"Swiftwater" Bill Gates (born 1860 died 1935) was an American frontiersman and fortune hunter, and a fixture in stories of the Klondike Gold Rush. He made and lost several fortunes, and died in Peru in 1935 pursuing a silver strike.

In one famous Klondike story he presented Dawson dance hall girl Gussie Lamore her weight in gold.^{[citation needed]}

Gates was married briefly to Grace Lamore in 1898; he later married Bera Beebe, with whom he fathered two sons, Fredrick and Clifford. Gates subsequently abandoned her for 15-year-old Kitty Brandon, his niece.

His biography "The True Life Story of Swiftwater Bill Gates" (c. 1908) was authored by Iola Beebe, his mother-in-law.

Swiftwater Bill was known to be at the gold fields of Nome, Alaska at the same time as William H Gates I, grandfather of the Microsoft founder. However, despite the similarity in name and coincidences of gold, there is no apparent family relationship between "Swiftwater Bill" and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

In fiction, he has been portrayed by Gordon Pinsent in the 1985 film Klondike Fever and Colin Cunningham in the 2014 miniseries Klondike.

While there may be a Bill Gates very famous at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, there was an equally notorious character with the same knack for making money, who went by the same name at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th.

"Swiftwater" Bill Gates or Swiftwater Willie was one of the most colourful of the colourful and legendary crowd that amassed in the arctic reaches of the Yukon when gold fever struck the Klondike. He was, it is said, an unassuming, round-faced man of about five feet, who was working as a dishwasher in Circle Creek, Alaska, when gold was found around the Klondike river. His origins and date of birth are unknown but he claimed to be from Idaho where he had supposedly been a boatman on the Coeur d'Alene river, hence his nickname. He never did prove that he actually could steer a boat safely through any rapids.

It's hard to separate myth from reality in the often unbelievable life of this man and assembling all events in a coherent timeline is a task in itself. There was more gold than paper and more brawlers than scribes in the Dawson City of the late 1890s so what did make it onto the record was part fact, part frontier lore. Such was his legend and the nature of his exploits that the first publication about him was by a disgruntled mother-in-law in 1908, while he was still very much alive and kicking. A consummate swindler and given to extravagance on a grand scale, gold and money managed to flow through his hands faster than the rapids of the Idaho river he called home.

Being in Alaska when gold was found he managed to get to Dawson City and make good money long before the mass of fortune-seekers arrived from the south. He never staked a claim himself but obtained rights through shrewd trading and working others' claims for a share of the gold, ending up with enough money to lease a stake in a claim another prospector did not want to work himself, along with six partners. When his group of diggers hit the motherlode they hid it and bought the claim which so far they had only leased for 50% of the gold found. Thus they cheated its owner out of at least $45000 (unethical business practices, anyone?). The claim on the tributary stream of the Klondike named Eldorado #13 was not only lucky but one of the richest claims of the gold rush. Gates and his friends became Kings of the Klondike but none, it seems, conducted himself less regally than Swiftwater Willie.

After that big hit, he went on and bought more claims, paying newcomers to dig them in return for a parcel of the claim, and made even more money, becoming possibly the richest miner in Dawson City. And while his pockets were literally lined with gold, his mind was a dungeon of moral depravity by the standards of those days and not much better by today's. He lost immense amounts gambling, challenging people to seven-thousand dollar wagers and blowing thousands more at the poker table, where his charm helped him little. In a town where gambling was everyone's favourite pastime and conducted with deadly seriousness, Gates still stood out as a prince among losers. In the end he bought a share in the Monte Carlo gaming parlour and helped elevate it from tent to unsavoury Mecca of gambling. When he was broke, he borrowed money at astronomical rates and blew that too before he made enough from his claims to pay it back. His gambling philosophy was simple: "The sky's the limit! Raise 'er up as far as you want to go, boys, and if the roof's in your way, why then tear it off!"

Nowhere though were his exploits more infamous than in the realm of romance. While he was one of the few prospectors who didn't engage in the other sport of the times--drinking--he was definitely into young girls and promised himself and the Monte Carlo the prettiest dance-hall girls that money could lure to the frozen north. He had already demonstrated his fondness for these girls by letting them gather gold on his own claims and went on a trip to San Francisco to find both the girls and the fancy booze and trappings that would make the Monte Carlo dazzle one and all. With him went one of the girls, by the name of Gussie Lamore.

Gussie was only one of the three Lamore sisters Gates courted. Gussie was the real prize and she figures in the most famous of all Klondike tales--the "Egg Story." The year was 1897 and the exact circumstances of the event are unknown but the basic idea was that Bill Gates bought every single one of the scarce fresh eggs in Dawson City at a dollar a piece because of her reputed fondness for them. According to different versions of the story, he did it to impress her, to make her come to him to get them or after seeing her order them while with another man. Nobody knows exactly how many eggs there were and reports vary enough to cast doubt on any figure. He certainly did corner the market. Sound familiar? What he did with all those eggs is also uncertain but he may not have given them all to Gussie as it was said. By some accounts he fried them himself and tossed them to the dogs, by others he gave them away to all the other girls.

