Timeline

Stories of gold in the Pitt Lake area and of a mythical “Indian” (a role later given to Slumach) or a white man (later mostly called Jackson) who had found the bonanza, may have circulated among prospectors since the late 1800s, but the stories did not find their way to the newspapers.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, only a handful of stories appeared in the papers about Pitt Lake gold: but no word about Slumach. In 1925 a newspaper story named Shotwell (not Jackson) as the discoverer of the mine.

Not until 1926 did a newspaper article connect Slumach for the first time with Pitt Lake gold, presenting Slumach as a pathological killer rather than as a murderer of one man. Slumach is not mentioned again in connection with the gold for more than a decade, including the time of Volcanic Brown’s searches and disappearance.

It is not until 1939 that the newspapers revived the 1926 story and tied Slumach for good to the legends of the gold of the Pitt Lake mountains. From that time onward the media created and recreated a Slumach of their own imagination.