Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Sept. 11, 2018 — The residents of Bowbells and the surrounding area were armed with shovels in 1908 and were determined to find buried treasure. A story from the late 1800s was revived, and according to that story, a paymaster for the Hudson’s Bay Company was robbed in Canada while delivering salaries to men at several trading posts throughout the country. The loot was rumored to be about $40,000, and was never recovered, even after the robber was captured near Big Butte, 12 miles south of Bowbells.
According to the story, the bandit died while in custody, and never revealed the location of the booty. Its hiding place supposedly died with the robber — that is, until his body was searched and a plat etched into the inside of his fur vest was found. That plat was suspected of being a map leading to the hidden treasure.
The search near Big Butte, where the money was allegedly hidden, only intensified when one digger uncovered a number of engraved stones. Several were engraved with arrows, while another was marked with the date “1877.” The treasure hunters believed the stones to be markers leading to the hidden booty. While these hunters remained hopeful, one man was skeptical.
Today in 1908, the Bowbells Tribune published a letter from a White Earth rancher who remembers the bold robbery. Though the rancher said he was just a small boy at that time, he said he remembered well the details of the robbery and the subsequent manhunt. His father ranched in that area and said many of the farmers and ranchers, his father included, turned out to help find the bandit. They chased the man along the Missouri River bottomlands for days. Once, they thought they had him hemmed up in a thicket up the river from Williston, but the man was camped about 20 miles inland and his whereabouts were not known until a passing hunter reported his location to the posse.
Six days later, the rancher’s father and his neighbors apprehended the highwayman. The rancher said the man’s name was Goodspeed, and that he was “thoroughly English.” Goodpseed was once an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and had fallen from grace with the company when he robbed the paymaster. Though the rancher confirms the story of the robbery, he says the story of hidden treasure is mere fiction.
According to the rancher, before Goodspeed was captured, the money was not hidden, but was stolen from Goodspeed by two other men. They also relieved him of any supplies, leaving Goodspeed in a condition he was glad to be rescued from, even if it meant jail. The rancher said Goodspeed did die shortly after his arrest, but stood by the story of his own mugging to the end.
The alleged plat, said the rancher, is nonsense. As for the engraved stones, the rancher says they were likely from one of General Sibley’s expeditions. Many soldiers, said the rancher, carved their names and dates on boulders all along that trail. Once again dismissing the story of the hidden loot, the rancher wrote, “There’s nothing in it, and the people over in that country who are putting in time excavating in hope of unearthing this treasure are only throwing away valuable time that they might better be expending in some other direction.”
Though Goodspeed may not have marked a stolen treasure, Goodspeed did make his mark as one of Dakota’s many bold bandits.
“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org, or subscribe to the “Dakota Datebook” podcast.