In San Francisco he truly lived like a king and squandered his capital on eccentric luxuries like champagne baths in first-class hotels, tipping people with gold dust and blowing $15000 on the Oakland mansion that he and Gussie's sister, Grace, would spend three married weeks in, after which she kicked him out. Having thus been rendered once again single and skint he went in search of someone who would fill his purse. Gussie had, in the meantime, dumped him and returned to her husband (after promising to marry Swiftwater Willie, she wasn't much of a saint herself).

On his way back north a lady by the name of Iola Beebe sought him out in Seattle. At the same time the man he had borrowed $20.000 from in San Francisco, money which he used to buy furnishings and hire girls for the Monte Carlo, a certain Dr. Wolf, was having second thoughts and was also pursuing him to recover his cash. Dr. Wolf would eventually catch up with him in Dawson City and get his money back, leaving Bill Gates $20.000 in the hole with his Dawson City creditors. Now, Iola Beebe was a widow infected with the gold fever of the times and had $35.000 at her disposal with which she intended to build an inn in Dawson City. More than her financial assets though, our man Bill was attracted to her teenage daughters. He did try to elope with both but was caught before the ship left port. Although he had to leave alone this time, they would meet again in Skagway.

The second time he succeeded in running away with a girl and getting married in Dawson City. By the time Mrs. Beebe caught up with them it was a fait accompli. Bill did not only manage to charm himself out of his new mother-in-law's doghouse but also talked her into investing her fortune in a mining concession called Quartz Creek which turned out to be a dud. In debt to the tune of $100.000 he decided it was a good time to disappear. Their child was left with grandma and he and his wife took off for Nome where gold had been found. This is where he dumped his young wife Bera and ran off with his sister's seventeen-year old stepdaughter, Kitty Brandon. With his own sister in hot pursuit, he made it back to Washington State and there he married the girl. A few months later he would abandon her too.

He hadn't done too well in Nome, blowing the few thousand dollars he made gambling. Incidentally, he was not the only man to head for Nome in 1899. In the same gold rush in the same town there was another Bill Gates, who would later be Bill Gates Sr. of Bremerton, Wash., great-grandfather of none other than William Henry Gates III. It's not known whether Microsoft's 'Yukon' project codename has anything to do with the Bill Gates of old.

Bill now had not one but two mother-in-laws after him. Iola Beebe caught up with him once and he miraculously got away with her confidence and money once again. This time to Fairbanks where he managed to strike it rich yet again. Once back in Seattle, Mrs. Beebe found him again and this time was taking no prisoners... or rather, she was and had him thrown in jail for bigamy. He once again demonstrated his extravagant ways by presenting the lawyers, a judge, sheriffs, and court reporters with gold nuggets wraped in twenty-dollar bills and, to top it off, talked Mrs. Beebe into posting his bail. After that he got himself out of the jam by divorcing both women.

Very little is known of his whereabouts and activities after 1908 but one is inclined to believe that he continued to make money and blow it like nobody's business, though on a less grand and documented scale. He died in 1935 while negotiating a huge silver mining concession in Peru. Of all the odd characters digging their way through the fortunes of Alaska and the Yukon, he was certainly one of the oddest. While the women in his life may have disagreed, to anyone who takes interest in the madness of those times "Swiftwater" Bill Gates was one unforgettable fellow.

One researcher went through Gates as a surname in the 1850 and 1860 US censuses and estimated that a majority of them had German rather than English roots. Many Goetz became Gates in America on arrival or a generation or so later.

Among the Goetz who came to America and became Gates then or later were:

• Early arrivals, John Georg Goetz along with his mother and siblings, who left Wurttemburg for America in 1750 and settled in Berks county, Pennsylvania.
• Johannes Gotz from the Rhine Palatinate arrived in 1754 and settled in Indiana county, Pennsylvania
• Adolph Goetz and his family from Wurttemburg who moved to Buffalo, New York in 1846 (another Goetz, George Goertz, settled in Rochester nearby and later moved onto Indiana and Ohio)
• Daniel Goetz and his family from Wurttemburg who arrived in Iowa in the early 1850's to farm
• and a Goetz family from Nuremburg who started emigrating to America in 1853. They settled in Angola, Indiana.

