Thus the rumor of the Hill of Silver developed into the epic legend of Texas. History has recorded clearly the foundation and the failure of the San Saba mission and presidio, and there is no occasion for repeating the story here.[4] It has been singularly reticent on the subject of the mines. Dr. Dunn says nothing on it. Dr. Bolton tells of having “identified the mine opened by Miranda with the Boyd Shaft” on Honey Creek, fifty or sixty miles from the mission and presidio that were near what is now Menard on the San Saba.[5] The fullest essay yet made at treating the debatable subject of the mines is to be found in a pamphlet by the late John Warren Hunter, entitled “Rise and Fall of the Mission San Saba,” to which is appended “A Brief History of the Bowie or Almagres Mine.”[6] The implication from [[14]]history is that the mines were closed with the abandonment of the San Saba presidio, 1769. However, inasmuch as the nearest military protection was more than fifty miles away and was unable to hold its own against the Comanches and other hostile tribes, it is doubtful whether the mines were ever worked to any extent. Hunter finds, on doubtful evidence, that they were still being operated in 1812.[7] Again, it is claimed that Mexico was preparing to reopen the mines when Iturbide fell in 1823.[8]
But with the evidence at hand it would be idle to go further into the history of the mines. All that I myself know is what I have read in and of Miranda’s reports; and these reports were the propaganda of an ambitious promotion seeker, made before, not after, practical exploitation. The mines may have been worked consistently for a while. They may have paid. According to one report in the Miranda documents, the ore assayed eleven ounces to the pound.[9] Hunter says that a report made in 1812 by Don Ignacio Obregon, who signed himself “Inspector Real de las Minas,” announced an analysis of $1680 to the ton;[10] but this Don Ignacio’s reports of assays have been only a little less ubiquitous than peddled charts.[11] According to a recent United States Government report, the Llano country shows no evidence of gold or silver in paying quantities.[12] [[15]]
It is true that Miranda was ordered to take thirty mule loads of ore to Mexico to be carefully assayed. According to some traditions, all the ore of Texas mines was transported to Mexico to be smelted; on the other hand, the ruins of sundry smelters have been reported by hunters for the mines. The point is that a great many legends about “seventeen,” “thirty,” or “forty jack loads” of buried bullion may have been derived from the actual transportation of a pack train of crude ore.
II
Where history is doubtful, legend is assured; and a volume of the most engrossing narratives might easily be compiled on the Almagres Mine. The legend, in its color, variety, and luxuriance, has reached into the literature of England and continental Europe,[13] reverted with thousand-fold increase to the Mexican land of its birth, and flourished in the camps, households, and offices of a century of American cowboys, rangers, miners, farmers, bankers, lawyers, preachers, and newspaper writers of the Southwest; entering, on one hand, into professed fiction,[14] and on the other hand, leading hundreds of men into the grave business of disemboweling mountains, draining lakes, and turning rivers out of their courses. [[16]]
It is a great pity for the sake of romance that we have no biography of Bowie such as we have of Crockett. James Bowie must have been a colorful and spirited soldier of fortune as well as free-hearted patriot. We know that he was a successful slave runner. We know that in the early twenties he and his brother Rezin P. Bowie came to San Antonio and that from the beginning he had one eye open for a quick fortune. According to Sowell, he prospected for gold and silver on the Frio River.[15] He must have been rather credulous, as is natural to men with untrained imagination and bounding lust for adventure. Witness his precipitate action in the so-called “Grass Fight.”[16] While he was in hot-headed quest of the San Saba Mine, he engaged in one of the most brilliant Indian fights of early days.[17] Thousands of men have believed and yet believe that he knew where untold riches lie. He died in the Alamo, carrying with him a secret as potent to render him immortal as his brave part in achieving the independence of Texas.
I shall now briefly sketch Colonel Bowie’s connection with the mine that bears his name. My information is based somewhat on Hunter’s pamphlet, but I have heard the legend in a dozen different forms and shall attempt nothing more than an amalgamation.
“In the first place,” says West Burton of Austin, a most persistent seeker for the mine, “never be fooled into thinking that there is any such thing as the Bowie Mine. You can follow a lead if you hit it and locate any mine, but there is not any lead to the so-called Bowie Mine. That wasn’t a mine at all, but a storage for bullion taken from the San Saba or Los Almagres mines [[17]]proper. Remember that the Spanish fort on the San Saba was destroyed three times and that the Indians were on the warpath constantly. Under such conditions, a strong and secure place had to be found for storing the bullion as it was smelted out. That place was somewhere on the Llano. In it were stored five hundred jack loads of silver bullion when the Indians ran the Spanish out the last time and destroyed the mines. It was that storage that the Lipans showed to Bowie and that he tried to get.”
Over the Llano region roamed and ruled a band of Lipans. Their chief was named Xolic, and for a long time he was in the habit of leading his people down to San Antonio every year to trade off some of the bullion they had captured from the Spaniards. They never took much at a time, for their wants were simple. The Spaniards and Mexicans in San Antonio thought that the ore had been chipped off some rich vein; there was a little gold in it. Of course they tried to learn the source of such wealth, but the Indians had a tribal understanding that whoever should reveal the place of the mineral should be bound and tortured to death. No Lipan broke his agreement. At length the people of San Antonio grew accustomed to the silver-bearing Lipans and ceased to try to enter their secret. Then came the curious Americans.