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LEGENDS OF TEXAS

EDITED BY
J. FRANK DOBIE

PUBLICATIONS
of the
TEXAS FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
Number III
(SECOND EDITION)
PUBLISHED BY THE TEXAS FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
AUSTIN, TEXAS, 1924
Copyright, 1924, by J. Frank Dobie, Secretary of the Texas Folk-Lore Society
All rights reserved

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University of Texas Press
Austin
1924 [[iii]]

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

The assembling of the legends of my own state has been with me no light matter, though it has been a joyful business. Might I as editor spend as much of the next three years as I have spent of the last three in talking with people, in riding on horseback into remote places, in writing letters, in searching through Texas material, the result would no doubt be more satisfactory. The satisfaction, however, would not lie in an increased number of legends, nor in an added variety or worth, for all the widely known legends of Texas are, I think, here presented, and the swelling size of this volume has already ruled out many legends as representative and as interesting as some of those included. The increased satisfaction resulting from further research would lie in the establishment of relationships, in the tracing out of origins, and, most of all, in the fullness of the bibliography. Files of Texas newspapers would come first as a printed source for additional legendary material. These I have but dipped into, my removal to a place in which they are altogether inaccessible having cut short the investigation of them that I had planned. Considerable new material might be gained from original Spanish and Mexican documents. Texas magazines and Texas books of fiction, history, biography, and travel have been fairly well examined. The chief source of legend in a virgin field of folk-lore like that of Texas is the folk themselves; that field is not likely to be exhausted soon.

No attempt has been made at comparing the legends of Texas with those of other lands. An attempt has been made to relate the legends to each other and to the life and history of the state. In the grouping of them, logic has been plainly violated. The groups overlap. They would overlap in any other manner of arrangement, even a geographical one. With few exceptions, and those important for their relationships, all legends not residing among Texans of white skin and English speech have been excluded. Thus certain negro tales, certain Mexican legends unassimilated by English speaking Texans, certain Indian legends have been ruled out. Of course, a vast majority of the legends transmitted by white settlers in Texas are derived from folk of other races. [[iv]]

Various factors have combined to determine just what legends should be included. A few legends have been printed on account of their geographic interest. The legends of buried treasure and lost mines are arranged according to place. The geographic center of such legends in Texas is the Llano and San Saba country. Hence the legends of that region have been put first; then come in order those to the south as far as Brownsville, those of the west clear to the Guadalupe Mountains, those of the north against Red River, those of the eastern part of the state, and finally those of the south-central and east. My own intimacy with the southwestern part of Texas has probably led to the inclusion of an undue proportion of treasure legends from that section; I can only plead that I have excluded almost as many as are included. A considerable number of excellent legends of Texas are available in recent books and newspapers and have, therefore, not been reprinted. The legends of the Alamo and other missions of San Antonio are first in importance among legends of the state. They are not included in this volume because happily they have been preserved in at least three local histories.[1]

If the ballads of a nation are as important as its laws, its legends are almost as important as its ballads. Here I must confess a great hope that some man or woman who understands will seize upon these legends and use them as Irving used the legends of the Hudson and the Catskills, as Whittier used the legends of New England. People of Texas soil still have a vast body of folk-lore, and whoever will write of them with fidelity must recognize that lore as surely as Shakespeare recognized the lore of his folk, as surely as Mr. Thomas Hardy has recognized the lore of Wessex.

The names of nearly two score contributors to this volume testify to the eagerness with which people from every quarter of the state have joined in the enterprise of gathering together their legends. Many whose names are unsigned have contributed with equal sympathy and intelligence. As editor, I desire to express gratitude to all who have helped. First I must record the eager [[v]]sympathy and aid of many former students of mine at the University of Texas. I owe much to the encouragement and counsel of Dr. L. W. Payne, Jr., Professor of English at the University of Texas. Mrs. Adele B. Looscan of Houston has time after time contributed invaluable information. Mr. E. G. Littlejohn of Galveston has for years kept clippings of legends that appeared in Texas newspapers, and he has put his collection at the disposal of the editor. Miss Elizabeth H. West of the Texas State Library and Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Mr. E. W. Winkler, and Miss Annie Campbell Hill, all of the Library of the University of Texas, have given generously of their time and information. Since my removal from Austin seven months ago, Mr. W. P. Webb, Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Texas, and Miss Louise von Blittersdorf and Mr. Hartman Dignowity, students, have often verified certain references or run down certain information not procurable elsewhere than in the libraries of Texas material at Austin. My wife, Bertha McKee Dobie, has “o’er look’d each line” of manuscript and proof, and the debt to her cannot be set down. Mr. A. C. Wright, Manager of the University of Texas Press, has done far more than a mere business obligation required. The list grows too long. It is impossible to extend it to include the names of all those who have assisted.

More Legends Wanted

Finally, let it not be thought that this volume will conclude the collection and publication of Texas legends. I make an appeal at once personal and official: it is for more legends, new or variant, to add to the ripening second volume that I trust may come forth at no very remote date.

Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College,
Stillwater, Oklahoma,
April, 1924. [[vii]]

[1] History and Legends of the Alamo and Other Missions in and around San Antonio, by Adina De Zavala, San Antonio, 1917; San Antonio de Béxar, Historical, Traditional, Legendary, by Mrs. S. J. Wright, Austin, 1916; Combats and Conquests of Immortal Heroes, by Charles Merritt Barnes, San Antonio, 1910. The last named of the three books is now very scarce; the other two are obtainable at reasonable prices. [↑]

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CONTENTS

[LEGENDS OF BURIED TREASURE AND LOST MINES]

[LEGENDS OF THE SUPERNATURAL]

[LEGENDS OF LOVERS]

[PIRATES AND PIRATE TREASURE IN LEGEND]

[LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF TEXAS FLOWERS, NAMES, AND STREAMS]

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[MISCELLANEOUS LEGENDS]

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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LEGENDS OF BURIED TREASURE AND LOST MINES

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AN INQUIRY INTO THE SOURCES OF TREASURE LEGENDS OF TEXAS

By J. Frank Dobie

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I

However many legends of other kinds there may be, the buried treasure or lost mine legend is the typical legend of Texas. Just how representative it is, is demonstrated by the varied examples in this section of “Legends of Buried Treasure and Lost Mines.” The McMullen County group well illustrates how numerous are the legends. The group is by no means unique in either number or variety. Pertaining to the country up the Colorado and its western tributaries, there are literally hundreds of lost treasure legends. Scarcely fewer legends cluster around the old Fort Stockton-Fort Lancaster country, around the Victoria-Refugio-Goliad country, around the Big Bend country, and along certain sections of the Red River country. In lumber mills of East Texas buried treasure is the frequent subject of tale and speculation. The Nacogdoches country, the San Jacinto country, the San Augustine country, the country all along the Brazos from head to mouth, to mention only a few other localities, are replete with buried treasure legends. Moreover, instead of diminishing in number, these legends are constantly increasing.

The people who tell these legends represent many standards and strata of life, but the ultimate source of their legendary gold and their tales is common—Mexican or Spanish. In some of the legends the pioneer Texan, the Indian, or the negro plays a part, but in nearly all the Spaniard and the Mexican enter as both actors and transmitters. The native Texan frequently makes no distinction between “Spaniard” and “Mexican”; the wealth of legend, however, is generally Spanish. And that wealth would fade the actual riches of Potosi into paltriness. Now, how comes it that illimitable wealth is so popularly ascribed to the long Spanish dominion in Texas and to the brief Mexican occupation that intervened between the downfall of Spanish sovereignty and the achievement of Texas independence? Were the Spanish great gainers in Texas? Did Santa Anna’s armies mark their trail with gold? [[4]]

The facts are that the Spanish in Texas were always hard up, that the occupation of the territory was a financial loss, that Texas was occupied as a buffer,[1] first against the French in Louisiana and then against the United States, with but little attempt at mineral exploitation and always with a drain on the treasury. The Spanish soldiers and settlers often led a wretched existence, even on occasions having to root in the ground for starches and to hunt wild berries for sugars. According to Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, one old San Antonio Mexican did write that the Spanish soldiers there were rolling in wealth. “They will spend a hundred reales for a dinner,” said he, “as easily as we spend a centavo for a glass of beer.” But he was a revolutionist inflamed with hatred of Spanish tyranny. So far as we know from the records—and again I quote Mrs. Hatcher for authority—only one cargo of money ever came to Texas from south of the Rio Grande; that was during the Mexican Revolution, in 1811. An expedition of revolutionists set forth from Coahuila to San Antonio, seeking escape to the United States. They had with them a considerable amount of bullion and money belonging to the revolutionary party. They were caught in Texas and hanged, and nobody knows what became of their wealth.

