn River, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></dt>
-<dt>Bismarck (S.D.), <a href="#Page_53">53</a></dt>
-<dt>Black Bart, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
-<dt>Black Hills &amp; Badlands Assn., <a href="#Page_44">44</a></dt>
-<dt>Black Hills Range Days, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></dt>
-<dt>Black Hills Teachers College, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></dt>
-<dt>Black Moon (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_66">66</a></dt>
-<dt>Blackfeet tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Blodgett, Sam, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></dt>
-<dt>Borglum, Gutzon, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-39</dt>
-<dt>Bozeman Trail, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-53</dt>
-<dt>Brule tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></dt>
-<dt>&ldquo;Broken Hand.&rdquo; <i>See</i> Fitzpatrick, Thomas</dt>
-<dt>Buffalo Bill, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></dt>
-<dt>Burlington Railroad, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_C"><b>C</b></dt>
-<dt>Calamity Jane, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-91, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-11</dt>
-<dt><i>Calamity Jane</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
-<dt>California, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></dt>
-<dt>Cambrian Period, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>-20</dt>
-<dt>Cambrian sea, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></dt>
-<dt>Canyon Springs, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></dt>
-<dt>Carlsbad Caverns, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></dt>
-<dt>Carson, Kit, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></dt>
-<dt>Cathedral Park, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></dt>
-<dt>Central City (S.D.), <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
-<dt>Cheyenne (Wyo.), <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-61, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-81, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></dt>
-<dt>Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></dt>
-<dt>Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></dt>
-<dt>Cheyenne Indians, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Cheyenne River, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></dt>
-<dt>Chicago (Ill.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Chicago &amp; Northwestern Railroad, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Clarke, Dick, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></dt>
-<dt>Colorado, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-33, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></dt>
-<dt>Coolidge, President Calvin, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></dt>
-<dt>Crazy Horse (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-67</dt>
-<dt>Cripple Creek (Colo.), <a href="#Page_72">72</a></dt>
-<dt>Crocker, Charles, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
-<dt>Crook, General, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-66, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></dt>
-<dt>Crystal Cave, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></dt>
-<dt>Custer (S.D.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>-11, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-31, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-43, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>-71, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></dt>
-<dt>Custer, General George Armstrong, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-57, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-67, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></dt>
-<dt>Custer State Park, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></dt>
-<dt>Custer&rsquo;s Last Stand, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_D"><b>D</b></dt>
-<dt>Darrall, Duke, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
-<dt>Days of &rsquo;76, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></dt>
-<dt>Dead Man&rsquo;s Hand (poker), <a href="#Page_95">95</a></dt>
-<dt>Deadtree Gulch, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></dt>
-<dt class="pb" id="Page_128">128</dt>
-<dt>Deadwood (S.D.), <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>-84, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-6, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-11</dt>
-<dt>Deadwood City (S.D.), <a href="#Page_76">76</a></dt>
-<dt>Deadwood Dick, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-94</dt>
-<dt>Deadwood Dick, Jr., <a href="#Page_92">92</a></dt>
-<dt>Deadwood Gulch, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></dt>
-<dt>Denver (Colo.), <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-4, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
-<dt>Devonian Period, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></dt>
-<dt>Dodge, General Grenville, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
-<dt>Dodge City (Kan.), <a href="#Page_84">84</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_E"><b>E</b></dt>
-<dt>Earp, Wyatt, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-86</dt>
-<dt>Egan, Capt. Pat, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></dt>
-<dt>Estes Park, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></dt>
-<dt>Evans, Fred T., <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Evans Hotel, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Evans, John, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_F"><b>F</b></dt>
-<dt>Fair, James, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
-<dt>Fellows, Dick, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
-<dt>Fitzpatrick, Thomas, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
-<dt>Fort Ellis, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></dt>
-<dt>Fort Fetterman, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></dt>
-<dt>Fort Laramie, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>-52, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></dt>
-<dt>Fort Lincoln, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></dt>
-<dt>Fort Pierre, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></dt>
-<dt>Fort Sully, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
-<dt>French Creek, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_G"><b>G</b></dt>
-<dt>Gall (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_66">66</a></dt>
-<dt>Game Lodge, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-33</dt>
-<dt>Gayville (S.D.), <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
-<dt>Gibbon, General John, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-65</dt>
-<dt>Gold, discovered in the Black Hills, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></dt>
-<dt>Gold Discovery Days, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></dt>
-<dt>Golden Gate (S.D.), <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
-<dt>Golden Star mine, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></dt>
-<dt>Golden Terra mine, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></dt>
-<dt>Gordon party, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></dt>
-<dt>Great Plains, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_H"><b>H</b></dt>
-<dt>Haggin, James Ben Ali, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
-<dt>Harney Peak, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-36, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></dt>
-<dt>Harney-Sanborne Treaty, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></dt>
-<dt>Hayden, V. F., <a href="#Page_121">121</a></dt>
-<dt>Hays City (Kan.), <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></dt>
-<dt>Hearst, Senator George, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-75</dt>
-<dt>Hearst, William Randolph, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
-<dt>Hickok, Wild Bill, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-97, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-102, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-8</dt>
-<dt>Hinckley&rsquo;s Overland Express, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
-<dt>Homestake Mine, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-76, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></dt>
-<dt>Homestake Mining Co., <a href="#Page_75">75</a></dt>
-<dt>Hot Springs (S.D.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-9, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_I"><b>I</b></dt>
-<dt>Ice Cave, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>-44</dt>
-<dt>Inkpaduta (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_66">66</a></dt>
-<dt><i>Inter-Ocean</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_J"><b>J</b></dt>
-<dt>Jefferson, President Thomas, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></dt>
-<dt>Jenney Stockade, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></dt>
-<dt>Jennings, Dr., <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Jewel Cave, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></dt>
-<dt>Jones, Seth, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
-<dt>Julesburg (Colo.), <a href="#Page_97">97</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_K"><b>K</b></dt>
-<dt>Kansas, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
-<dt>Kansas City (Mo.), <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Kind, Ezra, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_L"><b>L</b></dt>
-<dt>Lake, Agnes, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></dt>
-<dt>Laramie (Wyo.), <a href="#Page_61">61</a></dt>
-<dt>Last Chance Gulch, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></dt>
-<dt>Lead (S.D.), <a href="#Page_75">75</a></dt>
-<dt><i>Legend of Sam Bass</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></dt>
-<dt>Leidy, Dr. Joseph, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></dt>
-<dt>Lincoln, President Abraham, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></dt>
-<dt>Lincoln Highway, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></dt>
-<dt>Little Big Horn River, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></dt>
-<dt>Luenen (Germany), <a href="#Page_12">12</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_Mc"><b>Mc</b></dt>
-<dt>McCall, Jack, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-102</dt>
-<dt>McCanles gang, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></dt>
-<dt>McKay, William T., <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_M"><b>M</b></dt>
-<dt>Manuel, Fred, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-75</dt>
-<dt>Manuel, Moses, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-75</dt>
-<dt>Meier, Joseph, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></dt>
-<dt class="pb" id="Page_129">129</dt>
-<dt>Miles City (Mont.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a></dt>
-<dt>Minneapolis (Minn.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a></dt>
-<dt>Minnekahta Canyon, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Minnesota, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
-<dt>Minniconjou tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Mississippian Period, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></dt>
-<dt>Missouri, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></dt>
-<dt>Missouri River, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></dt>
-<dt>Missouri Valley, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
-<dt>Mogollon (mountains), <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
-<dt>Montana, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></dt>
-<dt>Mount Coolidge, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></dt>
-<dt>Mount Evans, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></dt>
-<dt>Mount Moriah Cemetery, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></dt>
-<dt>Mount Rushmore, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-41</dt>
-<dt>Mount Washington, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></dt>
-<dt>Mumey, Nolie, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
-<dt>Murietta, Joaquin, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_N"><b>N</b></dt>
-<dt>National Park Service, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></dt>
-<dt>Nebraska, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></dt>
-<dt>Needles, The, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></dt>
-<dt>Needles Highway, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-35</dt>
-<dt>Nevada, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></dt>
-<dt>Newcastle (Wyo.), <a href="#Page_43">43</a></dt>
-<dt>Niobrara River, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></dt>
-<dt>North America, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></dt>
-<dt>North Platte River, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></dt>
-<dt>Number Ten, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-100</dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_O"><b>O</b></dt>
-<dt>Oglala tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></dt>
-<dt>O&rsquo;Harra, Dr. Cleophas, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></dt>
-<dt>Omaha (Neb.), <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Ordovician Period, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></dt>
-<dt>Oregon Trail, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
-<dt>Oregon-California Trail, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></dt>
-<dt>Owen Survey, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_P"><b>P</b></dt>
-<dt>Paha Sapa (Indian name for Black Hills), <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></dt>
-<dt>Paleozoic Era, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></dt>
-<dt>Passion Play, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></dt>
-<dt>Pearson, John, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-72</dt>
-<dt>Pierre (S.D.), <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
-<dt>Pikes Peak, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></dt>
-<dt>Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></dt>
-<dt>Platte River, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
-<dt>Platte River-Oregon Trail, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Platte Valley, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
-<dt>Portland-Independence Mine, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></dt>
-<dt>Powder River Valley, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></dt>
-<dt>Preacher Smith, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-91, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-5</dt>
-<dt>Princeton University, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></dt>
-<dt>Prout, Prof. Hiram, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>-20</dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_R"><b>R</b></dt>
-<dt>Rapid City (S.D.), <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>-7, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-14, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Rawlins (Wyo.), <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
-<dt>Red Cloud (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_52">52</a>-53</dt>
-<dt>Reno, Major, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-68</dt>
-<dt>Reynolds, Charley, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></dt>
-<dt>Rhodes, Eugene Manlove, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></dt>
-<dt>Rio Grande Valley, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></dt>
-<dt>Robinson, Will, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></dt>
-<dt>Rocky Mountains, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></dt>
-<dt>Roosevelt, President Theodore, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></dt>
-<dt>Rosebud Creek, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></dt>
-<dt>Ross, H. N., <a href="#Page_55">55</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_S"><b>S</b></dt>
-<dt>St. Joseph (Mo.), <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
-<dt>St. Louis (Mo.), <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></dt>
-<dt>St. Paul (Minn.), <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>San Arc tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>San Francisco (Calif.), <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-75</dt>
-<dt>Santa Fe Trail, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Santee Sioux, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
-<dt>School of Mines Canyon, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></dt>
-<dt>Seventh Cavalry, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></dt>
-<dt>Sheridan, General Phil, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>-57</dt>
-<dt>Sidney (Neb.), <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></dt>
-<dt>Sidney Short Route, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></dt>
-<dt>Silurian Period, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></dt>
-<dt>Silver Heels, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></dt>
-<dt>Sioux Indians, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
-<dt>Sioux War, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></dt>
-<dt>Sitting Bull (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-67</dt>
-<dt class="pb" id="Page_130">130</dt>
-<dt>Smith, Rev. Henry. <i>See</i> Preacher Smith</dt>
-<dt>South Dakota, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></dt>
-<dt>Spearfish (S.D.), <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></dt>
-<dt>Spencer, Joseph, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></dt>
-<dt>Springfield (Mo.), <a href="#Page_97">97</a></dt>
-<dt>Standing Bear (Indian Chief), <a href="#Page_40">40</a></dt>
-<dt>Stanford, Leland, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
-<dt>Sunday Creek, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></dt>
-<dt>Sylvan Lake, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-36, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_T"><b>T</b></dt>
-<dt><i>Ten Nights in a Barroom</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></dt>
-<dt>Terry, General, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>-64</dt>
-<dt>Teton Sioux, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Texas Rangers, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></dt>
-<dt>Thoen, Louis, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></dt>
-<dt>Thunderhead Mountain, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-41</dt>
-<dt><i>Trial of Jack McCall, The</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></dt>
-<dt>Triassic Period, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></dt>
-<dt>Two Kettle tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_U"><b>U</b></dt>
-<dt>Union Pacific Railroad, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></dt>
-<dt>University of Nebraska, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></dt>
-<dt>University of South Dakota, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></dt>
-<dt>Unkpapa tribe, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
-<dt>Ussher, Archbishop James, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></dt>
-<dt>Utah, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_V"><b>V</b></dt>
-<dt>Vale of Minnekahta, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></dt>
-<dt>Virginia City (Nev.), <a href="#Page_73">73</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_W"><b>W</b></dt>
-<dt>War Department, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></dt>
-<dt>Washington (D.C.), <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></dt>
-<dt>Washington, President George, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></dt>
-<dt>Wells Fargo, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-84</dt>
-<dt>Wheeler, Edward L., <a href="#Page_91">91</a></dt>
-<dt>White, George, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
-<dt>White River, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></dt>
-<dt>White River Badlands. <i>See</i> Badlands</dt>
-<dt>Wild Bill Hickok, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-97, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-102, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-8</dt>
-<dt>Wind Cave, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-29, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-44</dt>
-<dt>Wind Cave Park, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></dt>
-<dt>Witwatersrand, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></dt>
-<dt>Wood Lake, battle of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
-<dt>Wright, Frank Lloyd, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></dt>
-<dt>Wyoming, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_Y"><b>Y</b></dt>
-<dt>Yale University, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></dt>
-<dt>Yankton (S.D.), <a href="#Page_102">102</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<dl class="index">
-<dt class="center" id="index_Z"><b>Z</b></dt>
-<dt>Ziolkowski, Korczak, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-41, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></dt>
-</dl>
-<hr />
-<p><span class="lr">$2.50</span></p>
-<h3 id="c9"><span class="large">THE BLACK HILLS</span>
-<br /><span class="small">MID-CONTINENT RESORT</span></h3>
-<p>From taboo Indian fastness to roaring gold
-camp to modern resort and recreation area&mdash;so
-runs the history of the Black Hills,
-Paha Sapa of the Indians, which are really
-not hills at all but mountains, the highest
-east of the Rockies. Back through geologic
-ages the story extends, to the thunderous
-time when Nature fashioned the intricate
-formations of the Hills and their companion
-geologic marvel, the Badlands.</p>
-<p>Here, in racy and fluent prose, Albert N.
-Williams has brought the full sweep of this
-story to life, from its beginning in the
-mighty geologic upheaval that, before the
-Alps had been formed, thrust the giant spire
-of Harney Peak up through the ancient
-shale, to the present quiet rest of man-made
-Sylvan Lake, where it lies peacefully
-reflecting its great granite shields for the
-delight of the traveler.</p>
-<p>On the way he tells of the discovery of
-gold in this &ldquo;mysterious and brooding dark
-mountain-land&rdquo; just when gold-hungry men
-had decided that the bonanza days were
-gone forever; of the Indian fighting that
-reached its tragic climax at the Little Big
-Horn; of the development of the Homestake,
-one of earth&rsquo;s greatest mines; of the
-hazardous stage-coach journeys on which
-&ldquo;shotgun messengers&rdquo; guarded chests of
-bullion; and, most fascinating of all, of the
-amazing personalities&mdash;Sam Bass and Wyatt
-Earp and Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity
-Jane and Preacher Smith&mdash;who inhabited
-the Hills in their gaudiest days or, like
-Deadwood Dick, lived a no less vivid life in
-the pages of dime novels.</p>
-<p>If this were all, <i>The Black Hills</i> would
-be a book for any lover of our country&rsquo;s
-natural glories and thrilling history to pick
-up and be unable to lay down again until he
-had finished it. But other chapters directed
-particularly to the tourist make it also a
-book for the traveler to keep always with
-him and to consult at every point in his
-journey through the Black Hills. All he
-needs to know is here&mdash;the highways to take
-into the Hills, the towns with their historic
-plays and celebrations, the peaks and lakes
-and caves he will find, the sports he may enjoy,
-the places where he may stay. A trip so
-guided cannot fail to be filled with the excitement
-the author himself has found in the
-Black Hills, of which he says that in his
-opinion &ldquo;no other resort area in the United
-States possesses such a wealth of tourist attractions.&rdquo;</p>
-<p class="tb">Albert N. Williams was for many years a
-writer for NBC in New York, and for two
-years Editor-in-Chief of the English features
-section of the Voice of America. He is
-the author of <i>Listening</i>, <i>Rocky Mountain
-Country</i>, <i>The Water and the Power</i>, and
-numerous short fiction pieces in national
-magazines. He is at present Director of Development
-of the University of Denver.</p>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/p02.jpg" alt="Southern Methodist University Press Logo" width="200" height="224" />
-</div>
-<p class="center"><span class="sc">Southern Methodist University Press
-<br />Dallas 5, Texas</span></p>
-<h2>Transcriber&rsquo;s Notes</h2>
-<ul>
-<li>Silently corrected a few typos.</li>
-<li>Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.</li>
-<li>In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.</li>
-</ul>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort, by
-Albert Nathaniel Williams
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort, by
-Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort
- American Resort Series No. 4
-
-Author: Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-Release Date: July 11, 2017 [EBook #55088]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK HILLS MID-CONTINENT RESORT ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- The Black Hills
- MID-CONTINENT RESORT
-
-
- BY Albert N. Williams
-
- [Illustration: Southern Methodist University Press Logo]
-
- AMERICAN RESORT SERIES NO. 4
-
- Southern Methodist University Press
- 1952
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY
- SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY PRESS
- PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
- BY AMERICAN BOOK--STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK
-
-
- AMERICAN RESORT SERIES
-
- No. 1: Gatlinburg: Gateway to the Great Smokies, _by Edwin J. Foscue_
- No. 2: Taxco: Mexico's Silver City, _by Edwin J. Foscue_
- No. 3: Estes Park: Resort in the Rockies, _by Edwin J. Foscue and
- Louis O. Quam_
- No. 4: The Black Hills: Mid-Continent Resort, _by Albert N. Williams_
-
-
- For Chris
-
-
-
-
- Acknowledgments
-
-
-The research on early Black Hills and Badlands history was ably assisted
-by Miss June Carothers, whose services were provided the author through
-a generous grant-in-aid by the University of Denver's Bureau of
-Humanities and Social Development.
-
-Miss Ina T. Aulls, Mrs. Alys Freeze, Mrs. Opal Harber, Miss Margery
-Bedinger, Mrs. Margaret Simonds, Mrs. Elizabeth Kingston, and Mrs. Clara
-Cutright, all of the Denver Public Library, are particularly to be
-thanked for placing the resources of that institution at my disposal.
-
-For assistance in preparing the manuscript, I wish to thank Miss Helen
-Kiamos, Miss Edith Goldfarb, and Miss Lillian Helling.
-
-I am indebted to Bell Photo of Rapid City for the photograph of the
-Needles highway; to Ned Perrigoue of Rapid City for that of Sylvan Lake;
-to the Denver Public Library Western Collection for those of Calamity
-Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Deadwood Gulch in 1881; and to Mr. A. H.
-Pankow of the South Dakota State Highway Commission for that of a Black
-Hills stream.
-
-And finally, as always, thanks go to my wife, Ann, for her patient
-editorial help.
-
- Albert N. Williams
-
- _University of Denver
- Denver, Colorado_
-
-
- Books by Albert N. Williams
-
- LISTENING
- ROCKY MOUNTAIN COUNTRY
- THE WATER AND THE POWER
- THE BOOK BY MY SIDE
-
-
-
-
- Contents
-
-
- I The Black Hills: The Forbidden Land 1
- II The Formation of the Black Hills 15
- III The Hills Today 27
- IV History I: Indians and Gold 47
- V History II: Deadwood Days 78
- VI The White River Badlands 115
- Bibliography 126
- Index 127
-
-
-
-
- Illustrations
-
-
- Along the Needles Highway _facing page_ 34
- Harney Peak--older by ages than the Rockies 35
- The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial 50
- Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an elevation of 6,250
- feet 51
- Calamity Jane, during her carnival days 82
- Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait 82
- Cheyenne--Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded by shotgun
- messengers 82
- Deadwood Gulch in 1881 83
- Modern Deadwood--seventy years later 83
- One of the Black Hills' many streams 98
- The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared 99
-
-
-
-
- Introduction
-
-
-I have had an opportunity to enjoy one of the most readable accounts of
-the Black Hills I have ever come across. It is written to acquaint
-traveling America with an area which was long off the beaten path of
-tourists, and which has only during the past quarter century been
-recognized as a place where people who wish to "Know America First" may
-profitably spend some time.
