Page 282 - Cornelius Hedges Story

269 The Cornelius Hedges Story

in Congress affirmed that this whole country was utterly worthless
and unfit for settlement by white men. The evidence to the
contrary produced by the Isaac I. Stevens survey in the ‘50’s fell
upon prejudiced ears or was purposely suppressed. But after the
government had given millions in bonds and other millions in acres
of land to secure the construction of two transcontinental roads, Mr.
James J. Hill built the Great Northern over the northwestern route in
less time, with less difficulty and without any subsidy.
It was the discovery of gold in California that led to the settlement
of that State and while the miners were taking out the millions that
gave the nation strength to endure and survive the Civil War, the
most expensive if not the bloodiest that the world had ever seen,
others tested the soil and climate for agriculture and fruit-growing
and found resources for permanent settlement and a steady flow of
wealth richer than the mines in their most productive days.
So it was the discovery of gold in Montana that led to settlement.
Gold was found on the west side of the mountains as early as 1852
and worked to some extent, but the discovery on Rattlesnake Creek,
near Bannack, in 1862, and on Alder Gulch in Madison County
in 1863, set the country again on fire as in the wildest days of
California excitement. The most desirable of those who would have
joined in such a stampede were serving in contending armies, but
there were still others who desired to escape service and the gold
discoveries brought them a desirable way of escape. The gamblers
and criminal class generally sought such a natural field for their
operations, beyond the eye of the law and the reign of justice. So
it was that in the early years of the settlement of Montana a large
majority of those who came were Southern sympathizers and
against the national government. In the earliest elections this class
always carried the day. The criminal class naturally allied itself with
the stronger party and by the alliance succeeded in getting many of
their kind into office. But with others who came, was an entirely
different class of the best men of the north, encouraged thereto by the
government which was having trouble with Indians who seized the
opportunity to give loose reins to their smothered hostility and their
natural tastes for murder and pillage. Besides, during the war, there
was much talk of separating the country on the Pacific Coast from
the rest of the Union, either joining the Confederacy or setting up a
Government independent of both North and South. The government
at Washington, before the war closed, deemed it of such importance
to bind the extreme West to the East by stronger ties that it voted
vast subsidies for building a trans-continental railroad, though its
debt was so vast, that many thought it impossible ever to be paid.