According to authenticated history, the Spanish worked but one mine in what before 1836 was the state of Texas.[2] That was Los Almagres on the San Saba River, opened about 1757. Though the history of the San Saba mission and of the San Saba presidio is clear and sufficiently full, little is known of the history of the mine. It is doubtful if it ever paid much. Certainly, captains and commanders were always urging the Spanish viceroy to equip a large presidio on the San Saba to protect the mines. A certain Captain Villareal, too, is reported to have sent an urgent plea to the viceroy for more troops to protect a mine “two days’ ride from Corpus Christi,” which, he said, had been taken by Indians.[3] But such advice from the Spanish commanders must not be taken too seriously. Many of them were notorious grafters, [[5]]paying their men in goods with enormous profit to themselves, and frequently carrying on their payrolls the names of men whom they had enlisted only to discharge, or whom they had not enlisted at all. Their meat was more men.[4] Yet these old reports have furnished “documentary evidence” to many a treasure hunter.

Santa Anna’s army, although it was well furnished when it crossed over into Texas from Mexico, and although it provided some fair plunder to the Texans at San Jacinto,[5] could not, thinks Dr. E. C. Barker, Professor of American History in the University of Texas, have dropped off any chests of money in Texas. According to Dr. Barker, the Mexican troops in Texas, especially garrison troops, were often poorly paid.

If we turn from the Spanish and Mexicans to the early American colonists of Texas, we find that the prospect of mineral riches had little part in motivating their colonization. Though Stephen F. Austin “denounced” a mine—perhaps coal—on the upper Trinity,[6] and though the Bowie brothers, with a small band of men, staked their lives on the chance of gaining silver ore from the San Saba country,[7] thereby giving basis to the most remarkable of all Texas legends, nevertheless, the pioneer settlers of [[6]]Texas came hither to plough and herd, to trade and labor, not to prospect.[8]

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II

If the Spanish, then, occupied Texas for military and not pecuniary reasons, at large expense; if the brief Mexican regime meant nothing more than the maintenance of costly armies; if the original Texas colonists came without a dream of Spanish treasure—whence now among their descendants the amazing wealth of legends about lost mines and secreted treasures pertaining to the Spanish-Mexican eras? The full answer can be found in no one factor, but it can be largely found in the Spanish genius as it expressed itself in America. The answer involves a review of early Spanish wealth in America, real and imaginary, and an understanding of the influence of the Spanish genius upon Anglo-Saxons in the Southwest. The Spanish found immense wealth in America. They became credulous of mythical wealth. Later ages and folk, failing to inherit their wealth, inherited their credulity.

For treasure the Spanish explored and ransacked the whole of one continent and the half of another. And treasure they found. The indeterminate lake of Tezcuco is yet uneasy with the wealth of Montezuma lost in it by the overwhelmed army of Cortez.[9] The ransom of Atahualpa, head Inca of Peru, promised in golden vessels to Pizarro at Andamarca, was to fill a room twenty-two by seventeen feet to a height of nine feet above the floor.[10] And most of that ransom was actually delivered! Quesada did not find El Dorado, but in the country of Bogota he piled up golden booty in a courtyard so high “that a rider on horseback might hide behind it.”[11] For four centuries the silver mines of [[7]]South America have been the richest in the world. What wonder that the Spanish dreamed of wealth wherever the unknown stretched, and that buoyantly they followed their dreams! Led by rumor, they found in some places what they had come to America to find; thus they came to expect to find it wherever rumor pointed. The assertion of a naked Indian led Balboa to gaze first of all Europeans upon the great “South Sea.” An Indian told Pizarro of the vast nations of the Incas and of the fabulous treasures of Cuzco. Indians with their tales of the wealth of the Aztecs and the Muiscas “guided Cortez to the rich capital of Montezuma, and Quesada to the opulent plateau of Cundinamarca.”[12]

What wonder then that Sebastian de Benalcazar listened to a lone Indian tell the tale of the Gilded King, El Dorado,[13] in 1535, and that in that puissant age of energy, exploration, and imagination, the tale was echoed in the camps of soldiers under the Andes, by the hearths of peasants in Navarre, on the smacks of Devonshire fishermen, in the counting-houses of Augsburg bankers, and in the council chamber of Queen Elizabeth as well as in the courts of a century of Spanish monarchs? To seek El Dorado, the conquistadores for a hundred years and more marched and countermarched from one extremity of half of the western hemisphere to the other, spending the lives of tens of thousands of men and the wealth of prodigal treasuries, enduring starvation, fever, cold, thirst, the pests of swamps and the pitilessness of deserts—all with an intrepidity that comes now in our tame “Safety First” age like a stirring cup brewed by the giants. At first a man, El Dorado came to mean a place somewhere in the western part of what is now Colombia, then in any, every direction. At sixty-three Great Raleigh came out of twelve years of imprisonment to fare forth a second time on the quest. And two centuries after he had died the same quest was occupying whole bodies of men; and even yet it is the tale, so it is said, of sanguine souls scattered over all South America.

When the seekers did not find it, always the treasure was [[8]]más allá, on beyond. The search for La Ciudad Encantada de los Cesares,[14] inspired by the fabrication of an Indian, was but the duplication of the sublime and ridiculous El Dorado error. And so was Cabeza de Vaca’s quest for the legended wealth of Florida[15]—a quest that had its ironic conclusion on the other side of the continent in Coronado’s expedition. So, too, were the fabled Palace of Cubanacan in Cuba;[16] the mythical wealth of the mythical Amazons;[17] the Laguna de Oro in New Mexico;[18] the Pueblos del Rey Coronado of the West;[19] the Cerro de la Plata,[20] which was perhaps Los Almagres of Texas;[21] the Concho River, bedded with pearls richer than those of the Indies or of the Gulf of California;[22] the “Peak of Gold,”[23] in either Texas or New Mexico; the nebulous treasures of a Casa del Sol;[24] and the Gran Paytiti, or Gran Moxo,[25] again in South America. Always beyond and beyond, lured by the talk of whatever chance savage, the Spanish quested. Thus the tale of a captive Indian, who wanted to get back eastward, led Coronado from the empty pueblos of the Zuñi in Arizona, whither he had been guided by an ignorant negro in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, to make his astounding march on eastward all the way to Kansas in quest of the Gran Quivira[26]—a place that never existed, a people that wandered naked at the heels of the drifting buffalo. [[9]]

The imagination of simple-lived folk abhors failure, and the poorest in circumstances are the richest in legend of treasure. A remote disaster becomes a hope for present success. “I have remarked,” says Washington Irving,[27] “that the stories of treasure buried by the Moors which prevail throughout Spain are most current among the poorest people. It is thus kind nature consoles with shadows for the want of substantials.” When Coronado told his men the truth of his barren search, they deserted him unbelieving. Following his expedition in 1542, a mission was established in southeastern New Mexico. For a hundred years explorers continued to search east and west for the Quivira. Finally the poor little mission was destroyed, and then the mixed-blooded descendants of the Spanish fortune hunters came to believe that it had been a rich cathedral in which was hoarded illimitable wealth.[28] The dreamer may die, but the dream of treasure lives on.

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]]

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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.

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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.

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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. [↑]

[11] Bandelier, p. 26. [↑]

[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. [↑]

[19] Ibid., p. 130. [↑]

[20] Ibid., pp. 283–284. [↑]

[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. [↑]

[25] Ibid., pp. 197–200. [↑]

[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. [↑]

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THE LEGEND OF THE SAN SABA OR BOWIE MINE

By J. Frank Dobie

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I

The epic legend of Texas is the legend of the San Saba, or Bowie, Mine. In Spanish chronicles it is known as La Mina de Los Almagres, or simply Los Almagres; also as Las Amarillas; sometimes as La Mina de las Iguanas, or Lizard Mine, from the fact that the ore was said to be found in chunks called iguanas (lizards). Almagre means red earth.

