Gold was first discovered in the Black Hills by General George Custer's expedition in 1874, or perhaps earlier in the northern Black Hills in 1834 by a group of seven men who had come there in 1833 specifically to search for it. In 1887, Louis Thoen and his brother Ivan, searching for foundation material around Spearfish, found an inscribed piece of sandstone at the base of Lookout Mountain. The stone appears to tell the fate of the gold seekers: all but one of the group had been killed by American Indians, who did not want trespassers on their sacred land. Ezra Kind, the lone survivor, etched into the stone that they had gotten all the gold they could carry, their ponies had all been taken by the Indians, he had lost his gun, had nothing to eat, and Indians were hunting him. Some question whether Louis Thoen truly found the stone or created it, and that question remains unresolved, but the gold seekers' families verify that the men did go west.