Chapter 9: Paha Sapa

Jun 13, 1857

When I finally dragged myself outside this morning, I found a surprise. It wouldn’t be light for more than an hour, yet there was an impressive train of loaded pack mules ready to go. I was almost the last one to arrive. I guess I wasn’t the only one excited about this trip. We left with no fanfare since almost everyone else was still asleep. We were quickly far enough from town that we never even heard the first rooster crow.

The trip was a long one, and we marked the route we took, more for my sake than for the Indians. Some days we followed rivers or streams, and others we rode across miles and miles of the gently rolling hills constituting the prairie around here. We crossed a beautiful valley just across the county line and west of our property line.

While I rode with the two chiefs, the warriors did the scouting and hunting. When they made a derogatory comment about the Negro men doing squaw’s work, I reminded them that the men had been slaves, forced to cook. Now that they knew how, they had volunteered to cook for us. That stopped the teasing.

I noted that each of the braves with us had both an Enfield and a repeating rifle. Several even wore a cross draw holster with one of the S&W revolvers. The warriors from the newest group of Sioux carried their rifles especially proudly.

In addition, each of the Negroes had a repeating rifle, and several carried a shotgun as well. Most of them wore a holster with a Navy Colt revolver.

The trip took nineteen days and I saw my first buffalo during the trip. Well, actually, it was more than one buffalo. The herd had thousands and they moved across the prairie like the shadow of a slow-moving cloud. I also got my first taste of buffalo meat and loved it.

My first sight of Paha Sapa left me speechless. From a distance, in the middle of the rolling hills of the prairie was a dark mound rising abruptly from the ground. As we got closer, I could see that the dark coloration was from the heavy covering of trees on what appeared to be a small mountain range.

As we got closer, it almost looked like a giant had dropped a rock into the choppy water of a pond, and everything froze instantly when the rock was half immersed in the water, sending out ripples across the surface of the pond. It was both stunningly beautiful and eerie at the same time. For much of the second half of the trip, we paralleled the Missouri River. Occasionally, we would hear or see a steamboat headed up or down the river.

Finally, we turned almost due west, following a large tributary of the Missouri River, watching Paha Sapa looming larger and larger before us. Five days after leaving the Missouri River, we forded the tributary and left it, only to find and cross another the next day. Seven days after leaving the Missouri River, we arrived at the base of Paha Sapa, and made camp to rest up and make plans.

July 3

This morning, the surveyors began their work. They determined yesterday that we were still well within the United States, and still in the Nebraska Territory. They struck out to the north, their intent being to circumnavigate the Paha Sapa. Along the way, they would take the necessary measurements and readings to determine how large an area we were talking about, where exactly it was, and if it would even be possible to raise enough money to buy all of it. Even if it was only a small mountain range, it was still a mountain range.

From several days away, it seemed small enough to be able to buy it. Up this close, I had serious doubts. I decided what to tell everyone if we managed to buy it. I would tell them I wanted it for the timber. There was timber on the property I bought, mostly along the rivers, but it would soon be gone, and the cottonwoods were worthless for building. After seeing the banks of the Mississippi and lower Missouri Rivers stripped of their trees for firewood, I knew how quickly the remaining trees would disappear. The lumberjacks who sent frequent rafts of logs downriver to us were logging pines and hardwood well beyond the boundaries of our property.

We’d have to find somewhere besides Paha Sapa to log, though. I didn’t think the Sioux would appreciate us desecrating their holy place that way. I was still wondering why they even allowed us to come here to mine the gold.

Once the surveyors were on their way, our Sioux companions led us into the sacred Paha Sapa. That afternoon, we stopped at one of the most sacred places of the Sioux. I’d seen a few large caves in Virginia and recognized this as such. I never felt the wind blowing out of a cave quite like this, though. It was strong enough that it blew my hat off. Chief Red Fish explained that this was where the first Sioux had arrived from the underworld.

Finally, we continued on our way, camping several miles away from the cave, almost back to the plains.

July 4-6

Today, the day in history that our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, our route left the mountains again, skirting the Paha Sapa for two days. Then we headed back into the mountains.

July 19

Following the route of a stream for the second day, Chief Red Fish motioned to it. “This is where I found the yellow metal,” he said quietly.