There were two Bill Gates known to be in Alaska at the time of the Klondike gold rush of the 1890's. The first, the flamboyant Swiftwater Bill, was a small moon-faced wanderer from Idaho. He made and lost several fortunes. In one famous Klondike story he presented the Dawson dance hall girl Gussie Lamore with her weight in gold. A biography The True Life Story of Swiftwater Bill Gates was written in 1908 by his mother-in-law Iola Beebe. The other Bill Gates, whose family had come from Rhode Island in the early 19th century, settled in Washington state and was the grandfather of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Canada. The descent from New England immigrant Stephen Gates came north into Canada a century or so later, through two different lines:

• One was via his son Simon. Simon's grandson Captain Oldham Gates left Massachusetts in 1760 for what is now Annapolis county, Nova Scotia. His family founded Gates Breakwater, which became known as Port George in 1812, and were the builders of the first oceangoing vessel there.
• The other was via his son Isaac. There was a Joseph Abel Gates, who was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1772 and married Mary Burtch in 1802, and a Henry Gates, born in Burford in Brant county, Ontario in 1777.

W. C. Gates lived out the fantasies of a repressed society, during an age when piano legs were draped with cloth to cover their “nakedness.” In his pursuit of gold, fame and women, he had more successes—and failures— than any man in the history of the North.

The first half of Bill’s life was easy to research because the press followed his every move. In one instance they sifted the ashes in his hotel fireplace for evi- dence of his sinning.

His disappearance from North America left most historians with little information to cover his later years. Now, thanks to an Alaskan prospector, the rest of Bill’s adventures have come to light. So here is the story, too outlandish for fiction or film—but true—of “Swiftwater” Bill Gates...

Alaska, 1896

Originally from Redwing, Minnesota, Bill first came into the Yukon sometime in l895. He had played around with prospecting in the central States and had worked in a copper mine in Idaho. It was there that he heard about the gold discoveries in Alaska.

In l896, Bill was washing dishes and making beds at a crudely-built log hostel in Circle City, Alaska. One night after supper, as he was cleaning up the dining hall, he overheard two men talking about the big gold strike in the Klondike.

Misty dawn found Bill poling a flat-bottomed boat upstream toward Dawson, 275 miles away. It was no easy feat. The Yukon River runs swift and the poler, using all his limbs and back to move against the current, must stay near shore in the shallow water. Hordes of flies and mosquitoes can attack him unmercifully. Bill knew how to handle boats, however. He often bragged of this ability and his pals dubbed him “Swiftwater Bill.”

His detractors—of which he was to have many—told a different story.

They said that on his initial entry to the Yukon, Swiftwater jumped out of the boat and walked around the notorious Miles Canyon and Whitehorse Rapids. After his companions put the boat through the turbulent waters, Swiftwater rejoined the expedition. And that, according to them, was how he came by his nickname.

His later adventures in the Yukon and on the upper rivers of the Ama- zon jungle lend more credence to the first story than the latter. Whatever the case, he did stand out from his peers by the very contrast he presented to them.

The men along the Yukon in those days were a hardy lot—perhaps the toughest, fiercest at work or play, most macho white men on the continent— while Bill was a short, small-limbed waif of a man. His slight paunch and indolent manner bespoke his aversion to hard work and danger. He sported an enormous black moustache and, in the manner of many small men, he spoke with a strident timbre when bragging of his accomplishments and bravery. No one took him very seriously.

All the claims along Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks had been staked by the time Bill arrived from Alaska but he and six others obtained a lay on Claim #13, Eldorado. They worked together to put a shaft down to bedrock and whooped for joy at what they found—coarse gold in a paystreak that seemed of endless width and length. At Bill’s urging they covered up the incredible find and went to the owner of the claim with a joint offer of $40,000. They were willing to take a chance if he would sell this claim with the un- lucky number.

The owner fell for it and the boys soon brought him enough gold to pay off their debt. Before long Bill’s (and the others’) pockets and packsacks bulged with gold.

Into town he went, $20,000 richer, and hired newcomers to work his ground on a percentage basis. He then bought the best clothes he could find in Dawson and sported the only starched collar in town. Mining camp followers were descending on the Klondike from all over Alaska and these included quite a few hurdy-gurdy girls. In his princely manner, Swiftwater brought coveys of these females out to his claim to help themselves to some of his gold. He bought all the love and laughter that was available in the embryo town—even if they were laughing at him.

He loved to gamble. Never a heavy drinker, he gambled on any game he came across. He lost more often than he won. When he strutted into a sa- loon he yelled loud enough to be heard above the roar of the crowd:

“De sky’s de limit boys! And if de roof ’s in your way, why just tear it off!”

When professional theatre entertainment arrived in Dawson, one com- pany staged a satire entitled, “The Adventures of Stillwater Willie.” Bill revelled in the attention it brought him and attended every performance. No one could say for sure whether the crowd laughed at him or at the show, but he minded not at all. Swiftwater Bill provided a spectacle in a town full of eccentrics. In his swan-tailed coat and diamond cravat, with his devilish black eyes and flowing moustache, he outshone all others in those heady days of easy fortune in the Yukon.

