Chapter I: Part 1

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

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.

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 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.

CONTENTS

LEGENDS OF BURIED TREASURE AND LOST MINES

An Inquiry into the Sources of Treasure Legends of Texas
J. Frank Dobie 3
The Legend of the San Saba or Bowie Mine. J. Frank Dobie 12
Lost Gold of the Llano Country E. G. Littlejohn 20
I. The Brook of Gold Discovered by Lost Rangers
II. The Smelter on the Little Llano
Lost Mines of the Llano and San Saba Julia Estill 24
I. A Legend of the Blanco Mine
II. The Mythical Bowie Mine
Treasure Legends of McMullen County J. Frank Dobie 28
I. The Rock Pens
II. A Week Too Late at the Laredo-San Antonio Crossing
III. The Chest at Rock Crossing on the Nueces
IV. San Caja Mountain Legends
V. The Mines
VI. Loma de Siete Piedras
VII. The Metate Rocks of Loma Alta
VIII. When Two Parallel Lines Intersected
IX. A Lucky Post Hole
Legendary Spanish Forts Down the Nueces J. Frank Dobie 43
I. Fort Ramirez on the Ramireña
II. The Legend of Casa Blanca
III. Lutzer’s Find at Fort Planticlan
Treasure Chest on the Nueces Mary A. Sutherland 49
The Battlefields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma
J. Frank Dobie 51
How Dollars Turned into Bumble Bees and Other Legends
J. Frank Dobie 52
Native Treasure Talk up the Frio Fannie Ratchford 57
The Silver Ledge on the Frio J. Frank Dobie 60
Lost Mines Near Sabinal Edgar B. Kincaid 62
I. The Quicksilver Mine of the Rangers
II. Lost Lead Mine
The Nigger Gold Mine of the Big Bend J. Frank Dobie 64
Mysterious Gold Mine of the Guadalupe Mountains
J. Marvin Hunter 67
Lost Copper Mines and Spanish Gold, Haskell County
R. E. Sherrill 72
Lost Lead Mine on the Brazos, King County L. D. Bertillion 77
The Accursed Gold in the Santa Anna Mountains J. Leeper Gay 78
The Hole of Gold Near Wichita Falls J. Frank Dobie 80
Buried Treasure Legends of Cooke County Lillian Gunter 81
The Treasure Cannon of the Neches Roscoe Martin 84
The Dream Woman and the White Rose Bush Mary A. Sutherland 89
Steinheimer’s Millions L. D. Bertillion 91
The Snively Legend J. Frank Dobie 95
Buried Treasure Legends of Milam County Louise von Blittersdorf 99
I. The San Gabriel Mission in Legend
II. The Gold Protected by Snively’s Ghost
III. Pope’s Ghost at the Gap
The Wagon-Load of Silver in Clear Fork Creek L. W. Payne, Jr. 103
Moro’s Gold Fannie Ratchford 104

LEGENDS OF THE SUPERNATURAL

The Legend of Stampede Mesa John R. Craddock 111 The Woman of the Western Star: A Legend of the Rangers Adele B. Looscan 115 The Devil and Strap Buckner N. A. Taylor 118 The Legend of Cheetwah Edith C. Lane 130 The Mysterious Woman in Blue Charles H. Heimsath 132 The Headless Squatter John R. Craddock 135 Mysterious Music in the San Bernard River Bertha McKee Dobie 137 The Death Bell of the Brazos Bertha McKee Dobie 141 The Legend of the Salt Marshes Bertha McKee Dobie 143 Rhymes of Galveston Bay John P. Sjolander 143 I. The Boat That Never Sailed II. The Padre’s Beacon III. Baffle Point IV. Point Sesenta V. Gumman Gro

LEGENDS OF LOVERS

The Enchanted Rock in Llano County Julia Estill 153 Francesca: A Legend of Old Fort Stockton L. W. Payne, Jr. 157 Lover’s Retreat and Lovers’ Retreat, Palo Pinto. J. S. Spratt 159 Lover’s Leap in Kimble County Flora Eckert 163 The Waiting Woman John R. Craddock 167 Lover’s Leap at Santa Anna Austin Callan 169 Antonette’s Leap: The Legend of Mount Bonnell J. Frank Dobie 171

PIRATES AND PIRATE TREASURE IN LEGEND

From Sunset in August: Galveston Beach Stanley E. Babb 179
Life and Legends of Lafitte the Pirate E. G. Littlejohn 179
I. Jean Lafitte: Man and Pirate
II. Credence in the Lafitte Legend
III. The Horror Guarded Treasure of the Neches
IV. Pirates and Their Sacks of Gold
V. Lafitte’s Treasure Vault
The Uneasy Ghost of Lafitte Julia Beazley 185
Lafitte Lore J. O. Webb 189
The Pirate Ship of the San Bernard:
A Legend of Theodosia Burr Allston J. W. Morris 191

LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF TEXAS FLOWERS, NAMES, AND STREAMS