“To discover a rumored Silver Hill (Cerro de la Plata) somewhere to the north, several attempts were made before 1650 from both Nuevo Leon and Nueva Vizcaya, but were frustrated by Indian hostilities.”[1]

“Sir,… the principal vein is more than two square bars thick, and from a distance the upper part of it looks to be more than [[13]]thirty bars wide.… We met Indians who assured us that on beyond the almagres were still larger and richer … and that there we might find an abundance not only of ore but of pure silver.… But the mines of Cerro del Almagre are so numerous … that I pledge myself to give the inhabitants of the province of Texas one each, without any man’s being prejudiced in the measurements.” Thus reported Bernardo de Miranda as a result of his prospecting tour for minerals in the Llano country in 1756.[2] And partly “because an opulence and abundance of silver and gold was the principal foundation upon which the kingdom of Spain rested” (“por que la riqueza y abundancia de plata, y oro, es el fundo principal de que resuelta los reinos de España”),[3] as the royal viceroy of Mexico took occasion to remind his subordinates, an immediate establishment of mission and presidio on the San Saba River was undertaken and the mining enterprise presumably launched.

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.

[[Contents]]

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.

Bowie laid his plans carefully. He at once began to cultivate the friendship of the Lipans. He sent back East for a fine rifle plated with silver. When it came he presented it to old Chief Xolic. A powwow was held and Bowie was invited to join the tribe. Formally, by the San Pedro Springs, he was adopted into it. Now followed months of life with the savages. Bowie was expert at shooting the buffalo; he was foremost in fighting against the enemies of the Lipans; some say that he married the chief’s daughter. He became so thoroughly a Lipan and was so useful a warrior that his adopted brothers finally showed him the source of their precious mineral. He had expected much but he had hardly expected to see millions. The sight seemed to overthrow all caution and judgment. Almost immediately he deserted the Indians and returned to San Antonio to raise a force for seizing the treasure.

He was between two fires. He did not want too large a body of men to share with; he must have a considerable body to force the Indians. He took some time in arranging the campaign. [[18]]Meanwhile old Chief Xolic died, and a young warrior named Tresmanos succeeded to his position. Soon afterwards he came with his people to San Antonio on their annual bartering trip. There he saw Bowie, accused him of treachery, and came near being killed for his insolence. The time was at hand for Bowie to start on his campaign. Thirty-four men had promised to accompany him. In actuality, only ten put in their appearance, among whom were his brother Rezin P. Bowie and a negro slave. The fewness of numbers, however, did not deter him. He was determined to reach the site of the mineral—whether smelted bullion or natural veins of crude ore legend does not agree—and to establish a stockade there and proceed with exploitation.

Some distance north of San Antonio in the hills he met a friendly band of Indians who warned him that Tresmanos was on the warpath against him and his rumored invasion. Bowie pressed on. November 21, 1831, near Calf Creek, in what is now McCulloch County, the little party was attacked at sunrise by 164 Indians. The Texans had one man killed and two wounded and all their horses lost; the Indians, according to their own subsequent report, had eighty men killed besides a great number wounded. In 1905, Hunter described the remains of the barricade hastily constructed by the Bowie party as being “still traceable,” and added that the barricade “would be almost intact but for the hand of the impious treasure seeker.”

It is generally said that the battle of Calf Creek marked Bowie’s last attempt to get to the San Saba Mine, and that the remaining few years of his life were taken up with the duties of a patriot. According to one legend current in the San Saba country, on the word of Mr. Carlos Ashley, a native, Bowie was seeking the San Saba treasure in order to finance the Texas army. This is the patriotic theme also of a Texas novel in which Bowie is the hero: William O. Stoddard’s The Lost Gold of the Montezumas—A Story of the Alamo. Mr. Matt Bradley, editor and publisher of Border Wars of Texas, says that only three months before Bowie fell in the Alamo he was trying again to reach the riches of which he alone among white men knew the secret.[18] Some years ago a man named Longworth, who is now in Kansas, paid a Mexican in San Antonio $500 for a document purporting to have been taken [[19]]off Bowie’s body by a Mexican lieutenant who entered the Alamo immediately after the last defender had been silenced. The Mexican who sold the document claimed that lieutenant as a paternal ancestor. He swore that it gave directions to the mine, but somehow Longworth could not follow them.

Thus we see that, in fact, Bowie had nothing more to do with the mine than to hunt it. But because he was its greatest hunter and because he is presumed to have found it, his name has come to be linked with it. However, this linking is of a comparatively recent time. I doubt if the name “Bowie Mine” was used at all until after the Civil War. All the earlier histories and books of travel that mention the mines—and they are many—refer to them as the San Saba Mines. “Bowie Mine” is a popular coinage of the last half century, and now the legend of the mine is living to no small extent by virtue of the legend of the man.

[[Contents]]

III

We have seen that the San Saba presidio was fifty miles or more away from the mines it is supposed to have protected. Not all lost mine hunters, by any means, have agreed with Dr. Bolton in locating the mine, or mines, on Honey Creek. It has been located now on the Llano, now on the San Saba, up and down, across and beyond. Many hunters assert that numerous mines were scattered over a wide belt extending in a general way from the Colorado westward along the courses of the Llano and San Saba to the Nueces canyon, El Cañon, as the Spanish called it.[19] A vast part of the bullion buried in Texas legends is supposed to have come from the mines in this area.

Some of the early Texas writers credulous of mineral deposits in the state have had an immense influence on hunters for the San Saba Mines, who are often readers of old and out of the way books. These hunters argue that as the early writers were nearer the sources of history than their skeptical successors, they must be more reliable.

An article from the now stilled pen of John Warren Hunter recently appeared in the Frontier Times (Bandera, Texas), detailing [[20]]a few of the enterprises that have been undertaken to recover the San Saba Mine. I quote from the article:[20]

“The poor, credulous tramp prospector has not been alone led off by the lure of the Lost Mine.… Ben F. Gooch, a one-time wealthy stockman at Mason, was so sure that he had found the Bowie Mine that he spent $1500 sinking a shaft that is yet pointed out as ‘Gooch’s Folly.’ A judge of the Supreme Court spent $500 in another hole near Menard. W. T. Burnum invested $1500 in machinery with which he pumped out a cave on the divide north of the old mission. Failing to find the coveted mine at this place, he moved the machinery and pumped out a small artificial lake just above the town of Menard.… The Spanish had created this lake for a purpose.… The Almagres Mine entrance was at the bottom of the lake, which had been flooded by the Spaniards at the last moment.”

[1] Bolton, H. E., Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, pp. 283–284. [↑]

[2] “Miranda’s Expedition to Los Almagres and Plans for Developing the Mines,” a Spanish transcript from original documents in the archives of Mexico, now in the history archives of the University of Texas, “1755–1756, A. G. I. Mejico, 92–6–22, N′ 16A.” See also another transcript from original sources: “Report on Disposition of San Saba,” listed “1767, A. G. I., Guad., 104–6, 13.” [↑]

[3] “Miranda’s Expedition to Los Almagres,” etc. Vide ante. [↑]

[4] For a succinct history, see Dunn, William E., “The Apache Mission of the San Saba River,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVII, 379–414; also, Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp. 78–93. [↑]

[5] Bolton, supra, p. 83. [↑]

[6] This is an interesting but somewhat confusing document. It was printed in 1905 and is already so rare as to be almost unobtainable. It is in neither [[14]]the Texas State Library nor the Library of the University of Texas. I am indebted to Mr. E. W. Winkler for use of his presentation copy. Mr. Hunter was living at Mason when he issued the pamphlet and had a rare first-hand knowledge of the ground and of traditions as well as access to some original documents. [↑]

[7] Op. cit., p. 47. [↑]

[8] History of San Antonio and the Early Days of Texas, compiled by Robert Sturmberg, San Antonio, 1920, Chap. III. [↑]

[9] “Report on Disposition of San Saba.” Vide ante. [↑]

[10] Op. cit., p. 48. [↑]

[11] See, for instance, “The Lost Gold Mines of Texas May Be Found,” by W. D. Hornaday in the Dallas News, January 7, 1923. [↑]

[12] U. S. Geological Survey, Bulletin 450, “Mineral Resources of the Llano-Burnet Region, Texas,” by Sidney Page, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1911.

