San Caja Mountain Legends
The name “San Caja” is significant, though its meaning is in dispute. Some people who should know say that it means Holy, or Sainted, Box; that the word caja, meaning box, alludes to the chest, or chests, of treasure hid in the mountain. But a white man who is native to the San Caja country told me that a very old Mexican once told him that the name was originally Sin Caja, sin meaning without, and caja also meaning coffin; hence, Without [[35]]Coffin.[2] According to the Mexican, the name was derived from the fact that a man had once been buried on or in the mountain without a coffin, perhaps not buried at all but left out in the open. Either interpretation is appropriate to the legends of the mountain.
Under the mountain is a cave, the entrance to which is on the west side halfway up the mountain. Mexican bandits who preyed on the wagon and mule trains that traveled the San Antonio-Laredo road were accustomed to ride their horses into that entrance. They had a great room underground that they used for a stable. Back of it was their treasure room, “el aparto [apartado] del tesoro,” in which were heaps of gold and silver coins, Spanish doubloons and old Mexican square dollars, golden candle-sticks, silver-mounted and jewel-studded saddles, bits and spurs of precious workmanship, plated firearms, all manner of costly plunder meant for the grandees and the cathedrals, as well as the bullion of mines near at hand—for there were rich mines in that country in the old days of the Spanish.
According to Mexican tradition, after the bandidos had accumulated all this treasure, a terrible dragon came and killed some of them and ran the others away. The dragon had a spiked tail and two heads, and at night one might see fire flashing out of his nostrils. He came to be called el celador del tesoro—the warden of the treasure; and there are Mexicans today who would not think of violating the premises that he still guards.
An addition to the legend was told me by Mr. Whitley. Years ago, as he had heard the story, a certain white man who bore the marks of a borderer was visiting the penitentiary at Huntsville when he suddenly heard himself called in Mexican. He paused. At his side appeared a Mexican, begging to talk to him. The guard consented, and then in his own language the Mexican poured out his tale.[3] He was serving a life sentence in the penitentiary, the sole survivor of a band of murdering brigands. All their booty was still in a cave to the south of the San Caja. If the [[36]]white man would get it, he might have half, using the other half to free the prisoner. He gave directions about as follows: Go to the southeast side of the mountain; thence go about a mile to two little knobs, then on down a kind of ravine about the same distance, where an opening will be found that enters into the booty hall. The white man set out to follow directions, but he was already old, and death overtook him before he could search out the treasure.
“There are,” says Mr. Whitley, “two knobs on the southeast side of the mountain, but two miles down instead of one, which shows that a Mexican has no sense of distance. In giving directions he always says un (s)pedacito—a little piece—which may mean a half mile or five miles.” Anyhow, the country does not seem to fit the Mexican’s measurements.
To the northwest of the San Caja are the San Cajitas (Little San Cajas); where, according to Mr. Whitley, is another robbers’ cave stored with fine saddles and other plunder left by Mexican bandidos. In it are ladders that were used to descend a hundred feet to the treasure floor. But no man has since the days of the bandits been down into this cave. It is said to be “alive” with rattlesnakes.
While Joe Newberry was bossing a ranch “down in the Sands” twenty-five years ago, an old Mexican who was headed west to hunt for the Rock Pens gave him a chart to nine jack loads of silver bullion buried on top of the San Caja, a certain number of pasos west of a chapote, or persimmon tree, and covered over with a great rock. The Mexicans who buried it were on their way to the City of Mexico from up the Nueces canyon, where the Spanish operated mines long since lost. It was during a terrible drouth; the Nueces had dried up, and the travelers had missed finding the lakes that they had vaguely heard of; they and their animals were perishing of thirst, and they realized that their nearest water was the Rio Grande seventy miles away across a desert of rocks and sands. To reach it they must lighten their loads as much as possible. Their mistake was in not having buried the bullion earlier, for they were so exhausted and the way was so hard that all but one man perished in the attempt to reach the Great River. This solitary survivor for some reason did not return, but he made out a chart, which must have been fairly well circulated, for another Mexican coming north in [[37]]search of the famed Casa Blanca cache also had directions to this San Caja treasure.
Dubose and his fellow explorers blasted a certain likely looking rock off and found under it a tinaja (rock hole) six feet deep, but no bullion in it.
According to “Uncle” Ben Adkins of Beeville, the San Caja treasure consists of money that was buried by Mexicans who were on their way to San Antonio. Just as they got to the Rock Crossing they heard that the Mexican army was being slaughtered in the Alamo and turned back in such haste that they left their precious freight on top of the loneliest “mountain” in Southwest Texas. A Mexican in Austin told me something like the same tale. He said that a detachment reached the river in winter time when a big rise was on, were unable to swim their treasure-laden mules across the flood, and while they were waiting for the waters to go down, heard that a band of Texans was close on their heels. They hastily took their freight to the mountain and left it there.
On the south side of the San Caja are said to be two cowhides of gold doubloons. Travelers out of the City of Mexico headed for the San Antonio missions lost their road and, perishing of thirst, began to look for water in the tinajas and crevices of the rocks. They found a little, enough for themselves, but not any for their poor beasts, which were in greater need than the men, for the men had had canteens of water for a day or two this side of their last watering. The party really had not traveled a great distance in coming from the Rio Grande, but they had been wandering lost over a rough country for days, keeping no general direction. The burros finally played out and the Spaniards hid their cowhides of doubloons in a crevice and placed over them a flat rock on which they marked with pear-apple juice a red cross. Over that they placed a second rock. Joe Newberry got the facts as to this treasure from a Mexican bandit on the Rio Grande who had come over on this side in hiding. Dubose actually found two flat rocks stacked up as if by hand, and under the first he found an Indian arrow-head, but nothing more.