-
-Mr. Williams has outlined the historical reason why this small
-wonderland was so long outside the consciousness of America, and he has
-devoted a chapter to telling about the methods of nature in producing
-the intricacies of this formation, older by far than the Alps or the
-Himalayas. He has made the subject live, and he includes enough expert
-terminology to satisfy the reader that he knows whereof he speaks.
-
-In his chapter on "The Hills Today" Mr. Williams outlines what the
-tourist should see, and how to see it. For that chapter alone his book
-would be well worth the attention of every prospective sight-seer. He
-has two chapters pertaining to the history of the region, the first
-speculating on how the whole economic growth of the West might well have
-been altered had a confirmed story of "gold in the Black Hills" been
-released fifty years before it was spread-eagled on the pages of the
-_Chicago Inter-Ocean_. It is an interesting speculation, and he gives it
-a pleasing reality.
-
-Another chapter deals with the lives of some of the characters exploited
-and given semi-permanent fame by the old dime novels. Deadwood without
-these characters would be just another picturesque town set down in a
-mountain valley; with them it becomes one of America's better-known hot
-spots, vying with the Klondike and Leadville.
-
-Mr. Williams' last chapter on the Badlands, a neighboring phenomenon, a
-place of amazing mystery and strange disorder, serves to depict what
-might be termed the undepictable in terms exactly calculated to excite
-the reader's absorbed interest.
-
- Will G. Robinson
-
- _South Dakota State Historical Society
- Pierre, South Dakota
- December 17, 1951_
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER ONE
- The Black Hills:
- The Forbidden Land
-
-
-The thing to remember is that the Black Hills are not hills at all. They
-are mountains, the highest mountains east of the Rockies, with Harney
-Peak rising to a height of 7,242 feet above sea level. Inasmuch as the
-prairie floor averages, at the four entrances to the Hills, only 3,200
-feet in elevation, these are mountains of considerable stature.
-
-The title "hills" was by no means given the area by early white
-settlers. Indeed, if that majestic domain had not already been named the
-Black Hills by the Indians, George Armstrong Custer, who in 1874 made
-the first full-scale exploration of the region, would no doubt have
-dignified it with a more appropriate and properly descriptive name--the
-Sioux or the Dakota Mountains, in all probability.
-
-From time beyond remembrance, however, the region had been known to the
-Indians as Paha Sapa, exactly to be translated as "Black Hills," and
-very properly that name was accepted by government geographers. The use
-of the word "black" possibly fulfilled several functions, for not only
-do these massive peaks appear decidedly black when seen against the
-horizon across distances as great as a hundred miles, but they were, to
-the superstitious braves of the Teton Sioux, the abode of the Thunders
-and studiously to be avoided.
-
-This taboo fastness was one of the last regions in the great American
-West to be explored and settled. For one reason, it enjoyed an isolation
-from the centers of development that served to discourage any but the
-most hardy of explorers. Lying in the extreme western end of present-day
-South Dakota, the Black Hills were two hundred miles west of the
-settlements around Pierre, on the Missouri River, and two hundred miles
-north of the towns along the North Platte, the valley of the
-Oregon-California Trail. The most important reason, though, for its
-belated opening was that gold was not discovered in the Black Hills
-until 1874, and it was the discovery of gold in various sections which
-more than any other single set of circumstances dictated the pattern of
-the development of the trans-Mississippi West.
-
-Even today this fascinating region remains nearly the most remote of all
-America's resort and recreation areas. The Grand Canyon lies but an
-hour's drive from a major east-west transcontinental highway. Estes
-Park,[1] in the Rockies, is only seventy miles from the city of Denver.
-Glacier Park is easily served by the Great Northern Railroad on its
-overland run, and Yellowstone enjoys direct service by three railroads.
-But the Black Hills lie beyond the privileges of railroad stopovers, and
-in order to visit them the tourist has no choice but to plan a vacation
-trip for the sake of the Hills themselves and not as a side venture from
-any of the traditional tours of the West. The Hills are worth the
-effort.
-
-The Black Hills occupy a rectangular realm which is roughly one hundred
-miles long, north to south, and fifty miles across its east-west axis.
-The White River Badlands, which are customarily visited on any Black
-Hills trip, form a depression in the high prairies some forty miles long
-and fifteen miles across the widest part. This stark and empty waste is
-to be found some seventy-five miles east of the Black Hills, or, more
-precisely, east of Rapid on U.S. Highway 14-16.
-
-There are five major access routes to the land of Paha Sapa. From the
-west, which is to say from Yellowstone Park, five hundred miles distant,
-the Hills can be reached by U.S. Highways 14 and 16. These routes come
-in together across the high plains of northern Wyoming, and separate a
-few hours' drive from the South Dakota border, 14 veering to the north
-and 16 continuing through the central section of the Hills.
-
-From the south, U.S. 85 comes up from Denver, four hundred miles
-distant, crossing the Lincoln Highway at Cheyenne, and continuing along
-the route of the old Cheyenne-Deadwood stage.
-
-From Omaha and points in the southeast, the Hills are best reached over
-U.S. 20 across the top side of Nebraska. Although this route is not a
-major east-west route for interstate tourists, it serves a busy
-agricultural section and is generally in fine repair.
-
- [Illustration: The Black Hills; The Badlands]
-
-From the east U.S. 14 and 16, again, bring the tourist through Pierre,
-on the Missouri River, past the Badlands, and into the Hills through
-Rapid City. From Minneapolis the distance is just over six hundred
-miles, while from Chicago it is very nearly a thousand.
-
-For those entering the region from the north, U.S. 12 from Miles City,
-Montana, is in all probability the best route.
-
-The gateways to the Black Hills are the towns of Hot Springs in the
-south, Rapid City on the eastern edge, Spearfish or Belle Fourche at the
-north, and Custer in the west. All these towns offer entirely acceptable
-accommodations for a touring family; in fact, no one need drive more
-than twenty or thirty miles from any point in the area to find suitable
-lodgings at a desired rate.
-
-Hot Springs, on U.S. 18-85A and State 87, is situated at an altitude of
-3,443 feet and has a population of approximately five thousand. It is
-the one sector of the Black Hills that does not owe its original
-development to the gold rush of the seventies, but was sought out from
-the earliest days for its natural thermal springs.
-
-The town is located in a large bowl of the southern hills known as the
-Vale of Minnekahta, from the Sioux name for "warm waters." Situated as
-it is on the rim of the Hills region, it was not included in the general
-taboo that cloaked the rest of Paha Sapa to the north; and for nearly a
-century before its discovery by the white man in 1875, it was a favored
-health resort of the Indians. As a matter of fact, Battle Mountain,
-which overlooks the town, takes its name from a legendary war between
-the Sioux and the Cheyenne for the exclusive privileges of the hot
-baths.
-
-Not long after the discovery of the springs a syndicate of investors who
-had come into the Hills from Iowa bought the ranch claims that had been
-taken out in the Minnekahta Canyon, and sought to develop the region as
-a spa. This was in the late eighties when salubrious waters were in high
-fashion as a cure for arthritis and other joint and muscular disorders
-of various degrees of complexity. Colonel Fred T. Evans, who had made a
-fortune operating a bull-team freight line from Fort Pierre to Rapid
-City, built an elaborate resort, the Evans Hotel, which even today is
-imposing in its last-century splendor; and with the arrival in 1890 and
-1891 of two railroads, the Chicago and Northwestern and the Burlington,
-wealthy cure-seekers from all over the United States made it their habit
-to spend the summer months in this pleasant town.
-
- [Illustration: Highways leading into the Black Hills.]
-
-Healing waters have long since gone out of vogue as a form of
-recreation, and although several clinics still treat a modest number of
-visitors for one indisposition or another, the town of Hot Springs has
-ceased to be a tourist center of any consequence. Also, the fact that
-the Springs are located a considerable distance south of U.S. 16, the
-main east-west route through the Hills, has contributed to the
-increasing isolation which this town enjoys, drowsily seeing to the
-wants of the occasional visitor who strays into Paha Sapa from the south
-along U.S. 85. But do not mistake it, it is a pleasant town to stop in,
-with excellent motor courts and a good selection of restaurants.
-
-The town of Custer, a scant fifteen miles from the Wyoming border on
-U.S. 16, is little more today than a tourist stopover. It is almost two
-thousand feet higher than Hot Springs, at an altitude of 5,301 feet, and
-contains, according to the latest estimates, nearly two thousand
-residents.
-
-As the tourist enters the town he will immediately be amazed by the wide
-main street; but if he ponders for a moment the problems of turning a
-freight wagon behind sixteen oxen, the reason will become clear. Custer,
-the western gateway to the Hills, was, until the coming of the
-railroads, a major way station on the busy Cheyenne-Deadwood stage and
-freight route; and for fifteen years the great bull wagons teamed into
-this busy center where, in most cases, the goods were unloaded and
-trans-shipped by lighter wagons into the various mining centers
-throughout the northern and central Hills.
-
-Custer, the oldest of the white man's settlements in Paha Sapa, was
-founded in 1875 by gold-seekers who flocked into the territory following
-the reports of yellow metal sent back by George Custer after his
-exploratory campaign of 1874. In the first spring and summer of its
-existence more than five thousand miners swarmed into the region to pan
-gold. This invasion was a violation of the government's treaty with the
-Sioux, and the military forced the argonauts to leave.
-
-By 1876 the Indian problem had come to a head with the defeat of General
-Custer on the Little Big Horn in eastern Montana; and as one phase of
-retaliation the federal government redrafted the Sioux treaty, allowing
-American citizens to enter the Black Hills, until this time reserved for
-the Indians. Although for some time the tribal leaders could not be
-persuaded to sign the revised agreement, the restrictions on settlers
-were removed, and back into the Hills rushed the prospectors--this time
-to the new strikes in Deadwood Gulch, in the north.
-
-By the middle of 1877 Custer, where gold had originally been found, had
-a population of a mere three hundred souls, all of them concerned
-primarily with the operation of the stage stations and hostels. True, a
-few grizzled placer miners still worked the streams near by, and do to
-this day; but hard rock mining in Deadwood was the new order of affairs.
-
-The visitor to this section of the Hills today will find it pleasant to
-stay the night in any one of a wide choice of tourist courts and other
-reasonable billets, and he may see much of historical interest within a
-few miles' drive of Custer. A settler's stockade, reconstructed to the
-original model of 1874, is a remarkable site to visit, and the Jewel
-Cave is best reached from this point. For sheer color and pageantry the
-annual celebration of Gold Discovery Days, which is held at Custer late
-in July--near the date of the discovery of gold, July 27--is an affair
-not to be missed during a Black Hills vacation at that time of year.
-
-The town of Spearfish is the point of entrance to the region on U.S. 14,
-or, coming in from the north, on U.S. 85. This tidy metropolis, called
-the Queen City of the Black Hills, never knew the heady history that
-marked the early days of Custer, of Deadwood, of Rapid City, or even of
-fashionable Hot Springs. Lying outside the magnificent natural bowl of
-mineral deposits, Spearfish was founded and exists today for the simple
-purpose of supplying the inner Hills with food and produce. It has a
-population of between three and four thousand people, most of whose
-energies are devoted to agriculture and livestock.
-
-Spearfish has, however, carved for itself a fame and renown even larger,
-in many quarters, than that enjoyed by the gold rush towns of gustier
-memories. It is the home of the Black Hills Passion Play.
-
-This beautiful and stirring performance, which is given in a large
-amphitheater on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday evenings throughout the
-summers, is a resurrection in an American atmosphere of the
-centuries-old Passion of Luenen, in Germany. The man who plays the
-Christus, an inherited responsibility through many generations, is Josef
-Meier, who fled from Europe in 1932. For six years, with a reassembled
-cast, he toured the United States, performing a much trimmed-down
-version of the historic morality on college campuses, in civic
-auditoriums, and at summer encampments. It was at such a performance at
-the Black Hills Teachers College that the citizens of Spearfish were
-inspired to offer the touring company a permanent home. Meier and his
-group eagerly accepted the offer, and the town constructed an outdoor
-theater seating eight thousand people. Now, each winter the Passion Play
-continues its tour of the United States, but all during July and August
-it remains in residence, acting its moving and majestic pageant to
-constantly packed houses.
-
-The eastern gateway to the Hills is Rapid City, a metropolis of thirty
-thousand people which lies on the level prairie just to the east of the
-final ring of foothills. Founded, like Spearfish, not as a mining center
-but to serve the near-by gold regions, Rapid City has developed a maze
-of industrial and commercial enterprises. Shipping, of course, has been
-a basic form of commerce from the earliest days, with the two most
-heavily traveled trails into the Black Hills, that from Fort Pierre and
-that from Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific, entering the gold area
-at Rapid City. Lumbering, manufacture, banking, and livestock quickly
-became prominent as the gold fever subsided and the more permanent
-settlers began coming into the region to take up the rich cattle and
-farming lands in western South Dakota. A final guarantee that Rapid City
-will continue to flourish may be seen in the selection by the Air Force
-of the high, level prairie land just ten miles to the east of the city
-as the nation's major mid-continent bomber base.
-
-Rapid City is served by U.S. Highway 14-16, and South Dakota state
-highways 40 and 79. Two railroads and a major airline assist in handling
-the heavy summer tourist travel, and from Rapid City practically every
-point of interest in the Black Hills can be reached by car within three
-hours.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER TWO
- The Formation of the Black Hills
-
-
-One of the most rewarding features of a visit to the Black Hills is the
-opportunity for the average individual, who has no technical training,
-to see with his own eyes a museum of the earth's ages and a living
-sample of practically every one of the many aeons of the planet's
-history.
-
-The Hills, which is to say the rock substances of the region, are older
-by hundreds of millions of years than the stone out-juttings of the
-Rocky Mountains. Layer after layer of slates and schists from the very
-foundations of this globe lie visibly exposed as the end result of a
-doming of the region, a vast blistering, as it were, which raised the
-entire structure, layer upon layer, several thousand feet in the air.
-Following this doming process, a vigorous program of erosion commenced.
-Stratum by stratum the winds and rains cut across this huge blister in a
-horizontal plane, eventually laying the core open at the height above
-sea level at which we find the Black Hills today. From that core,
-extending in every direction in the general form of a circle, the
-various strata which once lay so smoothly one upon another have been
-laid open as one might slice off the top of an orange.
-
- [Illustration: The Doming of the Black Hills
-
- Rock Strata being shifted into a dome at the time of the great
- continental uplift.
-
- The forces of erosion--wind and water--have levelled the dome and
- opened the seams to view.]
-
-In order to get an even clearer picture of how this amazing phenomenon
-came about through the aeons, let us fold back the ages to the very
-birth of this planet.
-
-For centuries men have attempted to determine the earth's exact age, but
-except for the famed Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland, who gravely
-calculated that the earth was formed at precisely nine o'clock on the
-morning of the twelfth of October in the year 4004 B.C., no scientist
-has been able to come closer than a few million years in the figures.
-Through a number of trustworthy measurements, however--including, in
-recent years, the examination of the deterioration of radioactive
-elements in rocks--geologists have agreed that the oldest known
-ingredients of the earth's crust have been in existence at least two
-billion years, and, according to some very recent calculations, possibly
-as long as three and a half billion.
-
-In what is known as the Archean period, the most ancient of which we
-have any geological knowledge, a vast sea covered much of North America,
-bounded by certain masses of land, the extent of which has never been
-discovered. From this land mass remnants of mud and sand were broken
-away by waves and deposited on the floor of the sea. Eventually, under
-the pressure of its own weight, this material formed shales and
-sandstones to an undetermined depth--many thousands of feet. Those
-particular sandstones and shales underlie the entire Black Hills area
-and extend in nearly every direction for a considerable distance,
-suggesting perhaps that the area of the Hills was at one time the bottom
-of this watery bowl.
-
-The Archean period came to an end some five hundred million years ago.
-By then the seas had withdrawn, and the new land formations which had
-lain under the early ocean merged with the vestiges of the first land
-mass. But this metamorphosis, which can be described in such calm
-fashion, was by no means a gentle affair. It took place largely as the
-result of a shifting and rising of certain ocean bottom areas, among
-which was the region where we now find the Black Hills.
-
-At the time of this uplift, and possibly contributing to it, there was a
-tremendous disturbance in the lower regions of the earth which sent
-great streams of molten matter up into the several-mile-thick layer of
-shale, through which it poured toward the surface, breaking through in
-monolithic forms and hardening into granite. The New Mexico writer,
-Eugene Manlove Rhodes, describing a similar geologic phenomenon in the
-valley of the Rio Grande, has called it "like sticking a knife through a
-tambourine," and indeed it was. Harney Peak, in Custer State Park, is
-just such a granite finger pointing up through the original shales
-toward the sky.
-
-When this disturbance took place the granite juttings did not rise above
-the surrounding landscape as they now do. In many cases they did not
-even reach the surface of the shale beds, but ceased their flow and
-hardened short of the crust of the earth, as it was then to be found.
-When, however, the region was domed, many millions of years later, the
-subsequent weathering of the huge blister did not attack these granite
-formations with anywhere near the vigor with which the softer sandstones
-and limestones were eroded. What actually occurred, then, was a peeling
-away of the softer rocks, leaving the granite formations near their
-original sizes, but at last above the ground level in the form of peaks,
-needles, and spires.
-
-But we have gotten ahead of our story. Following the Algonkian period,
-when the molten matter was injected into the layers of shale, there came
-what is known as the Cambrian period. The Cambrian occupied the first
-80,000,000 years of the Paleozoic era, which in itself covered the
-entire period from 510,000,000 to 180,000,000 years ago.
-
-During the Cambrian period the land subsided again, perhaps because of
-the weight of the uplifted sedimentary formations. During this
-subsidence the waters once again covered vast portions of North America,
-and additional muds and slimes were deposited on the bottom. It was at
-this period that life first appeared on the earth, in the form of simple
-marine organisms which have left fossil remains. These deposits made in
-the Cambrian period can be seen in outcroppings all through the region,
-although they are most notably found in the area about Deadwood. Because
-of their structure they indicate to the geologist that the shoreline of
-the ancient Cambrian sea was near at hand, and also that this covering
-of water was by no means as extensive or as deep as the earlier Archean
-sea.
-
-The deposits of sand and mud, which were eventually pressed into stone,
-occasionally reach a depth of as much as five hundred feet, although
-they were laid down extremely slowly, as eddying mud is laid at the
-bottom of a pond. In the locality of Deadwood they contained a rich
-infiltration of gold, and the entire conglomeration was thoroughly
-intermixed with a vast outcropping of much older rock--this effect
-undoubtedly having taken place later, during the great continental
-uplift, when the final doming occurred.
-
-
- THE AGES OF EARTH
-
- MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO (Pre-Cambrian Existence back to 3-1/2
- Billions of years)
-
- PALEOZOIC ERA
- 510
- Cambrian Period--First fossils deposited.
- Marine life.
- 430>
- Ordovician Period--Invertebrates increase
- greatly.
- 350>
- Silurian Period--Coral reefs formed. First
- evidence of land life.
- 310>
- Devonian Period--First forests. First
- amphibians.
- 250>
- Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian
- Periods.--Reptiles and insects appear.
- Continental uplift at end of this period.
- 180
- MESOZOIC ERA
- Triassic Period--Small Dinosaurs. First
- mammals.
- 150>
- Jurassic Period--Dinosaurs and marine
- reptiles dominant.
- 125>
- Cretaceous Period--Dinosaurs reach zenith of
- development then disappear. Small mammals.
- Flowering plants and development of hardwood
- forests.
- 60
- CENOZOIC ERA & PERIOD
- Paleocene Epoch--Archaic mammals.
- 50>
- Eocene Epoch--Modern mammals appear.
