Charles Nolin
Historical Sturgis and the Black Hills

The blowing mail was ominous. It was clear that a tragedy had occurred, and soon that would be confirmed through the lifeless body of a young pony mail carrier. His death most likely came swiftly, with multiple bullet wounds to the head. He would later be scalped; his gun and horse stolen. The mail bag he had been carrying was slashed and the letters littered the area.

While Nolin’s life was cut short, at just 24 years, he would become immortalized through his death with millions of people passing by his memorial. But exactly who was this Pony Express rider. Let’s see in this issue of Historical Sturgis and the Black Hills.

Hello, and thank you for tuning in. I’m your host, Dustin White. In this article we will be looking at Charles Nolin, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, mail on the frontier, and how they all mixed to lead to the death of a young man.

Before we begin though, I’d just like to mention the parent company for this series, White Canvas Art Co., A Start to Finish Art Studio. If you’re in the Sturgis, SD area, come check it out and if you want to talk history, I will be there at 1060 Main Street.

Charles Nolin was born in Akron, Ohio, but as a small child, his family moved to Beatrice, Nebraska. It would be Nebraska that he would call home for the rest of his life, moving around the state as he grew older.

Not much more is known about the early life of Nolin. It’s possible that he moved around quite a bit, as he would later be associated with various towns in Nebraska. We also know that he had red hair, which lent itself to his nickname of either Red or Reddy.

It truly was in death that Nolin’s legacy would live. It just so happened that his death was at the corner of events that changed the history of the west.

Discovery of Gold
On July 27, 1874, a discovery would be made that would have a very long lasting impact. Horatio N Ross, a miner in Custer’s 7^th Cavalry, discovered gold in the French Creek of the Black Hills. Only a small amount of gold was initially discovered, but the search was building up.

As word about gold began being passed on, a rush to the Black Hills, in what was considered the last of the gold rushes, started to escalate. In November of 1875, larger gold deposits were found in Deadwood Gulch, and by 1876, thousands of gold seekers would pour in.

With an increasing amount of miners flooding into the area, tensions quickly rose among the Lakota. According to the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, the area of the Black Hills was closed off to Americans.

There are many aspects that led to this growing tension though, and in future podcasts we will delve into that matter more fully. However, after the Laramie Treaty of 1868, white men were forbidden to trespass in the Black Hills, except for officials of the U.S. Government.

But it wouldn’t be long before resources from the Black Hills would be sought after. Initially, it was the timber that the U.S. Government had looked at as settlements began to pop up in Missouri that needed lumber. In addition, it was suspected that the area was also rich in mineral resources. Because of that, the U.S. Government sent a commission to the Red Cloud Agency that sought the possibility of the Lakota selling away the Black Hills. The answer they got was a definite no, and Colonel John E. Smith concluded that, quote, nothing short of their annihilation will get it from them.

For their part, the U.S. Army did make some attempts though to keep miners out of the region. They were relatively successful in evicting miners from the Black Hills in the beginning, but such evictions then led to a growing pressure on President Grant to secure the Black Hills.

A storm was brewing over the nation though that put additional pressure on the government to take control of the Black Hills. In 1873, an economic panic took hold that would put the US in a depression that lasted until 1879. Coupled with Custer’s expedition finding gold in the Black Hills in 1874, stopping the influx of people into the region was a mounting issue, one that the U.S. Army was neither fully equipped to handle, nor really were overly concerned about.

So by 1876, thousands of miners were pouring into the area, and the government was still actively trying to secure the rights to the land. When diplomacy continued to fail, President Grant decided an alternative route was needed. Looking to provoke the Lakota, Grant instructed Indian agents to notify all Lakota that they must return to their reservation by January 31, 1876, a task that was deemed impossible by many of the agents themselves.

As the deadline passed, and the task was not completed, the U.S. Army prepared to go to war. On February 8, 1876, General Sheridan made the order to commence the winter military campaign against the “hostiles,” and thus, the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 began.

War and Mail
As war was breaking out in the Black Hills and across the prairie, there was another issue that had caused problem for the U.S. Government; how to deliver mail to these new frontier towns.

This was a problem that had been dealt with decades earlier as the California Gold Rush was in full swing. It was then that the legendary Pony Express was conceived.

On April 3, 1860, the first horse and rider packed his mail bag and headed out from Missouri to California. The trip was to take about 10 days, but came with a hefty price; $130 in today’s money to send a half ounce letter.

The Pony Express would operate for just 18 months, closing it’s doors in October of 1861. With such high prices, and the establishment of the transcontinental telegraph, on October 24, 1861, the Pony Express was no longer a viable option.

But the legend of the Pony Express would live on much longer, and it would quickly be romanticized, with figures such as William “Buffalo Bill” Cody bringing it center stage.

There was an added difficulty though for the Black Hills. As they were still part of the Great Sioux Reservation, the U.S. Government was not able to make any arrangements for handling mail in the Black Hills region. Instead, it was entrusted to private individuals.

Initially, letters traveled in and out of the hills in the hands of people passing through. As a result, whether one would receive their mail was questionable at best. If their letter would be delivered, it was often tattered and soiled, and bore the marks of it having been well read.

