I
However many legends of other kinds there may be, the buried treasure or lost mine legend is the typical legend of Texas. Just how representative it is, is demonstrated by the varied examples in this section of “Legends of Buried Treasure and Lost Mines.” The McMullen County group well illustrates how numerous are the legends. The group is by no means unique in either number or variety. Pertaining to the country up the Colorado and its western tributaries, there are literally hundreds of lost treasure legends. Scarcely fewer legends cluster around the old Fort Stockton-Fort Lancaster country, around the Victoria-Refugio-Goliad country, around the Big Bend country, and along certain sections of the Red River country. In lumber mills of East Texas buried treasure is the frequent subject of tale and speculation. The Nacogdoches country, the San Jacinto country, the San Augustine country, the country all along the Brazos from head to mouth, to mention only a few other localities, are replete with buried treasure legends. Moreover, instead of diminishing in number, these legends are constantly increasing.
The people who tell these legends represent many standards and strata of life, but the ultimate source of their legendary gold and their tales is common—Mexican or Spanish. In some of the legends the pioneer Texan, the Indian, or the negro plays a part, but in nearly all the Spaniard and the Mexican enter as both actors and transmitters. The native Texan frequently makes no distinction between “Spaniard” and “Mexican”; the wealth of legend, however, is generally Spanish. And that wealth would fade the actual riches of Potosi into paltriness. Now, how comes it that illimitable wealth is so popularly ascribed to the long Spanish dominion in Texas and to the brief Mexican occupation that intervened between the downfall of Spanish sovereignty and the achievement of Texas independence? Were the Spanish great gainers in Texas? Did Santa Anna’s armies mark their trail with gold? [[4]]
The facts are that the Spanish in Texas were always hard up, that the occupation of the territory was a financial loss, that Texas was occupied as a buffer,[1] first against the French in Louisiana and then against the United States, with but little attempt at mineral exploitation and always with a drain on the treasury. The Spanish soldiers and settlers often led a wretched existence, even on occasions having to root in the ground for starches and to hunt wild berries for sugars. According to Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, one old San Antonio Mexican did write that the Spanish soldiers there were rolling in wealth. “They will spend a hundred reales for a dinner,” said he, “as easily as we spend a centavo for a glass of beer.” But he was a revolutionist inflamed with hatred of Spanish tyranny. So far as we know from the records—and again I quote Mrs. Hatcher for authority—only one cargo of money ever came to Texas from south of the Rio Grande; that was during the Mexican Revolution, in 1811. An expedition of revolutionists set forth from Coahuila to San Antonio, seeking escape to the United States. They had with them a considerable amount of bullion and money belonging to the revolutionary party. They were caught in Texas and hanged, and nobody knows what became of their wealth.
According to authenticated history, the Spanish worked but one mine in what before 1836 was the state of Texas.[2] That was Los Almagres on the San Saba River, opened about 1757. Though the history of the San Saba mission and of the San Saba presidio is clear and sufficiently full, little is known of the history of the mine. It is doubtful if it ever paid much. Certainly, captains and commanders were always urging the Spanish viceroy to equip a large presidio on the San Saba to protect the mines. A certain Captain Villareal, too, is reported to have sent an urgent plea to the viceroy for more troops to protect a mine “two days’ ride from Corpus Christi,” which, he said, had been taken by Indians.[3] But such advice from the Spanish commanders must not be taken too seriously. Many of them were notorious grafters, [[5]]paying their men in goods with enormous profit to themselves, and frequently carrying on their payrolls the names of men whom they had enlisted only to discharge, or whom they had not enlisted at all. Their meat was more men.[4] Yet these old reports have furnished “documentary evidence” to many a treasure hunter.
Santa Anna’s army, although it was well furnished when it crossed over into Texas from Mexico, and although it provided some fair plunder to the Texans at San Jacinto,[5] could not, thinks Dr. E. C. Barker, Professor of American History in the University of Texas, have dropped off any chests of money in Texas. According to Dr. Barker, the Mexican troops in Texas, especially garrison troops, were often poorly paid.
If we turn from the Spanish and Mexicans to the early American colonists of Texas, we find that the prospect of mineral riches had little part in motivating their colonization. Though Stephen F. Austin “denounced” a mine—perhaps coal—on the upper Trinity,[6] and though the Bowie brothers, with a small band of men, staked their lives on the chance of gaining silver ore from the San Saba country,[7] thereby giving basis to the most remarkable of all Texas legends, nevertheless, the pioneer settlers of [[6]]Texas came hither to plough and herd, to trade and labor, not to prospect.[8]