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.
The Mines
Five or six miles to the southwest of the San Caja, the Spanish are believed to have operated a silver mine by the name of Las [[38]]Chuzas, called so from its proximity to Las Chuzas Mountains. In later times Texas pioneers found that Indian bullets lodged in the spokes and felloes of their wagons were almost pure silver, and the Indians are supposed to have got their material for bullets from the Chuzas ore. The Indians would never tell where they got it. While Dubose and a man named Wallace McNeill were riding the country in quest of the Rock Pens they found the shaft of the mine at the foot of one of the Chuzas Mountains. That shaft is said to be lined with silver bars covered over with clay, but as the men were looking for the “thirty-one mule loads” and fully expected to find them, they did not investigate the shaft.
Some ten miles away, in the Guidan Pasture, and about six miles from the Nueces River, is what is known as the Devil’s Water Hole, and there the smelter is supposed to have been located. Burnt rocks to this day evidence its existence. In the vicinity of White Creek, in the foothills below the Devil’s Water Hole, were some other silver mines that used the same smelter.
Somewhere between the old Las Chuzas Mine and the Nueces River there is said to be a pile of silver bullion, crude, unformed, in the very hue and shape of the rocks around. How it came there or why, nobody knows. It just came there, so the Mexicans still say.