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Title: Legends of Texas : Publications of the Texas Folk-Lore Society Number III (Second Edition)
Author: Various
Language: English
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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
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.
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.
LOST MINES OF THE LLANO AND SAN SABA
By Julia Estill
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
THE CHEST AT ROCK CROSSING ON THE NUECES
General Santa Anna was going from Laredo to Goliad. [56] 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 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.
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 Coffin. [57] 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. [58] 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 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 search of the famed Casa Blanca cache also had directions to this
San Caja treasure.
Dubose and his fellow explorers blasted a certain likely looking rock
off and found under it a tinaja (rock hole) six feet deep, but no
bullion in it.
According to “Uncle” Ben Adkins of Beeville, the San Caja treasure
consists of money that was buried by Mexicans who were on their way to
San Antonio. Just as they got to the Rock Crossing they heard that the
Mexican army was being slaughtered in the Alamo and turned back in such
haste that they left their precious freight on top of the loneliest
“mountain” in Southwest Texas. A Mexican in Austin told me something
like the same tale. He said that a detachment reached the river in
winter time when a big rise was on, were unable to swim their
treasure-laden mules across the flood, and while they were waiting for
the waters to go down, heard that a band of Texans was close on their
heels. They hastily took their freight to the mountain and left it
there.
On the south side of the San Caja are said to be two cowhides of gold
doubloons. Travelers out of the City of Mexico headed for the San
Antonio missions lost their road and, perishing of thirst, began to
look for water in the tinajas and crevices of the rocks. They found a
little, enough for themselves, but not any for their poor beasts, which
were in greater need than the men, for the men had had canteens of
water for a day or two this side of their last watering. The party
really had not traveled a great distance in coming from the Rio Grande,
but they had been wandering lost over a rough country for days, keeping
no general direction. The burros finally played out and the Spaniards
hid their cowhides of doubloons in a crevice and placed over them a
flat rock on which they marked with pear-apple juice a red cross. Over
that they placed a second rock. Joe Newberry got the facts as to this
treasure from a Mexican bandit on the Rio Grande who had come over on
this side in hiding. Dubose actually found two flat rocks stacked up as
if by hand, and under the first he found an Indian arrow-head, but
nothing more.
THE MINES
Five or six miles to the southwest of the San Caja, the Spanish are
believed to have operated a silver mine by the name of Las 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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, 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 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.
LEGENDARY SPANISH FORTS DOWN THE NUECES
By J. Frank Dobie
Many people of pioneer stock in Southwest Texas speak of “a string of
old Spanish forts” that extended from a fortification near Point Isabel
in Cameron County to another near what is now “Old” Pleasanton in
Atascosa. The names of these two extreme “forts” I cannot recall, but
southward toward Laredo from the Pleasanton location was Fort Ewell, on
the Nueces River, in La Salle County. Fifty miles to the east as the
crow flies, but double that distance as the river runs, was El Fortin,
otherwise known as Fort Merrill; next, not more than twelve miles to
the south, and some five or six miles off the river, came Fort Ramirez,
on the Ramireña Creek; sixteen miles southward, again on the Nueces,
was Casa Blanca; near it on the Bluntzer Ranch was Fort Planticlan;
next, due south, Petronita; then, Las Animas; last, the “fort” near
Point Isabel. In such a string the first three so-called forts made a
kind of crescent, and the remainder a long, almost straight, line, the
whole figure resembling an old-fashioned wagon axle-wrench, or gancho.
History, so far as I have read, has nothing to say about this fine
“string of old Spanish forts,” but its existence is often a premise to
legends connected with the several stations. Of the forts in the string
Casa Blanca and Ramirez seem to be the most fertile in legend. As best
I can gather from oral tradition, Fort Ewell and Fort Merrill were
built about 1840 and used by the early settlers and rangers for
protection against the Indians and Mexicans. Both places are mentioned
by the historian Brown, though he has nothing definite on the origin of
either. [59] Other not well identified ruins in Southwest Texas are
frequently pointed out as the sites of old Spanish missions or
presidios. [60]
FORT RAMIREZ ON THE RAMIREÑA
Fort Ramirez is in the southern part of Live Oak County on my father’s
ranch. When I was a boy some of the old rock walls were ten or twelve
feet high, though they were crumbling. As far back as I can remember or
have heard men tell, there were holes that had been made by treasure
seekers all along the walls, inside the room, and for hundreds of yards
out from the place. When I revisited the location last summer, I found
the walls all down, most of the rock lugged to one side, and indeed a
large part of the foundation dug out. Some of the excavated stones
weighed, I dare say, two hundred pounds. The ruins are on the point of
a hill that overlooks the immense but dry bed of Ramireña Creek, which,
nevertheless, back in the days of the open range was nearly always
running, men of that time say. A deep but short gorge called Ramirez
Hollow runs up near the hill.
I
There are two distinct legends about the old place: in one it is a
fort; in the other, an old sheep ranch. Of later years, the fort idea
seems to have gained ground. Mr. E. M. Dubose of Mathis says that he
first got “the straight” of the matter from an old Mexican who was
looking for the Casa Blanca site. According to this Mexican, a band of
bandidos had in early days captured the fort from Spanish priests who
were using it as a kind of ungarrisoned mission. The bandits pillaged
the place of a cross of precious metal, golden candle-sticks, and other
costly paraphernalia, and took up their headquarters in a secret cave a
short distance east of the building. Later they were run out of the
country by the Texans, leaving in the cave all their churchly plunder
as well as much money that they had robbed from freighters and
ranchmen. The problem with treasure seekers has been to locate the
cave, of which there is now no sign.
In trying to make the location, Dubose and his party used at first a
“gold monkey,” or mineral rod. This “monkey” was supposed to oscillate
towards rich mineral until it got over it, then to halt. It oscillated
all right, and under its guidance the treasure seekers dug two holes,
both to the west of the fort.
Then Dubose went to Victoria to consult a famous mulatto fortune
teller. The fortune teller described Fort Ramirez satisfactorily and
said that he could and would locate a buried chest of money near the
place for $500. The agreement was made, and one dark night Dubose drove
the mulatto to the fort. The fortune teller led at once to the north
corner and, walking thence east a few paces, planted his foot down and
said: “Here it is. With this spot as the center, dig a round hole ten
feet in diameter.” The two went back to Wade’s Switch that night, and
when they got there the negro demanded his $500. Dubose told him that
he would have to wait until the money was dug up, and offered to allow
him to be present at the ceremony, but he refused to stay. He declared
that unless he was paid his fee at once, “spirits would move the box”
and that it would be useless for anyone to try to find it.
He was not paid at once, but in spite of the threatened futility of
digging, a few days later two white men, aided by two or three Mexican
laborers, were digging a great hole circumscribing the point marked by
the fortune teller. When they had got down six or seven feet, they came
upon a loose soil that was different in color from the contiguous
earth. It appeared to be “the filling” in some old hole. Hopes became
feverish, but after about a barrel of the extraneous earth had been
removed, the foreign matter petered out, and at the depth of twelve
feet the men quit digging.