- 35>
- Oligocene Epoch--Great apes appear.
- 25>
- Miocene Epoch--Grazing types of mammals
- appear.
- 10>
- Pliocene Epoch--Man appears.
- 0
-
-The next period of the earth's age--the Ordovician period, which
-extended from 430,000,000 to 350,000,000 years ago--has left its mark
-just as visibly upon the Black Hills. It was during this period that the
-many species of invertebrate marine life reached a zenith of
-development, and that a bed of sediment was laid down and later
-compressed to a pinkish limestone. The fact that this Ordovician bed is
-less than forty feet thick indicates that the land mass from which the
-muds and sands were drawn was very low, and that the Cambrian sea was
-relatively shallow, entertaining only minor erosive currents along its
-shores.
-
-The next two ages, the Silurian and the Devonian, which brought our
-earth down to a scant 250,000,000 years ago, did not see the deposit of
-any silting in the Black Hills region. No doubt the waters which covered
-the locality dried up gradually. The Mississippian period, however, was
-a time of great depositional activity. A layer of limestone between five
-and six hundred feet thick was set down over the entire section. In
-later periods this limestone underwent much decay and water erosion,
-which formed the amazing caverns for which the Black Hills are known.
-Wind Cave, now the site of a National Park, Crystal Cave, and Jewel Cave
-are the best-known tourist attractions among the many, although there
-are a number of lesser ones, some even today only partially explored.
-
-The chemical activity which accomplished this erosion was caused by the
-seeping of rain water down through later accumulations of sediment on
-top of the layer of limestone. As it seeped through rotting vegetation
-and timber the water collected carbonic acid gases which, when it
-reached the level of the Mississippian limestone, eroded the structure
-and ate out huge hollows in it.
-
-The thickness of the Mississippian deposit indicated that at this time
-the earth had again sunk beneath the waters to a considerable depth. The
-shallow sea which had not offered sediment to a greater depth than a few
-feet was replaced by active currents which carried heavier sedimentary
-materials from great distances, laying them down on the floor of the sea
-in various strata to a depth of several hundred feet. Finally, after an
-unknown number of millions of years, but perhaps during the Triassic
-period, the land again rose above the level of the waters. A red shale
-suggests a time of great aridity when the region must have been a near
-desert, and certain discernible patterns in the shales suggest periods
-of rapid evaporation and a consequent change in chemical activity.
-
-Finally the land subsided again, for the last time to date. At times
-salt water covered the region, and at other times fresh water left its
-chemical mark. At some levels in this last layer of sedimentary rocks an
-abundance of fossils can be found, indicating deep water, and at others
-ripple-marked rock indicates very shallow water. It remains a period of
-great mystery. How long this final submersion continued we do not know;
-but in all probability it lasted nearly a hundred million years, and
-then was terminated by the vast upending of North America which created
-the Rocky Mountains. This upheaval did not take place suddenly, as a
-volcanic eruption or a series of earthquakes, but apparently commenced
-about sixty million years ago and lasted, as a continuous series of
-shiftings and slow upheavals, for about twenty million years.
-
-At the beginning of this mighty uplifting the region of the Black Hills
-was covered by the various layers of sedimentary deposits to a depth of
-nearly two miles. Slowly this rectangular area was lifted as a dome over
-the surrounding prairies. We do not know how high above the level lands
-this dome reached, but we do know that several thousand feet of later
-deposits overcapped the granite upthrusts which were planted in the
-fundamental shales. Those granite fingers, which have now been exposed
-to view, stand from five hundred to four thousand feet above the plains,
-and thus the original dome may be assumed to have extended from eight to
-ten thousand feet above our present-day sea level.
-
-Almost as soon as this era of upheaval first started, as soon as the
-first land of the Black Hills was elevated above the great sea, the
-forces of erosion set to work. Wind and rain worked their terrifying
-magic on the slowly rising terrain, carving away the softer rocks and
-the loose dirt and leaving only the granite outcroppings. Down from the
-sides of the great dome poured the waters of melting snows, gushing
-springs, and torrential rainfalls, digging out rivers, canyons, and the
-deep and narrow cuts which characterize this beautiful region. Slowly
-the land continued to rise and the oceans to fall until at last an
-equilibrium was reached, a static state of affairs which remained much
-the same until our own period, when the base of the dome was at last
-revealed, with the surrounding lands drifting away in every direction on
-a gentle incline.
-
-From that day the structure of the Black Hills has changed but little.
-The high winds off the Dakota plains and the annual spring run-off and
-seasonal rains cut their minute etchings in the landscape; but Nature's
-greatest effort in the Black Hills part of the world has, it seems, been
-made. It must be remembered, though, that Nature has had other
-responsibilities. At the time of the doming of the Black Hills the Alps
-had not yet been formed, nor the Pyrenees, nor the Caucasus. And on the
-site of the mountains we know today as the sky-piercing Himalayas, the
-swampy waters still moldered.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER THREE
- The Hills Today
-
-
-It is this writer's personal opinion that no other resort area in the
-United States possesses such a wealth of tourist attractions as the
-Black Hills. This profusion of happy endowments can be separated into
-three categories, each of which deserves individual study and enjoyment.
-Two of these, the region's folklore and its memories of the gold rush,
-belong to the amazing history of the Hills. But of course the visible
-landscape and the natural wonders of the area are the primary objects of
-the tourist's visits, and it is proper that they be considered
-immediately and in detail.
-
-
- _Wind Cave_
-
-The Wind Cave lies ten miles north of Hot Springs on U.S. 85A. The
-cavern is the focal point of interest in its own National Park, which
-takes in forty square miles. Nearly half of this park is enclosed with a
-high fence, behind which one of the last great bison herds roams
-contentedly. Protected antelope, elk, and deer also enjoy this game
-preserve.
-
-The cavern was discovered, according to legend, by a cowboy who heard a
-continued low whistling noise in the weeds and, investigating, found air
-rushing from a ten-inch hole near the present entrance to the cave. And
-indeed it is this very phenomenon that makes Wind Cave different from
-other notable caverns, such as the one at Carlsbad. Even on the stillest
-of days a steady current of air can be felt rushing in or out of the
-cave's opening--into the earth if the barometer is rising, and out of
-the ground if the pressure is falling.
-
-The National Park Service conducts tours of the cave, the complete
-excursion lasting some two hours. Fortunately, although the visitor
-descends to a great depth as he searches out the various chambers on the
-route, the tour ends at an elevator which whisks him swiftly to the
-surface near the starting point.
-
-The entire cavern is a little more than ten miles long, although there
-are portions of it which have not even yet been explored so that their
-size may be known with accuracy. It is not graced with the growths of
-stalactites and stalagmites normally to be found in limestone
-formations, but nature has compensated for that lack by fashioning a
-peculiar box-work which looks for all the world as if the cavern had
-been subjected to an interminable frosting process. These beautiful
-fretwork deposits, which are not to be found in any other cave, are the
-result of a strange chemical process that took place in the limestone
-stratum where Wind Cave is located. Surface water seeping into the stone
-became charged with carbon dioxide gas from the decaying organic matter
-through which it passed. This gentle acid then dissolved the limestone
-only to redeposit it in cracks and crevices around other limestone
-fragments. The precipitated limestone was of a different chemical
-composition and resisted later onslaughts by the eroding acids--which,
-however, did eat away the fragments around which the precipitate had
-formed, leaving the maze of hollow crystalline formations that can be
-seen in the various chambers of the cavern.
-
-The National Park, being relatively small, is not equipped with
-overnight facilities; but this does not matter, for the town of Hot
-Springs is but twenty minutes' drive from the park, and the town of
-Custer is only twenty miles away. There are, however, camping grounds in
-the park, and the Park Service operates a lunchroom at the entrance to
-the cave.
-
-
- _Custer State Park_
-
-Custer State Park is located almost in the center of the Black Hills.
-Containing nearly one hundred and fifty thousand acres, it is one of the
-largest state parks in America. It was originally set aside as a state
-game refuge, and it was not until the advent of summer touring as a
-national pastime that the state of South Dakota purchased additional
-private lands which contained scenic wonders, incorporating all of them
-into the one large area.
-
-Today the park is the center of all tourist activity in the region. A
-number of excellent lodges, camp grounds, and tourist courts along every
-road make it particularly easy for the tourist to stop at will for a day
-or more to enjoy the various recreational facilities as his fancy
-dictates. In every respect the park is effectively administered: food
-and lodging prices are held to a reasonable figure, the cleanliness of
-the buildings and grounds is regularly inspected, and the landscape is
-protected from commercial exploitation.
-
-The center of the park's activities is the Game Lodge, a monstrous
-Victorian hotel built in 1919 and operated under a private lease. Close
-by the Game Lodge are cabins, stores, eating establishments, the park
-zoo, a museum, and the offices of the state park officials. The Lodge,
-those with a flair for nostalgia will recall, achieved international
-renown in 1927 when President Coolidge made it the summer White House.
-It lies on US. 16, thirty-two miles from Rapid City and seventeen miles
-from the town of Custer.
-
-It behooves the writer to mention at this point that the museum
-connected with the Game Lodge is by no means the drab and dusty sort of
-collection of impedimenta associated with the vicinity that is so often
-found in museums at scenic sites. Indeed, this fine attraction is an
-assemblage of geological, paleontological, and historical items which
-trace with rare discernment the whole history of the Hills through the
-ages, and up to our own day. The visitor who fails to pass an hour in
-this exciting spot will have missed the heart of the Hills entirely.
-
-
- _Harney Peak_
-
-Harney Peak stands like a sentinel in Custer Park. The highest point in
-the Black Hills, it rises to an altitude of 7,242 feet, 4,000 feet above
-the prairie floor outside the Hills. Higher by 900 feet than Mount
-Washington in New Hampshire, it is the highest mountain east of the
-Rockies.
-
-High as it is, Harney Peak is by no means the typical mountain which
-tourists come to expect after a trip through Colorado, for example, or
-western Wyoming. It is older by ages than the precipitous and craggy
-Rockies, and the winds and waters have worked their slow erosion on it,
-cutting away what high shelves and escarpments might originally have
-existed and leaving it, except at the top, a gentle and easy mountain
-that may be climbed over a trail which will scarcely tax the laziest
-tourist.
-
-On the top of the peak will be found the core of granite that originally
-broke through the Archean shales. This granite, subject to the
-mechanical ravages of wind, rain, and frost, is rugged and coarse, a
-steep dome covered with a thick lichen. From this eminence the entire
-Black Hills area can be seen, rolling away in every direction--great
-waves of pinnacle and mountain, gradually subsiding and disappearing in
-the haze of distance which covers the prairies. Especially striking from
-this spot is the view of Cathedral Park, with its hundreds of
-needle-like spires and organ pipes, and, sheltered in a quiet recess,
-that amazing phenomenon, Sylvan Lake.
-
-
- _The Needles_
-
-The Needles Highway, a fourteen-mile stretch of road, branches off U.S.
-16 about five miles west of the Game Lodge. At the time of its
-construction in 1920-21 it was regarded as an engineering marvel,
-although later exploits of American highway builders, such as the road
-to the top of fourteen-thousand-foot Mount Evans in Colorado, have since
-far overshadowed this accomplishment.
-
-The road winds and curves in an interminable pattern, finding its way,
-by trial and error it seems, among the great granite spires that give
-the region its name. These "needles," through the last of which the
-highway actually plunges in a tunnel, are the remains of a great granite
-plateau which once covered that entire portion of the Black Hills.
-Contrary to popular opinion, the rocks are not outthrusts, the result of
-some ancient upheaval, but the last thin vestiges of this once-solid
-plateau. The age-old process of erosion has carved them into the shapes
-they now have; and the inquiring visitor can see the process still at
-work, for upon close inspection this granite is found to be not the
-impregnable stone it appears, but rock in a late stage of
-disintegration. Rot is the word which actually describes this formation,
-and in many spots whole chunks can be picked from the side of a spire by
-hand. It was, as a matter of fact, this situation which made the
-construction of the Needles Highway possible. Had the granite been
-solid, the task of cutting the Needles and Iron Creek tunnels would have
-been so expensive as to prohibit the entire undertaking.
-
-
- _Sylvan Lake_
-
-Not all of the scenery in the Black Hills was created by Nature. Sylvan
-Lake, in many respects the most beautiful corner of the region, was made
-entirely by hand.
-
-It was near the turn of the century when two hunters, Dr. Jennings of
-Hot Springs and Joseph Spencer of Chicago, got the intriguing idea of
-having an additional tourist attraction in the vicinity of Harney
-Peak--a lake.
-
- [Illustration: Along the Needles Highway]
-
- [Illustration: Harney Peak older by ages than the Rockies]
-
-Some lakes are difficult to construct, while some are relatively easy.
-Sylvan belongs in the latter category. The two imaginative gentlemen
-merely bought a small tract of land between two great granite shields
-and built a dam seventy-five feet high between the boulders. The waters
-of Sunday Creek, which flowed to their dam, together with local springs,
-at last contrived to fill the area back of the dam. Today this loveliest
-of lakes basks peacefully high above the world at an elevation of 6,250
-feet, actually on top of a ridge, at the north terminal of the Needles
-Highway.
-
-It is easy for any lover of water scenes to become enthusiastic as he
-describes the colorations of his favorite lake, so I shall merely state
-that Sylvan never looks the same in two consecutive moments. Not having
-the symmetry of natural lakes or the tremendous depths of glacial pools,
-this body of water plays the role of mirror to the fabulous rock shapes
-which surround it; and indeed it is a source of never-ending delight to
-watch the cloud and sun patterns as they wrestle with the shadows of the
-rocks on its surface.
-
-For many years Sylvan Lake and its environs were operated privately. A
-hotel catered to the tourists who bounced over the privately built road
-in buggies and horse-drawn busses. In 1919 the property was purchased by
-the state of South Dakota, and since that time it has been operated as a
-public facility. When the original hotel burned, in the thirties, the
-state built with funds procured from the federal government a
-comfortable and modern hostelry, the most amazing feature of which is
-the expansive dining room with picture windows looking out over the lake
-to Harney Peak.
-
-The hotel is small, as resort hotels go, containing only fifty rooms,
-and the tourist would do well to arrange for accommodations in advance
-of his visit. There are, however, a number of cabins operated in
-conjunction with the main building, and except at the height of the
-season rooms can probably be found in the annexes. Along the lake shore
-an excellent restaurant, independent of the hotel, serves the needs of
-the traveler who has only a few hours to spend at this stop.
-
-
- _Mount Rushmore_
-
-From Sylvan Lake around back of the north side of Harney Peak it is a
-drive of but a few miles to the second man-made wonder of the Hills--the
-Mount Rushmore Memorial.
-
-Perhaps no one thing has done so much to make the Black Hills known
-throughout the world as this incredible undertaking--the carving in the
-natural granite face of a mountain of the faces of our four most revered
-presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
-"Teddy" is included for his lasting service to the people of the United
-States as the president who saw the Panama Canal project through
-Congress and into being. The military and economic values of that
-enterprise so deeply impressed the sculptor of this mammoth frieze that
-he insisted upon elevating TR into the august company of the other three
-great statesmen.
-
-The whole story of the memorial would fill several volumes, and indeed
-has already done so. Briefly, the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, wished to
-perpetuate a patriotic motif in stone figures so large that they would
-attract visitors from every corner of the country and impress upon them
-the glories of the democracy which the four presidents had done so much
-to build and sustain. The sculptor's own words were: "I want, somewhere
-in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the continent, a few
-feet of stone that carries the likenesses, the dates, and a word or two
-of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high that it
-won't pay to pull it down for lesser purposes."
-
-The actual construction work started in 1926, and the formal dedication
-was made by President Coolidge in the summer of 1927. Between nine
-hundred thousand and a million dollars went into the gigantic task,
-including money for supplies, wages, and the sculptor's own personal
-needs during the fifteen years he spent on the project. He died in 1941,
-and the work was completed a few months later by his son.
-
-The immensity of the undertaking can be grasped when the dimensions are
-noted. The face of each of the figures, for example, measures sixty feet
-from chin to forehead.
-
-The rough carving was done by dynamite. Borglum, working from a
-carefully constructed model, would mark on the sheer sides of the great
-mountain the lines where he wanted the stone peeled away. Then a blast
-would be set off in the hope that the rock displacement would
-approximate the lines marked out, and from that point the work had to be
-done by hand. At first, taking lessons from the miners working for him
-who had many years of experience in blasting the hard granites of the
-region, Borglum was able to reach only within a foot of the final figure
-by dynamiting. As he became more proficient in the use of the explosives
-he got to the point where his original blasts would shed the stone to a
-matter of an inch or less from the final cut surface. The head of
-Washington was finished in 1930, that of Jefferson in 1936, that of
-Lincoln a year later, and that of Theodore Roosevelt, the final figure,
-in 1941.
-
-There are no tourist facilities at the site of the Memorial. Like every
-other place in the Black Hills, however, Rushmore can be reached in a
-few minutes' drive from any one of a number of near-by points where a
-tourist might be stopping. Borglum's studio, situated on a prominence a
-few hundred yards from the carvings, gives the best view of the scene
-and is open to the public.
-
-
- _Crazy Horse_
-
-It is not entirely accurate to refer to the Mount Rushmore Memorial as
-_the_ other man-made wonder in the Hills. At the moment it is the only
-such marvel outside of Sylvan Lake; but in twenty-five or thirty years
-it will have to share that honor with the Crazy Horse Memorial, a statue
-carved on top of Thunderhead Mountain, between Harney Peak and the town
-of Custer. This gigantic carving, which will be an entire figure and not
-a mere bas-relief, will be an equestrian statue of the great Sioux
-chief, Crazy Horse, who led his nation during the desperate years
-between 1866 and 1877. The chief will be mounted on a prancing steed,
-his hair blowing, as if in the wind, behind him.
-
-The Indians themselves can take the credit for this fabulous idea. Chief
-Henry Standing Bear, a resident of the Pine Ridge reservation, is said
-to have had his inspiration after a visit to Mount Rushmore. Why not, he
-wondered, erect some monument to an outstanding red man, so that when
-the last of his people have been assimilated into the white man's
-society, visitors to what was once the heart of the Indian country can
-reflect for a moment upon the greatness of that lost race?
-
-Standing Bear wrote his idea to Korczak Ziolkowski, an energetic and
-imaginative sculptor, and suggested that Chief Crazy Horse would make a
-fitting symbol of the Indians' struggle for existence. This was in 1940.
-
-The sculptor took to the idea, but because of the events of World War II
-he was unable to commence work on the project until 1947. Since then he
-has been setting off two blasts of dynamite a day, carving away the rock
-at the top of Thunderhead. But even yet the first faint outlines of the
-eventual statue are only barely discernible. Ziolkowski estimates that
-the entire task will consume a quarter of a century, if not more, and
-will cost not less than five million dollars. If this figure sounds high
-compared with the less than a million spent on Rushmore, perhaps the
-measurements will provide an explanation: the horse upon which the chief
-will be seated will be four hundred feet from nose to tail, and the
-entire work, from pedestal to top, will be more than five hundred feet
-in height.
-
-
- _Mount Coolidge_
-
-In this same general region lies another prominent Black Hills landmark
-which every tourist should take time to visit--Mount Coolidge. With a
-height of 6,400 feet, this peak is by no means an outstanding mountain,
-being ranked by a good half dozen higher within the Hills. But from its
-summit, which can be reached by an auto road leading off U.S. 85A a few
-miles to the north of Wind Cave Park, an amazing vista can be seen. To
-the east, on a clear day, the White River Badlands loom as a great
-valley sixty miles away. To the south one can see across the high
-rolling hills all the way into Nebraska, and to the west landmarks in
-Wyoming are clearly visible. On the summit a stone lookout tower has
-been built for the convenience of visitors.
-
-
- _Jewel Cave and Ice Cave_
-
-Since the Black Hills are underbedded so widely by limestone, it is not
-surprising to find in them not one but several memorable caverns. There
-are, as a matter of fact, a dozen or more well-known large caves; but
-outside of Wind Cave, only Jewel Cave has been opened and fully prepared
-for public visit. The expense of exploring, lighting, and carving trails
-in the others has kept them off the market, so to speak, for in a region
-so packed with scenic delights two great caverns are about as much as
-the traffic will bear.
