Across The Fence: 'Aunt Sally' and Dakota Gold

In June of 1872 a military post was built by two companies of the 6th U.S. Infantry under the command of Lt. Col. Daniel Huston, Jr. The new outpost was built at the confluence of the Missouri and Heart Rivers where, nearly three hundred years before, the Mandan Indian tribe had established their village. By the mid-1800’s the Mandan had abandoned the site when smallpox decimated their numbers.

The newly built post was named Fort McKeen and was located near Bismarck, Dakota Territory. Shortly thereafter, the small infantry post was renamed Fort Abraham Lincoln when in November of 1872 the fort began a major expansion to include six companies of cavalry. The completed fort would contain 78 permanent structures including a post office, telegraph, barracks for nine companies, seven officers quarters, six stables, a guardhouse, quartermasters store, bakery, hospital, laundry and scouts quarters. Water was hauled by team and wagon from the banks of the Missouri and civilian contractors supplied wood for buildings and fuel.

During the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1873, the 7th U.S. Cavalry was ordered to protect the workers and ensure the progress of the railroad. These duties were to be carried out by troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. As the newly expanded forts first commander, Custer would hold this command until his death at the Little Bighorn in June of 1876.

Across the river from the fort, the railroad camp of Bismarck was a flurry of activity. Railroad camps attracted the usual prairie gypsies of gamblers, whiskey peddlers and ladies of questionable reputation, all ready and able to relieve the railroad workers of the rewards of their labor.

Among those many less savory characters there were also those who followed the rails for honest work and honest pay. One such individual was Sarah A. Campbell, a widow woman who filed property claims on seven Bismarck lots, owned and operated a private club, took in laundry and often performed the duties of midwife. Sarah had also been a cook on the steamboats that travelled the upper Missouri and those that knew her best affectionately called her “Aunt Sally.”

The years of 1872 and 1873 saw extensive military operations in the Dakotas. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had stipulated that the Black Hills of the Dakotas would be forever reserved as Indian lands. Unfortunately forever didn’t last very long and white encroachment of the territory included the expansion of the Union Pacific and the increasing number of westward emigrants. The Sioux and Cheyenne of the region retaliated with violent attacks on both the railroad and the emigrant wagons, necessitating the deployment of the 7th Cavalry to Fort Lincoln.

During Custer’s command of Fort Lincoln, General Phil Sheridan, Commander of the U.S. Military Department of the Missouri, determined that the best defense against the escalating Indian problem would be a large military post located within the Black Hills. To that end, he ordered General Terry to organize a Black Hills expedition to determine the best location for the proposed fort. The expedition was to start at Fort Abraham Lincoln and probe deep into the Black Hills.

Terry assigned General Custer and the 7th Cavalry to command the expedition. In addition to determining a suitable location for a military installation, Custer’s expedition was also charged with verifying, or dispelling, recent rumors that there was gold to be found within the Black Hills.

Plans and preparations resulted in the most elaborately equipped expedition ever to be sent outside the states. Under Custer’s command were 1,200 men, including the ten companies of the 7th, two companies of infantry and a detachment of Indian scouts. Among the civilians were a corps of scientists, a photographer, experienced miners, a score of civilian employees and no less than five newspaper correspondents.

On July 2, 1874 General George Armstrong Custer led the expedition out of the gates of Fort Lincoln. Custer rode his favorite high-stepping steed, Dandy. Beside him rode his special aide, Lt. Col. Fred Grant, President Ulysses S. Grant’s son. Close behind rode Custer’s most trusted white scout, Charlie Reynolds, followed by Custer’s military band of 16 enlisted men. Each band member played their gleaming brass instrument and rendered the regimental battle song, “Gary Owen” in crisp and blaring tones.

The regimental band was grandly mounted on 16 perfectly matched white horses.

Behind the band followed 110 wagons each pulled by six-up teams of mules.