II
The legend that I grew up knowing was that the “fort” had been the
ranch of a Mexican or Spaniard named Ramirez who became immensely
wealthy raising sheep. He is supposed to have lived there more than a
hundred years ago. Ramirez had a tunnel connecting his house with the
creek. One time the Indians surrounded him. After withstanding the
siege for days until he saw that he must leave or starve, he buried his
money somewhere within the rock walls, and left by the tunnel. He was
cautious and left in the night, but the next day he was captured,
together with his small household, and all were put to death, leaving
the place of his hidden thousands a secret.
Some people will tell you that it is useless to hunt for the treasure
any longer. They say that fifty years ago Tol McNeill, who owns a
fair-sized ranch adjoining the pasture in which the fort is situated,
found $40,000 there and with the money bought and stocked his land. But
I am sure that hunters for riches around the place are increasing in
number.
Years ago I remember that a white man with a Mexican beside him drove
up to our house in a buckboard. He had come from Runge, seventy miles
northeast. He told my father what he was after and asked permission to
dig at the fort, which was readily granted. His Mexican claimed to have
been digging at the south wall some ten years before when all of a
sudden, just as he was sure that his telache had struck the lid of a
chest, he heard an unearthly yell behind him. He did have enough
presence of mind to kick a few clods back into the hole, which was a
small one; but he had been too much frightened ever to return to the
scene or even to tell anyone of his experience before he found the
patrón that was with him now. I guided the buckboard through the
prickly pear to the fort; when the Mexican got there he appeared never
to have seen it before.
A field was put in near the place and a Mexican jacal built about half
a mile down the creek. The Mexicans living there tell of seeing lights
play around the hill at night, and to them, as to folk of other races,
the lights are a sign of precious metal under the ground.
Last summer a Mexican, named Genardo del Bosque, who has been on the
ranch for a quarter of a century, gave me considerable information
about “la casa de Ramirez.” Antonio de la Fuente, now dead, came to the
country years and years ago as a child with his parents. They had a
little money and as land was then very cheap and as the old fort was
yet in tolerable condition, the walls all standing, and all that it
needed to make it habitable being a roof of thatched beargrass, they
considered buying it. One day while they were approaching it, a white
lion, or perhaps it was a white panther, leaped out, and when they came
within Antonio saw many and various coins on the walls and on the
floor. But he was afraid and so were his parents to touch the coins,
and of course they would no longer consider a purchase. The white
animal was the soul of the dead owner of the treasure there to watch
over it.
However, it is rather strange that Antonio and his parents took none of
the money, for a white object (un bulto blanco) is a good spirit, and a
white cat, a white calf, a white dog, or a white mule, or a woman
dressed all in white may appear to people to lead them to buried
treasure. But if un bulto negro appears, let them look out! The
established Spanish custom in old times was to bury the treasure first
and then over it a dead man. If this dead guardian was not the owner,
then often the spirits of the two are in conflict. Hence, if a man digs
close to the treasure, he is usually frightened away by outlandish
noises heard behind him. The noises are generally as of many chains
(cadenas) rattling and clanking. Since Antonio saw the white panther so
long ago, no strange animals have been observed near the fort, only
lights, lights, always between the fort and the creek, never at the
fort itself.
THE LEGEND OF CASA BLANCA
Old Casa Blanca, which is several miles from the railroad switch by
that name, is on the Nueces River in what is now Jim Wells, but was a
part of Nueces, County. “Of the history of this old ruin,” says Mrs.
Sutherland, [61] “no one knows a word.” The record of it is preserved
in legend alone, and of legends there are many. Mrs. Sutherland links
the place with a certain purported silver mine and recalls a tale of “a
find” made there in 1868.
In its past, Casa Blanca was both Spanish fort and mission. So runs the
legend told by Mr. E. M. Dubose. After the priests left it, it was
occupied by a Mexican sheepman who prospered mightily. Finally he sold
out his sheep and land for cash, but stayed on a while at Casa Blanca
to wind up his affairs. Now the fact that he had thousands and that he
kept them within the walls of the building was corroborated to Mr.
Dubose by a man named Reems, who once lived in Pearsall. Reems stayed
with the old sheepman three or four days just before the latter was
killed and got a hint as to the location of the money. After the
murder, he returned to Casa Blanca and found a worn hole in the very
spot that he had “figured out” to be the hiding place.
Not long after it became known that the sheepman had acquired his cash,
some Mexicans captured him and tortured him until he told where the
money was, whereupon they put an end to his life. At this juncture,
they found that they were being spied on by a second set of robbers.
Under the concealment of night they hid their booty in a kind of rock
pen near the fort, throwing the body of the murdered sheepman on top of
it. They spent the night under protection of the walls, hoping to fight
their way out the next morning.
The battle began at daybreak. The besiegers far outnumbered the
besieged, and in desperation the latter scattered into the brush. There
one of them named Carbal was cut off, and as he fell from a deadly shot
he saw his own younger brother bend over him. It was the brother whom
years ago he had taught the first lessons of outlaw life, and now that
brother in ironic ignorance had paid for the lesson. Carbal understood
the ignorance and with his dying words told where the loot was hid.
Even as he told, the last of his companions was killed.
But the victorious desperadoes were never to reap the golden harvest of
their victory. In the fight they had suffered losses, and now upon
their heels came the terrible Texas Rangers. Retreating towards the Rio
Grande, they were all “naturalized” [62] on Texas soil but one or two
who managed to reach the security of Mexico. From that one or two has
come down to us, in confused form, the story of the rich sheepman, his
lost money, and the blood spilled over it. Ed Dubose got the story,
together with a chart, from an old Mexican whom he made drunk on
tequilla. Later he tried to find the “kind of rock pen” near Casa
Blanca, but could locate no trace of it.
LUTZER’S FIND AT FORT PLANTICLAN
About fifteen miles below Casa Blanca, in Nueces County, not very far
from the Nueces River, and near a huisache lake, are the remains of
what is known as the Planticlan Fort. In a great Indian uprising the
Spanish were forced to evacuate it, and when they did, they left
everything but their guns, including three jack loads of silver
bullion. The retreating Spanish were taken by the Indians and
butchered, with the exception of one man who survived long enough to
reach his people and tell them about the abandoned treasure on the
Nueces.
More than half a century ago three Mexicans came with a chart to seek
that hidden silver. After digging an immense hole, they found it, and
there on the brink of the excavation they were polishing some of the
blackened silver bars when Nick Lutzer happened upon them. (Lutzer is
not the real name.) He was riding after cattle and, hearing low voices
in the brush, he at once suspected cow thieves. He dismounted and,
rifle in hand, crept through the bushes. He had often heard of the
riches supposed to lie in the neighborhood, and so he was not surprised
at the sight that greeted his eyes. The Mexicans were too intent on
their business to sense his presence. Lutzer was a true and quick shot.
He killed two of the Mexicans with his rifle and then drew his
six-shooter in deadly fire on the other. In a minute he rolled all
three of the dead men into the freshly dug pit and covered them.
Later he went to New Orleans, sold the silver ore, and came back and
bought and stocked an immense ranch, which still goes by the name of
the Lutzer Ranch.