He met a man operating a saloon about a mile from town. The man’s name was Jack Smith. Jack had come down from Fortymile with his variety troupe. He had staked a rich claim, sold it for $150,000, and was moving on to bigger and better endeavours.

He and Bill decided to build what was to become the most glittering pleasure palace ever to be seen in the North: the Monte Carlo Dance Hall & Saloon. While Jack looked after construction he entrusted Bill with the chore of going “outside” for a load of furniture, liquor and dancing girls.

In the days to come Jack Smith was to bitterly regret this decision.

Swiftwater and the eggs...

Meanwhile, Swiftwater began a stormy courtship of a buxom, platinum- blonde dance hall girl called Gussie Lamore. Gussie was the reigning queen of the muddy town and billed herself as “The Little Klondike Nugget.” Bill offered Gussie her weight in gold if she would marry him. She stalled him by saying she was “not quite ready yet.” (Unknown to Bill, she was married and had a three-year-old child.) One night he saw her dancing merrily with a big French Canadian. The ensuing argument touched off a legend that would earn Bill a new title: “The Knight of the Golden Omelette.”

The story flashed up and down the creeks, from cabin to cabin, from camp to camp, from saloon to saloon until the whole Yukon knew the story, one version of it or another.

Gussie Lamore loved eggs. She could never get enough of them in Dawson, simply because there weren’t any. Just about the time of her argu- ment with Bill, a shipment of eggs came into town by dogteam. Swiftwater bought them all, some 2,200 eggs at a dollar each. And that’s what started the stories.

Arthur Walden, the well-known dogpuncher, said in his memoirs that Bill had the eggs fried in a restaurant and then threw them out, one at a time, to the dogs in the street.

Stroller White, the famous news columnist, said Bill kept the eggs un- der his bed at the hotel till they all turned rotten.

Others said Bill invited every dance hall girl in town for a feast of eggs, all except Gussie.

The Klondike Nugget dubbed Swiftwater “The Knight of the Golden Omelette.”

Bill never talked about it at all. Some years later Gussie told the real story to a news reporter in Seattle:

“I met Swiftwater,” she said, “in Dawson of ’97. He certainly had the coin then. He lavished money on me but I got dead sick of him. He had no sense so I got to skating around with another guy. There was an egg famine come on in Dawson. I’d shaken Bill.

“I went down to the store to buy some eggs...Lordy how I wanted some eggs for breakfast. Well, Bill was in the store when I goes in. He sees I wanted the eggs and while I’m talking to the clerk, see, he buys up the whole con- signment of 900 eggs at $1 apiece. Then he says to me, ‘Now my dear, if you want eggs for breakfast, come home where you belong.’

“Well, I was just dying for them eggs, and I came to my milk like a lady. I goes home with Bill.”

In the fall of l897, Bill and a new friend of his, Joseph Whiteside Boyle (who would one day become a true Klondike King), Indian Charlie, and few others left Dawson for the “outside.” Swift was to come back from the south with all the necessities for the Monte Carlo: booze, furnishings and, most important, women.

It was a hell of a trip for them. They poled a boat upstream until the river froze and had to wait a month at Stewart Island until the ice was solid enough to walk on. At last they were able to resume the journey but some- where on the river Swiftwater broke through the ice and big Joe Boyle fished him out.

Leaving the river, they hiked over the Dalton Trail to Haines Mission. The hundred-mile journey normally took about four days but in the extreme cold and snowstorms they struggled for 25 days before reaching the coast. Some of the party wanted to just “lay down and die.” Swiftwater and Joe Boyle urged them on. At last they boarded a ship and arrived in Seattle on November 29th, two full months after leaving the Klondike.

Gussie Lamore, wise to the ways of the North, went over the ice that winter as a passenger in a dog sled. She met up with Bill in San Francisco. Klondike fever was just beginning in the west coast cities and Swiftwater was living proof of the riches to be had. He passed out large nuggets to the bellhops at his hotel to tell all comers that the man in the fur hat was

“Swiftwater Bill Gates, King of the Klondike.”

Gussie took her well-dressed beau to meet her folks. Years later she told the story to the Seattle Washingtonian:

“In ‘Frisco I introduced Bill to my family. Well, say, would you believe it, my sister Grace she cops him out—steals him from me cold and marries him.

“Well, say, she lives with him a couple of weeks and quits him. She couldn’t stand him at all. She leaves their rooms at the Baldwin and takes a flat. Bill, he goes to her room while she’s away, wraps her silverware and other valuables in a sheet and carries them downtown on his back.

No woman could live with Bill...

Finally Grace she gets a divorce and her maiden name back and then, he steps in and joins up with my sister Nell.

