Clay County AlArchives News.....Indian Sliver Mine Found? June 16, 1908
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Linda Ayres http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00031.html#0007674 March 11, 2023, 12:18 am

The Montgomery Advertiser June 16, 1908
Th Advertiser received a special from Talladega of which we republish the main 
part, as it may have escaped the attention of the reader. It read: 
The lost Indian silver mine has been discovered in Talladega. O. W. Wright and 
Kelt Lackey have located It one and one-quarter miles for Ironaton at Lackey's 
old mill on Horse Creek, on the site of the Indian town formerly occupied by 
Chief Mohoc.  
A passing wagon had turned over a rock beside the road and when Lackey came 
along, he noticed an arrow shaped spike in the rock. Adjoining rock contained 
carving of Indian figure. Upon blasting the rocks away, he found three six-inch 
bars of silver about one inch wide and a flat round silver plate about seven 
inches in diameter. 
Under these treasures, Wright, who was with Lackey, found a vein of silver ore 
about two feet thick. It is fissure vein and runs almost perpendicular. The men 
upon having the ore assayed found it to run $62.11 to the ton. 
This discovery will be of much interest to the old residents of that region. 
Even if there are none left who were there when the Indians were they can, some 
of them at least, call to mind things told them by those who lived among the 
Creeks seventy or eighty years ago, we remember Old "Uncle Jimmie" Johnson, who 
lived three or four miles West of Ashland, in Clay County, and who lived there 
many year while the Indians were there, he was a blacksmith and a gunsmith, a 
good friend to the red men of the vicinity, and did many jobs of his trade for 
them. He often told how the Indians would bring him chunks of solid silver, 
which they had mined and melted into lumps or bars, and from which he would make 
ornaments for their persons, as well as to ornaments their guns. 
But one thing about it was that not one of them would divulge to Mr. Johnson or 
to any on else the location of their mine. With the reticence and craftiness 
which were part of the Indian nature they produced their sliver, and no white 
man ever learned it what is more, they carried their determination to the end, 
and when they were preparing; to leave their home they covered and concealed the 
mine so carefully that no white man could ever find a trace of it, though many 
sought it for years. If the discovery referred to above in Talladega is genuine, 
and there is no mistake about it, the lost has been found after a lapse of some 
three-sore and ten years. 
And while on this subject we may mention that the little village of Louina, in 
Randolph County, just across the Tallapoosa River from the growing railroad town 
of Wadley, had a somewhat similar record, near Louina there was said to be a 
rich silver mine, and we have heard the old citizens of fifty years or more ago 
tell the vine many times seen the Indians with lumps and bars of native sliver 
which they procured from some near locality, but no white man ever knew where it 
was. It was a common tradition among the old Inhabitants that when the. bid 
Indian woman Louina, for whom the village was afterwards named, left for the 
West with her tribe she had a pony loaded with silver, which she carried with 
her to the new home to which she and her tribe had been banished by the white 
invaders. 
The part of the story about the pony loaded with silver may have been a myth, 
but there seems no doubt about the existence of a sliver deposit in that 
vicinity, nor is there any doubt, so far as we know, about the care, cunning and 
success with which the Indians concealed their mine. The proof that the Indians 
throughout that section knew of the existence of really valuable stiver deposits 
is beyond question, but they were determined that the whites should never learn 
the location of their mines, and they succeeded in their purpose. It is possible 
that there was one or more of such deposits nearer Mr. Johnson's home than the 
one just reported, but if not, the distance would have been a small matter to 
the Indians. It will be of interest to know that no mistake has been made in the 
statement from Talladega.

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