The Powder River County examiner and the Broadus independent. [volume] (Broadus, Mont.) 1919-1935, 1921-10-21
AFTER PROSECUTING KANSAS GOVERNOR,
WEIR TRIED GOLD MlMlNG ON MONTANA
By David b. Weaver


Montana's early gold excitement
brought many prominent and many
strange characters into the territory,
some OF whom it was my fortune to
meet in the early days. Among them
was DR.. Frank Wier, the first United
States district attorney of Kansas,
and the man who conducted the pro-
secution of Governor Charles Robin
son, the free state" executive of
Kansas, on the charge of usurpation
of the office of governor of the yet
to-be-created state of Kansas.
During the struggles for control
of Kansas between the pro- and anti
slavery forces, the free states men
held a convention at Topeka, created
the machinery for a state govern
ment, and prepared to ask the forth
coming session of congress for adj
mission to the union as free state.
Immediately DIR. Frank Wier brought
indictments against the officers nam
ed by this convention, in the United
States courts in Kansas. The first
person to come to trial was DR.. Rob-
inson, in August, 1857. He was ac-
quilted. but the other indictments
stood until after Kansas had been ad-
mitted as q free state, when they
were Quashed.
DR.. Wier returned to his home in
Missouri after the Kansas troubles.
and was there when word reached the
states of the discovery of gold in
Idaho" and like the writer, he got
the gold fever and Joined the great
movement to the Idaho-Montana
placer gold fields. In 1864 travel
was routed over two new cut-offs to
the gold districts-the Bozeman and
Bridger trails, which left the Platte
river before coming to the Sweet
water, then north to the Yellowstone,
and followed It to the divide, then
crossed over to Virginia City.
The writer was in the same train
with DR.. Wier-that of Major Cyrus
C. Coffinbury-and the party arrived
near the site of the present city of
Livingston ON August Is, 1864.
Here the train disbanded. Our own
wagon crew, composed of David R.
Shorthill, Alexander orris and my
self, went up the Yellowstone valley,
while Richard Owens, George Travis
and DR.. Wier continued to Virginia
City.
shorthill, Frank Garrett and I
made the discovery Of gold in Emil
grant Gulch on August 80, 1864, and
we sent q man on after our men to
return and get the claims we had
staked out for them. Some of them
fastened back to the new diggings
Immediately ON receipt of our mes
sage. but DR.. Wier and Owens stop
ped when they got as far as the new
town of Bozeman, where they went
prospecting. and were successful in
getting the color or very fine particles
Of gold. about the foothills near
Bridger canyon.
Mining Elk Horns
They concluded that the bed of the
East Gallatin river might have coarse
gold on bed rock, so they rugged up
q windlass and sunk shaft down
some forty feet. Wier presiding over
the turning of the windlass, while
Owens worked down in the shaft.
After going some forty feet through
this rich soil, Owens came upon what
he concluded were bones of some
extinct mastodon, and he sent q speci-
men up for the doctor to examine.
''Say, Doc, what are these queer
things ! am sending up" he shouted
mp the shaft.