“Nell only lived with him for a week. Then Bill tried to cop out this fourth sister of mine after Nellie shook him but he couldn’t touch her with a ten- foot pole. That’s where she’s wiser than the rest of us.

“No woman could live with Bill. He’s one of those camp guys that never had any money in his life till he got a great big bunch of it all at once. He doesn’t know nuthin’ except to tell everybody he’s lousy with the yellow stuff. He’d throw dollars into the crowds just to see ‘em scramble and let ‘em know he had it to trown (sic) at the birds. He’d tip bellboys with $5 gold pieces and buy wine at show prices by the barrel.”

“Hasn’t a particle of intellect; couldn’t carry on a conversation to save his soul. He’s no company for a woman and still he’s jealous if a woman only looks at another man.”

“Say, did you ever see his get-up? Well, you ought to. He wears a plug hat of the vintage of ’75; then he wears a Prince Albert coat and a negligee shirt that cost him a dollar and a quarter. He tops the whole thing out with dancing pumps. Why say, he’s a regular mark.”

From then until the day he left North America, newspapers tracked Bill’s every move. They delightedly reported on his affairs with the Lamore sisters. What they could not find out directly they made up from the slight- est rumours. Even up north in Dawson the Klondike Nugget said Bill had “bought Grace Lamore a huge white mansion” and after the breakup he “made off with $7,000 worth of wedding gifts.” With his love of exaggeration and the newspapers’ wild reporting, the legend of Swiftwater Bill, the Klondike Prince, grew and grew. His name was a household word all over the U. S. and Canada.

Jack Smith in Dawson cringed every time he read a new story about his “partner.”

Bill’s money was fast running out. Not one item had yet been purchased for the Monte Carlo. The Lamore sisters had taken him for about $100,000 and his every action as a Klondike King cost plenty. He holed up at the Pal- ace Hotel in San Francisco, keeping a low profile. About this time a rich doctor came to see the “famous mining magnate” at his suite of rooms.

Swiftwater regaled Doctor Wolf with tales of the Klondike and painted a glowing portrait of the opportunities there for someone with money to invest. Quickly they formed a partnership. Together they would create a vast trading and transportation network stretching from Skagway to Circle City. In the meantime could the doctor advance Bill some funds? At one hundred percent interest?

With $20,000 of Doctor Wolf’s money in his pocket, Swiftwater took off to Seattle. In that fair city, which was the main jumping off point for the Klondike stampeders, he set about gathering supply contracts for the new business. At the same time he rounded up a group of women to work in the Monte Carlo and bought furnishings and supplies—mostly on credit.

The winter of l898 was half over. The entire world knew about the gold in the Klondike and some 100,000 people made plans to go there. The sup- plies and services they bought gave a tremendous boost to the cities along the west coast. In the midst of all this bustle Swiftwater showed them that a man really could come out of the Klondike with a fortune—and then just go back for more.

Around and around Seattle he paraded, surrounded by a group of at- tractive women. Very few knew that these laughing members of his “harem” were on the payroll of the Monte Carlo. In his Klondike costume—fur hat, parka, mukluks—he caused a sensation wherever he went.

After one party at the ritzy Rainier-Grand Hotel the management pre- sented him with a bill for damages amounting to $1,500.

He bought champagne by the case and invited reporters to watch him bathe in it. When one reporter asked for an exclusive interview, Bill told him it would cost him $l,000 a minute.

Doctor Wolf, seeing all the stories in the papers, sent word for Bill to hurry up with the arrangements so they could be on their way to the Klondike.

Bill planned to leave soon anyhow. He was again running low on funds. He and his “staff” boarded a ship for Skagway. They partied all the way under the disapproving glares of Doctor Wolf. They had to wait for a month in Skagway for the Yukon River system to thaw and had another wonderful time as they waited. Doctor Wolf hired a dogteam to take him over the ice to Dawson. Soon after he arrived there he heard some very disturbing ru- mours about his partner.

Jack Smith flew into a rage every time someone mentioned Swiftwater Bill. Eugene Allen, editor of the Klondike Nugget newspaper, had this to say:

“Swiftwater has never been known to pay back any money after it was thrown away. If he made another lucky strike somewhere, he might toss some your way, but that’s about your only chance.”

Return to the Klondike...

One day the word flew around the City of Gold: Swiftwater Bill Gates and his party were just upstream, round the big bend in the Yukon River. They would be arriving at any moment. Soon a large crowd milled about on the waterfront.

They were well rewarded for their patience. In the prow of a Peterbor- ough canoe stood Swiftwater, posing grandly, all decked out in his Prince Albert coat and silk top hat. Beside him a dance hall girl perched beautifully on a whiskey keg. Behind the canoe came two barges piled high with crates. On these crates sat many more smiling, painted women wearing low-cut evening gowns. The men on shore cheered wildly, the girls waved back at them, and when the convoy nudged into the dock, all the men pitched in to help the girls ashore.