-
-Jewel Cave lies some fourteen miles west of Custer on U.S. 16, almost at
-the Wyoming-South Dakota border. It is a small cave, with only two tours
-marked out in it, one a mile long and the other two miles. It is noted
-for its wealth of colorful crystalline deposits, totally unlike the
-delicate filigree work to be found in Wind Cave.
-
-The cave was discovered by two prospectors, who proceeded to develop
-their property for commercial gain. In 1934 they sold the cave and such
-of its environs as they owned to the Newcastle, Wyoming, Lions Club and
-the Custer Chamber of Commerce. These two organizations sought to
-popularize it further as a lure to tourists who would have to travel
-through their towns to reach the scene. In 1938 the federal government
-took it over and made a national monument of it.
-
-Not far from Jewel Cave is the famous Ice Cave. This cavern gets its
-name from the current of cold air which blows from its mouth, cold and
-clammy on even the hottest of summer days. The Ice Cave is not
-officially open to the public, and has not even been totally explored.
-Forest rangers and Park Service employees have charted some of it and
-have searched out certain channels in the strange formation, and from
-their meager reports it would seem that if Ice Cave is ever fully opened
-it will vie with New Mexico's Carlsbad in beauty and grandeur.
-
-For the curious tourist the only possibility at the moment is to take
-the lovely off-route trip to the cave's entrance, a natural arch twenty
-feet high and seventy-five feet wide.
-
-In addition to Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and Ice Cave, there are a number
-of other caverns of varying interest and underground beauty which have
-been opened and exploited by private individuals. In many cases these
-are but indifferently arranged for public inspection, but can be tracked
-down by the visitor by means of the garish signs which too often manage
-to clutter the otherwise unblemished scenery.
-
-
- _Just Scenery_
-
-The foregoing are only a very few of the scenic wonders of the Black
-Hills. Detailed information on the various other scenic features is
-easily to be had at any of the hotels and tourist courts in the Hills,
-and brochures covering practically every landmark are available gratis,
-thanks to the enthusiasm of the local chambers of commerce, the Black
-Hills and Badlands Association, and the state of South Dakota. The area
-is crisscrossed with good roads, and no matter which route one takes to
-his eventual destination, every mile will be marked by breath-taking
-views and natural wonders.
-
-The region, except at the summits of the peaks, lies at an average
-altitude of some five thousand feet. Cool nights are thus guaranteed,
-regardless of the temperatures by day. The highest mean temperature
-ranges, during the six months between April and November, from 60 to 85
-degrees. Light outing clothes are suggested for day wear, and light
-wraps are always in order after dark.
-
-The rainfall during this same six-month period, averaged over fifty
-years, amounts to three inches per month; what small showers do occur
-take place most usually in an hour or so of the early afternoon, and
-refresh rather than hinder the tourist.
-
-The hillsides are covered with a mass of shrub and tree growth, and an
-earnest searcher can find specimens of no less than fifty-two varieties.
-Yellow pine, spruce, cedar, ash, aspen, alder, dogwood, and cottonwood
-are most in evidence.
-
-The bird lover will find the Black Hills nothing less than a vast
-aviary, more than two hundred species having been seen in the region.
-Animal life is almost as widely represented, although the casual visitor
-is not likely to come upon a native mountain lion or gray wolf. The
-assistance of forest rangers and Park Service employees is available in
-locating the habitats of some of the rarer varieties of wildlife.
-
-As might be expected, the fisherman will find plenty of opportunity to
-ply his pole in this region. There are nearly 150 miles of stream and
-lake frontage in the Black Hills, and the waters are liberally stocked
-by the state hatcheries. In addition to trout, the angler will encounter
-pike, pickerel, bluegills, black bass, and perch.
-
-Finally, there are the annual celebrations and fairs, which are always
-of interest to the outsider, for they help dramatize the particular
-region where they are held and its historical background. July and
-August are the months for these celebrations, and notices of coming
-events will be found posted prominently' along the tourist routes. Four
-such outstanding occasions are Black Hills Range Days at Rapid City,
-Gold Discovery Days at Custer, the Belle Fourche Round-Up, and the Days
-of '76 at Deadwood. The Deadwood celebration, it might be added,
-celebrates not the Revolutionary War, but the discovery of gold in
-Deadwood Gulch in 1876.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER FOUR
- History I: Indians and Gold
-
-
-Gold, they say, is where you find it. In California in 1848--in Montana
-in 1852--in Colorado in 1858--in Arizona, in Nevada: when they finally
-found it in the Black Hills in 1874, the Gold Rush West had nearly all
-been settled and the bonanza days were forever gone, for all the likely
-places had been searched.
-
-The question posed is an obvious one. With sourdoughs plowing and
-digging up the bed of every stream and rivulet in the West from 1849 on,
-how did it come about that the Black Hills, lying a considerable
-distance closer to home than California and the other gold rush regions,
-had kept their glittering secret until so late?
-
-The truth of the matter is that the mysterious and brooding dark
-mountain-land was a good place to hide secrets. Gold had been discovered
-there, as a matter of fact, as early as 1834, which was just seven years
-after the country's first gold strike--the 1827 Georgia rush. But
-unfortunately those first lucky gold-seekers--there were six of
-them--did not live to enjoy their taste of the Black Hills' incredible
-wealth. Fifty-three years later, not far from the town of Spearfish, one
-Louis Thoen found a piece of limestone upon which was crudely but
-legibly engraved this melancholy message:
-
- came to these hills in 1833, seven of us DeLacompt Ezra Kind G. W.
- Wood T Brown R Kent WM King Indian Crow All ded but me Ezra Kind
- Killed by Indians beyond the high hill got our gold june 1834
-
-On the back of this somber relic were the blunt words: "Got all gold we
-could carry."
-
-Yes, there was gold in plenty, but Paha Sapa of the Hills was a jealous
-spirit who guarded the forbidden portals with a great vengeance. It is
-interesting, though, to speculate upon how the course of western history
-might have veered had Ezra Kind made his way out of the bleak region to
-report his discovery. Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and most of the Missouri
-Valley would have been skipped over in a rush to the prairie West, left
-to be filled in and settled later. The upriver ports of the Missouri,
-rather than St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Joseph, and Omaha, would have
-been the outposts, and there would have been no Santa Fe Trail, no
-Platte River--Oregon Trail, but rather a heavily traveled National Road
-winding out from St. Paul and from Chicago. Rapid City would have been a
-metropolis the size of Denver, and when eventually the Union Pacific was
-built it would have been three hundred miles north of its present route.
-And the Indians? There would have been a far different story in that
-regard, perhaps a much bloodier and more tragic tale.
-
-But Ezra Kind was killed and his secret slept, and thus we are as we are
-today. Actually it was the Indians who kept the Hills so long
-forbidden--Indians of the Teton Sioux, the same tribe who put Ezra's
-party to the tomahawk.
-
-Before the California gold rush life on the Great Plains had proceeded
-pretty much on an even keel. The mighty Teton Sioux, all seven tribes of
-them--the Oglalas, the Unkpapas, the San Arcs, the Brules, the
-Minniconjous, the Blackfeet, and the Two Kettle--roamed the prairies at
-will, from the Missouri Valley to the Rocky Mountains. Of course they
-had their misadventures with the fur companies, but just as often their
-dealings with the Mountain Men were profitable, for the Indians, when in
-the mood, scouted, trapped, and hunted, all for the white man's pay.
-
-With the great exodus to California, though, the situation took on a
-different hue. Immigrants by the hundreds and the thousands poured up
-the rolling valley of the Platte, and it was not many months before the
-haphazard Indian attacks took on a new strength and design. Long burned
-the council fires in the dark nights, and all up and down the great
-plains the war raged. To protect the wagon trains the government sent
-its shrewdest and most experienced Indian agent, Thomas Fitzpatrick, a
-veteran fur trader since 1823, the famed "Broken Hand" of western
-legend. Summoning the tribes to Fort Laramie in 1851, Fitzpatrick
-managed to subdue them, but only by promising that he would confine the
-settlers to specific ranges and would keep them steadfastly out of the
-Dakotas and the Black Hills.
-
-In the meanwhile the eastern tribes, the Santee Sioux, were beginning to
-feel the pressure of settlement in the rich Minnesota valleys. In 1862
-they revolted, and the terrible battle of Wood Lake was fought, with the
-score of massacred settlers reaching into the high hundreds. The leaders
-of this outrage were, of course, apprehended and punished, but whole
-tribes fled into the western plains, into the land of the Black Hills,
-where they eventually joined forces with their Teton cousins.
-
- [Illustration: The Four Great Faces: Mount Rushmore Memorial]
-
- [Illustration: Sylvan Lake mirrors great granite shields at an
- altitude of 6,250 feet]
-
-By 1865 matters had come to a head again, because although the great
-Sioux, numbering between thirty and forty thousand, had kept to
-themselves, the white man had broken his side of the bargain and was
-cutting a new route into the forbidden country. This passage was the
-famed Bozeman Trail, which drove north from Fort Laramie, on the Oregon
-Trail, directly through the Sioux country to serve the new gold fields
-of Montana.
-
-To protect the wagon trains on the Bozeman the army called upon General
-Grenville Dodge, who was later to build the Union Pacific. Dodge,
-Commandant of the Department of the Missouri, was an old hand at Indian
-warfare. He rushed into Wyoming a full force, four columns of men, who
-swiftly brought the angered tribes to heel.
-
-The immediate result of this engagement was the signing of a halfhearted
-and inconclusive treaty at Fort Sully, near Pierre, in October of 1865.
-The treaty attempted to settle some old differences of a fundamental
-nature, but inasmuch as neither the Oglala nor the Brule were
-represented it failed of its mission.
-
-A year later a further powwow was staged at Fort Laramie to pursue the
-matter of keeping the Bozeman Trail open through the forbidden Sioux
-country. Perhaps matters might have proceeded equably had not General
-Carrington arrived in the midst of the delicate negotiations to announce
-that he had enough soldiers to protect the trail, treaty or no treaty.
-
-Carrington's blustery announcement, backed up by a show of seven hundred
-courageous but misguided cavalrymen, brought the talks to an abrupt end
-and sent the two most important Sioux Chieftains, Red Cloud and Crazy
-Horse, scurrying for the council fire and the war paths. In all the
-great plains there were not to be found braver or more single-minded
-Indian strategists than these two. For the better part of two years
-roving bands of tribesmen under Red Cloud and his stalwart colleague
-amply proved that Carrington could not have kept the trail safely open
-if he had had seventy times his seven hundred men. It was, as a matter
-of fact, the only time in our long history that Uncle Sam's troops ever
-took a downright beating.
-
-At last even Red Cloud could see that the white man, for all his
-braggadocio and poor planning, would eventually win the turn; and
-although his savage troops had tasted victory in almost every
-engagement, he consented in 1868 to negotiate once more. Presumably both
-sides were wiser by then, for a pact, sometimes called the
-Harney-Sanborne Treaty, was dutifully signed and accepted in April of
-that year. The United States agreed to close the Bozeman Trail and to
-abandon the forts. The Black Hills were utterly forbidden to the white
-man, and except for an agreement to let the Northern Pacific rails cross
-the upper prairies unmolested, the high plains from the Missouri to the
-Big Horn were returned by federal order to their historic isolation.
-
-After that fiasco the situation remained comparatively quiet for a few
-years. Eastern Dakota was being settled bit by bit, and the rails were
-pushing forward, ever so slowly but ever so surely. The Missouri River
-was the frontier line, dividing the settled Dakotas from the Sioux
-lands; and Fort Lincoln, on the river (not far from the site of today's
-Bismarck), was the outpost that overlooked the troubled territory.
-
-From month to month trappers, gold-seekers, and would-be homesteaders
-slipped inside the Sioux curtain from the Cheyenne-Laramie country on
-the south, from the rich Niobrara country in northwest Nebraska, or from
-eastern Dakota itself. There was not much that the army could do about
-these treaty violators except worry, for the borders to be patrolled
-were vast and the forbidden lands inviting.
-
-But the army did worry, endlessly. There were increasingly frequent
-rumors of the existence of gold in the Hills, and year after year
-General Sheridan, commanding the Departments of Dakota, the Platte, and
-the Missouri, urged stronger fortification of the Sioux boundaries to
-prevent trouble. Trouble was particularly to be expected because several
-bands of Sioux, specifically those under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse,
-had not agreed to government supervision in 1868 and seemed thirsting
-for a fight.
-
-Thus it was to make a military survey that Sheridan sent an expedition
-through the heart of the Hills in 1874. His force of more than a
-thousand soldiers moved under the command of George Armstrong Custer;
-and, strange impedimenta for an army, the luggage in the lorries
-included mining picks and pans, the belongings of H. N. Ross and William
-T. McKay, who were officially attached to the command. Presumably Custer
-was looking for something more than mere military sites.
-
-The Indian fighters of an earlier day--Kit Carson, the Bents, or Sibley,
-for instance--would have stood gaping in the stockade as Custer's force
-moved leisurely onto the empty Dakota prairies. This was no ragtag army
-in buckskin, but an orderly procession of one hundred and ten wagons,
-six ambulances, a dozen caissons, and two heavy field pieces. Each wagon
-and ambulance was drawn by a sprightly hand of six sleek mules.
-
-In addition, three hundred head of beef cattle browsed slowly along the
-way in mooing testimony that this expedition would live off the very
-fattest of the land. The personnel included, in addition to Custer's
-highly trained troops, a hundred Indian scouts, a platoon of expert
-white guides and trappers, and, mounted upon docile mares, a special
-contingent of botanists, geologists, geographers, and assorted expert
-college professors. Also, as has been reported, there were two miners.
-
-To the north of the Hills, crossing the Belle Fourche River first, the
-army made its gentle way, and then down the west slope of the forbidding
-mountains, seeking for an easy pass into the dark interior. Tall in the
-saddle rode golden-haired George Custer, for he was commanding the
-strongest army ever put into Indian country. It is little wonder that he
-slept quietly at night, or that he wrote in his diary: "It is a strange
-sight to look back at the advancing column of cavalry and behold the men
-with beautiful bouquets in their hands while their horses were decorated
-with wreathes of flowers fit to crown a Queen of the May."
-
-In that holiday mood the army moved down inside the great bowl of
-mountains on its sightseeing tour, and presently it camped about three
-miles west of the present town of Custer. All this while the miners had
-not been inactive, but had plied their pans here and there as the
-company passed across various streams. Until this bivouac, though, they
-had had no luck, and, as a matter of fact, had actually been expecting
-none. They had come along to quell the rumor of gold as much as to bear
-it out. Preferably to quell it, if General Sheridan were to have his
-way.
-
-On August 2 of that year, 1874, McKay turned out to try his implements
-once again on French Creek. An early account gives this dramatic version
-of the famed discovery: "When the earth [in the pan] was gone, he held
-up his pan in the evening sun and found the rim lined with nearly a
-hundred little particles of gold. These he carried to General Custer,
-whose head was almost turned at the sight."
-
-Through the magic of his discipline Custer managed to keep his army from
-beating their ration tins into placer pans and "claiming" on the spot.
-Getting under way almost immediately, the men continued their march
-eastward through the heart of the Hills, and on August 30 emerged from
-the great park and headed back to Fort Lincoln.
-
-In the meanwhile a messenger had been sent ahead with the news of gold.
-Scout Charley Reynolds, who was to die with his commander just two years
-later, was detached from the base camp and sent scurrying down to Fort
-Laramie, to the nearest telegraph station. Within an hour of his arrival
-at the post, two hundred miles to the south and west of the Black Hills,
-the tremendous news was burning over the wires to General Sheridan in
-St. Louis.
-
-It was also burning some operator's ear along the way, for the great
-secret, which was to be handed only to the high command in Washington,
-made its way on that very day into the editorial rooms of the old
-_Chicago Inter-Ocean_--where, naturally, it was treated with great
-respect and splashed across the headlines with all the vigor of an
-announcement of the Second Coming.
-
-There was actually a genuine religious fervor in the proclamation, for
-the locust had been upon the land for many months in the eastern cities,
-and the bread lines had been growing. It had threatened to be a cold
-winter until ... until this last bonanza burst upon the nation.
-
-Men had all but forgotten what a gold rush was like. It had been so long
-since the last great hegira to the Pikes Peak region that a new
-generation had come into manhood, a generation that knew California only
-as a state, Colorado as a prosperous territory, and the Union Pacific as
-the proper way to cross the empty West. There were none of the desperate
-winter marches up the Continental Divide this time, no lost wagon trains
-on the salt deserts, no Indian massacres. This rush left Chicago on the
-"cars," as noisy and as highhearted as fans following a football club.
-
-And there was another great difference between the foray to the Black
-Hills and the earlier gold rushes. In this case the argonauts did not
-get to the diggings. The troops saw to that. Deploring the untimely leak
-of official intelligence concerning the presence of the yellow metal in
-the Dakota outcropping, the War Department issued stern warnings to all
-settlers to keep away. The existence of the treaty with the Indians was
-proclaimed in every paper--and, though less resoundingly, the danger
-from the Indians was also mentioned.
-
-Nonetheless, before the end of that crucial year a sizable group of
-foolhardy settlers broke through the blockade and made themselves at
-home. Erecting a strong stockade at the scene of the first strike, they
-soon carved themselves a town in the wilderness, gratefully naming it
-Custer, and even that early providing for the wide main street where ox
-teams could make a U-turn. Throughout the first winter these illegal
-townspeople managed somehow to survive the cold, the lack of rations,
-and the danger of Indian attack; but late in the spring General Crook's
-cavalry arrived to "escort" them out of the Hills and back to the
-railroad at Cheyenne.
-
-Many of the citizens of that first town took their eviction with fair
-grace, turning to other means of employment than gold mining--and there
-were plenty--in Cheyenne, Denver, and the other near-by and rapidly
-growing settlements. One group, though, the Gordon Party, apparently
-enjoyed leadership of a tougher sort. They refused to be intimidated by
-the troops. Setting up camp on the very boundary line between the
-forbidden country and the permitted Platte Valley, they just waited.
-Actually, an increasingly large number of immigrants waited on the
-border only until nightfall, and then set out into the unknown. Some
-were apprehended by the cavalry and returned, some were killed by the
-sullen tribesmen, but hundreds of them managed to find their way to the
-vicinity of French Creek. More than that, they managed to stay.
-
-It might be thought that gold mining, with all its necessary
-paraphernalia, supplies, and general confusion, could not very well be
-carried on in an atmosphere suggesting the more modern practice of
-moonshining; but the truth of the matter was that there were just too
-many settlers and too few soldiers. Time and again the troops would
-swoop down on some busy little gathering and hustle the miners out to
-the nearest courts, where they would hastily be acquitted and released
-to go back to their workings. Under the very fist of forbiddance a score
-of towns had sprung up, among them the reborn Custer City.
-
-Finally the government gave up all hope of keeping the eager immigrants
-out of this last frontier. By the fall of 1875 the border towns of
-Sidney, Nebraska, Yankton, South Dakota, and Cheyenne and Laramie,
-Wyoming, were bursting at the seams with gold-hunters who demanded
-"their rights as citizens." Bowing to the inevitable, the government
-sent a treaty commission to wait upon the Sioux. This body of earnest
-men offered the Indians six million dollars for the right of entry into
-the Hills. Although the treaty Sioux agreed to sell, the price they
-asked wavered between twenty and one hundred million. Crazy Horse, who
-did not attend the council, refused to sell at any price and solemnly
-warned the white man to stay out.
-
-Frustrated, the treaty commissioners returned to Washington in despair,
-while the embittered Sioux disappeared into the west river country to
-nurse their grievances. Upon this turn of affairs, the government washed
-its hands of the matter and opened the lands to settlement.
