by John Townley, June 1970
Anyone who reads western history is familiar with the story of the Indian who leads a white prospector to a fabulous deposit of glittering gold ore. This old chestnut has been repeated so many times it usually is treated at best as legendary, or ignored by the scholarly researcher. However, there is at least one example of such a story being well documented. The locality is Delamar, Nevada, one of the best preserved ghost towns in the Great Basin, where over $10,000,000 in gold was produced prior to World War I.
In 1902, the Delamar mine had been paying dividends for almost eight years. Many of the larger stockholders were Salt Lake City residents and news of the district was often printed in local news papers. On April 27, 1902 the Salt Lake Tribune carried an illustrated article on an alleged discovery of the deposit several decades earlier than the official location date of 1890.
The "glory hole" of Delamar was the hiding place of more than $10,000,000 in high-grade gold ore. Below, the town and mill operated by the Delamar Company.
According to the story, the discovery of the Delamar lode was almost made by some white prospectors in 1877, rather than 1890. Further, the deposit had been known to the Paiutes much earlier and they vigorously intended to keep it unknown to the whites. The author began, "There is scarcely any doubt that the great gold mines of De La Mar were first discovered by a roving band of Paiute Indians many years before the foot of a white man trod the ground over the yellow treasure. It was a fatal find for the red men, the first victim being the Indian who betrayed the secret to the whites. He was a son of old Tickaboo, an aged savage reputed to be 104 years old who still cumbers the sidewalks of Pioche.
"In the year 1877, Chitowich, the son, came in from one of .his periodical hunting trips with something more substantial than a robust appetite and a consuming thirst. He brought with him some fine looking samples of quartz alive with free gold."
Two Pioche miners saw the samples and had them assayed. The results were astonishing; over $1300 in gold to the ton. They immediately began a campaign to force Chitowich to show them the location of his find. A couple of weeks effort, plus the promise of free room and board for a lifetime, caused Chitowich to reflect on the tribal taboo concerning the location of the outcroppings. The next morning, the miners, together with Chitowich and his son George, left Pioche and headed south along the west side of the Meadow Valley range. The second night out, they were camped at Cliff Springs when the two prospectors noticed bright flashes from signal fires appearing at intervals on the mountains to their east. Chitowich noticed them as well and began to get uneasy. This was the first indication the whites had that the deposit was protected by the whole Paiute nation.
Brick in this power station was brought overland from Salt Lake City by wagon. Delamar was one of the first mining districts to have electricity. The equipment was sold as scrap during World War II
"Newton and Lamson (the miners) called to him that they would kill him if he did not stay where he was. For a time this threat held him in check, but as the shouts of the tribesmen seemed to come nearer he threw discretion to the winds and made a dash for the chaparral. Instantly, two guns rang out. Even in the dense darkness, the aim of one was so good that a charge of shot found its mark and brought a cry of pain from the treacherous guide, but it did not stop his flight.
Determined at all costs to keep the Indian from reaching his own people and bringing the whole tribe down upon them, Newton and Lamson sprang up and dashed away in pursuit. The wounded man was not able to make very good time, and was overtaken within a few hundred feet. This time the frontiersmen did pot miss. Leaving the body where it had been dispatched, the white men returned to their camp and be thought themselves of the small Indian boy who had been in bed with his father. No trace of him was to be found. His escape, made their situation as badas it had been before. There was nothing to do but pull stakes and get out of the dangerous neighborhood."
The eleven-year-old son of Chitowich reached his family within several days and related to them the facts of his father's death at the hands of the miners. An older son, Bill, went into isolation for a week, then gathered about him a party of other young Paiute men. They began one of the few Paiute outbreaks and had all of Lincoln County, Nevada paralyzed for three months. Finally, the residents of Pioche and Hiko organized search parties and kept in the saddle for weeks at a time. However, they could not locate the small and highly mobile group of Paiutes. In desperation, they decided on mass punishment and told the large Paiute colony in the Pahranagat Valley that either they produced Bill, or faced extinction.
In a few hours the bloodthirsty Bill was brought in on a pony, bound hand and foot. The Indians said that they had not seen George (the younger son) but reassured the whites that they would catch him before long and kill him themselves. With Bill in their midst, closely guarded, the punitive expedition returned to Hiko.
"There was no time wasted in taking testimony. The court simply suspended the rules, declared the prisoner guilty by a unanimous vote of the house, then suspended the prisoner. A hempen noose, a very popular piece of neckwear in Nevada in those days, was fitted about his neck. He was stood on a wagon and hauled under the pulley arm over the door of a barn. The loose end of the rope was firmly fixed to this arm and the wagon pulled from under Indian Bill. Bill did not stand on ceremony, or anything else, but died as almost any other well regulated Indian would have died under the circumstances. No one ever saw Indian George again so it was assumed by the whites that the headmen had kept their promise and had disposed of him in some manner satisfactory to themselves, if not to George."
The newspaper account closed by saying that the Delamar lode was finally located in the fall of 1891 by a stock man from Hiko while hunting mustangs. Mr. Newton, one of the two prospectors who unsuccessfully brought Chitowich south of Pioche in 1877, was living in Tintic, Utah in 1902 and was quoted as the source of the details.
The matter of an earlier location of the Delamar lode rested there for several months. I was gathering material for an historical study of the district and copied the article as an example of how mining legends can start. Later, while reading microfilm reproductions of Nevada newspapers, several letters appeared in the Nevada Belmont Courier. The author was Hartwig A. Cohen, writing to his good friend George Nicholl, deputy sheriff of Nye County. Cohen was a graduate of the Freiburg School of Mines in Germany and the first investor in the Delamar claims located by the Ferguson brothers of Hiko in 1890.
The Fergusons' had sent some samples which prompted him to inspect the property in person. He wrote back: "My trip south was productive of results bet ter than I had anticipated. The mine which I invested in is in the Bennett Springs range, about 30 miles south of Pioche, and about 31) miles east of Pahranagat Valley. The mine is not situated in any mining district, and the first tracks which were ever made into the canyon are now made by the locators.
"There is believed to be quite a history connected with this mine. It is supposed to be the same from which an Indian by the name of Bitter Sweet (translation of Chitowich) brought some samples about 25 years ago. Two prospectors managed to get the Indian to show them the mine; all three started out to where the mine was situated. When the party reached the neighbor hood where the mine was supposed to be the Indian, for some reason, refused to go further, and the prospectors, suspect ing treachery, shot the Indian."
Here is a disinterested verification of what has come to be regarded as a lost mine classic; the Indian who finds a mineralized outcrop, but for one reason or another is unable to lead others to the vicinity. The story of Chitowich and his samples was repeated around the Pioche area from 1877 until 1891 when Cohen arrived from Belmont. Cohen would have had no reason for repeating the story to his friends in Belmont except as an oddity of a new bonanza. The close similarity of Cohen's 1891 letter and the Salt Lake Tribune article of 1902 cannot be explained away as collision since Cohen was retired in Europe by that date. The facts must stand as presented: Chitowich did bring samples to Pioche and his attempt to disclose the location was met with death. The story lingered on in Pioche and became part of their oral tradition.
It would be interesting to know how many unsubstantiated stories involving an Indian now passing the rounds among treasure hunters could be verified by a little research. At any rate, just because a legend seems improbable is no reason to drop it. Who knows, confirming data might be as close as your newspaper.