In the meantime, Jack Smith and Doctor Wolf were elbowing their way through the crowd. They grabbed Bill from both sides.

“Swiftwater!” roared the doctor, his face red as a beet. “You’ve got ex- actly three hours to pay back the twenty thousand! Never mind the inter- est! Just get my goddam money!”

Somehow Bill borrowed enough money to pay the doctor, sans interest, and arranged to turn his share of the Monte Carlo and some earnings from his claim over to Jack Smith. He was clear of his creditors and then sold his interest in the Eldorado claim. He still had a claim on Sulphur Creek and was ready for some new action.

He staked out a three-mile mining concession on Quartz Creek. Joe Boyle did the same on other creeks and somehow they obtained title from the Canadian government in Ottawa. Partners now, the two of them sailed to London, England, to raise capital for the first large-scale mining opera- tion in the Yukon.

Swiftwater and Boyle formed an odd couple. Bill was tiny and ostenta- tious while Joe Boyle was a big, quiet man who needed no fancy attire or braggadocio to prove his manhood. While Boyle attended to business, Swiftwater caused a sensation in the courts of Europe.

Swiftwater dazzles Europe

Dubbed the Klondike Prince in the press, Bill told reporters he would bet $7,000 with any comer on one turn of a card. He visited Paris where beautiful women swooned over this flashy “millionaire” from the wild fron- tier. Finally Joe Boyle sent Bill and a British mining expert to San Fran- cisco where they were to arrange the purchase and shipment of mining equipment to the Klondike. Attended to by barbers and shoeshine boys, Swiftwater again became the most celebrated man in the city.

About this time a woman planning to ship a hotel piecemeal to Dawson City visited Bill at his hotel. She wanted some expert advice on conditions in the North. She was Iola Beebe, an attractive, matronly widow with two beautiful daughters.

For the rest of her life she would lament the day she introduced herself and her daughters to Swiftwater Bill Gates.

While Mrs. Beebe explained her plans, Bill gazed lecherously at 19- year-old Blanch. His business associate, the British mining engineer, lent such an air of respectability to this little group that Mrs. Beebe had no suspicion of the undercurrents of lust flowing beneath all the talk. She received the first of many great awakenings when she found the following note on her mantel:

“Dear Mama. We have gone to Alaska with Swiftwater and Mr. Hathaway. Do not worry, we will look out for your hotel when we get there. Bera.”

Bera was l5 years old at the time. The hysterical Mrs. Beebe stormed onto the steamer Humboldt, which was just about to depart for Alaska, and found her girls in a cabin. Swiftwater hid under a lifeboat but the ship’s officers located him. The police were summoned and the captain of the ship chafed at the delay while Bill gently persuaded Mrs. Beebe of the honour of his character.

She agreed to let the ship sail—minus her daughters. They all met up again in Skagway a few weeks later. Mrs. Beebe watched over her girls night and day but to no avail. She found another note in her room:

“Dear mama. I have gone to Dawson with Swiftwater. He loves me and I love him. Bera.”

The chase was on.

Mrs. Beebe arrived in Dawson to be met on the dock by Bill and Bera, who were now husband and wife. Marriage sanctified the whole relation- ship—so much so that Bill soon had $35,000 of his mother-in-law’s money invested in his mining operation. They all moved out to Sulphur Creek for the winter and Bera gave birth to a son.

Alas, things were not working out for Bill. His gambling and mining debts piled up. He flirted with Gussie Lamore who sang to him from her spot on the stage but he couldn’t take her up on the offer without money, lots of money. (She would sing an old song, “He Certainly Was Good to Me” to the delight of the crowd. Of course Bill sent up champagne to the cast, as any good sport should.)

He bought a small boat, packed Bera into it, and they set out for the ruby sands of Nome, leaving behind a destitute mother-in-law, the baby, and $l00,000 worth of bills. Too broke to follow her slippery son-in-law, Mrs. Beebe existed on charity until she received a letter from Swiftwater. He had recouped his fortunes on Dexter Creek just out of Nome and she must join them there as soon as possible.

Off she went, down the Yukon River by sternwheeler. The trip was long— long enough for her to hear that Bill was gambling heavily—and losing. When she finally stepped ashore at Nome, Swiftwater was gone. In fact, a Seattle newspaper had already arrived and there was Bill in the headlines:

SWIFTWATER BILL RUNS AWAY WITH ANOTHER WOMAN!

Indeed, he had covered a lot of ground while Mrs. Beebe had been on her l500-mile trip down the Yukon River. He had left Nome with Bera. It was now fall, l900, and they went to Washington where he happened to meet up with his sister’s step-daughter, Kitty Brandon, at an Elk’s carnival in Tacoma. In love again, he abandoned the pregnant Bera and eloped with Kitty, who was l6 years old at the time. The couple honeymooned at a posh hotel in Seattle.

