Before the Indians started back we gave them tobacco and some matches, and a fancy pipe for them to take to the chief. It was the 18th of January, 1863, when we crossed the Missouri river at Fort Benton, and the river at that time was perfectly free from ice. There were only a few days of cold weather and but little snow that winter.
About the first of March, 1863, Thebeau and I started for the upper country and got as far as Sun river the first day. Vail had charge of the government farm, which was near where we crossed the stream. After going over the hill in the Prickly Pear canyon, and while we were in camp at a little spring W. C. Gillette came along with a cayuse pack train on his way to Fort Benton to get goods for Bannock. Tom Clarey and Jim Gourley were with him. Gillette had his sacks filled with gold dust, and as the road agents were very troublesome at that time, he mistook us for desperadoes; he went by and would not stop to talk with us. From there we went to Montana Bar. By this time the immigrants had nearly all left. Albert Agnel, Alvin H. Wilcox and John Peeterson were there yet, besides a few others. John Peeterson and I sunk a shaft twenty-five feet deep on the bar and found fifty cents to the pan on bed rock. After that Peeterson and I went and surveyed a ditch (it is the same big ditch that now conveys the water from the Prickly Pear creek onto the bench land.) Our surveying apparatus was a triangle and a plumb bob which we made ourselves.
Alvin H. Wilcox, Jesse Crooks, Albert Agnel, and Jim Marston were also interested in the ditch. About the last of May I received word from Bill Sweeny of the discovery of Alder gulch and that he had staked a claim for me, and for me to come as quickly as possible, but it was pretty late in June before I could leave to go to Alder, and when I got there some one had taken possession of my claim, according to miners’ rules, and those were if the owner was not there to represent his claim it could not be held only so many days; consequently I went to work for Bill Sweeny for $14 per day. After working for Sweeny for several weeks, I decided to go back to the bar and do more prospecting. Early in the summer of 1863, I found twenty-five cents to the pan on a bar where the city of Helena is now. I filled the hole up again and built a fire on the fresh dirt to conceal the place, with the intention of going back; that was an old trick which was practiced by the prospectors. As I was interested with John Peeterson in the ditch and the mines on the bar (American bar), and as it was necessary for us to have more sluice boxes, one day I went to cut logs to make lumber. I was on the side of a mountain, when a log rolled and caught my leg between it and a stump. It was some time before I could release myself, and when I did so I found that my leg was broken, and that is why I am lame now. There was no doctor to be had. I squeezed the broken place together the best I could and wrapped it up in some bandages I made out of a pair of overalls I had. That winter (1863–4) I stopped in a little cabin. I hired a man named Talbot, who was a Baptist preacher, to cook and stay with me; I paid him twenty dollars a week for his services and companionship. All this time my leg was troubling me terribly. Knowing Father Ravalli, in whose honor Ravalli county is named (he is now dead, and peace be to his memory, for he was a good man), and hearing that he was at the Mission, near where the Ulm station on the Montana Central railroad is located, I decided to go and see him, for I knew that he was a good physician. I gave a man named Merrill all my interest in the mines to take me as far as Malcolm Clarke’s place at the head of Prickly Pear canyon; from there a man named Morgan, from Fort Benton, took me to the Mission, a distance of fifty-five miles, and he charged me two hundred and fifty dollars, which was all the money I had. Father Ravalli was not at the Mission, but Father Jurada was, he also being a good surgeon. He told me that he could break the leg over again, but it would be shorter. He operated on my leg, and by the summer of 1865 I was able to work.
In 1867 I located the ranch where I am now, and have been ever since. It is like a dream to me when I think of the old trails I traveled over, forty years ago, and, on the other hand, it is a revelation to listen to the rumbling of the heavy trains that pass to and fro on the Montana Central railroad only a few miles from my door; while, looking in another direction, I see clouds of smoke arising and hear the whistle of the locomotives of the Great Falls and Canada railroad, and looking in still another direction I see the city of Great Falls and the towering smokestacks of its great smelters. Where once were the lone trails I helped to blaze through a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and savage men, I now see a flourishing city, and the country around me dotted with fine homes and prosperous towns.
While looking back, my imaginary view is tinged with sadness as I realize that the old days are gone forever; nevertheless my declining years are made contented and happy by the knowledge that I have done all that I could to convert this one-time wilderness into an empire, I now lay down the rifle of the pioneer and the pick and shovel of the prospector to pass the remainder of my days in the peace and content that comes from the consciousness of having done my best to help develop this western country that it might become the abiding place of an intelligent and prosperous people. And now, in the sunset of life, as I realize that before many years I shall strike the trail that leads “over the great divide,” I rejoice that I can leave to my children a name honored by being enrolled on the scroll of Montana’s pioneers.”
Now Mr. Brown is past seventy-five years of age and lives with his family on a farm. Sun River is his postoffice. He is a well-preserved man for his age and has a remarkably good memory. What I have written here is but a fraction of that which he told me that evening of what the West was forty-two years ago. The only way to get a true early history of a country is to get such a narrative from its pioneers, and surely John D. Brown should be counted as one of the early historians of the state of Montana.
Robert Vaughn.
January 4, 1900.