TREASURE CHEST ON THE NUECES
By Mary A. Sutherland
Riverside Ranch is in Nueces County on the Nueces River. Fifty years
ago while the owner was putting up a house near a ford, said to have
been used by Indians of the most remote times, a Mexican with three
pack burros came into camp. He and his beasts were travel worn and he
asked permission to camp and rest his stock. The permission was readily
granted, and true to class the Mexican hobbled his burros and then lay
up in the sun and took life easy for several days.
Then the men working on the house noticed that he was apparently
hunting after various herbs and plants and making a close study of the
ground. After he had investigated for about two weeks in his solitary
manner, the Mexican seemed very much depressed. One night he came to
the camp of the Texans and asked for the owner of the land. Then he
told his story. He and his burros had come over the long trail from the
interior of Mexico to seek a buried chest of treasure. His trail had
ended; he had not found the treasure. The history of that treasure he
gave thus:
“When my father was a boy, he left home to go with a party of Spaniards
to the seacoast. They had three big wagons and a grand carriage, the
carriage for the captain, one wagon for the cook, and two wagons for
the guard. They started at midnight from a mine belonging to the
captain, and as they set forth they made a great show to the stars.
They traveled to and across the Rio Grande without trouble, and then,
señor, the sands, [63] the terrible desert. They were days getting
across, and then, with the tough Spanish mules worn to the bone, they
camped in the nearest spot where there was water.
“They prepared to rest for a week, but in the night the Indians
charged, killed one man, and got off with two mules. The party started
again at dawn, the Indians following. The Spanish captain decided to
leave one wagon; so he took out the heavy boxes and put them in the
carriage with himself. Thus the pobrecitos traveled till they came to
the Nueces, on this very trail, and here on this bank they camped. That
night they got out the heavy boxes, and the captain and three men dug a
great hole and buried them, while the rest of the party stood guard.
“At dawn they crossed the river at the ford, hoping somehow to escape
and make it back to Mexico for more guards. Five days later the Indians
came on with a great whoop and every soul was killed except the boy, my
father. He slid out into the tall grass, and after many months got back
home. Now he is muy, muy viejo (very, very old), and he has sent me to
get as much of the gold as I could pack on three burros. They buried
the gold, he says, at the foot of a tree and put some stones above it.
But the tree is gone and there are stones everywhere. I go tomorrow. If
you find the Spanish gold, it is yours. Adios!”
Needless to say, for a few days the woods were full of treasure
hunters, but so far as is known not one was successful. Yet the story
that there is a chest of gold buried on Riverside Ranch has held from
those early days to this time.
THE BATTLEFIELDS OF PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA IN LEGEND
By J. Frank Dobie
The Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma were fought May 8 and
9, respectively, 1846. The battlefield of the latter is about three
miles from old Fort Brown on the Rio Grande.
I
According to John Lewis, who was boss on the Collins Ranch, in Cameron
County, on which is the site of the battle of Palo Alto, seven
cartloads of pay money for the Mexican army were buried on the
battlefield. In proof of the claim, he found a part of an old-fashioned
Mexican cart while he was digging on Agua Dulce Creek, which runs close
to the battlefield.
A Mexican named Santiago in Austin claims that one of his ancestors
helped bury seven cartloads of army money on Palo Alto battlefield.
Taylor’s army was pressing the Mexicans. To save time the Mexicans had
to lighten baggage. The officer in charge of the pay-carts had orders
to bury the money. He told off his detail and ordered them to dig a
trench by a gully or little creek lined with mesquite brush. When the
trench was made, the officer ordered the money transferred to it from
the carts. While the last cartload was being put in the trench,
Santiago’s ancestor ran, for he knew that the men who made the trench
would have to follow the treasure. He had no more than got out of sight
in the mesquites when he heard shots that told very plainly he had
acted prudently in leaving.
II
This account was given to me by Mr. Bob Nutt of Sabinal, who got it
from an old ferryman named Ramón down on the Rio Grande. Ramón claimed
to have been ferryman when the Mexican troops crossed over into Texas
at the beginning of the war between the United States and Mexico.
“It took me three days to get the army over,” Ramón would tell,
“crossing and crossing back, day and night. And, oh señor, I had muchas
ganas (many desires) to go with the troops. There was música, oh, so
lively, and there were the banderas (flags) all bright in the air, and
the men were all happy and singing. But I did not go, and in three days
more here they were back, but without any música or banderas and not
needing any ferry boat. They came in flocks, running and crawling like
tortugas (turtles), and they fell into the water flat on all fours like
tortugas and never stopped till they were into Mexico.
“They had been at the fight of what we call La Resaca de La Palma, and
I was very glad that I had not been with them. They did not have time
even to bring back the señor general’s chest of money or any of the
silver platas that he ate out of. There was a great bulto of it, and it
was left in La Resaca de La Palma. There three tall palms make a
triangle and in the middle of that triangle it is buried. They dug a
hole and put the chest and the silverware and a golden cross in it, and
then filled up the hole and made a great fire on top of it so that it
would look as if some military stores had been burned. And then they
came back here into the river like so many tortugas and los Americanos
were so bravos that no one of those who helped hide away the tesoro
ever would go back to it. Besides, most of them were killed at
Monterrey.”
HOW DOLLARS TURNED INTO BUMBLE BEES AND OTHER LEGENDS
By J. Frank Dobie
This group of legends came to me from an old darkey named Pete Staples.
In them may be seen the blended elements of negro, Mexican, and pioneer
Texan lore. Pete was brought to Texas from Mississippi before the Civil
War. He was raised in the border country among the Mexicans and drove
cattle up the trail to Kansas. He married a Mexican woman and lived for
some time in Mexico. When he told me these stories in 1922 he was
cooking for a Mexican cow camp in Live Oak County. The other hands had
“unrolled their blankets” early, and Pete’s tones were confidential as
we talked by the burnt-out campfire.
I
“One time there was a white man who had got wind of a lot of Mexican
dollars buried down below Roma. He had the place all located, and was
so sure of hisself that he brung in an outfit of mules and scrapers to
dig away the dirt. He was making a reg’lar tank digging down to that
money when a Mexican living down there what I’ve knowed all my life
comed along.
“This Mexican, when he come along clost to the tank that the white man
was digging, stopped a minute under a mesquite tree to sorter cool off,
and when he did he saw a hoe laying down on the ground half covered up
in the dirt. He reached down to pick it up and then he saw a whole
maleta of coins. A maleta, you know, is a kind of bag made out of hide.
This maleta was old and rotten, and when he turned it over with the hoe
it broke open and the gold money jest rolled out in the dirt.
“D’reckly, the Mexican went over to where the white man was bossing the
teams, and he asked him what he was doing. The white man told him that
he was digging up some buried money.
“‘Well, you’s digging where it ain’t no use to dig,’ said the Mexican.
‘The money ain’t there; hit’s over here. If you want to see it, come
along and I’ll show it to you.’
“The white man laughed like he didn’t believe what the Mexican was
telling him, but he come along. When they got to the mesquite there
wa’n’t no money in sight, but there was a hole down at the root of the
tree kinder like a badger hole and bumble bees was going in and out
making a roaring sound and the dirt was fairly alive with great big
bugs, maybe tumble bugs, only they was humming and making a sizzling
noise and working around awful like.