But note the following dispatch in the San Antonio Express, February 26, 1924, p. 5:

“AUSTIN, Tex., Feb. 25—Sam Young, Llano banker, was in Austin Monday and reports much activity in that region in the mineral line. Young says experts think they have found gold in paying quantity, also graphite, and that capital now is being interested in the deposits with the early prospects of real mining and shipping of valuable ores and probably the refined products. Many small deposits of precious metals have been found near Llano in recent years, but the new finds are said to be large enough to warrant exploitation and give that section a new and valuable industry.”

Thus history never tires of repeating itself; thus the dream of treasure once dreamed lives on. [↑]

[13] Fournel, Henri, Coup d’oeil … sur le Texas, Paris, 1841, p. 23, speaks “des richesses metalliques depuis longtemps signalées par les Espagnoles.” I am unable now to verify the reference, but I am sure that Gustave Aimard introduces the subject in one of his romances, probably The Freebooters.

Of course the rumor of the mines had a wide vogue in Spain, where the viceroy’s reports went direct.

An English novel published in 1843 has this sentence: “The Comanches have a great profusion of gold, which they obtain from the neighborhood of the San Seba [sic] hills, and work it themselves into bracelets, armlets, diadems, as well as bits for their horses, and ornaments to their saddles.”—Marryat, Captain, Monsieur Violet, etc., p. 175. [↑]

[14] As examples of fictional uses of the legend in America, see Webber, Charles W., The Gold Mines of the Gila, New York, 1849, pp. 189–191; Webber, Old Hicks the Guide, New York, 1848. In this last named book, the use is so vague and general that no particular pages can be cited. Other examples are “The Llano Treasure Cave,” by Dick Naylor, The Texas Magazine, Vol. III, pp. 195–204, reprinted in the Dallas Semi-Weekly Farm News, with T. B. Baldwin as the name of the author, July 11 and July 14, 1922; The Three Adventurers, by J. S. (K. Lamity) Bonner, Austin, (no date given). [↑]

[15] Sowell, A. J., Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Texas, pp. 405–408. [↑]

[16] “Several days previous to the fight it was currently reported in Camp that there was a quantity of silver coming from Mexico on pack mules to pay off the soldiers of General Cos. Our scouts kept a close watch, to give the news as soon as the convoy should be espied, so that we might intercept the treasure. On the morning of the 26th, Colonel Bowie was out in the direction of the Medina, with a company, and discovered some mules with packs approaching. Supposing this to be the expected train, he sent a messenger for reinforcements.”—Baker, D. W. C., Texas Scrap Book, p. 92. [↑]

[17] The Battle of Calf Creek, 1831, in which eleven Texans fought one hundred and sixty-four Indians under the leadership of Chief Tresmanos of the Lipans. Only one of Bowie’s men was killed. Rezin P. Bowie wrote an account of the battle that has often been quoted in Texas histories. The account by James Bowie seems not so well known. It is to be found in John Henry Brown’s History of Texas, Vol. I, pp. 170–175. [↑]

[18] A signed article on the Calf Creek fight in the Dallas News, January 28, 1923. [↑]

[19] “Command El Cañon and Los Almagres to deliver up their known treasures,” wrote De Mézières in an effort to stimulate Spanish activity in Texas.—Bolton, H. E., Athanase de Mézières, II, 297. [↑]

[20] Vol. I, No. I, October, 1923, p. 25. [↑]

[[Contents]]

LOST GOLD OF THE LLANO COUNTRY

By E. G. Littlejohn

The first of these two legends is adapted from an account signed “S. S. P.” that appeared in the Galveston News years ago. It is attributed to one of the rangers who made the find. The second legend appeared in the Galveston News also, signed by Nancy Evans Bower, of Cherokee, Texas, who got it direct from Medlin.

[[Contents]]

I

The Brook of Gold Discovered by Lost Rangers

Back in the early ’40’s the main camp of McCulloch’s rangers was located in Hamilton’s Valley on the Colorado. From this point they scouted far and wide against hostile Indians. While two of the rangers were out on one such scouting expedition, their horses got away during the night, and in attempting to find them next morning they got lost themselves in a dense fog that enveloped the hills and valleys. They wandered all day in a vain attempt to regain their camp. It was hot summer, in a time of long [[21]]drouth, and they were in a region utterly devoid of water. When night came they lay down, suffering from hunger and thirst. The next morning they struck out early, hoping to “find themselves” before the heat of the day came on, or at least to find some water. But though they climbed many rugged hills to view the land, every prospect was desolate and unfamiliar.

At length, from the summit of a low range of hills, they discovered a narrow green valley, and down it, by a line of green trees, they traced the course of a mountain brook. Descending, they soon stood on the banks of a stream of clear water, which danced over a pebbly bottom of fine, almost pure white gravel, with here and there shallow pools sparkling under the noon-day sun. Here they rested and refreshed themselves, lying flat upon the margin and taking long draughts of the crystal waters.

As one of the rangers, after the first pangs of his thirst were satisfied, lay looking into the sparkling waters, he was startled to discover that the entire bottom was strewn with minute shining particles. Calling to his companion, he said: “We have lost our horses, saddles, and guns, but here is something better. Here is gold, gold, world without end!” The particles, which were as thick among the sand and gravel as if sown by the handful, were yellow like gold and of the size of very coarse corn bran.

Before leaving the place, the rangers gathered a quantity of the yellow particles and tied them up in a handkerchief. On their way out they stopped to rest high up on the western shoulder of a long, rugged hill. Here they discovered in the fork of a stunted live oak tree an ancient rust-eaten pick, its handle gone, and one end so encased in the growth of the tree that the pick could not be removed. The other end pointed toward the head of the little stream they had left. Then they realized that they were not the first to have discovered the gold mine, but that some prospector, overtaken perhaps by sudden death, had left his mark. Late in the afternoon the scouts saw looming in the distance Packsaddle Mountain on the Llano, and from this well-known landmark they found their bearings and were soon safely back in McCulloch’s camp at Hamilton’s Valley.

Later they exhibited their bandana of gold in the village of San Marcos. A man there versed in the subject of minerals pronounced it virgin gold and said that it was what miners knew as “drift gold,” which had been washed downstream from a mother lode. That mother lode, he said, might be miles away, but wherever [[22]]it was it must be exceedingly rich. On many a long tramp and ride in after years the rangers sought the golden pool, but they never found it again. The mute finger of the old pick on the mountain side perhaps still points to the spot where the lost mine may be found, and the grim hills of the Llano country still stand silent guard over the secret of their hidden wealth.

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II

The Smelter on the Little Llano

In the early part of the last century mining parties composed principally of Mexicans, but usually led by two or more white men, were quite common in the mineral belt of Texas. The mining was carried on under great difficulties and in a crude way. The country was a wilderness inhabited only by roving bands of hostile Indians and wild animals. The only means of transportation were the small Mexican burros. Panniers made of cowhide and packed with provisions, tools, and other necessaries of the miners, were strapped to the backs of these patient, docile little animals. After the furnace was constructed, the burros conveyed ore from the mine to the furnace.

The mineral was buried as it came from the smelter, for no one knew at what moment the Indians might sweep down. It was also a rule among the miners, when moving or returning to the settlements, to bury their mineral treasure at night and build their campfire over it, thus having it securely hidden in case of an attack by the Indians.

In the year 1865 an ancient man came to San Saba County in search of an old furnace. After searching for it alone for several days, he confided to some ranchmen in the vicinity that in 1834 he and another white man and thirty-five Mexicans were engaged in mining near the Little Llano River. They had found, he said, a rich mine and had taken out 1200 pounds of gold and silver, which they buried together with $500 in Mexican silver coin. It was their custom to conceal the opening to the mine after conveying a month’s supply to the furnace. They had just completed a month’s run and were preparing to return to the mine for another supply when the Indians swooped down upon them, killing all except the two white men and a Mexican girl, who were at the spring some distance from the furnace. [[23]]

The stranger went on to say that the treasure was buried on a high hill half a mile due north from the furnace; that seventy-five yards from the furnace, in a direct line between the furnace and the spot where the treasure was buried, stood a pin oak tree, in a knot hole of which a rock had been driven. He offered $500 to anyone who would guide him to the furnace. Some half-dozen men turned out to assist in the search, but it proved fruitless. He then informed the ranchmen that he and his partner and the Mexican girl, after their escape from the Indians, made their way to Mexico, where they filed a chart of the mine in the Mexican archives, as was required by the laws of Mexico, of which Texas was at that time a part. A copy of the chart was retained by his partner, who was then (1865) living in St. Louis, he having married the Mexican girl. The old man then started on a long overland ride to St. Louis to induce his partner to aid him in the search for the treasure buried in 1834. A short time afterwards it was learned that while he was mounting his horse in Williamson County, his gun was accidentally discharged, killing him instantly.

