"We Have it Rich," Washing and Panning Gold

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Bird's Eye View of Battlefield of Wounded Knee
Meade-Bear Butte and Fort Meade in the Distance
Gen. Custer

Sha-bash-Kong High Priest, and his two wives
Golden Reward Mine near Lead

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448

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To the

Memory of my Mother

This book is dedicated

By her grateful son,

The Author.

BOOK I.

THE INDIANS IN THE BLACK HILLS.

CHAPTER I.

THE BLACK HILLS.

Closely embraced between the two principal forks of the Cheyenne river arises a magnificent group of mountains extending about one hundred miles north and south and about sixty miles east and west. To this group of mountains the great Dakota or Sioux nation gave the name of Pa-ha-sap-pah, or Black Hills.

The geographical location of these hills the Montenegro of America is between the meridians 102 degr. 30 min. and 105 degr. longitude west from Greenwich; or 25 degr. 30 min. and 28 degr. west from Washington; and between 43 degr. 20 min. and 40 degr. 45 min. north latitude. The boundary line between the States of South Dakota and Wyoming is on the twenty-seventh meridian west from Washington; consequently about two-thirds of this area lies within the State of South Dakota. The area in South Dakota forms the counties of Butte, Lawrence, Meade, Pennington, Custer and Fall River. The present population is about forty thousand. Up to the year 1875 this region, now studded with towns and villages, traversed by the panting steam car, the lightning telegraph and the convenient telephone, was a wilderness, lying untouched almost by aught save the hand of nature. But she has been very lavish in bestowing her gifts.

Here the blue hills rise beyond and above the other, higher and higher till the lofty points kindle with the early light, and the overshadowing ridges, like masses of black clouds, touch the skies. Here the rocky cliffs towering in naked grandeur mock the lightning, and send from peak to peak the loudest peal of the thunderstorm. Here wholesome water gushes forth profusely from a thousand springs which, through fifty different creeks, send their water to the Cheyenne on to the Missouri and the Gulf of Mexico.*

Here the Scotch pine, the black and white spruce, burr oak, white elm, aspen, white birch, ash and box elder cover the hill-sides and the banks of the rivers. Wild plums and cherries and numerous kind of berries are grow

* Names of the creeks: Gold Run, Deadwood, Whitewood, Bear Butte, Boulder, Two Bit, False Bottom, Iron, Stinking Chicken, Spruce, Redwater, Spearfish, Whitetail, Bobtail, Fantail, Sheeptail, Blacktail, Grizzly, Ruby, Potae, Squaw, Spring, Cottonwood, Ninemile, Deadman's Alcali, Morris, Pleasant, Antelope, Box Elder, Elk, Cherry, Plum, Horse, Indian, Crow, Owl, Lame Jonny, Crooked Oak, Jim, Rapid, Battle, French, Slate, Gimlet, Tenderfoot, Calamity, Beaver, Cascade, and Fall River.