They were as brave and adventurous spirits as ever walked the earth. -Ph-ha-sa-pah, or the Black Hills (1895)
John Gordon sneaked a small party past the soldiers to mine gold along French Creek, where the military had made its first discover. -Wild Bill Hickok & Calamity Jane: Deadwood Legends (2008)

Prior to the year 1874, the Black Hills country was absolutely unknown, save that it was located in the center of the great Sioux Nation, where the ruling chief, Sitting Bull, was an uncompromising enemy of any white trespassers and allowed no encroachments upon his broad domain.

If any trapper, hunter or adventurer had ever had the hardihood or the misfortune to have penetrated these forbidden grounds, he was never heard of more.

When news leaked that General Custers 1874 expedition through the Black Hills had discovered gold, 24-year-old Sioux City resident David Aken (born 1850) jumped at the chance to go there, even though it was forbidden by patrolling Army cavalry troops. An adventure of this kind had always been one of the greatest desires of my life, writes Aken in his 1920 book Pioneers of the Black Hills.

In describing one visit to an Ogalla Sioux camp, Aken writes:

On entering the chiefs tent I was quite overcome with surprise, for, among the female occupants was the young squaw that had so heroically liberated me some five months before, on two different occasions, thereby imperiling her own life and alienating the friendship of her own people, in case of discovery. I could see that she instantly recognized me, and, on the impulse of the moment, I would have greeted her as my heroine, my angel deliverer, but her warning look and gesture caused me to stop ...

In the end, the tide of immigration started by the little gold dust sent out in the winter was so great that the troops could not keep them out or take them out as fast as they went in, and long before winter had set in, the government had abandoned all attempts to restrain or stop the rush of fortune seekers to the new Eldorado.

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