No further attempt was made to locate the furnace till 1878, when a man named Medlin, hearing the story, engaged to herd sheep for a ranchman whose ranch was situated in that section of the country. Every day while herding sheep he prosecuted his search for the furnace. Within the year his search was rewarded with success. He found the ruins of the old furnace, the spring, the tree with the rock in the knot hole, and also the high hill half a mile due north, but he did not find the treasure.

He did find, however, on digging into the furnace, the skeleton of a man, and by its side a “miner’s spoon” made of burnt soapstone, used for amalgamating minerals with quicksilver. Nancy Evans Bower, who told this story in the News, says that Medlin, while showing her the spoon, told her the story substantially as related above. Shortly afterwards Medlin left for South America. She, too, from Medlin’s description, found the furnace and the tree with the rock in the knot hole. She believes that the story is true; that the treasure is there; and that anyone who will take the trouble to procure a copy of the chart from the archives of Mexico can easily find it. [[24]]

[[Contents]]

LOST MINES OF THE LLANO AND SAN SABA

By Julia Estill

[[Contents]]

I

A Legend of the Blanco Mine

[There seems to be some dispute as to whether or not the famed Blanco really existed. Tradition has it that the Blanco River was named for him. However, Z. T. Fulmore in his History and Geography of Texas as Told in County Names, page 270, says that the name Blanco, which means white, “was given to that stream” because it flows “almost its entire length through a white, chalky limestone region.” Almost the same story as that related here is told concerning the Bowie Mine. One treasure hunter told me of “the magic circle,” which is reproduced herewith, as belonging to the Bowie Mine, and in my possession are copies of letters from the R. J. Roland referred to by Miss Estill, describing the site of the Bowie Mine.—Editor.]

Some time before the Mexican War, a Mexican, Blanco by name, discovered a silver and lead mine somewhere in the Llano country, so the story goes. My grandfather, J. W. Wiley, a pioneer of this section of Texas, now an old gentleman of eighty-four, declares that he has been on the verge of discovering the lost mine several times. Even now, he is certain, were he in the hill country and given leave by his “tyrannical relatives” to climb Packsaddle Mountain alone, he could go to the very spot where the richest vein of silver and lead ore in Texas lies hidden.

Packsaddle Mountain is in Llano County near Kingsland, close to the junction of the Colorado and the Llano rivers in the red granite section of Texas. The mine is said to be in a cave somewhere on or near Packsaddle.

Many years ago, a man by the name of R. J. Roland found the mine, but in order to conceal its whereabouts he placed a huge flat stone over the entrance and covered the stone with loose soil, which in time became so overgrown with grass that no one has been able to locate it. Roland, however, was careful to leave his own marks so that at any time he might return to take from his treasure cave all the ore he wanted.

One day he did return with a pal named Chaney, who was so anxious to locate the mine that he offered Roland one thousand dollars if he would disclose the secret. [[25]]

[[26]]

It was agreed. The two men wandered over Packsaddle searching in vain. Finally, Chaney, becoming weary and impatient, told Roland emphatically that he was “tired of foolin’ ”; and his wary companion answered, “Show me the money, and I’ll show you the mine!”

Chaney, however, refused to produce the price unless he was shown the whereabouts of the mine; whereupon Roland turned shortly on his heel, and saying tersely, “Go to hell!” strode angrily down the mountain trail.

That night Roland spent with Mr. Wyatt, on old pioneer living in a cabin surrounded by cedars in a gap at the foot of Packsaddle. Of course, the guest related the incident to his host that evening as they smoked their pipes by the huge fireplace. And when it was time to “turn in,” Roland rose nonchalantly from his seat by the dying embers and, wearily stretching his arms to their full length while yawning portentously, drawled: “And do ye know, Mr. Wyatt, at the very time I tole Chaney to hand me over them thousand dollars, I was a-standin’ right on top uv that there mine!”

A day or so after the stranger’s departure, Mr. Wyatt climbed Packsaddle. In his explorations he found a cave with a wild animal skin upon the floor. In the center of the cave on the skin lay a huge nugget of silver.

Needless to say, mining enthusiasts who were let into the secret came from far and near to search for the lost mine; but, to this day, no one has discovered the hidden vein of metal.

[[Contents]]

II

The Mythical Bowie Mine

In the fall of 1876, when my father, J. T. Estill, and a lawyer friend, D. Y. Portis, who had both been attending district court in Mason, were on their way in a two-horse buggy to court in Menardville, Mr. Portis related to my father “the true story” of the fabulous Bowie Mine. Mr. Portis, an elderly man of perhaps seventy years, was a typical old Southland planter who owned a large farm in Brazoria County. He was a learned man and splendid at repartee; so the two companions, jogging slowly along the long trail to Menard, kept up a lively conversation; while now and then the woods resounded with their hearty laughter. [[27]]

About fifteen miles from Mason, the soil suddenly changes from a light color to a deep red; and, as the travelers approached this “divide,” father remarked: “This is the beginning of the Red Hill region of the San Saba. We must be in the neighborhood of the old Bowie Mine.”

Quick as a flash his companion answered: “The Bowie Mine is all a myth. I was personally acquainted with a man who, I knew, had been with Bowie on his expedition into the San Saba hills. One evening when a crowd of us young fellows were smoking our pipes around the fire, this old adventurer related unusually marvelous tales of the Bowie Mine and its rich silver ore, which, he said, could just be ‘hacked off with a hatchet.’ The entire crowd became wild with enthusiasm in consequence of his tales, and immediately resolved to fit out an expedition to search for the lost mine. Wagons, teams, and supplies to last several months were gathered, guards were hired to protect us from the Indians, and we set out confidently to seek the mine.”

About this time my father and Mr. Portis reached a place on the road overlooking the valley of the San Saba River; whereupon Mr. Portis expressed surprise that the country had changed so little and pointed out several places where the searching party had camped. Presently he continued: “The old guide would tell our party where to camp; and when camp had been pitched, he would go out into the woods, sometimes remaining all day, presumably hunting for the lost mine. Then we would move and the search would begin all over again.

“Thus the search continued for four or five days without any results. Finally, the party concluded either that the old man knew nothing whatever of the Bowie Mine, or that he would not tell. So the leaders of the expedition took him aside and forcibly expressed their opinions to him, saying that now if he knew where the mine was located, he must tell them—or hang.

“The old guide then broke down and cried: ‘There is no Bowie Mine! It is true that I was with Bowie on his expedition into the hill country, but, candidly, we found no mine. The Indians attacked our party, and I was one of the few that escaped. Then I commenced telling the story of the fabulous mine. And I’ve told it so often that I have actually got to believing it myself. Gentlemen, I have told you the truth. Hang me if you will.’

“Needless to say, the foolish young silver seekers returned to the Brazos bottom, disappointed, yet determined never to tell of their failure to find the famous Bowie Mine.” [[28]]

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TREASURE LEGENDS OF McMULLEN COUNTY

By J. Frank Dobie

Here are some sixteen legends out of a comparatively small section of one county. They will illustrate the fertility in buried treasure legend of all that stretch of Texas, for the most part yet unploughed, lying towards the Rio Grande and populated by Mexicans and by Texans of frontier stock. McMullen County itself has as yet neither railroad nor bank. The people are as yet unhackneyed by the plow or commercial secretary. They still talk a language seasoned with Mexican idiom and honest with the soil’s honesty; they have their old-time dances; they welcome heartily any decent stranger. On the whole, they are as enlightened as the populations that have their ideals molded by real estate agents. Just now oil boomers and railroad promoters threaten to bring their “progress.” Until they bring it, the people will remain individual.