-
-That was in June of 1875. Within a matter of weeks after the bars had
-been let down, the Hills were populated by uncounted thousands of men,
-women, and children. Many simply came out of the woods to claim honestly
-the diggings they had been working dishonestly; but many, many more came
-from the East by every train, now that the country was legitimately
-open.
-
-It was a motley assembly that took part in this Black Hills rush. In
-earlier bonanzas the type had been pretty well formalized, for the
-difficulty of the overland journey to California, for example, or across
-to the Pikes Peak region, had kept all but the roughest--and
-toughest--at home. But on this occasion the West was by no means as wild
-as it had been in those earlier days. Distances had been conquered;
-transportation methods, even beyond the railroads, were much safer and
-more adequate; and the Black Hills, although cold in the middle of
-winter, offered none of the climatic ferocities of the Rocky Mountains.
-Thus, to partake of this feast of yellow dust hopeful clerks brushed
-shoulders with desperadoes, professional men of every accomplishment
-traded rumors with crease-faced sourdoughs from the dead land south of
-the Mogollon, and oldsters who had thought they might never again hold a
-pan in their hands dug alongside mere boys from whom the apron strings
-had been relaxed.
-
-In the meantime, even as the good citizens of Custer, Gayville, Central
-City, Golden Gate, Anchor City, and a host of other thriving towns, most
-of which have long been given over to the ghosts, were bustling about
-their exciting business, matters in the west were taking a slow but
-inexorable turn for the worse.
-
-The army had let the situation ride for the summer and fall, keeping a
-careful watch over the enemy Sioux, but feeling fairly assured that they
-would attempt no large-scale raid of the Hills, populated now by at
-least fifty thousand people. Summer and fall were not normally times to
-worry over, in any case, for the buffalo were still on the range and
-forage was plentiful for the tribes. It was in the depths of winter that
-the tale would be told--either the Indians would come docilely to the
-reservations for their rations, or they would steer clear of the white
-man's soldiers and supply their own necessities by raiding the isolated
-ranch and stage line outposts.
-
-By mid-December the reservations were still empty, and General Terry
-sent out a call to Sitting Bull, ordering him to bring his people in to
-the military posts. January 1, 1876, was given as the deadline. The
-haughty Sioux chief paid scant attention to Terry's order, replying
-simply that the general knew where to find him if he wanted to come for
-him. Sitting Bull knew that the army would attempt no large maneuvers
-with the weather as it was--one of the bitterest winters in recorded
-history.
-
-Then he simply waited.
-
-But General Terry was no man to take a short answer. Immediately he
-ordered three expeditions to prepare themselves for the field, to move
-as soon as weather should permit, and to take the Indians early in the
-spring when their ponies would still be thin and unrecovered from the
-winter's rigors. General Crook was to march north from Fort Fetterman,
-on the North Platte River; General John Gibbon was to move south and
-east from Fort Ellis, in Montana; and General Custer was to come west
-from Fort Lincoln.
-
-Unfortunately not only the Indians but the weather as well turned
-against General Terry, for with the thermometer standing most of the
-time at between twenty and forty below and the prairie covered with the
-glaze of incessant blizzards, neither Custer nor Gibbon was able to move
-out of camp.
-
-Crook, though, was able to best the winter when March rolled in and to
-locate one of the most dangerous of the rebel bands, Crazy Horse's
-renegade Oglalas, deep in the Powder River Valley. This was on March 17,
-1876. Had Crook's men not made certain grave errors of tactics after a
-brilliant surprise, the battle might have solved the problem. As it
-turned out, the Indians galloped a few circles around the troops and
-made merrily off into the forest. Again the weather closed in.
-
-Three months later, when the summer weather made campaigning possible,
-Crook's troops were able to take to the saddle again, and again Crazy
-Horse was located, this time encamped on the Tongue River, between
-Powder River and Rosebud Creek. Again the battle was inconclusive, for
-the troops seemed unable to press the advantage of their surprise
-discovery of the Indians.
-
-Eight days later, on June 17, the bewildered but indomitable Crook came
-a third time upon Crazy Horse, now on Rosebud Creek. On this occasion
-the troops were able to euchre the Indians into a pitched battle--and
-were thereupon so thoroughly trounced that Crook's command was
-essentially immobilized where the bleeding remnant lay at the battle's
-close.
-
-By the time the harassed cavalrymen had bound up their wounds and
-remounted, Crazy Horse had disappeared over the hills and down into the
-Big Horn Basin, where his cohorts joined a host of other bloodthirsty
-braves in a great Sioux encampment. Black Moon was there, Inkpaduta,
-Gall, and a major roster of other courageous Indian warriors. Counseling
-them and performing their good medicine was none other than Sitting Bull
-himself, who, it should be said, was not a warrior but a medicine man
-and tribal diplomat.
-
-Historians have never been able to agree upon the number of braves
-assembled under this battle flag, but all concur in the belief that the
-camp could have contained no less than three thousand warriors--in all
-probability the greatest single Indian army ever to be put into the
-field against the troops.
-
-By this time other help was coming for Crook, as he lay in the south
-nursing his ill fortune. General Custer, having scouted out Crazy
-Horse's retreat, had been ordered to stop him from the north and to
-pinch the Indians between the prongs of his force and Crook's.
-
-But it was Custer rather than Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull who met the
-pincers. Coming upon the headquarters village of the enemy, Custer
-divided his force of 600 men into four groups: Benteen with 140 odd,
-Reno with about 125, McDougall with the ammunition and supplies and
-perhaps 140 men, and Custer himself retaining the balance.
-
-While McDougall stayed to the rear, Benteen was sent off on a fruitless
-errand into a badly broken terrain to the southwest. Custer and Reno in
-the meantime proceeded side by side toward the village. Coming over the
-last remaining hill before the Indian camp, Custer dispatched Reno ahead
-to make a preliminary contact with the enemy, while he rode off in a
-somewhat parallel direction, apparently bent on encircling the savages.
-
-Meanwhile Reno did indeed encounter the Indians, and when he realized
-how tragically outnumbered he was, he immediately dismounted his men to
-fight a delaying action on foot, thereby saving both men and horses. He
-obviously adopted this tactic on the theory that he would be supported
-from the rear by Custer. When he saw that Custer had decided to make a
-diversionary attack on the right flank of the enemy, Reno and his men
-gave up the fight and concentrated on scrambling out of the trap and
-making their way to the hill which overlooked the village.
-
-From that vantage point Custer and his force could be seen across the
-Little Big Horn at a distance of perhaps a thousand yards. Apparently
-thinking that Reno was still successfully engaging the Indians, Custer
-rode his men down into a ravine where he apparently encountered the full
-horde of savages and where he met his death. The details of that last
-action have never been made clear, but most experts think that he
-divided his pitifully weak force into two segments at the time of the
-final charge which took him full into the heart of the great enemy body.
-Thus it was that Custer was caught in the pliers of the attack, in which
-hopeless position his entire force was wiped out to the last man,
-officer, and guide. Custer's Last Stand, as it has been poetically
-called, was in every respect the greatest defeat of white forces in the
-history of Indian warfare.
-
-Custer's death marked the end of the Black Hills controversy. Although
-the Indians had been completely victorious, they had spent so heavily of
-their warriors and their supplies that they were never again able to
-mount a major attack against the whites. Swiftly the troops hunted them
-down, village by village, and within a year the great Sioux War had
-ground to a stop.
-
-A second treaty commission had been appointed late in 1876, and by
-February the transfer of the Black Hills from the Sioux Nation to the
-United States had been completed--not for a cash consideration, but only
-for the government's promise to support the Indians until such time as
-they might learn, under agency supervision, to provide for themselves.
-
-By that time the question of entry was no more than rhetorical. The
-Black Hills were as thickly populated as any region of equal size in the
-West. The stage routes in from Cheyenne, from Sidney, Nebraska, and from
-the Dakota railheads were well traveled. The last frontier had been
-broken.
-
-And besides--there was Deadwood and the Homestake.
-
-The original rush had centered in historic Custer, the scene of the
-first entrance into the country on French Creek, and the terminus of the
-Cheyenne-Black Hills stage line. By Christmas of 1875 the population of
-that wilderness settlement was in excess of ten thousand souls, each of
-them active and bustling about his business.
-
-On the other hand, there was not a great deal of business to bustle
-after. French Creek was a good clue to gold, but that was about all.
-Before long most of the good citizens, having found the little brook
-something of a snare and a delusion, were casting about for some way to
-make their livings from each other. Storekeeping, laundering, ranching,
-hostlering, all were honorable occupations which soon found a plenitude
-of practitioners.
-
-In that fashion the winter was passed. Ice capped the waters and the
-snow hung from the trees, and aside from hoping for spring there was
-little the thronging populace could do. Thus a fruitful field was in
-fallow for the gossip which started blossoming in March and April. The
-tales, whispered--as such stories always are--without definition or
-authority, had it that somewhere in the northern Hills there was another
-stream that had nuggets the size of ... it is unimportant how large the
-nuggets, for a glitter of dust the size of an eye-speck would have been
-a windfall in Custer. Day by day the rumor grew, and as is always the
-case with such gossip, the precise location of this "Deadtree Gulch" was
-never made entirely plain.
-
-The reason for this obfuscation was simple: a rich strike had actually
-been made far in the north part of the Hills, and the claimants were
-doing their level best to keep it a secret. The fact that Custer held
-its population as long as it did was a testament to the sagacity and
-close-lippedness of John Pearson and Sam Blodgett, who had stumbled,
-late the previous winter, into one of the world's richest gold basins.
-
-The secret held for only a few months. Trappers, prospectors, and mere
-travelers were passing through the spruce trails of the Hills in such
-profusion that sooner or later the activity up Deadwood Gulch, as it
-came to be called, was bound to be observed. Pearson had found his dream
-cache in December of 1875, and he managed to contain the secret only
-until March of 1876. Like a forest fire the news of the strike to the
-north spread, and by May the southern Hills were deserted. Custer, for
-several years the metropolis of the entire region, lost all except
-thirty of its citizens in a matter of weeks, and other settlements in
-the south and west simply dried up and disappeared.
-
-That Deadwood Gulch, so named for the stand of burned-over timber which
-graced its declivitous sides, contained a major deposit was not to be
-denied. The rich sands which Pearson had spaded up testified to that,
-and later comers were by no means disappointed. But the names and
-locations of individual early discoveries have long been lost to all
-save the most assiduous researchers, for there was one claim which
-outshone all the rest. That digging was the mighty Homestake, which,
-from its first days, has produced gold and assorted other precious ores
-in such abundance and with such dependability that it has been accepted
-the world over as one of earth's great mines, rivaled in munificence
-only by the Portland-Independence of Cripple Creek in Colorado and the
-fabulous workings of the Witwatersrand of South Africa.
-
-As with all rich diggings, an appropriate legend attends the account of
-the original discovery of the Homestake. It seems there were two
-brothers, Fred and Moses Manuel, who had long been addicted to that most
-vicious of all unbreakable habits--gold prospecting. Moses had wound his
-weary way through the West for a full quarter of a century, plodding the
-dusty California gold gulches in '50, up the steep heights of Virginia
-City in '60, into Old Mexico, and--although he was a full generation too
-early--into Alaska. But now, in 1875, he was through with it all and was
-going home.
-
-Collecting his brother Fred, who was fruitlessly panning the sands of
-the Last Chance Gulch in the high border country of Montana, Moses
-started east, passing of course through the Black Hills, to scout down
-this one last ray of rumor--that a new strike was in the making. Setting
-out their camp in Bobtail Gulch, a mere pistol shot from certain placer
-claims in Deadwood Gulch, they went to work in midwinter, hoping to
-find, the legend has it, just enough blossom rock to give them a stake
-for their homeward journey.
-
-They seem to have hit it with a vengeance, not mere placer gold in the
-stream bed but a genuine lode, for on April 9, 1876, they patented the
-claim known as the Homestake. Discarding for the moment all idea of
-going on home with whatever meager wealth this "last" try should bring
-them, the Manuel brothers immediately consolidated their position by
-going into partnership with another prospector and taking shares in the
-Golden Terra, an adjoining piece of real estate, the Old Abe, and the
-Golden Star. The immediate returns, by the ton, are not today known, but
-they must have been substantial, for the lucky brothers built an
-arrastra--a crude millstone affair for grinding ore--and managed to
-pocket more than five thousand dollars in their first year of operation.
-
-In the natural run of events the Homestake and the adjoining parcels
-which the Manuel brothers were operating would probably have worked well
-enough for a year or so, and would then have suffered the fate of
-thousands of other diggings throughout the gold-rush West--the surface
-ores would have played out, and because of the high cost of following
-the lodes deeper into the earth than a few dozen feet, the mines would
-have been abandoned. But in this case a San Francisco syndicate came
-into the picture, providing the necessary capital funds for the
-searching out of whatever ultimate wealth the Homestake might have.
-
-This syndicate of Pacific Coast businessmen included James Ben Ali
-Haggin, a partner in the highly solvent Wells Fargo express company, and
-Senator George Hearst, the father of the publisher, William Randolph
-Hearst. These vigorous men sent a mining engineer into the Hills in 1877
-to canvass the location for possible investments; and in the course of a
-detailed examination of whatever properties seemed to be paying well,
-this emissary from Market Street came upon the brothers Manuel. A
-superficial examination of the Homestake and the Golden Terra sufficed
-this engineer, and he optioned them both, the first for seventy thousand
-dollars and the second for half that sum. Returning immediately to
-California, he delivered to his employers samples of this richest gold
-mine in North America, and without delay Senator Hearst went to South
-Dakota to see for himself.
-
-What he saw impressed him most favorably, for upon his return to
-California he owned both the Terra and the Homestake, as well as several
-other claims on the same hill, a total of ten acres of mining property.
-That small figure is significant in the light of the fact that the
-Homestake Mining Company today owns more than six thousand acres of
-mining claims.
-
-With the incorporation of the mining company in San Francisco, the
-aboriginal methods employed by the Manuel brothers were discarded, and
-the latest in mine machinery was laboriously shipped by train to Sidney,
-Nebraska, and then by ox team the two hundred miles to the town of Lead
-(pronounced "Leed"), the precise location of the Homestake, two miles
-from Deadwood City. The first installation was an eighty-stamp mill,
-which began its work in July of 1878. Within five years six additional
-mills were in operation, holding a total of 580 giant stampers.
-
-The mine now handles four thousand tons of ore per day and has, in its
-sighted reserve, twenty million tons yet to work. The two main shafts
-reach into the earth to a depth of more than a mile, with branching
-tunnels piercing the mountain at hundred-foot levels; and there are more
-than a hundred and fifty miles of secondary tunnels, served by more than
-eighty miles of mine railway.
-
-The richness of the Homestake ore has averaged fourteen dollars per ton
-for many years now. This may not sound like any considerable amount of
-wealth--but the most active gold operation in Colorado, the Fairplay
-dredge, is working gravel which pays an average of nine cents per ton.
-
-Finally, the records of the company show that it has mined 70,000,000
-tons of ore, yielding a total of 18,000,000 ounces of gold, which has
-brought a gross price, at various standards, of $450,000,000.
-
-With the opening of the Homestake, the conquest of the Black Hills was
-effectively completed, and the region entered into a period of rapid
-development and expansion. Although the great mine at Lead was run
-solely as a business enterprise, devoid of glamour and excitement, the
-town of Deadwood, two miles away, enjoyed a decade of the lustiest
-history ever to be known by a bonanza town. During its years of activity
-and arrogance Deadwood contributed to our national folklore several
-great figures, among them Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick, Wild Bill
-Hickok, and Preacher Smith.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER FIVE
- History II: Deadwood Days
-
-
- Sam left where he was working
- one pretty morn in May,
- a-heading for the Black Hills
- with his cattle and his pay.
- Sold out in Custer City
- and then got on a spree,
- A harder set of cowboys
- you seldom ever see.
- --"Legend of Sam Bass"
-
-It has become the literary custom to recall our bonanza frontier less as
-an economic phenomenon than as a backdrop for bloodshed, mayhem, and
-assorted turns of vigor and violence. Early California, for example, is
-today known less as the scene of the accomplishments of James Fair,
-Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford than as the arena for the armed
-forays of Joaquin Murietta, Black Bart, Dick Fellows, and various other
-gunmen. Since this is the accepted practice, it is entirely appropriate
-to introduce the gold-rush days of the Black Hills with a brief account
-of the banditry and thuggery which accompanied the early growth of that
-last frontier.
-
-The quotation at the head of this chapter is one verse of an old folk
-ballad, "The Legend of Sam Bass," the not particularly inspiring saga of
-the life and death of an Indiana-born horse thief and road agent.
-Actually, Bass had little to do with the history of the Hills, and as
-anybody knows who has ever whistled or sung his song, the bulk of the
-chronicle concerns his struggle against the Texas Rangers.
-
-On the other hand, Sam Bass will long live in Black Hills history, for
-regardless of his other accomplishments he went to his glory bearing the
-credit for having originated the fine art of stage robbery in that
-Dakota wilderness. The Black Hills, like every other gold region,
-enjoyed but scant holiday from the pestiferous road agents. During 1875
-and 1876, when the region was filling up, it seemed that there was
-plenty to occupy the imagination of every individual who was able to
-make the tortuous trip from the railroad. But by 1877 the area had
-calmed down to such an extent that idle hands could occasionally be
-counted in the dram shops, and the time was ripe for the devil to get in
-his work.
-
-From the point of view of geography the Hills presented ideal conditions
-for armed assault. The two major stage lines leading into the region
-were the Cheyenne-Black Hills Line, running through two hundred miles of
-desolate emptyland, and the Sidney Short Route, less long by some thirty
-miles, but passing through equally lonely country. In addition, one
-freight and stage line came in from the east, from Fort Pierre, and
-another from the north, following the general heading of Custer's 1874
-expedition. The gold, though, most often traveled the fastest route, out
-to the Union Pacific at Cheyenne or Sidney.
-
-During the first twenty months or so of the Black Hills gold rush, armed
-guards were not normally counted among the personnel of the stage
-coaches. As a matter of fact, in most instances it was to be questioned
-whether or not any gold rode the stages, for the going was generally
-thin in the diggings, and the average operator accumulated his bullion
-for several months before amassing a shipment large enough to be worth
-the trouble and worry. For all the wealth of the Homestake, the Hills by
-no means repeated California's early history, when every stage worth
-tying a horse to carried at least some treasure. And yet, in the
-springtime most of the miners cleaned up their winter's take, it was
-commonly understood, and ... well, Sam Bass must have thought, every
-good thing must have a beginning.
-
-In March, 1877, Bass organized a gang of cutthroats in Deadwood, and the
-brief period when one could ride the coaches in comparative safety came
-to an end. It was not much of a gang that the legendary bandit gathered
-around him, the five other men being mostly cowardly and quite
-worthless, either as adventurers or as strategists. Bass himself was
-little more than a "punk," as he would be called today, and, as a matter
-of fact, did not earn his immortality until much later, in Texas, where
-he was shot down in a barber chair by a Ranger.
-
-The gang, if they might so be called, foregathered on the snowy night of
-March 25 in Deadwood and, after consuming sufficient whiskey to enable
-them to stand the cold, made their way down the south road to a point a
-few miles from town where they might intercept the incoming stage from
-Cheyenne. What genius of diabolical planning led them to attack an
-inbound conveyance, which could be carrying little more than ordinary
-mail, rather than the "down" stage, which might possibly be loaded with
-bullion, has never been figured out, but at any rate they camped
-themselves in the snow and waited.
-
-At last the stage hove into sight, and Bass, the trusty leader,
-cautioned his hoodlums not to shoot, but merely to stop the coach and
-demand the mail pouch. Presumably the sentiments of the period held that
-robbery without gunfire was quite condonable, and an entirely different
-affair from burglary accompanied by shooting. It is also quite possible
-that Bass was only minding his own safety, for the night had already
-been marked by one misfortune--one of his men had managed to shoot
-himself in the foot while putting on his deadly hardware.