“‘Huh, is this what you call money?’ says the white man, stamping down
on the tumble bugs. ‘I’ll eat all the gold what they roll up.’
“‘That’s all right,’ says the Mexican. ‘There was dollars of gold and
silver too here. But there ain’t now, I admit, ’cause them dollars’s
evidently not intinded for you. White man didn’t hide that money and it
ain’t meant for white man to find it. No matter how much you dig or
where now, you won’t find nothing.’
“Shore enough, the man kept on digging and he didn’t get nothing. One
time I asked the Mexican why he didn’t go back and take out the money.
“‘I didn’t want none of it,’ he said. ‘I never put it in the ground.
’Twa’n’t mine any more’n that white man’s.’
“A few days after he saw the money, though, he went back and scratched
around in the dirt a little and picked up an old Mexican square dollar.
He brung it to Roma and bought some flour and some coffee and some
candy, and give some of the candy to my wife. She was living down there
and knowed the man well and she’s told me many a time how she et some
of the candy that the Mexican bought with that old square Mexican
dollar. I always have thought that that money was intinded for him, but
you know how some people are, and I can’t say as I blame him for not
teching what he hadn’t a right to. If buried money like that is
intinded for a human, he’ll come by it jest easy and nach’ral. If it’s
not, he won’t come by it, no matter how much he hunts. Even if he did
find it and it wa’n’t intinded for him, it ud prove a curse. I’d be
afraid of it myself.”
II
“One time over in East Texas two young fellers was going along when
they met a man. He looked perfeckly nach’ral, and they was clost to a
tree.
“‘Dig there,’ said the man to them, like he knowed that they was
looking for something, which they was. ‘Dig there,’ was all he said,
and when he said that he pointed to the root of the tree.
“They swung down their grubbing hoes and hadn’t more’n scraped the
crust off’n the ground when a great big bulldog come right out of the
earth. He jest fairly appeared like out of nowhere, ’cept that he come
out of the ground. He was monstrous big and sorter white looking, but
he didn’t growl nor nothing. And those fellers never even went back to
get their grubbing hoes.”
III
“Something like the same thing happened down at the old Carmel place
below Lagarto. You know it’s only about two or three miles north of
Casa Blanca, what they tell so much about. I don’t know what the truth
is about that Carmel place, but as sure as you’re bawn, things has
happened there. Some says that Spanish priests buried money there what
they was trying to get back to Mexico with. And Mr. Ed Dubose, once
when I was cooking for him and some other gentlemens that was looking
for buried money, said that he saw the print of an iron box in a hole
close by. The rust was still on the ground all ’round the hole where
the box used to be, and they was jest a day late getting down there.
Some other feller had beat ’em to it—but it’s a good thing, I speck.
There’s an old grave made out of rock and cement at that Carmel place.
“Some says that there’s a mine for silver or gold down there too what
the Spanish used to work, but now it’s hid so nobody can’t find it.
“Some says that there was a man drug to death what was traveling
through with both saddlebags full of money. He was sleeping on his
saddle for a piller and the Mexicans supprised him and roped him and
drug him to death. Old Captain Cox used to have a house close down
there, you know, and sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night
hearing what sounded like a wagon rumbling. He’d get up and go to the
door and couldn’t hear nothing. Then maybe he’d hear d’reckly sounds
like somebody galloping on horses and dragging an old dry cowhide.
Sometimes this dragging and rumbling would go on all night so he
couldn’t sleep. Some Mexican cotton-pickers that was camped there heard
that hide being drug all around their camp one night, and next day they
left.
“Old man Miller was always projecking round trying to get his hands on
that money. He tried to get his pastor what kept a herd of goats down
on the south side of the ranch next to the Carmel place to look out for
signs. One time that pastor discovered that he’d lost a big billy goat
outen his herd. He set out to look for him, and he tramped around for
three days before he comed across ary a track. Then one evening nigh
about sundown he saw the old billy goat standing off on one side of a
ravine and nibbling grass jest as nach’ral as life. He set out to where
the goat was, but when he got there, there wa’n’t nothing but two dead
hackberry trees. It was a nach’ral clearing and there wa’n’t no other
hackberry trees in a mile. He said he knowed those trees was not there
when he started. And he couldn’t find not even a sign of the billy
goat, not even a track.”
IV [64]
“Down there sommers below Realitos there’s an old dug well with six
jack loads of Mexican silver in it, and nobody ain’t never going to get
it neither. How it come there was this way. Six Mexicans was making for
the Rio Grande with it when they was overtaken and killed. But the
bandits that killed them was being followed likewise and didn’t have
time to get away with the silver. The fight had been right by this old
well, and what the bandits did was to shoot the jacks that was not shot
already and to pitch dead Mexicans, jacks, silver and all right into
the well. In the fight that followed, the bandits was cleared out. The
men after them was rangers, I guess. Anyway, one of them found out
somehow about the six jack loads of silver.
“Well, when everything had quieted down like, he went and bought the
land on which the well was placed and set a bunch of Mexicans to clean
it out. Of course, the well had got filled up with dirt and so on from
caving in. After they’d dug a while the Mexicans struck bones. They
hollered up to the white man that they had struck bones and that all
they lacked now was to pull up the goods. The white man, he hollered
down to them that they needn’t do any more digging and for them to come
on up so as to let him down. Nach’rally, being as they had struck them
bones, the Mexicans wasn’t very slow about getting out.
“When the white man got down there, the first thing he done was to grab
hold of a corner of an old maleta what he seen sticking out among the
bones. He jerked it out and it had the dollars in it all right. Then he
looked up and yelled to the Mexicans to pull. He hadn’t more’n got the
words outen his mouth when he seen a tall skileton standing alongside
the wall of that well. Its feet was close to him and it must have been
twenty, maybe forty, feet tall. It reached clear up to the top, and its
face away up there was a-looking down at the white man. He couldn’t
take his eyes offen it, and all the way up while those Mexicans was
a-pulling him slow and jerky he had to look that skileton in the face.
He forgot all about that maleta of money and dropped it back, and when
he clumb out he was so weak that they had to help him on his horse.
They managed to get him home and put him in bed, and that night he
died. And there ain’t nobody what I know of as has undertook to get out
them six jack loads of silver since.”
NATIVE TREASURE TALK UP THE FRIO
By Fannie Ratchford
His name was Zeno, but he answered with equal indifference and slowness
to Bruno, Juno, and Zero. He was a goat-herder who had been hired to
help with the fall shearing, and though he was not more than fourteen
years of age, long following after flocks of goats along dusty roads
had given him the slow, shambling gait of an old man and fixed on his
small, wizened face an expression not unlike that of the patriarchs of
the flocks he drove.
One night at the supper table my cousin expressed disgust that a
certain Mexican, upon whom he had been depending for help with the
shearing, had seen some sort of supernatural light on the mountains,
and had betaken himself off to hunt for the buried treasure that such a
light indicates. As the conversation turned upon the subject of this
superstition, I saw Zeno’s face light up with an expression of interest
and intelligence altogether new to it. But he said nothing. Indeed, I
think, up to that time I had never heard him speak.
