Moses Manuel

Moses Manuel was a veteran prospector who, by the time of the Black Hills rush, had already chased gold across much of the West with his brother Fred. Drawn to the northern Black Hills in the winter of 1875–76, the brothers prospected the gulches above Deadwood, and in April 1876, with partners Hank Harney and Alex Engh, located the Homestake claim at what became Lead, Dakota Territory. Tradition credits Moses as the driving spirit of the discovery, following rich quartz float uncovered by spring runoff to the outcrop of the lode.

In 1877 the partners sold the Homestake to the syndicate of George Hearst, Lloyd Tevis, and James Ben Ali Haggin for $70,000. It was a fortune by the standards of the diggings, but a famous bargain for the buyers: the Homestake became the largest and deepest gold mine in the Western Hemisphere, producing roughly forty million ounces over 125 years before it closed in 2002, and founding the Hearst fortune's mining base.

Restless like most of his kind, Moses Manuel moved on to other camps and ventures after the sale. Documentation of his later years is sparse, and his dates of birth and death are not reliably recorded; he is remembered wherever the story of Lead and the Homestake is told.