Both these were from the Pike's Peak country in
Colorado. And in the autumn came a fifth--this one under military
protection, Captain James L. Fisk commanding, and having in the
party a number of settlers bound for Oregon as well as miners for
Idaho. This expedition arrived in the Prickly Pear Valley in
Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St. Paul on the 16th
of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. While Captain
Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half of
the immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But the
yield was not great and the distant Salmon River mines, their
original destination, still awaited them. Winter was approaching.
It was now too late in the season to reach the Salmon River
mines, five hundred miles across the mountains, and it was four
hundred miles to Salt Lake, the nearest supply post; therefore,
most of the men joined this little army of prospectors in
Montana. Some of them drifted to the Grasshopper diggings, soon
to be known under the name of Bannack--one of the wildest
mining-camps of its day.
These different origins of the population of the first Montana
camps are interesting because of the fact that they indicate a
difference in the two currents of population which now met here
in the new placer fields.
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