We walked over to the stream and I didn’t even have to work to find gold. Lying in the sand beneath two inches of water, a small yellow nugget glistened. It was small enough that, by itself, it was hardly worth much, but I had a feeling we might find enough here to allow the purchase of Paha Sapa regardless of how much land it covered. Still, I kept the small nugget as a personal memento of the first gold I’d ever found.

Camp was quickly set up. The miners broke out the lumber they brought and quickly built some sort of boxy contraption they called a sluice. Throughout the afternoon, they built six, six-foot long sluices. Once the first one was complete, I watched, fascinated, as they anchored it in the flowing water of the creek so the water ran through the sluice.

When they were satisfied that they had situated it correctly, one man began shoveling sand and gravel into it from the streambed. I asked about it when he seemed to be trying to dig a large rock out of the streambed by digging behind it.

The men working the streambed explained patiently that gold was more concentrated behind large rocks. I watched as the men set up and began using each sluice when it was finished. Others were using the gold pans we brought from the gold mine, and the ones I bought in Kansas City. I hadn’t realized the men from the gold mine had still panned the streambed there to get the gold that had washed into the stream before the mine was started.

When the six sluices were finished, they built a different contraption that looked a bit like a baby’s cradle. They called it a rocker, explaining that they used it to process the tailings they pulled from the sluices.

I had been rather optimistic before we left, bringing enough buckskin pouches to hold two hundred pounds of gold. After only half a day of watching the miners work in the stream, we had twenty pounds of gold nuggets and gold dust. I was flabbergasted.

Gratefully, we had the hides from the deer the warriors killed along the way. The Sioux warriors laughed at me as I hurriedly cut and stitched together more skin bags to hold the gold. While I cut and stitched, some of the miners began sawing several dead trees into planks to make small wood crates to hold even more gold nuggets.

The braves weren’t idle either. Aside from keeping us supplied with meat, they brought back extra that our cooks sliced thin and dried to take home for the winter.

We quit after only two weeks. Every mule was loaded with as much as it could safely carry so we began the return trip. I had originally expected to be here for a month or more, and to find much less gold than this.

Jul 20 - Aug 11

We left the tools and equipment in a hastily constructed lean-to that we covered with brush. That allowed us to carry more gold and meant we wouldn’t have to bring the tools back next time. Retracing much of the route we followed to get here, we began the trip home, although we bypassed the cave this time.

One group of the miners had successfully located the source of the gold about ten miles upstream from where we had been working. They brought back a five-pound chunk of quartz streaked heavily with veins and specks of gold.

Aug 12

The Sioux warriors proudly rode into town ahead of us and many of the people from town turned out to greet us when we rode in. We led the mules to a warehouse I had asked to have built near the blacksmith’s place and near where a new smelter had been built. The men who worked at the smelter for the Missouri gold mine already had our new smelter set up, ready to start work. Borrowing hot coals from the blacksmith, they immediately began adding those hot coals to the smelter’s furnace. When their coals were hot enough, they began the process of smelting what we brought back, refining it, and making ingots just like the ones we had brought from Missouri. They even used the same molds for the ingots.

It took a week of smelting day and night before they had cast all the gold into ingots. In the end, our seventy-seven mules carried back 11,453 pounds of refined gold worth more than three million dollars, an estimate based on what the original ingots from Missouri were worth. They also carried hides and about eight hundred pounds of dried meat.

Learning that the Freedom was due in town in two days, I spoke with the chiefs to see if they thought we might make another trip, using a steamboat to save a lot of travel time. They expressed a worry that I was getting gold craziness, but I explained that I just wanted to make sure we had enough gold to buy the entire area they called Paha Sapa. The survey team wouldn’t be back any time soon, and I wanted to buy the entire area in one purchase. They agreed, appointing several warriors to accompany us.

Hurriedly, we put together a group to return. The same men were returning, along with several carpenters. This time, we took more mules and buckskin bags, and packed less food. We also loaded all the now-empty wood boxes we used to bring gold back so we wouldn’t have to make too many more. The miners took another six ready-to-put-together sluices and another rocker. All they would have to do when we arrived was assemble them. I asked the women to start making more buckskin bags the same size as the ones I made in Paha Sapa.

Aug 13

In the morning, Dad took me around to see what they had accomplished in my absence. Our first harvest of oats and barley was complete and was wildly successful. They filled some of the stone silos they built with oats and continued building silos in anticipation of the corn and wheat harvest. They had just planted five thousand acres of winter wheat and continued plowing more fields in anticipation of planting an even larger crop of grain next year.