-
-As might be expected, however, Bass's well-laid plans went very much
-agley. In the excitement of calling "Halt!" one of the bandits proved a
-bit too eager-fingered, and even as the stage driver was reining his
-team to a stop, a shotgun blared out, emptying its charge at close range
-into the driver's chest.
-
- [Illustration: Calamity Jane, during her carnival days]
-
- [Illustration: Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait]
-
- [Illustration: Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage carrying bullion guarded
- by shotgun messengers]
-
- [Illustration: Deadwood Gulch in 1881]
-
- [Illustration: Modern Deadwood--seventy years later]
-
-With the shot the horses bolted, and shortly thereafter they pounded
-into Deadwood, guided by a hatless passenger who had managed to secure
-the ribbons as they dangled. Within a matter of minutes a posse had been
-formed and riders were making their way into the woods. Inasmuch as Bass
-and his companions had been acting suspiciously during the afternoon and
-evening, the finger of accusation pointed altogether correctly in their
-direction, and before the moon was down Sam Bass was well on his way to
-Texas, escaping Deadwood's justice only to go to his lathered doom.
-
-This tragic foray against law and order set the stage, so to speak, and
-before long the spruce trails of the Black Hills, once so still and
-harmless, could be passed over safely only in the company of "shotgun
-messengers," as the armed attendants were called. It did not take the
-stage companies long to come to this way of operating, for Wells Fargo,
-which contracted for the express business, had had a quarter-century of
-rugged experience. Bringing their brave talents swiftly to bear on the
-situation, the Wells Fargo men steel-plated the coaches to be used for
-bullion shipments, and brought into the Hills the famed treasure chests
-which had figured so largely in the history of the coming of law and
-order to California--metal-bound cases too heavy to be transported
-quickly from the scene of crime, and too sturdy to be opened except
-after arduous work with chisels and crowbars. The chests had been
-developed with the idea that a posse could be gathered at the spot where
-a stage had been held up before the gold could be removed from the chest
-or the chest itself taken far away.
-
-A more important safety factor than the chests was the reputation of the
-shotgun messengers. The express companies went to great lengths to
-engage only the most fearless and law-abiding men they could find for
-this dangerous task, and time and time again thousands upon thousands of
-dollars in bullion rode across the lonely trails with no more than one
-man, his shotgun, and his reputation for bravery guarding it.
-
-Wyatt Earp, perhaps the most noted of these messengers, entered his long
-tour of Wells Fargo duty through that firm's Deadwood office. Earp, as
-any lover of western legend will tell, earned his vigorous reputation as
-marshal in the bloody Kansas cattle towns of Dodge City and Abilene.
-After the excitement of these Gomorrahs had worn off, he made his way to
-Deadwood in 1876--not as a gold-seeker, but apparently merely in search
-of honest and not too dangerous employment. At any rate, his brief stay
-in the Hills was given to the profession of coal and wood dispensing
-rather than to law enforcement. Either the weather or the lethargy of
-the place suited him poorly, for within the year he was casting about
-for some means of making his way back to his own plains country.
-
-Taking advantage of the public clamor against road agents after the Sam
-Bass affair, he offered his services to the express agent and was hired
-for the single trip out for fifty dollars cash and free passage. The
-agent was by no means doling out any charity in this exchange, for he
-knew the value of Earp's reputation and looked upon the fifty dollars as
-a cheap form of insurance. He advertised in the local newspaper: "The
-Spring cleanup will leave for Cheyenne on the regular stage at 7 AM next
-Monday. Wyatt Earp of Dodge will ride shotgun."
-
-Bullion shippers were quick to take advantage of this extra protection,
-and it was recorded that no less than two hundred thousand dollars in
-bullion was weighed in for that special trip. It would be most dramatic
-to recount that Earp's one trip was marked by attempted mass raids,
-burning coaches, and wounded drivers, but the truth of the matter is
-that the journey was made on time and in good order. Only one shot was
-fired, and that by Marshal Earp, who took offense at the suspicious
-actions of a rider whose course seemed to parallel the stage route for
-an unaccountable distance. Without stopping the stage or otherwise
-alarming the passengers Earp dropped the offending horseman a few miles
-out of Deadwood, and the rest of the trip was made without incident.
-
-Despite the vigor with which the treasure coaches were protected, armed
-robbery continued to take place sporadically all during the final decade
-before the rails pushed through from the East. By and large these
-forays, while bloody, were unsuccessful, and not a single desperado was
-able to rise to any sort of fame during that period. On the other hand,
-there was one robbery which must go down in history for the strange way
-in which the loot was recovered.
-
-This particular villainy, remembered as the Canyon Springs robbery, took
-place on September 28, 1878. The locale of the outrage was not far out
-of Deadwood on the rough way through Beaver Creek and Jenney Stockade
-into Wyoming and thence to Cheyenne. The coach, on this fateful
-occasion, was rumored to be carrying nearly one hundred thousand dollars
-in ingots from the Homestake, as well as from other works; and although
-shipments of such size were not altogether rare, they were sufficiently
-out of the ordinary to suggest the services of additional shotgun
-messengers. It may well have been the mere fact of the scheduling of
-additional guards that called the attention of the bandits to this
-particular manifest.
-
-The holdup took place in midafternoon, as the driver was stopping the
-coach to water the horses. In the gunplay three men were killed, and the
-bandits escaped with the loot from the treasure chest, which they
-apparently managed to chisel open. Ten miles away one of the guards came
-upon a party of horsemen, who returned to the scene of the carnage; but
-upon their arrival they found the coach despoiled of its gold.
-
-In many such cases the bandits would have been recognized as local or
-near-local citizens; but in this instance all of the desperadoes
-appeared to be strangers to the Hills, and consequently the law officers
-had very little except guesswork to guide them in their pursuit.
-Guesswork coupled with just plain snooping soon uncovered a trail,
-however, for one of the stage agents turned up a ranch owner who gave
-the information that a small group of men had, on the very evening of
-the holdup, bought a light spring wagon from him. Such a transaction was
-unusual enough to indicate that the purchasers were by no means
-individuals of legitimate calling, and in all probability were the
-actual bandits. Setting out on this trail, the agent managed to trace
-them and their wagon all the way to Cheyenne, where the group had
-apparently turned to the east.
-
-By that time persons who had seen them in passing had recognized them,
-and their names were broadcast to the marshals and sheriffs of all the
-eastern regions of the plains. Day after day the stage agent followed
-their trail east, across the Missouri, across the border of Nebraska,
-and on to the pleasant town of Atlantic, in Iowa. By that time the wagon
-had been discarded and the gang had broken up, and the agent was
-following only one spoor--the track of a young man who was always seen
-with a strange, heavy pack on his back.
-
-In the town of Atlantic the trail came to an abrupt end, and indeed the
-mystery might never have been solved had it not been for a strange
-display in the street window of a local bank. Pausing to see what it
-might be that was engaging the attention of a crowd at the window, the
-agent was astounded to behold part of the very loot he was pursuing--two
-bullion bricks stamped with serial numbers which identified them beyond
-a doubt as part of the Canyon Springs treasure.
-
-Upon questioning, the banker proudly asserted that his son had only the
-day before returned from a successful adventure in the Black Hills, and
-had, as a matter of fact, found a gold mine, which he had sold for the
-very bricks making up the exhibit.
-
-Gently the agent disabused the banker of this sad misapprehension, and,
-enlisting the aid of the local Sheriff, had the prodigal son arrested.
-
-The unfortunate conclusion to this tale of detective expertness is that
-although the gold was eventually returned to the Homestake, the young
-bandit escaped from the train which was carrying him back to Cheyenne,
-and was never thereafter apprehended. As for the other four robbers and
-the rest of the treasure, no further trace of either was ever
-discovered.
-
-Although banditry and skulduggery played a very great part in the tales
-of most of the other bonanza gold fields, the Black Hills story was for
-the most part happily without extraordinary violence. Much more
-conspicuous in the history of the Hills than the desperate adventures of
-bandits are the exploits of the folk heroes who rode the Deadwood legend
-into immortality. Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick,
-Preacher Smith, all of these amazing personalities achieved a lasting
-fame during the early days of this later frontier, not for any deeds of
-derring-do in the Sam Bass fashion, but for the old American custom of
-living and dying in a high and wide manner.
-
-In all probability Deadwood Dick has carried the saga of the Hills
-farther and to a greater audience, both in this country and abroad, than
-any of the others, and for that reason, as well as for the strange
-circumstance that he never existed, it is perhaps well to tell his story
-first.
-
-Dick, who never had a last name, was nothing more nor less than the
-happy creation of an overworked literary side-liner eking out a living
-in the late seventies. Having exhausted the possible plot complexities
-of such heroes as Seth Jones and Duke Darrall, Messrs. Beadle and Adams,
-proprietors of that stupendous literary zoo, The Pocket Library
-(published weekly at 98 William Street, New York, price five cents),
-urged their hack, Edward L. Wheeler, to crank out a new character. This
-Shakespeare of the sensational, having recently heard of the brave
-doings in Deadwood, of the Black Hills, promptly created a latter-day
-Leatherstocking, Deadwood Dick.
-
-Dick's success was instantaneous, for there was a sense of truth in
-these stories which had theretofore been missing. Dispatches in every
-post brought the news of Deadwood as it was happening, and thus the
-weekly appearance of another Deadwood story was able to hang itself
-firmly on the coattails of reality. In one episode Dick courts Calamity
-Jane, who actually existed at the time, and finally marries her. In
-another, Our Hero is a frontier detective, fighting bravely on the side
-of law and order. In still another he has turned to robbery, and at one
-point is actually strung by his neck from a cottonwood gallows.
-
-After exhausting the many plot possibilities of the Black Hills, Dick,
-who had become as real to his readers as George Washington, began to
-work both backward and forward in time and space. In one set of
-adventures he is shown to be an active Indian fighter; in another he
-turns up with Calamity Jane in the town of Leadville, Colorado, which
-came into its glory not long after the strike in Deadwood.
-
-At last the many loose ends of the story so entangled author Wheeler
-that he gave up Deadwood Dick as a lost cause and out of nowhere fetched
-him a son, Deadwood Dick, Jr., who marched on to the turn of the century
-and down into our own time. Indeed, his noble features can still
-occasionally be found staring gravely up from a pile of old and dusty
-magazines in attic corners.
-
-With such a heritage it is little wonder that as the town of Deadwood
-grew away from its infancy, and as its modern Chamber of Commerce turned
-to summer pageants as a source of tourist interest, Deadwood Dick should
-be revived and paraded. Deadwood's summer festivals, the gay "Days of
-'76," are built around a town-wide re-creation of the gold rush, with
-the natives chin-whiskered, booted, and costumed within an inch of their
-lives. During this gusty week otherwise sober and retiring citizens turn
-themselves out as stage coach drivers, Indians, and pony express riders,
-and the nights are filled with such a bubbling halloo that the tourists,
-who come in ever larger droves, are able to go home and report that they
-have honestly spent time in a frontier town.
-
-To heighten the effect, the impresarios of this gay divertissement many
-years ago decided to raise Deadwood Dick from Beadle's pages and put him
-on the street like all the other self-respecting Calamity Janes and Wild
-Bills. Locating an oldster who looked not unlike the artist's original
-concept, they dressed him in an assortment of western oddities and gave
-him time off from his duties as a stable hand while the festival was in
-session. For several years this simple pretense was carried on, and no
-sleep whatsoever was lost over the fact that a mild fraud was being
-perpetrated on the visiting Iowans.
-
-In 1927, though, when South Dakota was negotiating with Calvin Coolidge
-to get him to spend his summer in the Hills, the stable hand, whose name
-happened to be Dick Clarke, was sent to Washington to extend a personal
-welcome to the President. Patently a publicity stunt, it fooled nobody
-but old Dick himself. The rigors of the trip and the succession of
-tongue-in-cheek honors heaped upon him somehow tilted the old man's
-mind, and from that day until his death a decade later he fully believed
-that he was the original Deadwood Dick. Frowning down any suggestions
-that he doff his beaded finery and return to the care of the oat bins,
-he betook himself far from the gentle safety of the Deadwood that he
-knew and that knew him, and took to touring the backwoods with
-fifth-rate medicine shows and Wild West pageants. Somewhere along the
-line he got up a small pamphlet which he sold to the gawking audiences
-who thought they were seeing a genuine frontiersman. In this amazing
-tract he spelled out such of the facts of Wheeler's stories as were
-coherent and in logical time sequence. The rest, including a date and
-place of birth, he soberly filled in for himself.
-
-And that was Deadwood Dick. When he finally died, back in Deadwood in
-the early forties, much of the town had come to believe as he did that
-there had been a Deadwood Dick, just as there had been a Calamity Jane,
-and that this gaffer had been the very person. His cortege was solemnly
-followed, and to this day flowers are sprinkled on his grave by confused
-but loyal residents of the Hills.
-
-
-Wild Bill Hickok, on the other hand, actually lived, and actually died
-exactly as the legend goes, with aces and eights in his hand. It was
-this unfortunate occurrence, as a matter of fact, that gave to that
-particular poker hand its gruesome name, Dead Man's Hand.
-
-Somewhat in the manner of Deadwood Dick, Wild Bill achieved a large part
-of his fame through the earnest efforts of Beadle & Adams. That is to
-say, much of his renown came after his untimely demise, and much of it
-was deliberately generated to satisfy the great western-yearnings of the
-avid book-buying public. In addition to the publishers' efforts on
-Bill's behalf, great impetus was given to his posthumous repute by
-Calamity Jane. Nevertheless, in all probability Hickok was actually the
-fearless and sterling character his legendeers have depicted, and had he
-not been brutally done to death by feckless Jack McCall he would
-doubtless have earned even greater fame through his own efforts in later
-years.
-
-James Hickok was born into a farming family in Illinois in the year
-1837, and passed a quiet and respectable boyhood in the ordinary
-pursuits of such an existence. In his nineteenth year he, like so many
-other young men of that day, felt the urgent call of the Far West. He
-hired himself out forthwith as a teamster in a wagon train to the
-Pacific Coast.
-
-Returning at the end of this one visit to the golden shores, he managed
-to land in the Platte Valley of the eastern Rockies in the very year
-when gold was being discovered in that region. The following two years
-he spent in odd jobs around Denver and on the high plains to the east of
-that new city. During all this time, however, it seemed as if his heart
-were hungering for the lower country. He let his drifting carry him
-slowly back into Kansas where, at the beginning of the Civil War, he
-managed a station for Hinckley's Overland Express Company, which was
-then staging from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Denver and into Central City.
-
-All these adventures gave ample opportunity for any young man of spleen
-to entangle himself a dozen times over in killings, brawls, and assorted
-rough businesses, but through this entire period James Hickok gave
-evidence of being nothing but a stalwart and well-intentioned
-individual.
-
-The harmlessness of his pursuits, though, came to an explosive end after
-one year in this genial work, when he indulged in pistolry with a
-certain McCanles gang. One version of the Wild Bill legend states that
-the "gang" were cutthroats, and that Hickok was only defending his
-company's property. Another version, equally trustworthy, has it that
-the McCanleses were Confederate sympathizers, attempting to raise a
-cavalry unit in the region and thus offending Hickok with his Unionist
-leanings. Whatever the reason, the outcome was bloody. No one today
-knows for certain how many men were killed, for eyewitness accounts have
-included reports ranging all the way from one to six, all of them
-presumably slain by Hickok.
-
-The doughty station manager, his helper, and another stage company
-employee were speedily brought to trial for the affair, and just as
-speedily acquitted of any crime. Shortly after that Hickok resigned his
-express company affiliation and joined the Union army, fighting the war
-out as a trusted though undistinguished scout.
-
-After his discharge in 1865, he seems to have forsaken forever his once
-peaceful way of life, and thereafter blood was more than occasionally to
-be found upon his hands. His first postwar killing took place in
-Springfield, Missouri, in a duel with a gambler; and later that same
-year he was reported to have mortally wounded another card player in
-Julesburg, Colorado Territory. In the next year another report,
-unofficial like all the rest, had him killing three more men in
-Missouri, and in 1867--this _was_ official--he went to the booming cow
-town of Hays City, Kansas, where he was shortly offered the post of
-marshal.
-
-That his reputation, whether truthful or legendary, was growing there
-can be no question. By 1867 he was accounted to be one of the best
-gunmen of his time and place, quite possibly for the simple reason that
-he had survived so many fights. For all the shadowy overtones of his
-story, he was also reputed to be a devotee of righteousness and order,
-although this facet of his character may or may not actually have
-existed. He was well known to be a gambler, and his victims were all
-(except the McCanleses) supposed to be cheaters at cards. Whether his
-vivacity with Mr. Colt's revolver was intended to rid the earth of
-dishonest men or merely to avenge a lost hand is beside the point, for
-his acceptance of the position of marshal of Hays City indicates that
-for a time, at least, his inclinations lay in the direction of law and
-order.
-
-From Hays City he went to a similar post in Abilene, where he bore the
-star until 1872. During all this time he was forced to kill but a bare
-minimum of unworthy citizens, his ever growing repute as a dangerous man
-with a gun apparently frightening would-be desperadoes out of his orbit.
-Three notches were all that he placed upon his weapon during his service
-in those two hell cities of the prairies--definitely a world's record in
-reverse.
-
- [Illustration: One of the Black Hills' many streams]
-
- [Illustration: The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared]
-
-Apparently the inactivity came to bore him, for he soon gave up police
-work to return to the army for two years as a scout. This harsh calling
-also failed to satisfy whatever inner wants were making themselves felt,
-and in 1874 he resigned to join a traveling show with Buffalo Bill.
-
-In 1875, however, he was to be found no longer behind the chemical
-lights, but idling his time away in Cheyenne. During this restless
-interlude he married a circus rider named Agnes Lake. Shortly after the
-ceremony, which took place in 1876, he followed the trail to Deadwood,
-arriving in April and setting up camp with another ex-army scout. The
-motives which drew him to that thriving boom town were, in all
-probability, those which drew the thousands of others--mere curiosity
-and the hope that something might turn up. Indeed, during the four
-months of his Deadwood hiatus he did very little but play poker in the
-famed saloon known as Number Ten. That he was as accomplished a gambler
-as he was a gunman was doubted by no one, and through his ability with
-the pasteboards he apparently kept himself in such funds as he needed.
-He did not attempt to look for gold, nor did he seek any official post
-in the town. He merely played the long hours away at cards.
-
-One might expect such a man as Wild Bill Hickok to meet his nemesis in
-open battle with a murderous cutthroat seeking to pay off an old score.
-Western legend is filled with such fitting come-uppances. But in this
-rare case our hero was killed in a peaceful moment by a total stranger
-and for reasons which nobody was ever thereafter able to discern.
-
-On the fateful day of August 2, 1876, he entered Number Ten shortly
-after the lunch hour to take up his everlasting hand of cards. Normally,
-being a prudent man, he insisted on a seat with its back to a wall, from
-which vantage point he could keep his eye cocked for trouble; but on
-this day, for some reason, he arrived just too late to take his
-customary position and had to accept a chair with its back to the door.
-The game proceeded amiably enough for a while, and there was nothing in
-the afternoon air to suggest violence of any sort. At last a normally
-inoffensive deadbeat, one Jack McCall, turned from the bar where he had
-been enjoying a quiet drink and, passing the gaming table on his way to
-the door, suddenly and without a word pulled his revolver from his vest
-and put a shot through Wild Bill's skull.
-
-The effect was instantaneous. When the news spread that Wild Bill had
-been killed, all work stopped in the city and men streamed in from every
-corner, expecting at the very least to find a major battle in progress.
-When finally the crowds were quieted down and it was learned that the
-killing was nothing more than a mere murder, the populace speedily
-hunted up the terrified McCall, whom they found huddled in a near-by
-stable, and arranged a formal trial. The facts that Deadwood was at that
-time still out of bounds to American citizens and therefore under no
-legitimate civil jurisdiction and that the judge, jury, and prosecuting
-attorney were elected on the spot by a show of hands, having therefore
-no official standing, did not dampen the ardor of the crowd. A trial was
-a trial, and its results would presumably be fair and honest.
