Series of letters written by R.H. Gerard from Galena, Dakota Territory, to his brother Edward L. Gerard in Suffolk County, New York. In the letters Gerard writes of trying to find various fossils and minerals (mainly quartz, particularly agate) to send back to Edward. He writes specifically of fossils and minerals in Deadwood and the Black Hills, as well as those bought and sold to a man named Charley Jones. Gerard also writes of difficulties caused by the Sioux Reservation (he writes of the Sioux that "there is a sentiment in the East that would make millionaires out of them at the expense of the whites, which I think is cutting it a little too far"), of railroads constructed in the Black Hills area ("it does not seem to increase the prosperity of this country...it was never so dull a place as it is right now"), and of a possible explosion of one of the railroad lines. Gerard also mentions the Orofino Gold Mine and Harvey Tin Company.