The small distillery was nearly complete on the outskirts of town. A large and growing collection of white oak barrels built by the cooper and seven men he supervised nearly filled the warehouse next to him. The man showed me the five stills he had all set up saying that he expected to begin brewing the first batches later this week.

As I was leaving right after lunch, the town’s women were gathered in our dining room, deciding what they should preserve tomorrow. The consensus seemed to be a large batch of green beans and another of sweet corn. The fresh sweet corn season was nearly past and what remained unpicked was drying. Soon, only what they had already preserved would be available. Fortunately, one of the women had reminded them to put in a late planting of sweet corn that should be ready to harvest in two or three weeks.

I spent much the afternoon at the docks, waiting anxiously for the Freedom. Our carpenters had already loaded wagons with the wood and supplies needed to make modifications to the Freedom. Other wagons held all the food and other supplies we would be taking with us. All we lacked was people and mules.

Watching two other steamboats unload, I saw one of our men paying the captain, and directing two Negro men and three Negro women to our wagons. He told me that Dad had offered to pay the fare for deck passage, including breakfast and dinner for any Negro they brought here. Evidently, word that Nebraska, and especially Omaha, accepted Free Negroes and offered paying jobs was spreading rapidly throughout the Free States, as well as in the South. Each time Captain Roberts arrived, he had more Negroes that his Underground Railroad contacts had secreted to their final hiding places while awaiting his arrival.

Word of available jobs was also drawing white families desperate for work. Most who arrived had no problem working with Negroes, knowing before they chose to come here that Negroes were being drawn here for the same jobs. Some of the people ended up working for businesses in Omaha and Saratoga Bend as those businesses strove to keep up with our demands for goods and services. Saratoga Bend was even expanding their docks. Aside from a few, the families who joined us added their sweat and expertise to our growing town. They wanted to name it Libertyville, a name proposed by one of the Negroes we rescued and brought here. I liked the name.

When the Freedom hadn’t arrived by supper, I left word for the captain not to take on passengers or cargo.

Mr. Franklin caught up with me right after dinner and explained that we needed to either trust one of the small banks in Omaha or Saratoga Bend, or start our own. With the economy being so bad, every day, the paper carried news of another small bank closing. He was reasonably certain that all four local banks in Omaha were on the verge of closing.

He explained more to me about banking in one evening than I cared to know, and I’m sure I forgot more than half of what he explained before I awoke the next morning. I did feel that he was right and authorized him to buy one of the banks if the price was reasonable, or we could just wait until one failed. I did request that he make sure the bank had a VERY large strong room, considering the gold we would be bringing back periodically, as well as the more than $500,000 we still had in my basement in gold and silver coins, the remaining half of the gold ingots from the original four wagons we found, and the gold and silver ingots from the six wagons we brought back from the mines in Missouri.

I guess he had no idea how much we had down there as his mouth opened and closed silently like a fish several times. “Amazing,” he finally gasped.

He also let me know that new settlers moving into town were wondering about buying lots to build on. “I have no idea how much to charge,” I admitted. “That seems like a good job for our new bank manager,” I teased. I could tell that he was proud to finally be able to contribute his expertise to our community, one nobody else could. For seven months now, he had toiled like everyone else, building the town up from nothing, doing work that was entirely foreign to him.

I suggested letting the earliest arrivals buy the land for whatever we paid for it. I would leave it up to him to talk with Dad, Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. Garfield to determine a logical cut-off point to be part of the “original” group. Off the top of my head, I suggested anyone here before the last of the fields were planted, but it was just a suggestion. I hadn’t really been involved enough to know a fair place to make the cut-off.

I suggested allowing more recent arrivals, maybe people who arrived before the harvest was complete, a second rate and people who arrived after that a higher rate. I made sure he realized that the homes and property for everyone who arrived here with us originally would be free.

Aug 14

This morning, the excitement in town was palpable again. They had completed the installation of posts and an arch over the road from the docks some time ago, hoping I would approve the city name. A loud cheer erupted when I released the sign to swing freely, proclaiming us Libertyville.

This evening, the Freedom arrived. Our carpenters swarmed the deck like ants on a picnic. While I talked with Captain Nadeau, they worked to build a large hopper on the deck to hold extra coal. Nadeau was excited by the time I finished my explanation. He had the Freedom loaded with firewood and docked for the night.