After supper, when he and a small boy who lived on the ranch had
withdrawn to the darkness of the lawn, I heard a thin, shrill, defiant
voice saying, “That’s the truth, and anybody can laf that wants to.”
Scenting an interesting story, I joined the boys on the grass, and
asked, “What’s true, Zeno? Tell me the story that you were telling
Wayne.”
“’Tain’t no story, hit’s the gospel truth, and if you’ll take me up
there, I’ll show yer,” was the defiant answer.
After several more questions, I got this story. Near the head of the
Frio River, between Leakey and Concan, there is a mountain with a
rather steep, bald face. Anyone who has the temerity to linger in the
vicinity until night begins to fall will see the tall, willowy figure
of a woman all in white moving slowly down the mountain-side, carrying
a lighted torch in one hand, while with the other she strikes about her
with a rod or switch.
“Where does she come from,” I asked, “from behind the mountain or from
out of the top?”
“She don’t come from nowhere,” was the indignant reply. “She
just—just—”
“Just appears,” I suggested.
“Yeh, just ’pears,” Zeno agreed.
“But what is she striking at?” I persisted.
“At ever’thing, and if she hits yer, you don’t feel no lick. Yer just
have a shivery feeling like a puff of cold, wet wind had struck yer.”
“What is she doing there?” I insisted. “Was there a murder committed
there?”
“She’s a-watching all the money that’s buried in that there mountain,
of course,” was the pitying reply. “Once on a time some Spaniards were
going along there with a lot of money packed on mules, when the Indians
came along, and they had a big fight, and they wus all killed, but
first they had buried their money, and nobody hain’t ever been able to
find it, ’cause they is always a spirit guarding it. Grandma Christmas,
she can tell yer all about it; she’s ’most a hundred years old, and
she’s lived up there ’most since the time of the fight.
“Paw and me, we found some arrerheads up there, and Paw, he’s seen the
spirit with the light and ever’thing.”
“Has your father ever dug for the money?” I asked.
“No, he ain’t never dug on that mountain, but he’s dug in another
place, I ain’t saying where, but not more’n a hundred miles from
there,” he answered mysteriously.
“My uncle, he first seen a light in this here place where Paw dug—a
funny sort of light that didn’ burn anything up—”
“Like Moses and the burning bush,” I suggested, but he ignored my
interruption, and went on.
“—and he first shot through it with his pistol, and then he tried to
touch it with his hand, but he never could get near enough to it. It
always moved away as he went toward it.
“But anyway him and Paw found the right place to dig. They knowed it
was the right place, ’cause they found two machete knives stuck way
down in the ground. They found a funny sort of place, like a well all
walled up with rocks that had been filled in with dirt, and had grass
and everything all grown over it.
“Paw and my uncle taken time about digging and watching, and once when
Paw was digging, he come to the bottom of the well. The bottom was
covered with pieces of flat rock like pieces of pie with their points
together in the middle. Paw started to prize one of these pieces up,
when a bright light flashed right in his face, and he heard a terrible
noise like a hundred men a-running on horses, and fighting, too. He got
out of there quick as he could, but it took him a long time to catch up
with my uncle, who had heard the noise first.
“No, he never did go back there, but he told another man, who did go,
and found the place too, but the man what owned the place run him away.
“Not long after that, Paw went to a fortune teller, and he told him
that they was a whole lot of money right there in that hole, an’ if he
had just lifted the rock on the other side he would a found it, but it
wouldn’t do him any good to go back, for the spirits were watching that
money, and they wusn’t no man on the green earth that could get it
until he could lay them spirits.”
Zeno was now thoroughly warmed up to his subject, and as soon as this
last story had had time to soak in, he started again.
“They’s another place, too, up on the Frio where they’s money buried.
Ever’body knows hit’s there, but nobody ain’t ever been able to find
it. My uncle was hunting up there once, when he found a funny piece of
old, old iron chain, and after a while he saw some rocks with the
funniest kind of marks on them, that wusn’t put there by no white man,
either. He come back to get Paw, and they hunted and hunted for the
place, but they never could find the rocks ner the marks ner nothing.
The fortune teller told Paw that the spirits always turned them away
just when they were about to find the right place.”
“I am sorry you can’t tell me exactly where those places are, Zeno. Do
you suppose your father could tell me?” I asked.
“He kin tell yer all right if he wants to,” was the canny answer. “He
knows where just about all the money in Texas is buried, I guess.”
Needless to say, I took occasion to go to Paw’s place of business not
long after, but found to my disappointment that Paw had gone to
California to pick grapes.
THE SILVER LEDGE ON THE FRIO
By J. Frank Dobie
This legend and others were given me in the summer of 1922 by Mr.
Whitley, a small ranchman of McMullen County. At that time, he was more
than seventy years old, though he was still an eager and agile
horseman. From his front gallery one could see the San Caja Mountain,
which his land ran against. We began talking on the subject of buried
treasure a little after dark, and it was long after midnight before he
suggested that we “unroll our blankets.” When I think of the place, the
time, the man, his tones—the whole environment in which these as well
as other legends were told, I realize that the most faithful
transcription of the words can give hardly more than a shadow of the
original effect.
“When I was a young man I got to know an old, old Mexican at Refugio,
who had been raised by the Indians. His name was Benito. They had
captured him down in the Rio Grande country when he was a boy and taken
him north with them. In those days the Indians were friendly with the
Mexicans at San Antonio, and every year they would come down from the
upper country and trade, but when they got in the vicinity of the San
Antonio settlement they always hid their Mexican captive, keeping him
back with the squaws.
“The main thing that these Indians brought in to trade off to the
Mexicans and Spanish was silver and lead. Benito said he knew that they
were getting it from somewhere about the head of the Frio, but for
years did not know just where, for he was never allowed to go to the
mine. The attempts of Mexican prospectors to get on to the whereabouts
of the mineral made the Indians very particular. Finally, though, they
trusted their captive with the location. He found that there was a vein
of ore. It seemed to be a lead and silver compound almost solid. From
it the Indians simply chopped off bars to be used in trading or in
moulding bullets.
“Now, as old Benito used to tell, after he was grown he slipped away
from the Indians, and with two or three Mexicans that he took in as
partners went back and tried to get the ore himself. The Indians got on
his trail, though, and killed his companions before the party ever got
to the ore. He alone escaped, and for years and years he was afraid to
go back.
“When I knew him he was over a hundred years old, I am pretty sure, and
he would tell me often about the rich silver vein. I wanted to go in
search of it, and he thought that he could make the trip in spite of
his feebleness if we fixed it so that he could ride in a hack. He knew
that he could find the mine if he ever got up the Frio Canyon, but he
would not go unless a good-sized party went. He said that he would pick
six Mexicans to go and that I could pick six white men.
“Well, we got everything about ready, wagons, provisions, and so forth,
when the man in our party who was bearing most of the fitting-out
expense up and took down sick. So we naturally had to put the trip off.
The man got well, and a while after that we got ready to go again. But
luck seemed to be against us, and the old Mexican guide was taken down.
