V
Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire, many people familiar with the great body of treasure legend will say. I have no disposition to refute the argument. According to legend, much money has been found. I myself know of a few small finds. I know of eight hundred Mexican dollars having been found under a mesquite tree in Atascosa County many years ago; I know of about four hundred dollars in Mexican coin that were rooted up by hogs in Frio County forty years ago. Doubtless other actual finds over the country could be recorded. Whatever the facts, few men of imagination can listen to the enthusiasm of the true treasure hunter without becoming infected with his glamour.
After all, one need not patronize or pity these modern seekers of El Dorado. The law of compensation always works. At least [[12]]they have kept alive that “knack of hoping” that made Oliver Goldsmith so charming. They have something in them as precious perhaps as the “ditches of footnotes” that authorize this treatise on them. They have dreamed something of the dream of Great Raleigh; and when one has known them as I have known them, he comes to respect something rightly simple and sincere in their lives, as there is, indeed, something rightly simple and sincere in their legends.
In some towns and back in certain unproductive hill districts of Southwest Texas, a considerable number of people live to hunt treasure. With them treasure hunting is a high passion. Others—and among them mingle people of some means—“dig” occasionally. However, few ranch and farm people of the Southwest make a practice of hunting lost treasure, and the majority even laugh at folk who do; yet most of them sometimes tell these legends, and nearly every man, under the sanguine spell of realistic circumstance, has at some time or another taken stock in one or two of them. Thus the legends in a large way, not easily defined, express the genius of the people to whose soil they pertain.
[1] See Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, p. 4. I am indebted also to Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Archivist in History at the University of Texas, for information in her unpublished (1923) book on The Opening of Texas to Foreign Settlement, particularly Chaps. II and V. [↑]
[2] Brewster County, in which mines were worked, was not in the old Mexican state of Texas and Coahuila. [↑]
[3] Sutherland, Mary A., The Story of Corpus Christi, Houston, 1916, pp. 2–3. Mrs. Sutherland does not give her authority. [↑]
[4] Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, p. 9; Priestley, H. I., José de Galvez (University of California Publications in History, 1916), p. 288. According to Priestley, some presidios were established by the Spanish in America to protect the special interests of large landholders.
Don Pedro de Terreros, banker and wealthy mine owner of Mexico, who advanced the money for the establishment of the Mission of San Saba, may not have been so altruistic as Bancroft, Dr. Dunn, and Dr. Bolton have all implied. The government must bear the cost of military protection for the mission. With government protection and Indian labor, the mines at San Saba, which Miranda had in his famous reports made so promising, would richly pay any individual working them. Don Pedro had an interest in the mines. The Terreros records, if extant, might throw a great deal of light on the subject. [↑]
[5] About $11 around for each man in the Texas army, besides $3000 that was voted to the Texas navy. There was $11,000 in specie in Santa Anna’s military chest. His “finery and silver” were auctioned off at $1600 and his rich saddle at $800. See “An Account of the Battle of San Jacinto,” by J. Washington Winters, Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. VI, pp. 139–144; “Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath,” by Lucy A. Erath, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, pp. 266–269. [↑]
[6] Austin Papers in University of Texas archives. Information given by Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Archivist. [↑]
[7] See “The Legend of the San Saba, or Bowie, Mine.” [↑]
[8] Dr. Barker, in treating of “Land Speculation as a Cause of the Texas Revolution,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. X, p. 76 ff., ignores all idea that reputed mineral riches had anything to do with the land speculation.
An unfounded but popular view to the contrary is offered by Captain Marryat, who says: “The dismemberment of Texas from Mexico was affected by the reports of extensive gold mines, diamonds, etc., which were to be found there.”—Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas, Leipzig, 1843, p. 147. [↑]
[9] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Book V, Chapter III. I am aware of the fact that some historians question the loss of any great treasure. [↑]
[10] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Philadelphia, 1874, I, pp. 420–422; 453 ff. Also, Bandelier, A. F., The Gilded Man, p. 19. [↑]
[12] Zahm, J. A. (H. J. Mozans), Through South America’s Southland, New York, 1916, p. 361. [↑]
[13] For full accounts of the El Dorado history and legends, see Adolphe F. Bandelier’s The Gilded Man, New York, 1893, and Z. A. Zahm’s (H. J. Mozans) The Quest of El Dorado, New York, 1917. Both are readable and distinguish well between history and legend. Bandelier is the more scholarly of the two writers. [↑]
[14] Zahm, J. A. (Mozans), Through South America’s Southland, pp. 353–362. [↑]
[15] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, “The Seven Cities,” p. 125 ff. [↑]
[16] Skinner, Chas. M., Myths and Legends of Our New Possessions, Philadelphia, 1902, p. 103. [↑]
[17] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, “The Amazons,” p. 113 ff. [↑]
[18] Bolton, H. E. (Editor), Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, New York, 1916, pp. 130, 156, 184, 186. [↑]
[21] Bancroft identifies the “mountain of silver” with “the famous iron mountain near the city of Durango.”—History of the North Mexican States and Texas, I, p. 100. [↑]
[22] Bolton, Spanish Explorations, pp. 313–317. [↑]
[23] Lummis, Chas. F., The Enchanted Burro, p. 161 ff. [↑]
[24] Zahm, J. A., The Quest of El Dorado, p. 6. [↑]
[26] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, “Quivira,” p. 223 ff.
Dr. Bolton points out that the Spanish searched in Texas for “the Kingdom of Gran Quivira, where ‘everyone had their ordinary dishes made of wrought plate, and the jugs and bowls were of gold’ ”; also “for the Seven Hills of the Aijados, or Aixaos, where gold was so plentiful that ‘the [[9]]natives not knowing any of the other metals, make of it everything they need, such as vessels and the tips of arrows and lances.’ ”—“The Spanish Occupation of Texas, 1519–1690,” by Herbert E. Bolton, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. XVI, pp. 1–2. [↑]
[27] The Alhambra, “The Journey.” [↑]
[28] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, p. 223 ff. [↑]
[29] See “The Snively Legend,” infra. [↑]
[30] Webber, Chas. W., The Gold Mines of the Gila, New York, 1849, especially pages 189–191 and 196–197. Webber concludes the book with an actual proposal to readers to join him in an expedition after the treasure. He had been a ranger with Jack Hays a short time and he claims to have gotten his information about the San Saba deposits from the talk of men in camp. Use is made of the same legendary material in Webber’s Old Hicks the Guide, 1848. [↑]
[31] Galveston Weekly Journal, May 13, June 6, June 16, 1853. [↑]
[32] “The Hunt for the Bowie Mine in Menard,” in Frontier Times, Bandera, Texas, October, 1923, pp. 24–26. The article is full of concrete evidence not to be questioned. [↑]
[33] San Antonio Express, October 21, 1923, p. 1. [↑]
[34] For good satire on Texan credulity in Mexican mines, see On A Mexican Mustang Through Texas, by Alex E. Sweet and J. Armory Knox, Rand, McNally and Co., New York, 1892, pp. 439–452. [↑]