Several ambulances joined the parade along with 300 head of beef and more than 1,000 cavalry remounts. Bringing up the rear and enveloped in the rising dust, rode the cattle drivers and three caissons that carried the Gatling guns.

Among the civilian employees there was a lone woman, the first non-native woman to ever enter the Black Hills.

Sarah A. Campbell, “Aunt Sally” had hired on as Custer’s cook. Ever since Sarah had arrived in the territory she had longed to explore the Black Hills, partly for the adventure and partly for the prospect of gold.

Sarah had been born into slavery in Kentucky on July 10, 1823. Sarah’s mother, Marianne, had been promised that she and her children would be freed upon her owner’s death. However, Marianne and Sarah remained illegally enslaved. Sarah was sold in 1834, six days after her mother died, to Henry Chouteau, she was 11 years old. Sarah filed a suit of unlawful detainment against Chouteau and won her freedom in 1837. She received a one-cent award for damages. And now, Sarah A. Campbell, a freed slave and early pioneer to the Dakota Territory was in the employment of the U.S. Cavalry as the personal cook to General George Armstrong Custer.

On July 27, 1874 gold was found on French Creek by Horatio Ross, a professional miner with the expedition. He wrote: “At daybreak after the first gold was discovered there was a crowd around the ‘diggins’ with every conceivable accouterment. Shovels and spades, picks, axes, tentpins, bowie knives, mess pans, plates and everything within reach that could lift the dirt or hold it was put in service by the worshippers of that god, Gold. The miners traced up the creek some distance, finding color at every step… It is in the very heart of Sioux Territory – in their choicest hunting ground – and they hold the land with as holy reverence as the savage heart can feel. No one can come here with any safety, or with any legal right…”

Custer’s scout, Reynolds, carried the news through hostile Indian country to Fort Laramie where the telegrapher tapped out the message that hummed through the talking wire: Gold! Gold has been discovered in the Black Hills!

By the time Custer’s expedition had returned to Fort Lincoln, the Black Hills were already crawling with prospectors. Like ravenous locusts descending on green Missouri bottomland, miners, gamblers, gunfighters, shopkeepers, outlaws, saloon owners and other shady souls of society had descended on the Black Hills. The newly named Custer City filled to overflowing with thousands of gold-crazed men who crowded into canvas tent saloons by night and scratched for gold, down to the bedrock of French Creek, in the day. And when it was rumored that the ‘diggins’ were better at Deadwood Gulch, Custer City became a ghost town overnight.

After Custer’s expedition had returned to Fort Lincoln, President Grant authorized a second expedition to be headed by Professor Walter Jenney of Columbia University. Professor Jenney and his party of men left Fort Laramie on May 5, 1875. Jenney was accompanied by two mining engineers, an astronomer and a young topographer, Dr. Valentine McGillicuddy. Additionally there were 22 officers and 400 enlisted men of the 23rd Infantry under the command of Lt. Col. R.I. Dodge.

The results of Jenney’s expedition indicated that the quantity of gold, reported to be found, in the Black Hills was greatly exaggerated. But it was already too late. The flood of gold seekers into the sacred Black Hills, the Paha Sapa, had irrevocably broken the treaty made years before.

Retaliation of the Sioux and Cheyenne against Custer and the 7th Cavalry would culminate on the bloody battlefield of the Little Bighorn, one year later, on June 25, 1876.

Aunt Sally immersed herself in the quest for gold and she, along with 20 other residents of Bismarck, formed the Custer Park Mining Company and staked their claims on French Creek. In 1876 she joined a second group of miners from Bismarck and returned to the Hills. She lived for a time in Crook City and also Galena where she worked as a cook and mid-wife while she prospected.

Her mining ventures were less than satisfactory. From the five mining claims that she filed, only one silver mine proved to have any value. Her silver mine, the Alice Lode, showed promise and a little more than one year before her death in 1888, she sold it for $500.