Hestwood
Reverend Hestwood was a Methodist minister who worked as a miner in the north. Around 1890, he met Thomas Lippy in Fargo, North Dakota after Lippy had broken his knee and could no longer work as an athletic instructor. Hestwood offered Lippy a job on his Miller Creek claim in the Sixtymile drainage.1)
In 1895, Hestwood and partner Van Wagener registered claim # 19 Above Discovery on Glacier Creek with the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP). They went outside for the winter and sublet their claim to A. A. Gordon who hired two men to work the claim that winter. In the spring of 1896, Gordon left for Circle, Alaska without paying his workers. They called a miner's meeting and Hestwood and Van Wagener were told to pay them or the claims would be confiscated and auctioned off. NWMP Inspector Constantine wrote to the committee telling them that their actions were illegal but the message arrived three hours after the meeting was held. Van Wagener and Hestwood refused to pay and another miner's meeting was held on 28 June 1896 where the claim was auctioned and sold to Jerry Baker for the low price of $1,075.00. Van Wagener and Hestwood sent another message to Constantine.2)
On 1 July 1896, Fred Hutchins and Dudley McKinney took possession of the claim while Jerry Baker went to Fort Constantine to register the bill of sale prepared by the committee and signed by twenty-three miners. Constantine refused to accept the document. Constantine then sent Inspector Strickland and eleven men armed with Metford carbines and pistols, and three Indian polers and packers to Glacier Creek on the night of July 4th. The party reached Kink House, fifteen miles up the Fortymile River, after twelve hours of travel. They then marched cross country to Moose creek where they camped overnight and then travelled the final miles to the Sixtymile goldfields. They warned David Thompson, who Baker had put in possession of the claim, and handed it back to the original owners, Hestwood and Van Wagener. Strickland remained on the creek for a further two days and finally received assurances from Malony, the chairman of the miner's committee, that there would be no further trouble.3) Constantine’s actions broke the power of the miner’s meeting on the Canadian side.4)