-
-As a matter of fact, Jack McCall must have been the most surprised
-individual of all at the ultimate fairness of the legal machinery which
-had been set up in his honor. With the acceptance of his fumbling plea
-that Hickok had, at a place unnamed and at a time unnamed, killed his
-brother, McCall was acquitted and turned free, and Wild Bill was
-sorrowfully buried by the admiring populace.
-
-As soon as he was freed, McCall hurried back to Cheyenne to escape the
-reach of any of Hickok's friends. Unfortunately the story of the killing
-followed him there, and under the mistaken impression that he had
-undergone a legitimate trial and was therefore no longer subject to
-additional jeopardy, McCall took no pains to deny the murder. This was a
-most foolish tactic on his part, for he was speedily rearrested and
-shipped to Yankton, the capital of South Dakota Territory, where he was
-held for a session of the proper court. Inasmuch as he had admitted
-before witnesses not only that he had killed Wild Bill, but also that
-his earlier plea had been fabricated from whole cloth, he had a very
-slender defense indeed, and was quickly found guilty and banged.
-
-To the very end no clue could be found to any sort of sound reason for
-his having fired the fatal shot. It was quite definitely proved that he
-had never had any dealings with his victim and had never been in any way
-offended by him, and that he no more than knew vaguely who he was. It
-was apparently a completely aimless killing, the unhappy inspiration of
-the moment.
-
-On the other hand, Justice seems forever determined to get to the bottom
-of the matter, for _The Trial of Jack McCall_ has become an institution
-of the Black Hills, played, like _Ten Nights in a Barroom_, all the
-summers long in a popular tavern. Where audiences elsewhere hiss their
-Legrees and other purely fictional villains, the proud residents of
-Deadwood have their very own and very real scoundrel for the target of
-their malisons--the miserable McCall. Tourists are cordially invited to
-join in the fun and thereby to spread ever farther the legend of Wild
-Bill Hickok.
-
-On June 21, 1951, the legend was further enhanced and improved upon by
-the presentation to the city of Deadwood of a brand new statue of Hickok
-carved out of a massive chunk of native granite by the ebullient
-sculptor, Ziolkowski. An all-day celebration attended the unveiling of
-this statue upon its pedestal at the foot of Mt. Moriah, and the zenith
-of the day's gaudy reverence was the reading of an "epic" poem to the
-hushed populace of the town over a loud-speaker system from the top of
-the mount. The statue is plain to be seen about a block from the Adams
-Memorial Museum, and copies of the epic can no doubt be had by
-soliciting the Deadwood Chamber of Commerce.
-
-
-Of a somewhat different character from Wild Bill, but, it is good to
-report, no less revered in the Hills, was Preacher Smith.
-
-Frontier towns have been notorious for their hallowing of persons, both
-male and female, who were either expertly good or expertly bad. This
-strange compounding of affections would suggest that the vice or
-godliness in itself was unimportant, but that the rough and crude
-citizens who populated our earlier settlements held a genuine admiration
-and regard for anyone of any calling who demonstrated authority and
-accomplishment.
-
-And thus it was with the Reverend Henry W. Smith. A man of exceptionally
-little luck in life, he gave up his dwindling congregations in the
-States and journeyed into the frontier in 1875, partly because of a zeal
-in his heart to bring the Word into the lawless and godless gold camps,
-but also, it must be conjectured, to find some form of weekday
-employment which would enable him to care for his wife and two
-daughters. The wolf had been howling at many doors during those years,
-and parsonages which carried even a bare subsistence stipend were few
-and far between.
-
-Smith went first to Custer, where he stayed but a short while, finding
-little in the way of work and less in the way of souls to save, since
-the rush to Deadwood was then in full force. Hiring onto a merchandise
-train as a cook's helper, he made his way to that newer city, arriving
-early in May of 1876. In a town of such activity it was not difficult to
-locate work, and shortly his hide began to fill out and his purse to
-thicken. That purse, it was discovered after his death, was to be used
-for the purpose of bringing his family out to join him.
-
-Working diligently and, of course, soberly at his menial tasks from
-Monday through Saturday, and bravely setting up his pulpit on the main
-street on Sundays, Preacher Smith soon won the respect and even the
-genial admiration of the roisterous townspeople. At first his
-congregations contained more wandering dogs than people, but week after
-week, as he determinedly kept after his work, an increasingly large
-crowd gathered of a Sunday morning to listen to his sermons.
-
-Thus the entire town was shocked when he was brutally killed by Indians
-while walking to a near-by settlement to preach a sermon. Indians were
-bad enough at best, but killing a harmless and unarmed preacher was an
-act of violence which shook the consciences of the whole citizen body.
-It was on those consciences that the guilt began to press--the guilt of
-the knowledge that they had driven him to his death by their slowness to
-accept him in their own community and that he had gone to his rendezvous
-seeking a congregation, no matter how small, that would house him and
-the Master he served.
-
-Belatedly gathering to his support, the citizens passed a sizable hat
-for the benefit of the unfortunate man's widow and daughters. In
-addition to the gift of cash, the woman received an invitation to bring
-her grieving family to the Hills, where care would be arranged for them,
-including a teaching post for the eldest daughter. Unfortunately,
-neither the widow nor the daughters were in good enough health to be
-able to make the rigorous trip, and in consequence they could not avail
-themselves of the hospitality and generosity which were so late in
-coming.
-
-Although they had failed to bring the parson's family to Deadwood, the
-worthy citizens were undaunted in their efforts to memorialize this
-modest itinerant who had stumbled unwittingly into glory. A great chunk
-of sandstone was quarried and a local artist of more verve than ability
-proceeded to hack out the parson's likeness. The statue was eventually
-propped over his grave atop Mount Moriah, the cemetery-museum where he
-lies alongside Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. Unfortunately souvenir
-hunters carried on their unworthy custom over the years, until finally
-the battered monument, no longer even recognizable, collapsed. In the
-Adams Memorial Hall of Deadwood, however, there can be seen a
-certificate signed in Preacher Smith's very writing, and thus his
-handiwork lives along with his legend.
-
-
-All stories of Deadwood in the Black Hills come, eventually, to the
-great riddle of Martha Jane Cannary (sometimes spelled Canary), known as
-Calamity Jane.
-
-This gusty female, who rolled around the West for nearly half a century,
-has been the subject of more controversy and speculation than almost any
-other early-day character. In her lifetime she circulated a brief
-autobiography which successfully managed to hide the truth about
-practically every aspect of her history. In addition, she manipulated
-her drab story in such a way that a whole generation of legend-mongers
-accepted her as the "true love" of Wild Bill Hickok, and thus by no
-means to be thought of as the drunken harlot she most certainly was.
-
-By dint of careful searching, however, some few definite facts of her
-early life and adventures have been isolated, and upon them at least the
-framework of her true story has been constructed. She appears to have
-been born in the neighborhood of 1850--add or subtract a year--in
-Missouri. Some accounts have it that her father was a Baptist minister,
-which is an unimportant sidelight, for young Martha Jane did not stay at
-home long enough for any such influence to gnaw its way into her
-personality.[2]
-
-How she managed to get from Missouri to Wyoming while still in her early
-teens remains a mystery, but nonetheless her career as a camp follower
-started when, at the tender age of fourteen, she arrived in the roaring
-outpost of Rawlins. Some tales have it that she had gone west as the
-consort of a young army lieutenant, and that her mother, remarried to a
-pioneer, found her in that boisterous military town and took her to
-Utah. In any event she came back into circulation two years later, for
-in 1866 she was duly married to one George White in Cheyenne. Following
-this felicitous turn of affairs she and her husband journeyed to Denver,
-where he was able to support her in a fine, high style. Unfortunately,
-she did not take to this pleasant existence, but shortly began to yearn
-after the cavalry. Leaving her husband to his Denver duties, she
-appeared all during 1867 and 1868 in various forts throughout Wyoming.
-It was at this particular time in her career that she was supposed to
-have earned the nickname of Calamity Jane. Undoubtedly the title was
-bestowed upon her by barroom companions who had learned the sad truth
-that Martha Jane's appearance on the scene boded a long and arduous
-night of drinking; but in her maudlin and confused autobiography she
-tells of assisting in an Indian fight and for her splendid services
-being gratefully given the name by a Captain Pat Egan. In a later
-interview Egan denied this, claiming that the only time he had ever seen
-the woman was while escorting her out of a barracks so that the men
-could get some sleep.
-
-From Wyoming she went to Hays City, Kansas, still following the Seventh
-Cavalry, her chosen military unit. Six years later she turned up again,
-this time disguised as a man and marching with General Crook's police
-force, which was trying to keep settlers out of the Hills. Her
-autobiography claims that she also accompanied Custer's command on its
-famous exploratory march, but this does not appear to be true.
-
-After the discovery of gold in Deadwood, she found the high life in that
-town so completely to her liking that she made it her home base. In time
-she fastened herself so securely among the legends of the metropolis
-that she was thereafter known solely as Calamity Jane of Deadwood.
-
-Taking advantage of the high romance which surrounded Wild Bill's name
-after his death, Calamity made haste to pass the story around that he
-had been her only true love; and although there was no evidence of any
-sort that he even knew who she was, her last words, when she died in
-1903, were a plea to be buried next to him.
-
-In the eighties she became restless again and forsook her beloved
-Deadwood for two decades, roving as far south as El Paso, and on one
-occasion being seen in California. Her activities at this time of her
-life are mostly lost from sight, but it may be presumed that as whatever
-charms she may earlier have had faded, her interest to and in the
-soldiers waned. During this period she married again, this time wedding
-a man named Burke, to whom she bore a daughter. She soon tired of Burke,
-however, and drifted slowly north again, passing considerable time in
-Colorado and then returning briefly to Deadwood in 1895. Even at that
-late date the citizens of the gold town had not forgotten her, nor had
-the esteem in which she had earlier been held dwindled; when it was
-discovered that she lacked funds to care for her daughter, the
-townspeople passed the ever present hat and arranged for the care of the
-child. This act of generosity was purportedly to repay a great sacrifice
-which Calamity Jane had made in the earlier days, braving the dangers of
-the smallpox scourge of 1878 to nurse whoever was ill and without help.
-This particular legend has had wide currency in the West, its closest
-variant being the tale of Silver Heels, a dancing girl who visited the
-mining camps of Colorado's South Park in the sixties. Silver Heels is
-popularly supposed to have ministered to the miners during a similar
-plague, for which bravery a near-by mountain was named for her.
-
-After placing her child in a school, Calamity, who was destitute, betook
-herself to the vaudeville circuit. Inasmuch as through the dime novels
-she had already become a well-known national figure, she was able for a
-while to draw large crowds. Had it not been for her unfortunate habit of
-getting dead drunk before show time, she might well have amassed a
-competence over the years. But her first contract was not renewed, and
-after a brief whirl at the Buffalo Exposition she returned to the West,
-spending the next several years in Montana.
-
-At last she came home to Deadwood, a sick and broken old roustabout. By
-this time she was nothing more than a bar-fly, and she lived out her
-last days panhandling food and liquor money from strangers. At last, on
-August 2, 1903, she died of pneumonia.
-
-Deadwood turned out in force for her funeral. As she had requested, she
-was buried near Wild Bill Hickok on Mount Moriah, overlooking the town.
-That she had never really known Wild Bill was quite beside the point,
-and anyway, there was none present who knew whether she had or not. The
-shoddy story of her "love" for Hickok was nothing that interested the
-old timers, but was saved for historians to untangle. That she was no
-more than an alcoholic old harlot was of no consequence, either, to the
-good citizens, for with her passing the last of the great names of the
-frontier was coming home to rest. That the townspeople were proud of
-her, and genuinely so, was not to be denied, although there was most
-certainly nobody present at that melancholy service who could have told
-why. The truth of the matter was that they were burying not a broken old
-woman, but the last of the Black Hills legends.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER SIX
- The White River Badlands
-
-
-Any visit to the Black Hills must also be the occasion of a tour, at
-least for a few hours, of the famous South Dakota Badlands. This
-fantastic National Monument is not a part of the Hills, either
-geographically or historically, but because the two regions lie so close
-together--a scant fifty miles apart--they are expediently linked as two
-great natural wonders in the same region.
-
-The term "badlands" has a loose scientific acceptance, meaning any
-region where a specific type of heavy erosion has taken place. Such
-regions usually have subnormal rainfall and sparse vegetation. Those
-rains that do occur, then, find little on the earth's surface to prevent
-almost complete runoff, which is so vigorous as to act as a powerful
-cutting agent. The final ingredients of a badlands are rock formations
-known as unconsolidated--lacking any general unity of structure which
-might tend to withstand erosion. When all these conditions exist, the
-devastation of the rushing flood waters is without pattern, a great gash
-being carved in one spot while no damage is visible on a near-by
-outcropping. The end result is an almost frightening collection of
-gruesome stone monuments rising to the sky and marking the heights once
-reached by a general plateau.
-
-Actually, much of the high western plain abutting on the Rocky Mountains
-is basic badland formation, and small pockets of distinct erosion can be
-seen all through eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and eastern
-Wyoming, in addition to the vast depression in the valleys of the White
-and Cheyenne rivers in South Dakota. This one region, though, sixty-five
-miles long and five to fifteen miles wide, is the largest and from the
-geologist's point of view the most important of all such regions in the
-world. Desolate, empty, seared by ages of sun and wind, it is now a
-great gash in the earth's flesh which exposes to view rock and soil
-strata that measure a great span of earth's history.
-
-In addition to the splendid opportunity to see and study the various
-layers of the earth's surface going back as far as sixty million years,
-the very composition of badlands formations makes any such region a
-veritable museum of fossils and petrified animal relics. The South
-Dakota Badlands have turned up absolute treasures of such
-paleontological finds, enabling scientists to trace the evolution of
-mammalian life all the way back to the appearance on earth of the first
-carnivorous animals--the vastly distant ancestors of the dog. And the
-Badlands are noted not only for the great span in geologic time of their
-fossil beds, but also for the number of different types which have been
-found in their ancient soil, more than 250 different prehistoric animals
-having been discovered in various stages of fossilized preservation in
-this general region.
-
-The tourist, though, need not be even an amateur student of geology or
-paleontology to be thrilled and awed by a visit to this grotesque but
-beautiful area. The mere colors of the various rock strata, ever
-changing under the light patterns of sun and cloud, provide a
-never-to-be-forgotten experience. One of the most articulate tributes to
-the grandeur of the Badlands is that of Frank Lloyd Wright:
-
- Speaking of our trip to the South Dakota Badlands, I've been about the
- world a lot and pretty much over our own country but I was totally
- unprepared for the revelation called the Badlands. What I saw gave me
- an indescribable sense of the mysterious otherwhere--a distant
- architecture, ethereal, touched, only touched, with a sense of
- Egyptian-Mayan drift and silhouette. As we came closer, a templed
- realm definitely stood ambient in the air before my astonished
- "scene"-loving but "scene"-jaded gaze.
-
- Yes, I say the aspects of the South Dakota Badlands have more
- spiritual quality to impart to the mind of America than anything else
- in it made by Man's God.
-
-The word "badlands," which now has a genuine scientific meaning, was
-taken into our vocabulary from the folk name for this very region. In
-the earliest days of North American exploration, far back before the
-Revolution, French trappers had braved this empty wasteland on their
-endless quest for new fur grounds, and had brought back tales of this
-lost world of silence and strange shapes. They were the ones who gave it
-the name Badlands, but they were only translating directly the Sioux
-name, Mako Sika, which meant, precisely, lands bad for traveling.
-
-To the early explorers the badlands meant only that--high escarpments to
-be overcome; twisting, winding, endless canyons from which there were no
-outlets; crumbling rock underfoot on the three-hundred-foot crawls from
-the canyon bottoms to the table-tops; and the hot, shimmering distances
-of this forbidding terrain as far as the eye could see.
-
-It was, as a matter of fact, the existence of this area that helped keep
-the Black Hills nothing more than an empty question mark on maps until
-the rumors of gold began to circulate. The first American explorers, who
-might have discovered the natural wonders of the Hills in the 1820's,
-found their paths diverted to the north and the south by this impassable
-valley, and consequently missed the Hills.
-
-The first reliable record of the wonders of this lost world was dated
-1847. That year, it will be remembered, was one of great moment in the
-history of the western movement--the year that Brigham Young braved the
-high prairies and pathless mountains with his great exodus, settling an
-empire on the shores of Great Salt Lake. Although the Pacific trails
-were fairly well established by then, his was the first of the true
-migrations, and the gold rush to California, the Oregon excursions, and
-the Pikes Peak mosaid were yet to come.
-
-In this fateful year of 1847 a certain Professor Hiram A. Prout of St.
-Louis came somehow into contact with a representative of the American
-Fur Company, which ran substantial trapping operations all up the wide
-Missouri and its tributaries. How this meeting came about is lost to
-record, but we do know that the fur trader gave Professor Prout a
-souvenir of his recent travels through the Badlands of Dakota--a
-fragment of the lower jaw of a Titanothere, the first fossil ever to be
-quarried out of the region and used for scientific purposes.
-
-In that same year a second Badlands fossil turned up, this one a
-well-preserved head of an ancestral camel, given to or purchased by the
-great scholar, Dr. Joseph Leidy. With true academic ardor both of these
-gentlemen, Leidy and Prout, rushed their discoveries into scholarly
-print, describing in learned journals the nature of their trophies.
-Enjoying the slender circulation of academic publication, the essays
-which described these fossil wonders eventually found their way into the
-offices of the government's geological survey, which acted quickly to
-dispatch an expedition to the overlooked region of their origin.
-
-That first exploring party, the David Owen Survey, went into the field
-in 1849. A prominent scientist-artist, Dr. John Evans, was attached to
-the group, and from his pen we have several sketches of this pioneer
-adventure into the empty wastelands. If these drawings look more like
-studies of Dante's Inferno than like the breath-taking Badlands as they
-really are, it must be remembered that such geological formations had
-never before been visited by the members of that party, and, being
-completely alien to the America of their knowledge, impressed them every
-bit as a visit to the moon might have done.
-
-The Owens party was merely the vanguard of the great army of brave men
-and women who have ever since made their dangerous ways into the
-remotest distances of the mountain and desert West, seeking neither
-riches of gold nor riches of land, but only more minute bits of the
-knowledge of the world of our past. Archeologists, geologists, and
-paleontologists from universities and learned societies the world over
-have spent liberally of their time, energies, and personal safety to
-scout out the secrets of mankind's past in such remote corners of the
-earth as the Badlands. Year after year additional expeditions, both
-governmental and privately organized, made their way into this
-particular area, seeking out the fossil remains which turned up in great
-numbers.
-
-V. F. Hayden of the United States Geological Survey was one of the most
-diligent of the early explorers. He made trips into the Badlands in
-1853, 1855, 1857, and 1866, carrying on detailed and exhaustive studies
-and eventually unraveling the story of the region's major geologic
-features.
-
-As Hayden's reports became more and more widely circulated, various
-universities found projects of specific interest in one or another phase
-of the work of uncovering fossil beds; and from year to year Yale,
-Princeton, Amherst, the universities of South Dakota and Nebraska, and
-other institutions sent groups into the Badlands for summer work.
-Gradually, as these several groups exchanged information and reports of
-progress, it became possible for their scientists to trace back, through
-the skeletal remains of prehistoric animals, the very processes of the
-evolution of many entire families in the animal kingdom. Not only are
-the fossil beds of the Badlands as richly stocked with remains as any
-such bed in the world, but in a great many instances entire groups of
-three, four, and five whole skeletons have been found, making it
-possible for museum workers to re-create almost perfectly the animals as
-they existed and to set up models of the terrain at various intervals
-throughout its entire sixty-million-year history.
-
-Perhaps the most noteworthy as well as view-worthy section of the
-Badlands is Sheep Mountain, located at the far west end of the Monument.
