Bill Fairweather.
Wm. Fairweather was a peculiar person. He was born in New Brunswick and started west at an early age.
Not enough is known of the early life of this truly remarkable man. He was not acquainted with fear. The rattlesnake was, to him, harmless, as in the story of Henry Edgar we find the following: "It was jointly through Bill Fairweather and Lewis Simmons that we were saved (from the Indians). I don't know how it was, but a rattlesnake would not bite Bill. When he saw one he would grab it up and carry it for days. They never seemed to resent anything he would do to them, and he never killed one. As we were going toward this Indian village he picked up a rattlesnake and just at the outskirts he picked up another. When the Indians saw him come in with a rattlesnake on each arm they were awed. He put the snakes in his shirt bosom and Simmons told the Indians that he was the great Medicine Man of the whites.
They took us into their medicine lodge, where there was a big bush in the center. They marched us around that bush several times and finally Bill said that if they marched him around again he would pull up the sacred medicine bush. They marched us around again and Bill pulled up the bush and walloper the Medicine Man on the head with it. We then formed three to three, back to back. We had refused all along to give up our guns and revolvers. The old chief drove the Indians back with a whip. They had a council which lasted from noon until midnight. In the morning we got our sentence. If we attempted to go on they would kill us. If we would give up our horses and go back we would not be harmed."
As I have mentioned in my "Story of Ajax" the Indians did not take Fairweather's horses. There can be but one way to account for this. Bill must be crazy! And a crazy man would be under the care of the "Great Spirit." Who, but a crazy man, would carry a live rattlesnake or pull up the sacred bush and strike the Medicine man? Yes, Bill was Crazy (?), but he made if work.
That Alder was discovered at all was due to the act of this leader, because a leader he was, of a pronounced nature.
As per Marshall's interview we notice the following:
Thursday evening, April 28, 1875.
At Douglas' Store saw W. Fairweather and obtained from him full account of the discovery of gold in Alder Gulch. A party, Fairweather, T. Cover, H. Edgar, B. Hughes, Sweeney, Rodgers, an old mountaineer (who fraternized with and remained among the Indians in the Yellowstone) started from Deer Lodge, intendizing to prospect some tributary of the Yellowstone. They crossed the main range by the Deer Lodge Pass, crossed the Big Hole and Beaverhead Rivers, traveled up the Pahsimmeri, struck across the Tobacco Root range at the head of Granite Creek, a tributary of Alder, passing within four or five miles of the richest and most extensive placer mines ever worked in Montana. Went down the Madison, turned east and crossing the Gallatin and the range lying between it and the Yellowstone, went down the latter stream two days' journey when they encountered a large party of Indians who stopped them and for two days detained them while making medicine over them to decide their fate, the old warriors being of the opinion that they should be turned back, and forbidden to attempt again to pass through that region in quest of the precious metals, while the younger warriors were for instantly killing them with all the horrors of fiendish tortures before, and scalping after death, which always distinguished the actions of the real savage Indians of history, though unknown to the Indian of poetry and romance, the noble savage of Longfellow and Cooper. The medicine proved favorable to the views of the older men and the party were turned back and, fearful of pursuit by the younger warriors, traveled with little rest until they came out of the mountains onto the Madison Valley, opposite the mouth of Wigwam Gulch, and recrossing the river and deeming themselves safe from pursuit rested a day on Wigwam and prospecting a little discovered a little gold, but not enough to pay. They then traveled up Wigwam some distance and crossing by the Lakes, discovered the gravel range on the head of Butcher and camping there for the night prospected a little but only found a few colors. The next morning they started to return to Bannack and coming into Alder Gulch near the Toll Gate opposite Fairweather Bar, Fairweather told the others, when on the hill, that, "If there wasn't gold there he wouldn't prospect another place till they got back to Bannack." When they reached the flat, just above the Toll Gate, Fairweather alighted and began to unsaddle. As they had only come five miles the others asked what he meant by stopping there. He replied that he was going to prospect and finally they called a halt and turned out their animals. As they made it a practice never to let them get out of their sight, when they had fed down the stream as far as Rogers' Bar, Fairweather started down to drive them back. As he returned up the creek he was all the time looking to see if he could find any place where the rimrock was visible and getting near the camp saw it sticking out for some two hundred feet on the bar opposite and since known as the Fairweather Bar, and taking a pick, pan and shovel he and Edgar started over to prospect the Bar, while the others got dinner ready. F. shoveled up a pan of the loose gravel which had crumbled down from the bank and Edgar took it down to the creek to wash it, and while he was gone F. picked the bare rimrock which is there a loose trap and taking up a piece saw it all sprinkled over with gold, and about the same time Edgar, who had washed the panful down enough to see the gold, shouted that he had got a big prospect, he thought $5 or $6. They washed three pans and returning to camp weighed it and found it to be forty-five cents. They had all claimed to be dead broke before this, but no sooner was it certain that they had discovered paying diggings than all the party, except Edgar and Fairweather, began to pull out purses which had before been carefully hidden, and declare that they had enough to buy grub when they should reach Bannack. They stayed five days and F. panned out $160.
Interview between F. and Prof. Wm. J. Marshall:
When he found gold he did not value it. He used to ride up the main street of Virginia City and scatter gold dust right and left in the street to see the children and Chinamen scramble for it. What he didn't throw away he drank up and did not have money enough left to bury himself.
From 1868 to 1872 he prospected on the Peace River and in Alaska. Never contented -- always a wanderer. He died at the age of 39, in 1875, and was buried in Virginia on the hill overlooking the stream that gave millions to the world.
Edgar said: "Bill was a fearless man, and an honest man, true to his friends and to his word. He never had but one fault, he would drink too much whiskey.
Bill died at Pete Daly's place, the Robbers' Roost. There is an iron fence around his grave with a gold plate bearing the following inscription, to-wit:
Wm. H. Fairweather, Captain of party who discovered Alder Gulch, May 1863.
Born at Woodstock Parish, Carlton County, New Brunswick, June 14th, 1836.
Died, 1875, at Daly's Ranch, Madison County, Montana, August 25th.