Aug 15

Well before dawn, the Freedom left the dock and headed upriver with our men and mules aboard. Supplies and equipment were stowed belowdecks, and we were underway on our next adventure.

Before noon, we reached our new coal mine. I was surprised that they already had a sturdy dock, as well as sturdy moorings where boats tied up to load coal. I talked to an excited Reuben while our men unloaded food and supplies for the coal mine. When he heard how much gold we were finding, he was beside himself.

The mine had already begun selling coal to passing steamboats and had a large sign advertising the price. Each of the captains who bought coal thanked them for the service, exclaiming how difficult it was finding enough wood anymore and how much time they saved stopping once for coal, instead of having to stop twice to chop and load wood. The coal was usually loaded in less than fifteen minutes, compared to an hour or more to take on a load of firewood.

The carpenters had built three large two-story bunkhouses, each capable of housing eighty men. Currently, the men slept in two of the bunkhouses which had been designed so they could later be divided into small apartments when some of the men began finding wives. Many of the coal miners helped with the construction at first, until the mine was big enough for more of them to work underground. Farther away, several homes were currently under construction, homes to house the families who would arrive here next spring to grow crops and tend livestock.

There was now a small office near the dock for the purser to receive payment for coal. A covered walkway connected all the buildings and the mine, allowing access even in the dead of winter and the worst storms.

Since the mine had extra mules, we loaded twenty-five more to take with us. Before retiring for the night, the Freedom was loaded with coal, including filling the extra bin on the deck to allow the boat to go even farther without having to stop for wood.

Aug 16-21

Our trip north was even more boring than my previous steamboat trips. This far north, we experienced no problems when we stopped for wood. The only problems this far north would have been Sioux Indians, but since we had some aboard, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Five days after leaving the coal mine, we reached the second tributary we had forded on our first trip here. Captain Nadeau managed to steam up the tributary quite some distance before the water became too shallow to continue further. Still, sailing up the tributary had saved us two additional days of travel on horseback. I told captain Nadeau to meet us back here in four weeks. We beached the log rafts that carried the mules, herded the mules ashore, and pulled the rafts out of the water so we could use them on the return trip.

Aug 22-28

From the drop-off point on the river, it only took us seven days to reach the mining site. Knowing our final destination, we took shortcuts by not following rivers and streams the entire way. Once we arrived, we quickly set up camp for the night half a mile upstream from where we panned for gold last time. After we unloaded everything from the mules, several men rode back to our original site and brought back the tools and equipment we had left behind. We ate supper and went to sleep, anxious to get started in the morning.

Aug 29

Everyone was up early this morning, excited about what we were doing. The men quickly had the original six sluices and the rocker in the river. Others started panning for gold along the streambed. Still other men began building the new sluices and a second rocker. We worked both sides of the stream at the same time, as well as what we could reach in the middle.

The carpenters selected a site well above the flood plain of the stream to build a sturdy log cabin. A couple of men began sawing dead trees into planks to make more crates.

This time, I actually helped with the sluicing, not that it was an especially difficult or glorious job. In fact, standing in the cold stream water with your feet clad in moccasins quickly became uncomfortable. Now I understood why the men rotated positions every half hour or so.

I noticed that we were finding more and bigger chunks of gold here than at the first location. The men working with me explained that the lighter bits of gold would wash away faster and farther than the heavier nuggets.

Aug 30

This morning, the Sioux hunters returned with guests. They had met another Sioux tribe who wanted to meet us when they heard we would buy their sacred land for them. Evidently, the Yankton Sioux had a treaty with Washington, giving them a reservation along the north bank of the Missouri River, although only a few of them actually lived there. Still, knowing that I intended to buy Paha Sapa and that white settlers would not be able to claim and then desecrate their sacred lands excited them.

Sep 4-9

Our Sioux hunters returned this morning and insisted that I go back out with them. They had found a seam of coal not even ten miles from where we were. Knowing that we used coal for cooking and heating, they thought it would be useful. I agreed, but said I first needed the approval of their chiefs before digging a coal mine here, even though it would reduce our need for firewood for cooking. It would also allow us to smelt the gold here, so we would only have to transport ingots back.

Twice more while we were here, Sioux hunters from other tribes came by. One brought their chief with them and I asked his opinion about the possible coal mine. He seemed okay with the idea, but also seemed to appreciate the fact that I still wanted to ask the other two chiefs, first.