The Peak of Gold.
The most remarkable myths that appear in American history are those which were so eagerly listened to by the early Spanish conquerors, who overran two-thirds of the two Americas long before the Saxons so much as attempted a foot-hold in the New World. There was the famous myth of El Dorado in South America—a living man covered from head to foot with pure gold dust and nuggets. In Mexico was the fable of Montezuma’s untold tons of gold and bushels of precious stones, and many other impossible things. Ponce de Leon, the gallant conqueror of Puerto Rico, paid with his life for the credulity which led him to the first of our states ever entered by a European, in quest of an alleged fountain of perpetual youth—a butterfly which some of the world’s learned doctors are still chasing under another form. And all across the arid Southwest the hot winds have scattered the dust of brave but too-believing men who fell in the desert through which they pursued some glittering shape of the American golden fleece. When Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the first American traveler, walked across this continent from ocean to ocean, over three hundred and fifty years ago, he heard from the Indians many gilded myths, and chief of them were those concerning the famous Seven Cities of Cíbola. So enormously abundant was gold said to be in these Indian cities, that it was put to the meanest uses. When Vaca got to the Spanish settlements in Mexico and told this wonderful report it made a great commotion, and soon afterward that great explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, came to the Seven Cities of Cíbola—which surrounded the site of the present Pueblo Indian town of Zuñi in the extreme west of New Mexico. But instead of the dazzling cities he expected, Coronado found only seven adobe towns, without an ounce of gold (or any other metal, for that matter)—towns which were wonderfully curious, but which sorely disheartened the brave Spanish pioneers. A little later Coronado heard equally astounding tales of a still more golden aboriginal city—the fabulous Gran Quivira—and set out to find it. After a marvelous march which took him almost to where Kansas City now is, he found the Quivira—but no gold, of course. And it has been the same ever since. Coronado’s footsore men ran down their fables in 1541. Certainly not a decade, and very likely not a year, has passed since then in which some equally preposterous story of incalculable treasures has not been born and found followers in the Southwest.
I know of but one thing in the world more remarkable than that the Spaniards should have believed such self-evident myths; and that one thing is that so many, many Americans believe them to-day. Not long ago I visited the most remote and inaccessible ruins in the Southwest, and found there the work of these sanguine dupes, who had actually dug through solid rock in search of buried treasure. And even while I write a party is digging, a hundred miles to the west, for a treasure as mythical, and as palpably so, as that at the end of the rainbow. The stories of golden mountains, of buried millions and of mysterious “lost mines”—far richer, of course, than those which any one can find—in New Mexico alone would fill a volume.
I had once the good fortune to run across some old and fragmentary Spanish manuscripts of the last century and the beginning of this, which are extremely interesting. It is not often that we get so much documentary evidence concerning the golden will-o’-the-wisps which have lured so many to disappointment and death. The writings all bear the stamp of implicit belief, and the old soldier, in particular, who is the hero of the fragmentary story, is often unconsciously eloquent and sometimes pathetic in his recital. I translate all the documents literally.
The first manuscript is a certified copy (certified in the City of Mexico, March 5, 1803), of the “relation” and petition of Bernardo de Castro, a copy for which the Spanish governor of New Mexico had sent. Bernardo’s story and appeal are as follows, rendering as closely as possible the quaint language of the day:
“Most Excellent Sir: Bernardo de Castro, retired sergeant of the company of San Carlos [St. Charles] of the government of the City of Chihuahua, in the Provinces of the Interior, admitted to citizenship in the City of Santa Fé, capital of the kingdom of New Mexico, and resident of this capital, goes on and before Your Excellency says: That having served our Royal Monarch for the space of nine years and eight months as sergeant of the said company in the countless combats at which I assisted against the nations of the ynfidels [Indians], I came out with a lance-thrust in one leg, of the which it resulted that I was placed in the Ynvalid corps by the Sir Commander Don Juan de Ugalde. But considering that with time and medicines I recovered and gained strength to seek my subsistence free from the hardships to which the frontier troop is exposed from the Mecos [probably the Apaches], I gave up for the benefit of the royal exchequer my pay as invalid sergeant, and have followed working in the same kingdom of New Mexico. There I have suffered various fights—as it befell in the past year of 1798, that while I was conducting a multitude of large cattle and other effects, the whole valued at more than $14,000, from New Mexico to El Paso del Norte, the barbarous Mecos assailed me, and after a long battle, in which flowed much human blood, they carried off all I had in the world. And we gave to God thanks for having saved us even the life.