It was out of the question for him to go. He was dying. He gave us,
though, the clearest directions he could and thought that we could
follow them. From what he said, the vein of silver could not be got to
horseback. It was in the south bank of one of three arroyos that ran
into the Frio close together. At it the creek made a sharp turn, and a
man would have to get down and go afoot along the bank. No doubt it was
concealed, for the Indians always covered it up well after they had
hacked off what they wanted. The old Mexican said that if he could only
get one sight of the lay of the land, he could tell which one of the
three arroyos the vein was in. But he never got that sight; so he gave
the best way-bill he could and died.
“The treasure hunting party broke up and things rocked along for years
without me doing anything. Meanwhile a brother-in-law of mine had moved
into the upper Frio country. I decided to go up and visit him and my
sister, and to find the ore at the same time. I took my dogs along, and
the first thing we struck the very first morning that we rode out to
look up those three creeks was a bear. Well, sir, I got to hunting
bear, and we never did get to hunting that silver, and to this day I
know good and well that if I had left my dogs at home, I’d a had it.
“I say I know, because my brother-in-law found it after I left. I gave
him the directions and he agreed to notify me if he made the find.
Well, he made it and was leaving his place to come down the country to
tell me, when he was murdered in cold blood. But that is another
matter. He had confided to his wife about finding the silver and told
her the purpose of his trip, warning her not to tell anybody. Of
course, after his death she told me all that she knew; he had never
told her, though, where he had located the vein.
“You see I have known two living witnesses to that treasure. There is
enough of it to make anybody rich. If I just had time, I believe that I
could go and find it yet.”
LOST MINES NEAR SABINAL
By Edgar B. Kincaid
I
THE QUICKSILVER MINE OF THE RANGERS
When the Sabinal country was just settling up, a company of rangers
camped for some time about four miles north of Sabinal on the Sabinal
River. They often practiced shooting, and some of the men from ranches
round about practiced with them. Then the rangers were ordered on.
Thirty or more years passed. One day one of the old rangers showed up
in Sabinal in search of their former camp. He looked around for a
while, took no one into his confidence, and quietly left. Within a
short time he returned with another member of his all but forgotten
company. They secured the help of some of the oldest settlers and
definitely located the old camp site. Next, the former rangers drew up
a contract with the owner of the land allowing them to mine
quicksilver. Then they told their story.
When they were camped in the Sabinal country in the early seventies,
one of the members of the company shot a ground squirrel on the edge of
its hole. On picking up the dead squirrel, he bent so that he could see
into the hole. The sun was shining at just the right angle to throw a
light down it; it must not have been very deep. Anyway, what the ranger
saw in the bottom of the hole was quicksilver. He got a can, dipped up
some of it, and passed it around for his comrades to examine. Some of
them rubbed their guns with it.
The old rangers started to work and dug many trenches about the former
camp site, but they could never find a sign of what they were after.
That site is near a great fault that has exposed millions of tons of
igneous rock. It is said that quicksilver is sometimes found under just
such conditions; but to this day the quicksilver once glimpsed by the
rangers has not been found, and their story has passed into the
tradition of the country.
II
LOST LEAD MINE
North of Sabinal in early days lived a ranchman named Hoffman. He had
come from California, and he used to sell lead to occasional settlers
who went to his cabin to buy it. One day Will and High Thompson,
brothers, were helping Hoffman brand calves on his ranch, now known as
the Nixon Ranch, when they said something about needing lead to mould
into bullets. Hoffman said that he had plenty and that if they would
keep on working he would get them all that they wanted. The Thompson
boys kept on working; Hoffman rode away, and in about two hours
returned with the lead. He said that he had got it out of his mine and
that just as soon as he could sell his cattle he was going to work the
mine. He did sell his cattle soon afterwards, but almost immediately
was killed by the Indians.
The Thompson brothers then began to hunt for the mine. One day while
they were searching, High called out to Will to come and see “this
great, big, blue cow chip.” The cow chip proved to be lead. They were
at the mine. Very shortly afterwards, Will, who was always leader, was
killed either by Indians or by robbers. The mine was forgotten for a
time, and the land passed into hands of people who would not allow any
but their own kin to hunt for the lead.
In after years Henry Taylor, a brother-in-law of the land-owner, got
High Thompson to try to locate the mine again. He made a location and
sank several shafts, but never found any lead. The mine is still a lost
mine, talked about by many and perhaps even searched for by some.
THE NIGGER GOLD MINE OF THE BIG BEND [65]
By J. Frank Dobie
Wherever men talk of the Bowie Mine, of the Rock Pens, of lost mines of
the West, they tell of the Nigger Gold Mine. The site of Reagan Canyon
varies from south of Dryden in Terrell County to a hundred and
seventy-five miles west in Brewster County, in some accounts being
identified with Maravillas Canyon. Likewise, the gold lead shifts from
one side of the Rio Grande to the other. Mr. Carl Raht has put into
print an account of the Nigger Gold Mine [66] but he has not stressed
the legendary features. For material I am indebted to R. R.
(“Railroad”) Smith of Jourdanton, who got his information from Tex
O’Reilly and others who know Campbell, the railroad conductor; also to
Edgar Kincaid of Sabinal and West Burton of Austin. I tell the legend
as it is told, not as history would sift it.
The Reagan brothers were camped down close to the Rio Grande in the Big
Bend country on a canyon that now bears their name. Reagan Canyon opens
into the Rio Grande, affording an excellent passage for stock, and the
Reagans used it to smuggle stolen cattle and horses back and forth
between Mexico and the United States. Some say that they were in
partnership with a gang of horse thieves that operated “a chain” all
the way to the Arbuckle Mountains in Oklahoma.
One time when one of the Reagan boys was in Valentine he came across a
negro tramp. He picked him up in his spring wagon and brought him back
to camp and put him to work. Not long afterwards a horse got loose with
a saddle on—some say with merely a drag-rope—and the men in camp
scattered out to find him. When night came and the men returned, nobody
had found the horse, but the negro rode in with a morral full of
something heavy, and calling off one of the Reagan men, he said, “Mr.
Reagan, jes’ looky here; I’se found a brass mine.”
“Damn your brass mine,” said Reagan as he scattered the contents of the
morral with a kick. “I’m not feeding you to hunt brass mines. Why in
the hell didn’t you find that horse? He’s got a new saddle on him worth
three brass mines.”
With that the negro kept still, and next morning early all hands turned
out again to hunt the lost horse. About six or seven miles out from
camp the same Reagan brother who had kicked the morral met the negro
circling towards him. They exchanged observations; neither had found
any sign of the horse. “But, Mr. Ben,” went on the negro, “we’se right
over here now clost to that brass mine. Lemme show you.”
It was along late in the afternoon and Reagan was fretted and hungry.
“I told you once,” he blurted out, “that I didn’t care anything about
your mine. What I want is that horse, and I’m a damn sight hungrier for
some frijoles than I am for brass anyhow.”
The two horse hunters parted, and when the negro got into camp that
night the cook called him off and told him that “Mr. Ben” was “on the
warpath.” And here the story prongs. According to one version, the
Reagans saw that they had antagonized the negro and that he was going
to leave. Their pasture was full of stolen stock at the time and they
did not want the negro to talk; so they forthwith shot him and pitched
him into the Rio Grande. Mr. J. M. Kincaid of San Antonio, who years
ago ranched in the Big Bend, says that this is a confusion of stories,
that a negro was pitched into the Rio Grande all right, but that some
train robbers drowned him because he would not go in with them as he
had promised to do.