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The Rock Pens

Excepting the Bowie Mine and the Nigger Gold Mine, no other purported lost treasure in Southwest Texas has caused so much discussion or enticed so many seekers as that of the “Rock Pens.” These “Pens” are variously placed in Live Oak, La Salle, and McMullen counties, generally in McMullen. The “way-bill” quoted below was given me by Mr. E. M. Dubose of Mathis, Texas, who has spent months, perhaps years, in trying to follow out its directions. Many of the details as I give them are also due to him, but the legend has been so familiar to me from my childhood up that I can hardly say to whom I owe it.

The story is that thirty-one mule loads of silver bullion, together with various fine images and other precious articles, were being brought from the mountains of Mexico by Texas bandits who had made a great robbery. They had crossed the Rio Grande in safety and were proceeding north to their rendezvous at San Antonio when they found that the Indians were closing in on them in the rough country west or south—for the river often changes its course—of the Nueces. They knew that an attack was imminent, and they picked the best place they could find in which to make their stand. It was by a small ravine in which [[29]]was a spring of water, and here they threw up some crude breastworks in the form of two rock pens. In one of the pens they buried the bullion, and then, in order to hide all signs of their secret work, they ran the mules around and around over the disturbed earth. The fight soon followed, and in it all of the Texans but one are supposed to have been killed. He, Daniel Dunham, on his deathbed in Austin, fifty-one years ago, dictated the following “way-bill.”

Austin Texas
April 17th 1873

About six or seven miles below the Laredo Crossing, on the west side of the Nueces River near the hills, there is or was a tree in the prairie. Due west from that tree at the foot of the hills at the mouth of a ravine there is a large rock and under the rock, there was a small spring of water coming from under the rock, due east from that rock there is a rock pen or rocks laid around like a pen and due east a few yards there is another pen of rocks, in that pen is the spoils of thirty one mule loads.

[Signed] DANIEL DUNHAM

This remarkable document was at his death, which occurred during the eighties, in the possession of a man named X. He had shown it to his sons a few times, but there was an accompanying paper that he had never shown. This accompanying paper he destroyed shortly before his death, or else his wife destroyed it immediately thereafter. One of his own sons conjectured, and certain circumstances have led others to conjecture, that X himself was one of the Texas bandits who invaded the Mexican mines and robbed a rich Mexican church. It is known that X held the way-bill as peculiarly veracious but that he had an overwhelming feeling against undertaking to follow out its directions.

Whether any attempts to find the Rock Pens were made before his death I do not know. A fact is that not long after his death an expedition, of which one of his sons was a member, set out to find the pens. Other “gold hunters” are known to have gone on the search. Therefore it must be that there were other directions in existence than those left by X. Men yet living claim to have seen the pens years and years ago before they knew that there was any significance to them, but though various old rock heaps [[30]]have been found since, none has ever been found to answer to Daniel Dunham’s description.

The Laredo Crossing mentioned in the way-bill is supposed to be the Nueces crossing on the old San Antonio-Laredo road. That is generally conceded to be on the Henry Shiner Ranch in McMullen County. Nearly all the land in that part of the country is still in large pastures. Much of it is rough, the San Caja, Las Chuzas, and other so-called mountains being in the vicinity. Where it was once open, the country during the last fifty years has grown up in brush so that no man can be sure the pens do not exist until thousands and thousands of acres of uneven land covered with prickly pear, mesquite, black chaparral, “gran haney,” and other thorned brush have been combed. The rocks were never piled high. They have been scattered, perhaps covered over with soil washed down from the hillside. In time of drouth it is a desolate country, and many a tale tells of early travelers perishing in it of thirst. Before the advent of the automobile one treasure-seeking expedition lived for days on jack rabbit meat, so remote were they in that region from supplies.

Sixty or seventy years ago Pate McNeill was coming from Tilden, or Dog Town as it was then called, down to Lagarto with his young wife. They were in a buggy, leading a horse, saddled. Somewhere in the Shiner country they saw a fine looking maverick cow. McNeill got out of the buggy, jumped on his horse, and took after her. When he had roped her and tied her, he looked around and saw that he was right in a kind of pen of rocks. At that time he did not know that great riches appertained to rock pens; so he calmly ran his famous brand of P A T E on the cow and went on down the country. Years later when the story of the Rock Pens came out, he went back and tried to locate the rocks, but the country had changed so much with brush and “washes” that he could never find anything.

“Uncle” Ben Adkins, a veteran of Beeville who guarded the western frontier during the Civil War days to keep cow thieves from driving cattle off to California, tells of a hunter who once stumbled into the pens and thought that he was in a deserted goat camp. Like others, he did not know at the time how close he was to millions.

Pete Staples, an old negro trail driver, tells how, when he was once hunting wild turkeys with Judge Lowe of McMullen County, they stumbled into some curiously placed rocks. “Huh, what’s [[31]]this?” he said. “Looks mighty funny to me for rocks in this place. Where’d they all cum from and how cum this way? Ain’t no other rocks like thesen for a mile.”

“Natural rocks all right,” said Judge Lowe, “but this is an old pen.” Judge Lowe died something more than a year ago. I have heard that he afterwards tried to find the pens, but failed. Pete, having a firm conviction that it is dangerous to “monkey” with money that some man now dead buried, has never been back to look for the pens, though he declares that men have tried to hire him as a guide and that he could find them, but “ain’t a-guine to.” The pens, according to Pete, are in the Guidan Pasture, which joins the Shiner and comprises some twenty or thirty thousand acres of land.

Another time, a good many years earlier, says Pete, a Mexican who was being chased by an Indian in the Las Chuzas country leaped over a spring of water and as he leaped saw a bar of silver shining in it. Later he went back and hunted for six months without ever finding the spring, much less the silver. It does look, as Pete expresses it, as if that money “ain’t meant” for any of the people who have looked for it. When the man comes along for whom it is “meant,” he will just naturally find it without even trying. Nevertheless, some people are still trying.

The cheering thing about looking for the Rock Pens is that even though the search for them be fruitless, one may stumble upon some other treasure at almost any time, for the whole San Caja Mountain country is rich in lost and buried treasure. Some of the legends follow. For much of the material I am indebted to that interesting tale-teller and one-time eager treasure-hunter, Mr. E. M. Dubose, of Mathis, already referred to. For material not derived from him I try to give specific sources. However, some of it is such common talk in the country and has for so long been a part of me that I cannot always cite exact sources.

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A Week Too Late at the Laredo-San Antonio Crossing

Neal Russell was out with two other cowpunchers on the Nueces River. They had extra mounts and a pack outfit and were well supplied. One day while they were hunting cattle they came up on two very old Mexicans. The Mexicans looked scared and acted peculiarly, but they were so old and worn and thin that Russell paid little attention to their secret manner. Finding that [[32]]they were out of something to eat, he told them where camp was and invited them up for a fill and a rest.

Well, after Russell and his men had come in and waited around a while, the Mexicans appeared. They ate and then, evidently feeling at ease with the Texans, who were talking Mexican like natives, they asked if anyone knew where the old San Antonio and Laredo crossing was.

“Why, yes,” replied Russell, “it is not two hundred yards from here, right down the river. I’ll show it to you in the morning.”

The Mexicans now seemed to think that they had as well take the Texans into confidence, and what seemed the older of the two made this explanation. “I was through this country the last time in 1836. I was with a small detachment of the Mexican army taking a load of money to San Antonio to pay off General Cos’s men. We had gotten a day’s ride north of here when we heard by courier of Santa Anna’s defeat. We knew that it was foolish to go on and so turned back, expecting at any hour to hear the Texans coming up on us. Just before we reached the east side of the Nueces, the front axle of our wagon broke square in two. There wasn’t anything to do but to cut a tree down and from a post hew into shape another axle. We managed to pull out of the road a little way, and set to work.

“As I told you, we were expecting the Texans at any time. As a precaution against their coming we dug a hole right beside the wagon. Then we went off a way and cut two posts, in case one turned out bad. After we had got them back to the wagon and were at work, we all at once heard a galloping as if a whole troop of cavalry was coming down the hills. Pronto, pronto (quickly, quickly), we threw the new logs into the pit we had dug, spread a few skins down, piled the load of coin into them, covered the pit up, turned the wagon upside down over the fresh dirt, and set fire to it. It blazed up; we mounted our horses and rode westward. I don’t know whether what we heard was Texas cavalry or not. I am inclined to think now that it must have been a herd of mustangs. Anyway, we left confident that signs of our digging would be wiped out by the fire and that the Texans would think we had burned our baggage to keep it from falling into their hands.

