Spanish Treasure and Mission Gold

Long before the gold rush of 1905 the area around Orro Grande (?uch Gold· was known for the rich turquoise mined by the Apache.

Spanish treasure sites

1. So many treasure stories center around the phrase ?he Spaniards were later driven out by the Indians·that it almost seems a clich· In 1824 when American mountain men like Jed Smith and Jeff Bridger began to pour through the South Pass, they found very little Spanish activity outside of New Mexico and California; yet even today artifacts continue to surface that tell the tale of a titanic struggle between the Indians and the Conquistadors.

As early at the 1550s Fray Bartolome warned the Conquistadors that trouble was coming ·but he was ignored. Queen Isabella proclaimed the Indian ? full and free citizen,·but she was ignored. Pope Paul III issued a bill instructing that the Indians ?re by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property...·But he, too, was ignored.

To feed their hunger for gold and jewels, the Conquistadors pressed every able-bodied Indian they could lay hands on into the cruelest of servitudes. ?urely,·wrote Fray Bartolome, ?od will wreak his fury and anger against Spain some day for the unjust wars wagered against the American Indians.·In August, 1680, all the subjugated Indians of the northern kingdom rose in rebellion. Santa Fe, the northern capital, fell. For days a pitiful stream of refugees poured into El Paso telling tales of butchery and destruction. Of many outlying missions, settlements, and mining camps, nothing would ever be heard again. The Spaniards had been driven out by the Indians.

It would take 11 years and four invasions to recapture Santa Fe. By the time the land was pacified, few who knew of the many treasures hidden prior to the Revolutions survived. There was no telling how many fabulous hoards were secreted prior to the collapse of the Northern Kingdom because so few were documented. Much has been written about the so-called ?ing? fifth,·but the ?ing? fifth·was instituted as a form of tax relief and, like any other bureaucracy, the Spaniards were not above imposing multiple taxes. In The Great North Trail, Dan Cushman points out that ·..from 1516 when mining started, until 1821, all subsurface rights in New Spain were deemed the King? property. Spanish subjects could work mines only under a special license. One of the conditions was that the king? treasury receive two-thirds of the profits...In time, the two-thirds rule was rescinded in favor of a 20 percent gross royalty.·

The reason for the reform was that even the richest mines could not show a profit under the two-thirds rule. The special licenses Mr. Cushman mentions were granted only to favored persons. If an ordinary soldier or priest discovered a rich ledge, his only chance to realize a benefit was to work it surreptitiously and cache the ore for later retrieval and smuggling out of the country.

Is it any wonder that so many mines and treasure caches went undocumented? Fortunately, there are some surviving documents that present a picture of the tip of what was obviously a very big iceberg. One of these documents, not surprisingly the one pertaining to the largest treasure, was discovered by accident. Hidden under the altar of a burned out church at Taos, the new pastor, Father Carbonel, found an account written by Father Mora which told of an immense fortune in gold bars hidden in the shaft of a gold mine at Hondo Canyon by the Franciscan padres in charge of the mine.

The night before the beginning of the 1680 Rebellion, the padres concealed the entrance of this mine and attempted to escape the coming storm. The padres were all killed on the first day of the rebellion and, but for the accidental discovery of Father Mora? document, the secret of their treasure (which some estimate to be worth in excess of $20,000,000) would have died with them. Father Mora? original document is presently in the archives at Santa Fe.

In the first days of the deluge of 1680, a small contingent of Spanish cavalry came across the still-smoking ruins of the former Pueblo Alameda on the Rio Grande River seven miles north of present day Albuquerque. A search of the village turned up only two survivors ·an old crippled Indian and a blind woman. Before moving out, the officer in charge had his soldiers round up whatever valuables they could find and bury them.

A document dictated on December 20, 1681, on file in the Mexican archives, list among other things, a golden chalice, palen, and cross, along with church bells and other ornaments and jewels. The value of this cache today would be several hundred thousand dollars and, as General Mendoza, who made the report, was not specific about the exact location, it has never been recovered. A copy of this report is on file at the Latin-American Center of the University of Texas in El Paso.

There is some documentation indicating that a large treasure was hidden in the vicinity of Gran Guivira National Monument, but this area is definitely off limits to treasure hunters. Nothing may be removed and visitors must remain in designated areas.

Numerous searches have been made for the treasure buried in or near San Miguel Church in Socorro in August of 1680, but no one to date has been successful in recovering even a single church vessel.

A map discovered in 1916 in the Bancroft Library in Berkley, Calif., led to the rediscovery of a rich gold mine which the Spanish discovered at San Pedro del Cuchillo just prior to the advent of the 1680 Revolt. The discoverer of the map reportedly lost out when he returned from World War I to find an open pit copper mine had obliterated the entrance to the previous shaft. The lost mine is thought to be located on a south slope of San Pedro Mountain near Castle Peak east of Golden. For a time, there were several bogus maps to the mine site in circulation, but most treasure hunters feel even the original map would be useless today due to the changes wrought by commercial mining activity in the area.

To the southwest of Golden, legends tell of a Spanish treasure train that disappeared in the same rebellion that drove out the miners at San Pedro del Cuchillo. Before the Indians wiped out the settlement of St. Augustine on the Dallinas River in San Miguel County, the miners there allegedly cached a great deal of gold and silver bars in a cave near the church.

A similar hoard taken from miners in the Mogollon Mountains was reportedly hidden in the foot hills of the Frisco Mountains in the Gila National Forest in Catron County. This site would be a few miles north of present day Glenwood.

A pair of pack trains fleeing the 1680 Rebellion reportedly cached a duo of fantastic treasures as their situation became more desperate. One of these treasures is said to be hidden on a small hill in Lincoln County just outside and east of present day White Sands Missile Range.

The other treasure load was reportedly cached near the mission church at Prajie on the Rio Grande River in Sierra County. A marked rock on a bluff two miles south of the site of Prajie is thought to contain a clue to this treasure. The signs indicate another bluff to the southeast, but no markers have been found on the indicated bluff, and the trail dead-ends at this point.

It is not by any means certain that all of these sites conceal treasure, but it is certain that a great amount of treasure was lost in 1680 and, to date, very little has been found.

Lost opal mine

2. In 1877, a party of prospectors seeking gold in the Horse Shoe Mountains found a rich opal deposit somewhere south of the Duncan-Lordsburg Road. They staked a claim and took some samples but later sold their rights rather than work the mine themselves. Later they heard that the pair to whom they had sold the claim had worked it pretty regularly for two years before the Apaches got to them. As usual, the Indians hid the mine ·probably by causing a landslide. Between the landslide and the Indians, no one figured it would be worth their while to try to relocate a claim that had already been worked pretty hard for two years.

In addition to the fact that opals today would be worth a good sight more than in 1877, an additional incentive to search for this one might be the claim that the two gem miners only sold a few of their stones in Lordsburg during the entire two years they were working the mine. The rest were obviously cached for retirement day. The Indians sent them to early ?etirement,·and the cache is probably still hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the mine.

SOURCES:

Cushman, Dan, The Great North Trail, McGraw Hill, 1966.

Horgan, Paul, The Conquistadore in North America, Fawcett Publications, 1963.

Terry, Thomas P, U.S. Treasure Atlas, Specialty Pub., 1985.