In the meantime Mrs. Beebe had arrived on the coast. Now three furi- ous women were searching everywhere for Swiftwater: Bera, Bill’s sister, and of course Iola Beebe. It was his sister who caught up to him first.

Bill looked down from his hotel room window and spotted his sister rushing up the steps to the lobby. Quickly he and Kitty scrambled down a fire escape and went back to Tacoma. Leaving her behind, Bill rode a train to Butte, Montana.

Who should be there but Gussie Lamore, just home from Dawson. She and her sister Belle were singing at a local nightclub. Bill signed over a part interest in a Nome gold claim to Gussie and she let it be known that she and her old love might marry. Suddenly Belle Lamore and Swift went missing from Butte, Montana. Soon Gussie received a wire from her sister: Belle and Swift had married and chartered a Pullman car for New York City.

This marriage (he now had three official wives) cooled off very fast and Bill drifted back to Alaska, this time to the Valdez area where he took up prospecting again.

For once he had poor luck and using an assumed name (Williams), he returned south and holed up in a room at the Victoria Hotel in Seattle.

Bill recoups his fortunes...

His reverie of self pity was shattered by a loud pounding on the door. He opened it just a crack and staggered backward. Mrs. Iola Beebe shoved the door open and flounced into the room.

Partially naked, Bill leaped onto the bed and pulled the covers up over his face. In the meantime his mother-in-law screeched out all the bitter- ness that boiled inside her. He beseeched her to leave him alone. He was finished, he said, all washed up and ready to die.

When at length she took a good look at the scruffy, sorrowful-looking waif on the bed, her maternal instincts awakened (or was it something else?) in spite of her anger. Bill quickly noticed the softening of her resolve. Soon he had her listening raptly to his tale of woe: how sorry he was for his mistakes and how he had only one chance to make amends—that was to head north again to the newly discovered Tanana River goldfields in Alaska.

Mrs. Beebe went out and pawned her jewellery to grubstake the new adventure. Afterwards she was amazed at how quickly Swiftwater became his former self.

From Dawson City he hiked over the trail to the headwaters of the Tanana River. He was seen tramping into Fairbanks wearing one rubber boot, one rubber overshoe, and his old yellow mackinaw. There, among many old cronies from the early rush into the Klondike, Bill obtained a partial interest in a couple of claims on Cleary Creek. They turned out to be in- credibly rich.

A small settlement grew up around his claims. They named it Gates City, in honour of Bill who, besides his womanizing and gambling, was famous for being able to spot a likely

piece of ground. Word of his new for- tune got around. Soon, two very de- termined women waited in Fairbanks for him to come out of the bush—-Iola Beebe and Bill’s sister (the step- mother of Kitty Brandon).

Packing a suitcase full of gold, Swiftwater boarded a sternwheeler for the coast. Mrs. Beebe, now well- tuned to his devious ways, booked passage on the same boat. She kept her eyes on him for the entire jour- ney. At St. Michael, Alaska, they changed to a ship and again she never let Bill out of her sight.

A lechorous monster...

When they reached Seattle, Swiftwater jumped onto a barge and then to shore before the ship was fully docked. Mrs. Beebe set police and private detectives on his trail.

They scooted him out of a Seattle bar and into jail went Swiftwater; the charge, bigamy.

He had hidden his gold and Mrs. Beebe couldn’t touch his mining claims. Through prison bars he persuaded her to bail him out. He would retrieve his gold, pay her some money, and straighten out his affairs. Part of the deal was that Bera must grant him a divorce so he could shake the bigamy charge.

Mrs. Beebe arranged everything and Bill was let out of prison. He eloped again—with Kitty Brandon. So far Mrs. Beebe hadn’t received a penny from her slippery son-in-law.

Incredulous reporters sought her out for the story. The ensuing news- paper coverage must surely have encouraged other mothers-in-law to look more kindly on the men their own daughters had married.

Swiftwater divorced Kitty and went back to his claim in Alaska. Mrs. Beebe, upon learning that he had taken another $200,000 worth of gold from the ground, decided to make another attempt to gain redress from Bill— the man who had ruined her life. She caught up to him on a side street in Fairbanks.

She grabbed him and shook him like a mother would an errant child. He pulled $50 from his pocket and as she reached for the money he slipped away from her and ran off down the street.

That was the last time Mrs. Beebe ever saw Swiftwater Bill Gates. Somehow he clambered aboard a departing boat and returned to the south where he declared bankruptcy.

He had already signed his claim over to a friend in Fairbanks. Unable to touch his resources, his mother-in-law garnered some measure of re- venge by publishing a book on Swiftwater. The book described Bill as noth- ing more than a “cowardly, dastardly scalawag” and a “lecherous mon- ster.”