“So far as I know, I am the only survivor of that escort of Mexicans. I know that no Mexican has ever been back to get the money. I am come now with my old compadre to get it. You [[33]]see how we are. We started out poorly prepared. Now we are afoot and without provisions. If you will help us, we will share with you.”

The next morning, according to Russell, all five of the men started out with the camp ax and spade. They went to the old crossing, then out a few rods down the river. The old Mexican led them to a row of three little mounds—the knolls common in that country along the river valley. Beyond those three knolls was a stump, and beyond the stump was another knoll.

“That is the place,” whispered the ancient Mexican. He was so eager that he was panting for every word.

The white men rode on slowly, for the Mexicans were on foot and the older was walking in a kind of stumble. When they got fairly around the mound, they saw a pile of fresh dirt. Pitched across it were two old logs. Mesquite lasts a long time, you know, when it is under ground. The men looked down into the hole. It was not very deep and apparently it had not been dug a week. The prints of the coins were yet plain on some of the dirt, and a few tags of rotted skins were about.

Russell said that the Mexicans did not say anything. They were a week too late. When he last saw them they were tottering back to Mexico with what provisions the cowboys could spare.

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The Chest at Rock Crossing on the Nueces

General Santa Anna was going from Laredo to Goliad.[1] While he was fording the Nueces at the old Rock Crossing in the Chalk Bluff Pasture, once a part of the George West Ranch, the Rock Crossing being about twelve miles below the Shiner Crossing, his “pay cart” broke down and a very heavy iron chest filled with gold fell into the river. The river was up; Santa Anna was in great haste to reach Goliad; there was little travel in the country. He decided to leave the chest in the river; so he had it chained to a tree, intending to get it on the way back, for he expected to make short work of subduing the insurgent Texans.

In after years, Pate McNeill, the same man that tied down the [[34]]maverick heifer in one of the Rock Pens, found a piece of chain tied around an elm tree on the east bank of the river. Still later Dubose found the tree bearing the marks of a chain, but the chain itself was gone. Encouraged by the markings, he, with Stonewall Jackson Wright and Wright’s brother-in-law, Albert Dinn, went to Beeville, about fifty miles distant, and got a four-horse load of tongue-and-groove lumber. They sank a shaft about eighteen feet deep in the middle of the river, a little below the crossing itself, accounting for the push of water. They were able to wall out the water but made poor way with the boiling quicksand.

The first night after the shaft had been started, Stonewall Jackson Wright and Dinn got to arguing as to what disposition should be made of the chest. Wright was in favor of taking it to his ranch, twenty or thirty miles down the country, before opening it. Dinn declared that he would open it at once and that the prize should be divided then and there. The argument waxed so hot that only Dubose’s reminder that they had not yet found the chest prevented a collision.

There is a possibility, some claim, that a part of Santa Anna’s army may have passed back over the same route and have taken the chest with them. However, there is in existence a Mexican way-bill to the treasure. Mr. Whitley of McMullen County says that the chest was buried on the bank under a tree that had a limb straight out over the water, and that the chain around the tree trunk was a piece of log chain from an ox cart. But the tree caved in long ago, the water changed its course, and now there is no sign to go by, though doubtless the chest is somewhere in the vicinity of what is still known as Rock Crossing, a mere name, for it has been decades since a road ran that way.

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San Caja Mountain Legends

The name “San Caja” is significant, though its meaning is in dispute. Some people who should know say that it means Holy, or Sainted, Box; that the word caja, meaning box, alludes to the chest, or chests, of treasure hid in the mountain. But a white man who is native to the San Caja country told me that a very old Mexican once told him that the name was originally Sin Caja, sin meaning without, and caja also meaning coffin; hence, Without [[35]]Coffin.[2] According to the Mexican, the name was derived from the fact that a man had once been buried on or in the mountain without a coffin, perhaps not buried at all but left out in the open. Either interpretation is appropriate to the legends of the mountain.

Under the mountain is a cave, the entrance to which is on the west side halfway up the mountain. Mexican bandits who preyed on the wagon and mule trains that traveled the San Antonio-Laredo road were accustomed to ride their horses into that entrance. They had a great room underground that they used for a stable. Back of it was their treasure room, “el aparto [apartado] del tesoro,” in which were heaps of gold and silver coins, Spanish doubloons and old Mexican square dollars, golden candle-sticks, silver-mounted and jewel-studded saddles, bits and spurs of precious workmanship, plated firearms, all manner of costly plunder meant for the grandees and the cathedrals, as well as the bullion of mines near at hand—for there were rich mines in that country in the old days of the Spanish.

According to Mexican tradition, after the bandidos had accumulated all this treasure, a terrible dragon came and killed some of them and ran the others away. The dragon had a spiked tail and two heads, and at night one might see fire flashing out of his nostrils. He came to be called el celador del tesoro—the warden of the treasure; and there are Mexicans today who would not think of violating the premises that he still guards.

An addition to the legend was told me by Mr. Whitley. Years ago, as he had heard the story, a certain white man who bore the marks of a borderer was visiting the penitentiary at Huntsville when he suddenly heard himself called in Mexican. He paused. At his side appeared a Mexican, begging to talk to him. The guard consented, and then in his own language the Mexican poured out his tale.[3] He was serving a life sentence in the penitentiary, the sole survivor of a band of murdering brigands. All their booty was still in a cave to the south of the San Caja. If the [[36]]white man would get it, he might have half, using the other half to free the prisoner. He gave directions about as follows: Go to the southeast side of the mountain; thence go about a mile to two little knobs, then on down a kind of ravine about the same distance, where an opening will be found that enters into the booty hall. The white man set out to follow directions, but he was already old, and death overtook him before he could search out the treasure.

“There are,” says Mr. Whitley, “two knobs on the southeast side of the mountain, but two miles down instead of one, which shows that a Mexican has no sense of distance. In giving directions he always says un (s)pedacito—a little piece—which may mean a half mile or five miles.” Anyhow, the country does not seem to fit the Mexican’s measurements.

To the northwest of the San Caja are the San Cajitas (Little San Cajas); where, according to Mr. Whitley, is another robbers’ cave stored with fine saddles and other plunder left by Mexican bandidos. In it are ladders that were used to descend a hundred feet to the treasure floor. But no man has since the days of the bandits been down into this cave. It is said to be “alive” with rattlesnakes.

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.

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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.

Fifteen or twenty miles beyond the San Caja in a westerly direction on what is now known as Los Picachos (The Peaks) Ranch, an early settler named Crier, according to John Murphy, a ranchman of the vicinity, actually used to operate a silver mine that yielded about twenty dollars to the ton of ore.

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Loma de Siete Piedras

In the same general direction from the San Caja as Los Picachos is the Loma de Siete Piedras, or Seven Rocks Hill, on which the Mills Ranch is located. Near this hill, as I have the tale from Mr. Whitley, the Mills boys unearthed some human bones while digging post holes. They themselves had never dug for treasure, for though they had always heard that there was treasure stored away somewhere in their country, they had never been able to get the details that would guide them to it.

Naturally they talked of the rather unusual find, and not long after the event a gang of eleven or twelve Mexicans rode up to the Mills Ranch. Now, the San Caja country is in all ways a [[39]]border country, and in many places one can cross the Rio Grande without meeting a river guard or seeing a customs officer; nowadays it is the rendezvous of tequilleros and mescaleros with their smuggled liquor from the other side. When the Mills boys saw the horses that the Mexican gang were riding, they knew at once from the brands that they were smuggled; and the saddles, ropes, bits, and other paraphernalia showed that the riders were fresh from old Mexico.

The spokesman of the band began by saying that one of their number was a descendant of a Mexican who, with his entire party, had been killed by Indians in that vicinity years ago. Their mutilated skeletons, scattered by the coyotes and buzzards, were known to have been buried months later by a Mexican freighter who came across them while he was hunting a mule that had broken away. The freighter had put a cross of mesquite sticks over the bones, but the cross was doubtless rotted away a long time ago, and now these men were come to put up another, if, by the will of God, they could find the place where the bones lay. Could anyone in the country give them the necessary information?