Various solutions were posed to improve mail delivery, such as using freight outfits to transport it. But such outfits were slow, and often were furthered delayed by skirmishes with local Lakota Indians. When it would finally arrive to its destination, there would be a large backlog of mail to then go out, which further complicated the situation.

It was in that environment that a new Pony Express would be formed. Sometime in July of 1876, Charlie Utter and Dick Seymour formed the Pioneer Pony and Express. The new service would be announced in the Black Hills Pioneer as early as July 8th, and by July 22nd, was already in full swing.

The Pioneer Pony would be open for just three months, yet it deserves a podcast episode in itself. Wild Bill Hickok would be one of the riders for this express, and was so at the time of his death. Charles Nolin would also become one of the riders for this group.

They would officially be labeled volunteers, but the pay was quite well at 25 cents per letter, which quickly added up as they could carry hundreds or even thousands of letters in a trip. Coupled with the adventure and romanticism that the 1860 Pony Express was surrounded with, it is of little wonder why Nolin would choose that career.

It would be just a couple months after the death of Nolin that the Pioneer Pony and Express would go under and the delivery of mail would be temporarily turned over to the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage Company. By the next year, the Black Hills would be open to settlement by the U.S. Government, and regular government mail service established in the Spring of 1877.

The Bighorn
At the top of this article, I mentioned how the Battle of the Little Big Horn would fit in to the story. The Great Sioux War had begun in February of 1876, but it was that June that a major turning point would occur. On June 25, Custer and his Seventh Calvary had come across the combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. In another subject that deserves its own episode, the short version is that the battle would be an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho.

History now sees the Battle of the Little Bighorn, or as the Lakota and other Plains Indians know it as, the Battle of the Greasy Grass, as the beginning of the end of the Indian Wars. It would directly lead to the ownership of the Black Hills being seized by the Untied States. Within 48 hours of the battle, the tribes would break up into smaller groups and would slowly return to the reservation.

Bolstered by the victory at the Little Bighorn, skirmishes escalated in the Black Hills. It was one of these returning parties that Nolin is thought to have encountered, and ultimately lost his life to.

For Nolin, it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His untimely death may have also been caused by a bit of impatience among the young man. But lets go back to the beginning.

Charles Nolin hadn’t been a rider with the Pioneer Pony for long. He was not among the first riders in the company, but most likely was recruited as the route extended to Sydney, Nebraska, a town where he was associated with.

From most accounts, it was a life that he wasn’t well suited for. While the money was good, with him being able to make upwards of $200 a month, it was strenuous work and quite dangerous. According to John McClintock, in his book, Pioneer Days in the Black Hills, he claims to have met Nolin in Deadwood. McClintock records Nolin as saying that he was tired of the job and was planning on making just one more trip before quitting. He also mentions that Nolin said he always traveled at night, which was a common practice among Pony riders as it was seen as being safer.

It would later be reported that Nolin had told his mother that this would be his final trip and then he’d be home. He was correct at least in part.

The beginning of Nolin’s final ride seemed to be normal enough. He would pass through Rapid City on August 19, and later meet up with a group of freighters along the Alkali Creek, just southwest of the present day Sturgis. He was headed to Crook City, and from there Deadwood, where it was rumored he had previously met a young lady that he was enamored with.

Taking a short break, Nolin would have supper with the camp. Jesse Brown, who was a member of the freighting company and would later be a resident of Sturgis, as well as sheriff, recalls that his group had been hearing war whoops and calls by an Indian party that was returning from the Little Bighorn.

Brown and his party urged Nolin to stay and help protect their camp through the night, but Nolin was insistent on moving on. While Brown would warn Nolin of the danger of continuing that night, Nolin just responded that quote, the boys in Deadwood are waiting for news from their homes; the mail must go through.

According to Brown, those were Nolin’s last words. Just 2 hours after Nolin left camp, Brown and his party would hear gun shots. They feared the worse, and the next day, those fears were confirmed, as they came along Nolin’s body. He had been shot, some say three times in the head, and scalped. His mail bags were slashed open and the letters he was meant to deliver scattered along the ground.

As Brown’s party came across the scene, they would attempt to bury Nolin’s body. Not having any shovels, they were only able to dig a shallow grave and rest Nolin’s body there. Rocks would be laid upon the grave, and the scattered mail would be collected and delivered to Crook City.

Nolin would be the first Pony mail rider, and possibly the only, who was killed in the line of duty in the Black Hills.

After his death, and quick burial, another freighter, E. L. Carl would pass by the shallow grave and noticed that coyotes had begun digging open the grave. He would fill it in with heavy rocks, and it was there that his body remained until 1880, when his remains were reinterred at Bear Butte Cemetery.

His story didn’t end there. The pile of stones that had marked his grave continued to be apparent, and in 1932, the Society of Black Hills Pioneers erected a monument upon Nolin’s grave in memorial of the pony mail carrier. Some report that at that time, 5 black walnut trees, from slips obtained from 5 different historic battlefields, including Gettysburg, Valley Forge and Antietam were planted behind the monument.

In 2018, the monument would be renovated, and continues to be a reminder of Charles Nolin.

In our next episode, we will be looking at Sturgis’s favorite card shark, Poker Alice.