Public Ledger

A Bonanza in the Missouri-$110,000
at the Bottom of the River.
[Cor. Pioneer-Press.]
BISMARCK, May 31. In the Missouri
below this point, is a bonanza, amount-
ing to $110,000 in gold. In 1864, oppo-
site Bismarck, there was massacred a
boat load of miners, returning from
Montana. They had in the bottom of
their flat or mackinaw $110,000. There
were eighteen miners, a woman and two
girls. They stopped a short time at
Fort Berthold, and were there warned by
F. F. Girard against going on at that
time. Girard was the trader at Berthold.
The Indians down the river were
bad, and the prospects of trouble
good. The miners, however, declined
the advice, and thought they would
push out for the next landing. They
had with them a little cannon and plenty
of arms. An Indian afterward related
to Girard the story of their fate. When
they were nearly opposite the present
site of Bismarck they ran into an Indian
trap. On the east bank of the river the
Indians appeared and fired a volley into
the boat. The miners steered over to the
west side to escape the range. Up rose
from behind a sand-bank near the water's
edge another and more numerous band.
The first volley killed the whole crew ex-
cept one man wounded and the woman
and girls. The cannon was fired once.
and over went the boat, drowning the
survivors. The Indians pulled the boat
ashore. found little or nothing, and
then pushed her into the stream to
float on to her wreck. Girard says he
never sees anything in the Missouri that
looks like a lost boat without thinking
of the Montana mackinaw and her gold.
He has always been on the lookout for
the wreck, as he believes the gold was
so securely locked up that it is still in-
tact, and if found the treasure could be
rescued. It is somewhere between Bis-
marek and the gulf, imbedded in the
sand and mud. Some dredging-boat or
lucky fisherman may drop on it. Girard
still looks for it, and he's a sensible
man. The probability is that the hid-
den bonanza is not far from Bismarck