When the Texas pioneers inherited the Spanish sitios and porciones of land, the leagues and labors, marked off by varas and pasos, they inherited too from the Spaniard and his Mexican successor something of the lure of ungained treasure. The imagination that images a cave in the Llano hills filled with five hundred jack loads of silver bullion is hardly so audacious as that which pictured the Seven Cities shining with their jeweled portals in the sun and peopled mostly by goldsmiths; but it is the same imagination, different only in degree, tempered by race and by temporal environment. The maletas of doubloons, the chests and stuffed cannon of Mexican army money, the caves bursting with Spanish bullion and plundered jewels—the very stuff of Texas treasure legends—are directly derived from the Spanish who made the multiform story of El Dorado immortal. I do not mean to say that the treasure legend is peculiar to the Spanish-tempered Southwest; I do mean to assert that the treasure legends of this Southwest are peculiarly of Spanish origin. It would, indeed, be interesting to contrast the treasure legends of the world before the Spanish discovered American wealth with those that have taken form since. [[10]]
III
One cannot neglect the immense effect on the imaginations of North America made by the discovery of gold in California and later in Alaska. Snively’s wild goose expedition up the Rio Grande in 1867[29] could hardly have been supported by the settlers of Texas before ’49. There is evidence to show that popular interest in, and therefore legends of, Texas lost mines blazed up synchronically with the California gold excitement of 1848–1850. In 1849 Charles W. Webber published a novel that makes much of the San Saba tradition.[30] In the early fifties, Texas newspapers carried items on “Gold” as well as on “Cotton,” etc., and there was a mining rush up the Colorado and its western tributaries.[31] The time afforded occasion for the revival of Spanish-Mexican and Indian traditions concerning Spanish mining operations in Texas. Note should be made of the fact that the majority of Texas buried treasure legends presuppose rich mines.
IV
Two kindred qualities of man, hope and credulity, remain to be considered among the sources of treasure legend in Texas. These qualities are not coördinate with the historical forces; rather, they have been acted upon by the historical forces. Yet they have a certain localized source like the legends themselves. For as the tradition of modern treasure goes back to El Dorado, so the Mexicans who lure Americans into the quest of treasure are direct descendants of the Indians who lured the early Spanish. These Indians often pointed the eager Spanish on beyond in order to get rid of them; so the modern Mexican frequently inspires credulity in American treasure hunters in order to gain a small reward.
There seems to be a more or less regular traffic in charts—platas—to buried treasure. One Mexican paid for medicine at a [[11]]drug store with his chart and story; another got pasturage for his burros at the same price; a third parted with his directive legend, which he believed in, to a white man for befriending him in sickness. Some of the platas purporting to be a century old are written with pencil on the cheapest of modern paper. The late John Warren Hunter asserted that at one time the chart business was a regular industry in San Antonio.[32] Only recently a man was indicted in Fort Worth for fraudulently obtaining money on pretense of organizing an expedition to seek $5,000,000 in gold nuggets in a cave in Mexico.[33] How the nuggets got in the cave involved a long story around an Indian, General Custer, Jesse James, and Pancho Villa. It was a good story![34]
However, it would be grossly wronging the chief purveyors of treasure charts and legends to ascribe their action even primarily to avarice. It is as easy to promise gold as it is to promise rain, and in a country in which neither is plentiful the Mexican shows his desire to please by predicting both. Many a treasure legend has originated in motives as innocent as those of Uncle Remus.