The next step in the progress of discovery must be credited to James and Granville Stuart, two of Montana’s most distinguished pioneers. They had been spending the winter of 1857–58, with a number of other people, in the valley of the Bighole River, a tributary of the Missouri, and in the spring of 1858 went over to the Deer Lodge Valley to investigate the reported findings on Gold Creek. They remained there for a time and found paying prospects, but were so harassed by the Blackfeet Indians that they were compelled to leave. They moved to a safer locality, but here James Stuart met with an accident which came near proving fatal, and the two brothers left the country and went to Fort Bridger. Although they had made no great discovery, their report was considered as confirming those already made of the existence of gold in the Deer Lodge Valley. Before these prospects were any further developed attention was wholly diverted to the important discoveries in Idaho already referred to. A great stampede to the Salmon and Clearwater rivers began. Emigrants poured in both by way of Salt Lake and the Missouri River, and an even larger inflow came from the Pacific Coast. But before the rush from the East had gathered full force discoveries in Montana arrested its course and held it permanently in a new and greater Eldorado. [Sidenote: BEGINNING OF MINING IN MONTANA.] In the winter of 1861–62 a considerable floating population, among them the Stuart brothers, remained in the Deer Lodge Valley. The Stuarts commenced sluicing in a systematic way on Gold Creek, and their work was the beginning of the gold-mining industry in Montana. Although nothing particularly remarkable was found, it was enough to attract attention, and reports soon got abroad that the findings were very rich. The greater part of the emigration from the East in the year 1862 was bound for the Idaho mines, but did not get beyond the Deer Lodge Valley, or other points in western Montana. Among these parties was one from Colorado, including J. M. Bozeman, for whom the town of Bozeman, in the beautiful Gallatin Valley, is named. The newcomers made a rich discovery on a branch of Gold Creek, which was named, from the place whence the party came, Pike’s Peak Gulch. [Sidenote: BANNOCK CITY.]