Lewiston teller. (Lewiston, Idaho), February 18, 1897
Chronicling America, Libary of Congress
Research courtesy of Sarah Liggitt, thanks for sharing!
Pioneer Sketches
The prospectors will ever be heroes of our history. Three-finger Smith is selected as an example of this class. He was in employ of the American Fur Company from early manhood; and had a thorough schooling in the hardships of the plains. He was one of the earliest to develop the Idaho placer gold mines and was one of the original discoverers of the great wealth of Florence. He was the autocrat of Babboon Gulch in those glorious days of gold. His claims yielded in one year four hundred pounds of dust. With this ample fortune he departed from the field of his success. He went forth to enjoy the blessings of the world, but he reaped the whirlwind. Within a year his gold was all gone.
Like so many of his class his name was suggested by a physical distinguishing mark, a wounded hand. He mentally and physically equipped for the life of a prospector. He gave to the work an excess of energy. There are invincibles in every field of labor and the subject of this sketch was an invincible prospector. If the thought entered his mind that gold existed in any region, however remote, no obstacle would restrain him front a personal investigation. He did not wait for a grub stake nor blankets nor pack horse: but he started with his gun and pouch filled with salt. His engagements were not measured by time but by results. If he started on a prospecting tour he might be gone a week, a month or half a year; and during these excursions he slept under the trees or in the shelter of a rock and ate the meat of wild beasts. In this manner he visited every mining camp in the northwest and explored more mountain fastnesses than any other prospector of old or modern times. He made manv important discoveries, perhaps passing them by because they would not yield a hundred dollars a day. He crossed and recrossed the divide be tween Montana and Idaho more than twenty times through the trackless forest with no companions but his shovel and gun.
On one occasion he disappeared into the mountains and was gone for many months. He returned bearing the scars of battle with hardships and with the evidence of success in his hands. He was loaded down with nuggets and to his friends he related the story of the discovery of a rich placer mine. None doubted his story and he undertook to guide a party to a second Florence; but he could not And the new camp. This is the old story of a lost mine. This man was not selfish enough to seek laudation by a false report: but he died without finding the lost mine.
After Three-finger Smith packed out his gold, good cargoes for two horses, he visited the Willamette valley. He returned, after squandering his wealth, to Warrens and with him came a friend by the name of Dawson accomnanied by bis family; and in the company was a daughter who became Mrs. Smith. After marriage the inveterate rambler became more reconciled to domestic habits and for several years was a permanent householder in the mining camps and on a farm on Salmon river. The man with so many traits of nobility was unfortunately adicted to the use of strong drink. His family relations became unpleasant too soon; and after three children had been born into the unhappy family, a separation occurred. Mrs. Smith deserted her husband and the children and went to Colorado where she afterwards married a man by the no me of Grim. The parent was attached to his children and tried hard to rally from his intemperance and be faithful to the trust of father. We find him in after years on a farm, having given up the mountains and the mines and also the habit of drink. The loss of his and the devotion to his children transformed him for a time and he built up a snug little fortune by agricultural pursuits. In him, however, was a longing for the old haunts and perhaps the old habits of debauchery. In the meantime a company of convivial tourists engaged the old time "Mintaineer to guide them to some g mi of the interior; and he went and again returned to tbe use of alcohol. This relapse carried him to the most excess and the downward never again interrupted, His ife thereafter was a prolonged spree. He died a poor man after giving to the world more gold than any man, by indivdual effort. His children inherited none of his greatness but they suffered all his misfortunes and all met violent deaths.
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