Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1898 — GOLD MINE OUT OF REACH. [ARTICLE]

GOLD MINE OUT OF REACH.

Made a Big Find, but It Was on an Indian Reservation. The speaker was one of the old prospectors to whom the present Alaska talk recalls memories. “When I was a kid prospecting in Arizona,” he said, “a little thing happened that made me think for a couple of days that I was wiser than I was credited with being. In the time I had been in the gold country there had been a good many laughs on me, the same as there Is on any tenderfoot, and I was Just aching for a chance to surprise the boys when this little incident turned up. “It was in connection with some of that Pueblo Indian pottery. I bought a little god for a curiosity on a reservation that an outfit of three of us passed through. In handling the ugly bit of crockery I noticed a roughness of the surface. I wondered If there might be anything back of it; so, without saying anything about it to my two partners, I broke it up and applied the tests. “The clay was full. of grains of ‘color.’ “The next thing to do was to find out from the Indians where they got their clay. I planned to hold back my find from the other fellows until I had everything in shape to surprise ’em. They kept me pretty busy making up excuses for hanging around with the Indians for the next week, but I found the excuses. Dry old Abraham Butts would smile once tn awhile, but I never thought for a minute that he ‘saveyed’ my game. “I got the Indian potter drunk, and he told me where 'he got his clay. The clay turned out to be full of color. It was not until I started to locate a claim in the beds that I was Jumped on and told quite plainly that they were Inside the reservation limits, and that a white man had better stay away from them. “That part of it wasn’t half so tough as the fact that the other two fellows had been watching and chuckling over the whole transaction. Old Abraham had found some of the pieces of my Pueblo god the day I broke him up. and had tumbled right on. They didn’t say much about It; no, they only smiled a little, and continued to buy me presents of Pueblo pottery until I swore I’d shoot any man that brought up the word Pueblo again.”