Page:A Brief History of South Dakota.djvu/158

152 Although more than a year passed before military opposition to entering the Hills was withdrawn, there was no abatement of popular interest in the gold diggings. Late in the fall of 1874, a party organized at Sioux City had slipped into the Hills by way of northern Nebraska, and had built a stockade on French Creek near the site of the present city of Custer. They were removed by the military in the early spring, and the reports they brought out served to increase the gold excitement throughout America.

During this period the prospecting for gold was in the placers along the streams in the vicinity of Custer; although gold was found generally distributed in that region, these diggings never proved to be particularly rich. Late in the fall of 1875 John B. Pearson, of Yankton, made his way over into the Deadwood gulch in the northern Hills, and discovered rich placer diggings. The following winter was severe, with very deep snow, but many thousand miners assembled at Custer and in that vicinity. Custer city is said to have had eleven thousand population on the 1st of March. As the snows began to disappear in the spring, word was received of Pearson's find in the Deadwood gulch, and there was a stampede for the northern Hills. In a day Custer was practically depopulated. It is said that less than a hundred people remained, where so many thousands, were making their homes but the day before.

During the next summer there were not less than twenty-five thousand people in the Deadwood gulch. They were trespassers upon the Indian land. The laws