-Down from the summit runs a great canyon, the School of Mines Canyon,
-named for the fact that the South Dakota State School of Mines at Rapid
-City long ago chose that location for the bulk of its paleontological
-research. Under the guidance of famed Dr. Cleophas O'Harra, for many
-years president of that institution, groups of Mines students went on
-extended annual encampments on Sheep Mountain, unearthing, among other
-rarities, full skeletons of the prehistoric midget horse, the
-saber-toothed tiger, and camels. It was this last discovery that lent
-considerable support to the concept, conjectural at the time of Dr.
-O'Harra's discoveries, that a land bridge had once connected North
-America and Asia, allowing the migration of peoples and animals from the
-old world into the new. School of Mines Canyon, while some distance off
-the main highway leading from Pierre to the Black Hills, is by all means
-worth the time required to visit it. The canyon lies only thirteen miles
-from the town of Scenic.
-
-The Badlands are reached by Highway 14-16 and by State Route 40. Coming
-from the west, from Rapid City, the visitor can take route 40 directly
-to the town of Scenic, forty-seven miles distant. From Scenic, in
-addition to connecting with the side trip to Sheep Mountain, 40
-continues along the north wall of the Badlands all the way to Cedar Pass
-and out the east end of the region, merging at Kadoka with Highway 16,
-or, by means of a nine-mile connection, with 14.
-
-Should the weather be bad and State 40 not recommended by local
-informers, the route is out of Rapid City on 14-16, east fifty-five
-miles to the town of Wall, thence by the access road through the
-Pinnacles, down into the Badlands halfway between Scenic and Cedar Pass,
-and joining State 40.
-
-From the east, Highway 16 goes through Kadoka, from which town State 40
-should be taken, leading in through Cedar Pass, and out either through
-Scenic and on to Rapid City, or at the Pinnacles, through Wall and back
-on 14-16. Coming from Pierre on 14, the tourist must leave that highway
-a few miles beyond the town of Philip and make the nine-mile detour on
-16 to Kadoka, from there going on to Cedar Pass as described.
-
-Several railroads serve the Badlands and its general region, notably the
-Chicago & Northwestern, the Burlington, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, and
-St. Paul. This last road, the "Milwaukee," offers the traveler the best
-view of the region, winding up the White River Valley the entire
-sixty-five miles between Kadoka and Scenic, and providing the passenger
-with unparalleled if hasty views of some of the most rugged and isolated
-portions of all the area.
-
-
-
-
- Bibliography
-
-
-Allsman, Paul T. _Reconnaissance of Gold Mining Districts in the Black
- Hills, South Dakota._ U.S. Bureau of Mines, No. 427. Washington,
- D. C.: U.S. Dept. of Interior, 1940.
-
-Baldwin, G. P., editor. _The Black Hills Illustrated._ Philadelphia:
- Baldwin Syndicate, 1904.
-
-Carpenter, F. R. _The Mineral Resources of the Black Hills._ South
- Dakota School of Mines Preliminary Report, No. 1. Rapid City:
- South Dakota School of Mines, 1888.
-
-Casey, Robert J. _The Black Hills._ New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1949.
-
-Dick, Everett. _Vanguards of the Frontier._ New York: D.
- Appleton-Century Co., 1941.
-
-Eloe, Frank. "Rushmore Cave," _Black Hills Engineer_, XXIV (December,
- 1938), 274.
-
-Fenton, C. L. "South Dakota's Badlands," _Nature Magazine_, XXIV
- (August, 1941), 370-74.
-
-Glasscock, C. B. _The Big Bonanza._ Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.,
- 1931.
-
-Hans, Fred. _The Great Sioux Nation._ Chicago: Donahue, 1907.
-
-Hayden, F. V. and Meek, F. B. "Remarks on Geology of the Black Hills,"
- _Academy of Natural Science Proceedings._ Philadelphia: Academy of
- Natural Science, 1858, X, 41-59.
-
-Hough, Emerson. _The Passing of the Frontier._ New Haven: Yale
- University Press, 1921.
-
-Kingsbury, G. W. _History of Dakota Territory._ Chicago: The S. J.
- Clarke Co., 1915.
-
-Lake, Stuart. _Wyatt Earp._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.
-
-Mirsky, Jeannette. _The Westward Crossings._ New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
- 1946.
-
-Newton, Henry. _Geology of the Black Hills._ Washington, D. C.: United
- States Geographical and Geological Survey, 1880.
-
-O'Harra, C. C. "The Gold Mining Industry of the Black Hills," _Black
- Hills Engineer_, XIX (January, 1931), 3-9.
-
-----. _The White River Badlands._ Department of Geology, No. 13. Rapid
- City: South Dakota School of Mines, 1920.
-
-Rothrach, E. P. _A Hydrologic Study of the White River Valley. South
- Dakota Geological Survey Report._ Vermillion, South Dakota:
- University of South Dakota, February, 1942.
-
-Todd, James Edward. _A Preliminary Report on the Geology of South
- Dakota._ South Dakota Geological Survey, No. 1. Vermillion:
- University of South Dakota, 1894.
-
-Tullis, E. L. "The Geology of the Black Hills," _Black Hills Engineer_,
- XXV (April, 1939), 26-38.
-
-
-
-
- Footnotes
-
-
-[1]For an account of the history and natural wonders of Estes Park,
- readers are referred to a previous book in this series, _Estes Park:
- Resort in the Rockies_, by Edwin J. Foscue and Louis O. Quam.
-
-[2]A treasured manuscript journal kept by the author's great-uncle, who
- was for many years curator of the Colorado State Historical
- Society's museum in Denver, reports an interview with Calamity Jane
- some time before her death which convinced him that the facts were
- substantially as they are stated here.
-
- On the other hand, Mr. Will G. Robinson, the eminent State Historian
- of South Dakota, reports: "On the authority of Dr. McGillicuddy, who
- was a medico at Ft. Laramie, and whose original letter I have, I
- would be entirely certain that she was born at Ft. Laramie, of a
- couple by the name of Dalton. Dalton was a soldier, was discharged
- and went out a short distance west to LaBonte. Here he was killed by
- Indians, although his wife got back into the fort with one eye
- gouged out, after which she shortly died. Her child got her
- name--Calamity--by reason of this disaster. She was not much over 40
- when she died in 1903."
-
- The discrepancy between these two accounts, both studiously
- researched and documented by men whose professional careers have
- been given over to solving puzzles of this nature with which western
- history abounds, is typical of the disagreement among
- well-authenticated reports of the birth and early life of this
- female enigma.
-
- In any event, it is a matter which is still subject to a maximum
- amount of conjecture, and for a much more complete account of the
- variant clues readers are enthusiastically referred to Nolie Mumey's
- _Calamity Jane_ (Denver: Privately printed, 1949).
-
-
-
-
- Index
-
-
- A
- Abilene (Kan.), 84, 98
- Adams Memorial Museum, 103, 107
- Alaska, 73
- Algonkian Period, 19
- American Fur Company, 120
- Amherst College, 122
- Anchor City (S.D.), 63
- Archean Period, 17-18
- Archean sea, 20
- Atlantic (Iowa), 88
-
-
- B
- Badlands, White River, 4, 6, 42, 115-17
- Bass, Sam, 79-81, 82-83, 85, 90
- Battle Mountain, 7
- Beadle & Adams, 90, 95
- Beaver Creek, 86
- Belle Fourche (S.D.), 6
- Belle Fourche River, 56
- Belle Fourche Round-up, 46
- Big Horn Basin, 66
- Big Horn River, 53
- Bismarck (S.D.), 53
- Black Bart, 78
- Black Hills & Badlands Assn., 44
- Black Hills Range Days, 46
- Black Hills Teachers College, 12
- Black Moon (Indian Chief), 66
- Blackfeet tribe, 49
- Blodgett, Sam, 71
- Borglum, Gutzon, 37-39
- Bozeman Trail, 51-53
- Brule tribe, 49, 52
- "Broken Hand." _See_ Fitzpatrick, Thomas
- Buffalo Bill, 99
- Burlington Railroad, 8
-
-
- C
- Calamity Jane, 77, 90-91, 94, 107-11
- _Calamity Jane_, 109
- California, 47, 50, 62, 75
- Cambrian Period, 19-20
- Cambrian sea, 20
- Canyon Springs, 86, 89
- Carlsbad Caverns, 28, 43
- Carson, Kit, 55
- Cathedral Park, 33
- Central City (S.D.), 63
- Cheyenne (Wyo.), 4, 59-61, 69, 80-81, 86, 89, 99
- Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage, 69, 80
- Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage, 4, 9
- Cheyenne Indians, 7
- Cheyenne River, 116
- Chicago (Ill.), 6, 34, 49
- Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, 7
- Clarke, Dick, 93
- Colorado, 32-33, 47, 58
- Coolidge, President Calvin, 31, 38, 93
- Crazy Horse (Indian Chief), 40, 52, 54, 61, 65-67
- Cripple Creek (Colo.), 72
- Crocker, Charles, 78
- Crook, General, 59, 64-66, 110
- Crystal Cave, 23
- Custer (S.D.), 6, 9, 10-11, 30-31, 40, 42-43, 46, 59, 61, 63,
- 70-71, 105
- Custer, General George Armstrong, 1, 10, 54-57, 64-67, 78, 80
- Custer State Park, 19, 30
- Custer's Last Stand, 68
-
-
- D
- Darrall, Duke, 90
- Days of '76, 46, 92
- Dead Man's Hand (poker), 95
- Deadtree Gulch, 71
- Deadwood (S.D.), 4, 11, 20, 46, 69, 81-84, 86, 91, 99, 101, 105-6,
- 110-11
- Deadwood City (S.D.), 76
- Deadwood Dick, 77, 90-94
- Deadwood Dick, Jr., 92
- Deadwood Gulch, 10, 46, 71, 73
- Denver (Colo.), 3-4, 49, 60, 96, 109
- Devonian Period, 22
- Dodge, General Grenville, 51
- Dodge City (Kan.), 84
-
-
- E
- Earp, Wyatt, 84-86
- Egan, Capt. Pat, 110
- Estes Park, 3
- Evans, Fred T., 7
- Evans Hotel, 7
- Evans, John, 120
-
-
- F
- Fair, James, 78
- Fellows, Dick, 78
- Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 50
- Fort Ellis, 64
- Fort Fetterman, 64
- Fort Laramie, 50-52, 57
- Fort Lincoln, 53, 57
- Fort Pierre, 7, 13, 80
- Fort Sully, 51
- French Creek, 57, 69, 70
-
-
- G
- Gall (Indian Chief), 66
- Game Lodge, 31-33
- Gayville (S.D.), 63
- Gibbon, General John, 64-65
- Gold, discovered in the Black Hills, 3
- Gold Discovery Days, 11, 46
- Golden Gate (S.D.), 63
- Golden Star mine, 73
- Golden Terra mine, 73, 75
- Gordon party, 60
- Great Plains, 49
-
-
- H
- Haggin, James Ben Ali, 74
- Harney Peak, 1, 19, 32, 35-36, 40
- Harney-Sanborne Treaty, 53
- Hayden, V. F., 121
- Hays City (Kan.), 98, 110
- Hearst, Senator George, 74-75
- Hearst, William Randolph, 74
- Hickok, Wild Bill, 90, 94-97, 100-102, 107-8
- Hinckley's Overland Express, 96
- Homestake Mine, 69, 72-76, 80, 87, 89
- Homestake Mining Co., 75
- Hot Springs (S.D.), 6, 8-9, 11, 29, 34
-
-
- I
- Ice Cave, 43-44
- Inkpaduta (Indian Chief), 66
- _Inter-Ocean_, 58
-
-
- J
- Jefferson, President Thomas, 37, 39
- Jenney Stockade, 86
- Jennings, Dr., 7
- Jewel Cave, 11, 23, 42, 44
- Jones, Seth, 90
- Julesburg (Colo.), 97
-
-
- K
- Kansas, 96
- Kansas City (Mo.), 49
- Kind, Ezra, 48
-
-
- L
- Lake, Agnes, 99
- Laramie (Wyo.), 61
- Last Chance Gulch, 73
- Lead (S.D.), 75
- _Legend of Sam Bass_, 79
- Leidy, Dr. Joseph, 120
- Lincoln, President Abraham, 37, 39
- Lincoln Highway, 4
- Little Big Horn River, 10, 68
- Luenen (Germany), 12
-
-
- Mc
- McCall, Jack, 95, 100-102
- McCanles gang, 96, 98
- McKay, William T., 54, 56
-
-
- M
- Manuel, Fred, 73-75
- Manuel, Moses, 73-75
- Meier, Joseph, 12
- Miles City (Mont.), 6
- Minneapolis (Minn.), 6
- Minnekahta Canyon, 7
- Minnesota, 50
- Minniconjou tribe, 49
- Mississippian Period, 22
- Missouri, 97, 108
- Missouri River, 2, 6, 49, 53, 88
- Missouri Valley, 48, 50
- Mogollon (mountains), 63
- Montana, 10, 47, 51, 64
- Mount Coolidge, 41
- Mount Evans, 33
- Mount Moriah Cemetery, 103, 107, 113
- Mount Rushmore, 37, 39, 40-41
- Mount Washington, 32
- Mumey, Nolie, 109
- Murietta, Joaquin, 78
-
-
- N
- National Park Service, 28, 30, 43, 45
- Nebraska, 42, 54, 88
- Needles, The, 33
- Needles Highway, 33-35
- Nevada, 47
- Newcastle (Wyo.), 43
- Niobrara River, 54
- North America, 17, 20, 24, 75
- North Platte River, 2, 64
- Number Ten, 99-100
-
-
- O
- Oglala tribe, 49, 52, 65
- O'Harra, Dr. Cleophas, 123
- Omaha (Neb.), 4, 49
- Ordovician Period, 22
- Oregon Trail, 51
- Oregon-California Trail, 2
- Owen Survey, 120
-
-
- P
- Paha Sapa (Indian name for Black Hills), 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 48
- Paleozoic Era, 19
- Passion Play, 72
- Pearson, John, 71-72
- Pierre (S.D.), 2, 6, 51
- Pikes Peak, 58, 62
- Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 40
- Platte River, 50
- Platte River-Oregon Trail, 49
- Platte Valley, 60, 96
- Portland-Independence Mine, 72
- Powder River Valley, 65
- Preacher Smith, 90-91, 104-5
- Princeton University, 122
- Prout, Prof. Hiram, 119-20
-
-
- R
- Rapid City (S.D.), 4, 6-7, 11, 13-14, 31, 46, 49
- Rawlins (Wyo.), 109
- Red Cloud (Indian Chief), 52-53
- Reno, Major, 67-68
- Reynolds, Charley, 57
- Rhodes, Eugene Manlove, 18
- Rio Grande Valley, 19
- Robinson, Will, 108
- Rocky Mountains, 1, 3, 15, 34, 37, 50, 62, 96, 116
- Roosevelt, President Theodore, 37, 39
- Rosebud Creek, 65
- Ross, H. N., 55
-
-
- S
- St. Joseph (Mo.), 49, 96
- St. Louis (Mo.), 49, 57
- St. Paul (Minn.), 49
- San Arc tribe, 49
- San Francisco (Calif.), 74-75
- Santa Fe Trail, 49
- Santee Sioux, 50
- School of Mines Canyon, 123
- Seventh Cavalry, 110
- Sheridan, General Phil, 56-57
- Sidney (Neb.), 13, 61, 69, 75, 80
- Sidney Short Route, 80
- Silurian Period, 22
- Silver Heels, 112
- Sioux Indians, 7, 61, 63
- Sioux War, 69
- Sitting Bull (Indian Chief), 54, 64, 66-67
- Smith, Rev. Henry. _See_ Preacher Smith
- South Dakota, 2, 4, 13, 30, 36, 44, 93
- Spearfish (S.D.), 6, 11, 13, 48
- Spencer, Joseph, 34
- Springfield (Mo.), 97
- Standing Bear (Indian Chief), 40
- Stanford, Leland, 78
- Sunday Creek, 35
- Sylvan Lake, 33-36, 39
-
-
- T
- _Ten Nights in a Barroom_, 103
- Terry, General, 63-64
- Teton Sioux, 2, 49
- Texas Rangers, 79
- Thoen, Louis, 48
- Thunderhead Mountain, 40-41
- _Trial of Jack McCall, The_, 103
- Triassic Period, 24
- Two Kettle tribe, 49
-
-
- U
- Union Pacific Railroad, 13, 49, 58, 80
- University of Nebraska, 122
- University of South Dakota, 122
- Unkpapa tribe, 49
- Ussher, Archbishop James, 17
- Utah, 109
-
-
- V
- Vale of Minnekahta, 7
- Virginia City (Nev.), 73
-
-
- W
- War Department, 59
- Washington (D.C.), 58, 61, 93
- Washington, President George, 37, 39, 91
- Wells Fargo, 74, 83-84
- Wheeler, Edward L., 91
- White, George, 109
- White River, 116
- White River Badlands. _See_ Badlands
- Wild Bill Hickok, 90, 94-97, 100-102, 107-8
- Wind Cave, 23, 27-29, 42-44
- Wind Cave Park, 41
- Witwatersrand, 72
- Wood Lake, battle of, 51
- Wright, Frank Lloyd, 117
- Wyoming, 4, 9, 32, 42, 86
-
-
- Y
- Yale University, 122
- Yankton (S.D.), 102
-
-
- Z
- Ziolkowski, Korczak, 40-41, 103
-
-
- $2.50
-
-
- THE BLACK HILLS
- MID-CONTINENT RESORT
-
-From taboo Indian fastness to roaring gold camp to modern resort and
-recreation area--so runs the history of the Black Hills, Paha Sapa of
-the Indians, which are really not hills at all but mountains, the
-highest east of the Rockies. Back through geologic ages the story
-extends, to the thunderous time when Nature fashioned the intricate
-formations of the Hills and their companion geologic marvel, the
-Badlands.
-
-Here, in racy and fluent prose, Albert N. Williams has brought the full
-sweep of this story to life, from its beginning in the mighty geologic
-upheaval that, before the Alps had been formed, thrust the giant spire
-of Harney Peak up through the ancient shale, to the present quiet rest
-of man-made Sylvan Lake, where it lies peacefully reflecting its great
-granite shields for the delight of the traveler.
-
-On the way he tells of the discovery of gold in this "mysterious and
-brooding dark mountain-land" just when gold-hungry men had decided that
-the bonanza days were gone forever; of the Indian fighting that reached
-its tragic climax at the Little Big Horn; of the development of the
-Homestake, one of earth's greatest mines; of the hazardous stage-coach
-journeys on which "shotgun messengers" guarded chests of bullion; and,
-most fascinating of all, of the amazing personalities--Sam Bass and
-Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and Preacher
-Smith--who inhabited the Hills in their gaudiest days or, like Deadwood
-Dick, lived a no less vivid life in the pages of dime novels.
-
-If this were all, _The Black Hills_ would be a book for any lover of our
-country's natural glories and thrilling history to pick up and be unable
-to lay down again until he had finished it. But other chapters directed
-particularly to the tourist make it also a book for the traveler to keep
-always with him and to consult at every point in his journey through the
-Black Hills. All he needs to know is here--the highways to take into the
-Hills, the towns with their historic plays and celebrations, the peaks
-and lakes and caves he will find, the sports he may enjoy, the places
-where he may stay. A trip so guided cannot fail to be filled with the
-excitement the author himself has found in the Black Hills, of which he
-says that in his opinion "no other resort area in the United States
-possesses such a wealth of tourist attractions."
-
-
-Albert N. Williams was for many years a writer for NBC in New York, and
-for two years Editor-in-Chief of the English features section of the
-Voice of America. He is the author of _Listening_, _Rocky Mountain
-Country_, _The Water and the Power_, and numerous short fiction pieces
-in national magazines. He is at present Director of Development of the
-University of Denver.
-
- [Illustration: Southern Methodist University Press Logo]
-
- Southern Methodist University Press
- Dallas 5, Texas
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber's Notes
-
-
---Silently corrected a few typos.
-
---Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
- is public-domain in the country of publication.
-
---In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
- _underscores_.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort, by
-Albert Nathaniel Williams
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK HILLS MID-CONTINENT RESORT ***
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