From the number, equipment, and general looks of the Mexicans, it appeared to the Mills boys that the mission of the gang might not be so altogether pious. They smelled a nigger in the woodpile, and told the Mexicans as much.

The Mexicans beat around the bush a while longer and consulted with each other for a few hours while their horses picked up mesquite beans down in the hollow. Then their leader came back to the Mills boys and let out that they were looking for the bones of men who had been killed while they were escorting seven jack loads of silver bullion from above—de arriba—to Mexico. If they could find the battle ground marked by the bones, they had a plata (plat) that would take them to the treasure.

At that the Mills brothers offered to show the bones provided they should get half the find. True to their nature, the Mexicans refused to go in on halves, and they left, trusting no doubt to come back some mañana and find the bones and bullion.

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The Metate Rocks of Loma Alta

Just west of the Hill of Seven Rocks towers in primeval roughness Loma Alta, the highest point of the whole country. John Murphy told me this story connected with it. An early settler [[40]]named Drummond had a squat near the foot of the mountain. One time an old Mexican came to him looking for some bullion that he claimed had been buried in the vicinity by ancient parientes (kinsmen) in flight from the Indians. His plata called for a mesquite tree on the southeast slope of Loma Alta marked by a certain sign. Murphy thinks that the sign was a cross but does not well remember. The plata called also for a line of smooth, oblong rocks that bore a resemblance to the stones used for grinding corn on the metate. They had been culled from the hillside and laid to point to the hidden bullion. Drummond and the Mexican found the tree but rode around for days without being able to find the rocks. They finally decided that generations of horses and cattle had scattered them so that they could no longer be recognized as forming a line, and gave up the search.

The Mexican left, Drummond died, and years passed. Then one day while Murphy was holding down a wormy calf out in the pasture to doctor it, he raised his eyes and saw three or four of the metate-like rocks lined up in some thick chaparral. He was down on his knees, so that he could see under the brush. He thought of the tale that Drummond had told him, and looking about further, he found, badly scattered, yet preserving a kind of line, other such rocks. But he could never settle on a place to dig, and so far as he knows no one has ever dug on that side of Loma Alta.

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When Two Parallel Lines Intersected

An old-timer of McMullen County, Kenney by name, tells of a fellow county-man, named Snowden, who was led by a negro to believe that a certain boulder out on a plain ten or fifteen miles from the San Caja marked the site of buried money. In the first place, the boulder really did look to have been placed where it was by human agency, for there was not another rock of its kind within miles. Snowden went to San Antonio to consult a fortune teller. The fortune teller, without ever having seen the country, drew up a chart of the whole territory, marking down on it the position of the boulder. He told Snowden to draw two parallel lines from the northwest and southeast corners of the boulder, respectively, and to dig at the intersection of the lines. Snowden paid a nice fee for the information and came back to Tilden and organized an expedition.

When they came to draw the parallel lines, they found that they [[41]]would not meet and sent back the chart for correction. But it was not returned, and becoming impatient for the treasure, the gold diggers twisted about the directions somehow so that the “parallel” lines would intersect. There they dug and dug. Finally, one of the party in disgust swore that he would sell out his interest “for two-bits’ worth of Bull Durham tobacco.” Snowden took him up. Presently all the other members had sold out on the same terms, leaving Snowden to pay the expenses of the whole work.

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A Lucky Post Hole

Tilden (old Dog Town) is, remember, the county seat of McMullen County. Not far from it is what is still known as the “old Tolbert Ranch,” though a man named Berry bought it years ago. I have heard the following story so many times in so many places that I have halfway come to believe it true.

Tolbert was a miser in early days when men kept their money about them. It is said that he would never kill a maverick no matter how hungry he was but would always brand it. He never bought sugar or molasses; bacon was a rare luxury; he and his men lived principally on jerked venison and javelin meat. When he “worked” and had an outfit to feed, he always told the cocinero to cook the bread early so that it would be cold and hard before the hands got to it. When he died none of his money could be found. So, even till this day, people dig for it around the old ranch house. One man who was working on the place some fifteen years ago saw two men in a wagon go down a ravine that runs near the ranch. He thought that they were hunters; but when the strangers passed him on their way out the next morning, he noted that one of them had a shotgun across his knees. When the ranch hand rode down into the ravine a few days later, he found that the wagon tracks led from a fresh hole under a live oak tree and that near the hole were pieces of old steel hinges that looked as if they had been cut off with a cold chisel. However, not many people think that the two strangers got Tolbert’s money.

Berry got that, and he never hunted for it either. He had moved on to the ranch when he bought it and a number of years had passed. One day when he had nothing else for his Mexican to do, he told him to put some new posts in the old corral fence, [[42]]which was made of pickets that were rotting down. The Mexican worked along digging post holes and putting in new posts until about ten o’clock. Then at about the third post from the south gate he struck something so hard that it turned the edge of his spade. He was used to digging post holes with a crowbar and a tin can, and so he went to a mesquite tree where the tools were kept and got the crowbar.

But the crowbar would no more dig into the hard substance than the spade would. The sun was mighty hot, anyhow; so the Mexican went up to the house where el señor Berry was whittling sticks on his gallery, and told him that he couldn’t dig any more, that at the third post hole from the south gate it looked as if the devil himself had humped up into a rock that nothing could get through. Berry snorted around considerably at first, but directly he seemed to think of something and told his man, very well, not to dig any more but to saddle up and go out and bring in the main remuda. Now, only the day before they had had the main remuda in the pen and had caught out fresh mounts to keep in the little horse pasture. By this time the other horses would be scattered clear away on the back side of the pasture. The Mexican wondered what the patrón wanted the remuda for again. But it was none of his business. Well, the ride would take him all the rest of the day, and at least he would not have to dig any more post holes before mañana.

After the Mexican had saddled his horse and drunk a cafecita for lunch and fooled away half an hour putting in new stirrup leather strings and finally got out of sight, Berry slouched down to the pens. He came back to his shade on the gallery and whittled for an hour or two longer until everything around the jacal, even the Mexican’s wife, was taking a siesta. Then he pulled off his spurs, which always dragged with a big clink when he walked, and went down to the pen again. The spade and the crowbar were where the Mexican had let them fall. Berry punched the crowbar down into the half-made hole. It almost bounced out of his hand, and he heard a kind of metallic thud. No, it was not flint-rock that had stopped the digging.

Berry went around back of the water trough to the huisache where his horse was tied and led him into the pen. Then he started to work. He began digging two or three feet out to one side of the hole. The dry ground was packed from the tramp of thousands of cattle and horses. He had to use the crowbar to [[43]]loosen the soil. But it was no great task to get out a patch of earth two or three feet square and eighteen or twenty inches deep. Berry knew what he was about, and as he scraped the loosened earth out with his spade he could feel a flat metal surface that seemed to have rivets in it. It was the lid of a chest, and when he had uncovered it, Berry drew up one of the firm, new posts to use as a fulcrum for the crowbar. With that he levered up the end of the chest. As he suspected, it was too heavy and too tightly wedged for him to lift out. He kicked a chunk under the raised edge and then looped a stout rope about the exposed end. He had dragged cows out of the bog on his horse, and he knew that the chest was not so heavy as a cow. He had but fifty yards to drag it, and that down grade, before he was in the brush, where he could prize the lid off.

When the Mexican got back that night his mujer told him that Señor Berry had gone to San Antonio in the buckboard, and that he had left word for the remuda to be turned back into the big pasture and for the repair of the corrals to be continued. “They say” that the deposit that Berry made at the Frost National Bank was a clean $17,000, nearly all in silver.

[1] Santa Anna, according to Brown, did cross into Texas at Laredo, but he went to San Antonio, not Goliad. See Brown, John Henry, History of Texas, Vol. I, p. 569 ff. Another Santa Anna chest is said to have been dropped off near Lockhart on the road to Nacogdoches. Of course, Santa Anna never went from San Antonio to Nacogdoches. [↑]

[2] This latter explanation is more probable. The feminine Santa is never apocopated in Spanish, and caja is feminine. [↑]

[3] A tale common to both legend and roguery. I have a copy of a letter written in 1911 by a prisoner in Madrid to an American at Aguas Calientes, Mexico, in which the prisoner offered to share $273,000 concealed on the American’s land, provided the American would send funds for passage of the prisoner and his wife. [↑]