According to the more prevalent version, the negro culled a stray horse
from the Reagan remuda—some say a fine Reagan stallion—and made back
east or else into Mexico. After he was gone and the Reagans had cooled
down, they began to think about the “brass” and picked up some of the
ore that had spilled out of the morral. They saw that it was rich in
gold. Then they tried to get the negro back, spending and offering
large sums in the attempt. The negro heard of the efforts and hid out
the farther. He thought that the white men were after him for taking
the horse. The Reagan boys searched in every direction for the gold
deposit, meantime continuing their stealing and smuggling. Later the
Rangers came down into the Big Bend and broke up the gang. They killed
one of the boys, one died, one went to Mexico, where he now lives with
the Yaqui Indians.
But when he left, the negro had held on to his samples of ore. He knew
that he had something valuable. He sent specimens to be assayed at El
Paso and Denver. The analysis showed either ninety-two per cent gold or
else $92,000 gold to the ton, the figures vary. No matter how rich the
ore, however, he was afraid to go back into the Big Bend. He
disappeared. Other people than the Reagans had heard of the negro and
his “mine” and they set to searching for both. It is estimated by some
men that fully $20,000 have been spent in trying to find the negro.
Some say that he died in Louisiana; some, that he is still in Mexico. I
know one man who claims to have known him in Monterrey a good many
years ago. There the negro went by the name of Pablo, had a peculiar
scar on his face, was a noted drinker and gambler, rode a fine horse
often at full speed down the street, whooping and shooting. He always
had plenty of money, and it was claimed that he loaded two pack horses
every three months with ore from his secret mine.
But the real story of the Nigger Mine is forever linked with the name
of Campbell. Campbell was a conductor on the Southern Pacific Railroad.
He is yet living in San Antonio and may enjoy in life the legendary
fame that only a few men attain to in death. Before the negro left
Texas, he gave Campbell some of his ore. Campbell had it assayed, with
the same rich results that the negro’s assays had shown. He quit work
to go out and see the mine. Then he discovered that the negro had
stolen a horse and run away. He tried to find the mine himself and
failed. All that he knew was that it was within seven or eight miles of
the old Reagan camp. He spread abroad offers of a high reward for
information that would lead him to the negro. Thus the whole country
came to know about the mine and to search for it.
Then the excitement gradually died down and people had begun to talk
about ordinary subjects when a miner by the name of Fink who had taken
up the search found, or claimed to have found, the mine. He confided
his success to some friends, who decided to take the mine for
themselves. Under the guise of friendship they went with him to El Paso
to help him file his mineral claim. As yet he had told no one of the
exact location of the deposit, and their plan was to get him drunk
enough to talk and then to double-cross him. They gave him all the
whiskey that he could drink and he had “a high old time.” He drank too
much whiskey to talk at all. In fact, he drank so much whiskey that it
killed him, and with him died his secret.
But Campbell had not given up. He alone of all the searchers has been
consistent and persistent. Others have searched far and near, now on
one side of the Rio Grande and now on the other. He has kept to his
eight mile radius. He grub-staked an old Dutch prospector to search,
giving him a pair of burros and telling him that he might go away from
camp as far as a burro might take him out and back in a day. Solitary,
often not seeing a human being for months, the old Dutchman examined
ledge after ledge, rock after rock. He was looking for a kind of blue
rock. Then one day he found it! He put some of the ore on his pack
burro, loaded on his bed and a little “grub,” and started for
Valentine. On the road he got sick. He was feeble anyhow. When he
reached Valentine he was too sick to talk. Only the ore in his pack
told his tale. He died before he could give directions to his find.
Campbell has had other men searching since. All he knows to tell them
is that they may search as far as a burro will walk out and back in a
day. But who knows that the old Dutchman did not tire of his tether and
wander out in the mountains, camping where night overtook him, and that
he did not make his discovery far out?
Some say that there never has been a mine, that the negro merely
stumbled on some ore that a certain old California prospector with a
sense of humor had “salted out.” Some say that the negro found a lead
under a cliff that later caved down and covered it up. Who knows? What
does it all mean? Romance.
MYSTERIOUS GOLD MINE OF THE GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS
By Marvin Hunter [67]
Twenty years ago, an old Mexican, of Tularosa, who had been captured by
the Mescalero Apaches when five years old, related that his captors
took him along on a hunting trip to Guadalupe Mountains and that while
there he saw them gathering nuggets of gold in a gulch.
A Mescalero Apache informed the late G. W. Wood, of El Paso, for whom
he worked in the Jarilla mines, that if he sought gold, he should go to
the mountains called “Smoky” over the line in Texas, where ... his
people used to go and gather gold.
Another story is that of John Kilgore, a Texan and a man of undoubted
veracity, who said that an old Mexican once told him that he was
captured by the Indians when he was about fourteen years old. One day,
the Indian who kept him in his wigwam in the Guadalupes called him to
his side, blindfolded him, and led him into the fastness of the
mountains, telling him to sit down on a flat rock and wait for his
return, which he did. The Indian went away and in a short time returned
with a buckskin sack filled with gold. This he handed to the Mexican
boy, gave him a pony, and told him to go back to his people. The
Mexican said he afterward tried to locate the place shown him but could
never do so.
Green Ussery, a rich cattleman of West Texas, was walking along a gulch
near the Chico Ranch in the Guadalupes when he saw Lee Church, a friend
who was with him, pick up a gold nugget from the ground, worth $20.
Several years ago, Cicero Stewart, under sheriff of Eddy County, New
Mexico, was up in the mountains hunting for the lost mine. He relates
that “Grizzly Bill,” a cowboy, was in camp in the Russell Hills of the
Guadalupe Mountains, and came across a gold deposit. He abandoned his
cattle and went to Pecos, where he had a great spree, displaying his
gold. While trying to ride a wild horse he was thrown off, breaking his
neck.
F. H. Hardesty, residing in El Paso, was induced to relate his own
experience as follows:
“About a year and a half ago, Lucius Arthur stopped at my place to get
water for himself and pack animal, and remained over night. Becoming
confidential, he divulged to me the secret that he was making a trip to
a mountain range, three days’ journey due east, for the purpose of
trailing two Mexicans who left Ysleta the night before.
“He said he had followed them at other times nearly to the mountain,
but had been compelled to return before reaching it for want of ‘grub’
and water. He was known as ‘Frenchy’ in Ysleta, being a native of
France. He had been professor of athletics in Austin, Texas, and while
there heard a story about these two Mexicans, and had come to find the
gold mine they visited.
“One Mexican, he said, would come from down in Mexico, and meet the
other (his brother-in-law) in Ysleta, and start out in the dead of
night horseback. The one from Mexico belonged to a wealthy old family
who had known for generations about the mine and had kept the location
a secret. But some member of the family would go every year and bring
back gold.
