On the way back to Fort Pierre, which is a neat little town of about one thousand people, with wide streets and cement sidewalks, my companions told of the discovery on February 17, 1913, of a lead plate on a hill back of the town, where it had been buried by French explorers in 1743. It is now the property of Mr. William O'Reilly, a resident of Fort Pierre. Mr. O'Reilly kindly presented me with a photograph of the plate and a translation of its inscription. He also took me to the bank where it is kept in a safe deposit vault and allowed me to examine it carefully. It is of thick sheet lead about six by seven inches in dimensions and but little corroded. On one side is the seal of France above an inscription in Latin. Both are deeply stamped in the lead and quite legible. A translation of the inscription follows:
In the twenty-sixth year of Louis XV's reign, in the name of the King, most illustrious sovereign, for the Governor, Marquis of Beauharnis, in 1743 Peter Gaultier de la Verendrye deposited this plate.
On the reverse side is scratched rather irregularly the following inscription in French:
Deposited by the Chevalier of Laverdendried (Witnesses) Louis La Louette, A. Miotte. April 30, 1743.
In a Fort Pierre book store I was able to procure "A Brief History of South Dakota," written in 1905 by Doane Robinson, Secretary of the State Historical Society. In this interesting book Mr. Robinson says:
"The first white man that we know certainly to have visited South Dakota was a young man named Verendrye (de la Verendrie on the plate), in the year of 1743. He claimed the land for the King of France, and on a hill near the camp planted a plate engraved with the arms of France and marked the spot with a pile of stones. To unearth that plate would be a rich find for some enterprising young South Dakotan. Taking into account the direction traveled and the time spent in making the trip, it is most likely that this plate rests within fifty miles of the state capitol."
The book contains many items of special interest to me. On one of the maps is shown the location of the winter cantonments of "Harney's troops in 1856." There is a good picture of "Old Fort Pierre in 1855 and vicinity," also a ground plan of the fort drawn to scale, showing all of the buildings within it. This plan shows the fort to have been three hundred by two hundred and fifty feet square, somewhat larger than I judged it to be from memory. The names of some Indian chiefs and their pictures printed in the book bring the originals back to my thoughts.
In the afternoon I bade farewell to the two gentlemen who had been so courteous to me. I was the only passenger on the ferry when the boatman vainly tried to make her start. He finally went up the street to get some dry batteries and returned with another man. They installed new batteries and took much of the machinery apart and put it together again. Still the boat refused to budge. Nearly an hour had been lost and I was beginning to get apprehensive about catching my train, when another boat arrived from the east shore. The boatman aboard her soon found what the trouble was and we started for the other side which we reached without mishap save grounding twice on the sandbar.
A reporter of a local paper caught me there, but I had time to give him only a very short interview. I caught the train for the east with little time to spare. A state fair was being held at Huron, S.D., four hours' ride from Pierre, and many persons got on at the intermediate stations. Among them were a few Indians and their squaws. To see an Indian mount the steps of a car, carrying a suitcase, seemed extraordinary to me. Surely the Indian as I knew him no longer exists.
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