Swiftwater Bill joined a silver rush to Peru after that. He was only seen in the U. S. a few more times, and never again after l908. His name disap- peared from the press.

Epilogue

In spite of his prowess in the mining business and his abilities in the northern wilderness, folks always thought of Bill as being something less than a real man.

They laughed at his clothes, his many marriages, his gambling, his es- capades. Yet, in many respects he was a gentleman. He took the insults and exaggerations with good humour and went on looking for gold or for another wife. When he disappeared from North America around 1910, the newspapers—who had hounded him so mercilessly—forgot about him. But the stories about Swiftwater lived on, repeated in almost every book deal- ing with the Klondike Gold Rush. Even today books are going into print that rehash the old stories about Swiftwater, most of them only partly true.

In 1985, I wrote to various historians and to newspapers and libraries, to everyone I could think of. Whatever became of Swiftwater Bill? No one seemed to know. The only clue was a picture and short death notice that appeared in the August, 1950, edition of the Alaska Weekly. Further check- ing proved the picture to be of Bill McKay, an Alaskan state senator who came to the Klondike in 1898.

In 1986, I received a letter from Fairbanks, Alaska. It was from Paolo Greer, an Alaskan prospector and adventurer who had given lectures and slide presentations on his expeditions to Peru. Paolo had called at the of- fice of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner just as my letter requesting infor- mation on Swiftwater had arrived at the editor’s desk.

Would I like to know, asked Paolo in his letter, about the final years of Swiftwater Bill? He had just returned from Peru and had some informa- tion. I answered right away. Soon I received a package containing pictures, magazine articles (from Peru), old letters, etc. from which I pieced together the story.

Swiftwater was murdered on February 21, 1937, twenty-eight years af- ter he was last seen in Alaska. The shooting took place in a tiny hut on the Tunquimayo Tributary of the Nusiniscato River in the Quispicanchi District of Southeastern Peru.

A young man named Eduardo Gonzales called Swiftwater up to the sleeping loft of the hut. When Bill’s head appeared at the top of the ladder, Gonzales blasted him with a heavy-gauge shotgun.

Eduardo was one of two brothers working for Bill. They killed him for his gold—which they didn’t find hidden under the bed—and his tools. The brothers disappeared after the killing and were never seen in the district again.

At the time of his death Swift was 68 years old. He was still prospecting and mining and had big plans for the future. The State Department found it convenient to call the death accidental rather than investigate the murder of another “gringo.”

The cabin where Bill was shot no longer stands. His grave site close by was long ago dug up and run through a sluice box, a very fitting tribute to a man whose life always centered around gold.

The three little jars of gold under Swiftwater’s bed had been saved by him for a project dear to his heart: he was going to take his daughter, Lydia, to the U.S.A. where they would find her a gringo husband. Swift had met Lydia’s mother, Victoria, in 1917 and took her to the jungle with him where Lydia was born. Bill might have married Victoria, who was 16 when he met her, but her parents disapproved of him and would not consent.

Lydia last heard from her father in late January, 1937. He wrote her a letter telling her not to buy clothes or anything; they would obtain every- thing in the U.S, It was the last anyone heard from the one-time greatest high roller of the north.

Swift had other women during his 27 years in the jungle. The press couldn’t follow him around like they did in North America so there aren’t many details in print. He did have a son by a woman, Marina, in Aporoma, Peru. In general folks said that Bill was a generous man who had no en- emies and that “la ruina de Gates era el juego” (Gates’ ruin was gambling).

It can be safely conjectured that from 1910 till his death in 1937, Bill had found his niche in life—mining, guiding the occasional exploration party, chasing young women, gambling, and scouring the Amazon jungle for an- other big strike—which he never found. In North America he went to great lengths to prove to the world that he was a man in spite of his faults. Down here in the jungle that sort of stuff didn't matter.

He was influential in bringing the first big gold dredges into the coun- try and taught his prospecting skills to anyone interested.

The upper Amazon River country, where Bill spent the best years of his life, is a dark forest intersected by countless rivers and smaller streams. Sharp vines, lightning quick vipers, anaconda snakes a foot thick, armor- plated scorpions—with legs and antennae a foot long with lobster-like claws—ants almost two inches long, tropical warble flies, legions of biting insects, rabid vampire bats, voracious piranha fish—these are just a few of the hazards he faced on his travels through the jungle. Yet he did so as easily as any native.

The story of Swiftwater is an age-old tale: a man finds gold, squanders the riches from it, then searches for more. Soon the search itself becomes the all-important motif in his life. All else—sex, material possessions, fame, whatever, are only temporary diversions from the search. Robert Service, Bard of the Yukon, explained it better than anyone:

“...it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting, So much as just finding the gold.