An Indian Legend of the Blue Bonnet Mrs. Bruce Reid 197 How the Water Lilies Came to the San Marcos River Bella French Swisher 200 The Legend of Eagle Lake 201 The Holy Spring of Father Margil at Nacogdoches E. G. Littlejohn 204 Indian Bluff on Canadian River L. W. Payne, Jr. 205 How Medicine Mounds of Hardeman County Got Their Name L. W. Payne, Jr. 207 The Naming of Metheglin Creek Alex. Dienst 208 How Dead Horse Canyon Got Its Name Victor J. Smith 209 How the Brazos River Got Its Name J. Frank Dobie 209 I. The Miraculous Escape II. How Perishing Seamen Named the River III. The Great Drouth and the Waters at Waco IV. A Miraculous Swim V. Arms Avenging and Saving How the Brazos and the Colorado Originated E. G. Littlejohn 218

MISCELLANEOUS LEGENDS

The White Steed of the Prairies W. P. Webb 223 The Legend of Sam Bass W. P. Webb 226 The Horn Worshipers L. D. Bertillion 230 The Cave of Montezuma J. Leeper Gay 233 The First Corn Crop in Texas A. W. Eddins 236 La Casa del Santa Anna A. W. Eddins 237 Lost Canyon of the Big Bend Country J. Frank Dobie 238 A Tradition of La Salle’s Expedition into Texas Alex. Dienst 241 Big Foot and Little Foot Mrs. S. J. Wright 242 The Wild Woman of the Navidad Martin M. Kenney 242

Bibliography of Texas Legends 255 Contributors 261 Proceedings of the Texas Folk-Lore Society 263 Members of the Texas Folk-Lore Society 264 Index 271

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Magic Circle: A Chart of the Blanco Mine 25 The Spider Rock 73 Stampede Mesa 113 Lover’s Leap: Junction, Kimble County 164

LEGENDS OF BURIED TREASURE AND LOST MINES

AN INQUIRY INTO THE SOURCES OF TREASURE LEGENDS OF TEXAS

By J. Frank Dobie

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?

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, [2] 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. [3] 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. [4] But such advice from the Spanish commanders must not be taken too seriously. Many of them were notorious grafters, 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. [5] 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, [6] 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, [7] 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, [8] thereby giving basis to the most remarkable of all Texas legends, nevertheless, the pioneer settlers of Texas came hither to plough and herd, to trade and labor, not to prospect. [9]

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. [10] 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. [11] 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.” [12] For four centuries the silver mines of 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.” [13]

What wonder then that Sebastian de Benalcazar listened to a lone Indian tell the tale of the Gilded King, El Dorado, [14] 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 más allá, on beyond. The search for La Ciudad Encantada de los Cesares, [15] 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 [16]—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; [17] the mythical wealth of the mythical Amazons; [18] the Laguna de Oro in New Mexico; [19] the Pueblos del Rey Coronado of the West; [20] the Cerro de la Plata, [21] which was perhaps Los Almagres of Texas; [22] the Concho River, bedded with pearls richer than those of the Indies or of the Gulf of California; [23] the “Peak of Gold,” [24] in either Texas or New Mexico; the nebulous treasures of a Casa del Sol; [25] and the Gran Paytiti, or Gran Moxo, [26] 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 [27]—a place that never existed, a people that wandered naked at the heels of the drifting buffalo.

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, [28] “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. [29] 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.

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 [30] 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. [31] 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. [32] The time afforded occasion for the revival of Spanish-Mexican and Indian traditions concerning Spanish mining operations in Texas. Note should be made of the fact that the majority of Texas buried treasure legends presuppose rich mines.

IV

Two kindred qualities of man, hope and credulity, remain to be considered among the sources of treasure legend in Texas. These qualities are not coördinate with the historical forces; rather, they have been acted upon by the historical forces. Yet they have a certain localized source like the legends themselves. For as the tradition of modern treasure goes back to El Dorado, so the Mexicans who lure Americans into the quest of treasure are direct descendants of the Indians who lured the early Spanish. These Indians often pointed the eager Spanish on beyond in order to get rid of them; so the modern Mexican frequently inspires credulity in American treasure hunters in order to gain a small reward.

There seems to be a more or less regular traffic in charts—platas—to buried treasure. One Mexican paid for medicine at a 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. [33] 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. [34] 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! [35]

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.

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 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.

THE LEGEND OF THE SAN SABA OR BOWIE MINE

By J. Frank Dobie

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.” [36]

“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 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. [37] 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”), [38] 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. [39] 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. [40] 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.” [41] The implication from 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. [42] Again, it is claimed that Mexico was preparing to reopen the mines when Iturbide fell in 1823. [43]

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. [44] 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; [45] but this Don Ignacio’s reports of assays have been only a little less ubiquitous than peddled charts. [46] According to a recent United States Government report, the Llano country shows no evidence of gold or silver in paying quantities. [47]

It is true that Miranda was ordered to take thirty mule loads of ore to Mexico to be carefully assayed. According to some traditions, all the ore of Texas mines was transported to Mexico to be smelted; on the other hand, the ruins of sundry smelters have been reported by hunters for the mines. The point is that a great many legends about “seventeen,” “thirty,” or “forty jack loads” of buried bullion may have been derived from the actual transportation of a pack train of crude ore.

II

Where history is doubtful, legend is assured; and a volume of the most engrossing narratives might easily be compiled on the Almagres Mine. The legend, in its color, variety, and luxuriance, has reached into the literature of England and continental Europe, [48] 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, [49] 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.

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. [50] 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.” [51] 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. [52] 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 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. 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. [53] 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 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.

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. [54] 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 a few of the enterprises that have been undertaken to recover the San Saba Mine. I quote from the article: [55]

“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.”

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.