Charles Collins' Sneakers

Gordon party

The man must have been, first and foremost, a promotor, a proud-and-loud salesman, an Irish wonder capable of selling most anything to most anybody. Charles Collins, Sioux City, Iowa, newspaperman, mover-and-shaker, had a plan, not alone either--not just him; there were others like him, others who thought Washington was dead wrong in giving the Black Hills away to those ungodly Sioux and Cheyenne because, well, as everybody knew, there's gold in them thar' hills.

What he insisted on was like candy served up to hungry Sioux City dreamers. Get them thar' hills to open up to immigrant pioneers, and Charles Collins would be sure to sell Sioux City as the official first and last place for trade and colonization out west--and gold, the last chance for essentials before kicking off into the unknown. That's right--we're talking "gold." As the last stop before the wide open spaces of the great Northwest, Sioux City merchants would be in exactly the right position to sell the teeming multitudes a thousand provisions for rolling on even farther west. Sure as anything, Sioux City would be Fat City.

Couldn't have been any more of a sure thing. Come one, come all. Get yourself some free and happy new land and maybe a we bit of gold as well, Collins said. America was going forward, a nation of over-achievers will all start here, in Sioux City. So dreamed our very own King Dreamer.

Collins carried more than a pop gun into the fray. He picked up a mining expert named Thomas H. Russell to stir up interest and business with a series of speeches around the region, aimed at convincing people to join with the other entrepeneurs.

By his estimation at least, his cause benefitted from a steamboat's Sioux City stop, when Editor Collins pulled off an interview with a man who could have been Bishop of the entire region, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who somehow let slip that he himself couldn't help but believe there was gold in them thar' hills. Thus, the word from on high became gospel truth and a few months later, right here in River City, a new association was born, "the Black Hills Mining and Exploring Association of Sioux City."

In 1872, Collins wasn't at all shy. He told people here as elsewhere that he fully expected 50,000 people to move with him into regions west of the Missouri, regions the government had granted, by treaty, to the Lakota, and that vast number would include scores of men working gold fields.

In April of 1872, government agents, who were not blind to Collins' dreams, issued a warning that any movement on the land specified by the 1868 treaty that had determined the Hills belonged to Native tribal people would be hunted down and ushered out of the treaty boundries, which meant getting sent back to Sioux City.

On October 6, 1874, 26 men, one woman, and one 10-year-old child departed from Sioux City, under the direction of wagon train boss John Gordon, who knew his way around the country just east of the Black Hills.

On December 23, 1874, they finally reached French Creek, where Custer's earlier expedition had claimed to find gold. Camp was set, and very soon the Wisconsin lumberjacks were sent out to get logs to set in the ground, palisades for what eventually became Fort Defiance.

You've seen it perhaps. That original fort's grandson still stands at the eastern edge of the Black Hills, right where its forbearer stood 130+ years ago. It's called the Gordon Stockade now, after the man who led the expedition, while Collins who was its inspiration--well, Collins and gold--had stayed back in Sioux City.

You've got to hand it to John Gordon, the trail boss. He successfully avoided the government forces who would have turned his bunch around and spanked them back to the Missouri River. "O'Neill's Colony," he had painted on a wagon, as if that were their destination.

It wasn't. They were after gold.

The whole bunch were sent back a few months later, but they left the fort behind--Gordon Stockade. You can hardly have missed it. The place has a genuine Sioux City history--for better or for worse.