“I told Arthur he ought to be better equipped for the journey, and
offered to stake him with all funds needed. He accepted my offer and
agreed to take me as a partner. He left with two months’ supplies and
good equipment. After an absence of a month and a half, he returned,
saying that he had at last found the hidden mine, and brought me as a
proof plenty of rich gold quartz broken off the ledge near the brink of
a chasm, which he could not descend into, because its walls were
perpendicular. He stayed with me a few days, and providing himself with
a strong rope, set out for the mine. This chasm was 80 feet long, east
and west, by 40 feet wide, he said.
“From his place of concealment, he said, he saw one of the Mexicans
descend by a rope, and bring out several filled sacks. After their
departure he slipped down to the place and saw a large opening like a
cave in the vein, 60 feet down. The chasm appeared to have widened to
100 feet at that point. Loose broken rock in front of the cave showed
that work had been done lately. He was unquestionably at the place
where the Mexicans had for generations got their yellow gold.
“Frenchy never returned to me,” concluded Mr. Hardesty.
But the most realistic and marvelous story of gold, in comparison with
which the stories of the lost “Cabin Mine” and “Nigger Ben Mine” and
similar legendary mines pale into insignificance, is one familiar to
nearly every one in Roswell and Carlsbad, New Mexico, and told by
cowboys and ranchmen in the winter nights around their camp fires in
the Guadalupe Mountain country.
It is the story of a mystery—that of a lost gold mine in the highest
and most precipitous, canyon-rent, and rugged mountains in the
Southwest, rising 5000 feet above the plains. The lost mine in the
fastness of this range is a gold mine (as the story goes) that is
fairly bristling with the precious metal; its value is estimated at
millions, and it is known in Texas and New Mexico as the “Lost Sublett
Mine.”
Two men now living have actually seen this famous mine, but neither now
remembers its exact location. One is Ross Sublett, son of the original
discoverer, who is a prominent business man of Roswell, New Mexico. The
other is Mike Wilson, a former crony of “old man Sublett,” who is
believed to be on his death bed in a little hut in the Guadalupe
Mountains, vainly trying to remember the location of probably one of
the richest gold mines in the world.
“Old Ben Sublett” was a native of Missouri, and belonged to an old
family of that name in St. Louis. In early life the “call of the wild”
and the lure of gold led him to go to the Rocky Mountains with his
young wife and three babies, whom he took on all prospecting trips. For
years luck never favored him, and while others found mines and grew
rich, he continued poor. He was in rags, and his wife and children were
hungry. They passed through the Guadalupes and finally settled in
Odessa, Texas. Here they made their home in a little hut. Mrs. Sublett
did washing and sewing to support the children, while Sublett worked on
a ranch just long enough to get money to buy a “rickety old buckboard
and a bony horse.”
He spent most of his time in the Guadalupes. He had the “hunch” that in
its labyrinthine solitudes he would find gold. Occasionally he brought
in a little nugget, hardly of value enough to buy grub for his return
trip. His wife vainly begged him to quit the mountains, to settle down
to some vocation in which was a sure living; he was stubborn, taking no
advice from anyone.
Although the mountains were then filled with the bloodthirsty Mescalero
Apaches, ever ready to kill the lonely prospector or trapper, Sublett
never carried arms, and by some strange fate was never molested. The
old prospector laughed at those who warned him and advised him to be
careful. These trips continued; and every time he returned, his return
was a surprise to the people of the town. They scoffed at his crazy
mode of life.
One day the old man drove up to Abe Williams’ saloon and strode boldly
to the bar, inviting everybody present to “join” him. They thought that
he was joking, as he was supposed to be penniless, but when Old Ben
threw down a buckskin sack filled with nuggets and said that he had
found a rich gold mine and could buy out the whole town and have plenty
left, the crowd was wild with excitement. He went out to his buckboard
and dragged in a canvas sack filled with gold so pure, it is said, that
a jeweler could hammer it out. “My friends, have all the drinks you
want,” he said, “for I have at last found the richest gold mine in the
world. I can buy Texas and make a backyard out of it for my children to
play in.”
After that Sublett would frequently slip out to the mountains and
return in less than ten days with about $1500 worth of gold. He built a
fine home for his family, and of course made many “prosperity” friends.
All tried to get him to show them the location of his mine, but he
would shake his head and say: “If anyone wants my mine, let him go and
hunt for it like I did. I hunted twenty-four years and wasted the best
part of my life at it. The valley of the Pecos and the peaks of the
Guadalupes are my home; I want to be buried there when I die, and I am
going to carry this secret to the other world, so that for years and
years people will remember me and talk about the rich gold mine ‘that
old man Sublett found.’ I will give them something to talk about.”
His son, Ross Sublett, who has made several attempts to find the mine,
says: “I have a faint recollection of it. I was only a small boy when
my father took me there. We drove out in an old buckboard. I know the
mine was about six miles from a spring. The spring is in what is known
as the Russell Hills of the Guadalupes. I paid no attention at the time
as to where we went, and was always glad when my father was ready to
return home. Father got the gold out of a hole or cave, but it seems
that it was in plain sight on the ground outside of the cave. When my
father was on his death bed I tried to get him to tell me how to go
back, but he said it would be useless, that I could never find it.”
Sublett once described the mine to Mike Wilson, who afterward went out
to the Guadalupes and found the mine. He emptied his sack of
provisions, and put in as much gold as he could carry and began the
journey back home. Without recuperating from the effects of the hard
trip, Mike went on a spree for three weeks, and when again he tried to
go to the mine he became bewildered and lost his bearings.
Old Ben Sublett just laughed at Wilson’s bewilderment, and refused to
direct him again. He refused to tell anyone else where it was. “If
anybody wants it, let him go and hunt for it like I did,” was all he
would say. Later Sublett died and carried the secret with him. This was
eighteen years ago.
LOST COPPER MINES AND SPANISH GOLD, HASKELL COUNTY
By R. E. Sherrill
[Haskell, King, and Stonewall counties all corner near the junction of
the main forks of the Brazos, and this legend told by Mr. Sherrill
should be read in conjunction with the one immediately following told
by Mr. Bertillion. It makes no difference that one legend has to do
with a copper mine and the other with a lead mine. One could probably
find another that has to do with a silver mine in the same vicinity. I
must think that both legends go back to the same tradition. And the
tradition of a mine—some kind of a mine—up the Brazos is very old. It
began with Spanish credence in an Indian story; the earliest American
settlers in Texas carried it on. In 1774, years after Los Almagres
mines were abandoned, De Mézières reported men gone in search of mines
which Indians said were “in the direction of the Brazos de Dios.” [68]
In 1823 Daniel Shipman and two other men, guided by “an old Red River
hunter,” went up the Brazos River to Flint Creek (which I have been
unable to identify) on the west side in search of “an inexhaustible
silver mine.” [69] It proved to be red clay. In 1836 the Reverend David
B. Edward was strong in his belief in a mountain of iron on the
headwaters of the Brazos—as well as in an abundance of gold and silver
on the branches of the Colorado. [70]—Editor.]
As far back as the first settlement of white men in this part of the
state, a tradition has been floating around through the country that at
some indefinitely early date Spanish prospectors worked copper mines a
little above the junction of the two main branches of the Brazos River,
the Salt Fork and the Double Mountain Fork, in what was formerly a part
of Haskell County but is now included in Stonewall County. Furthermore,
they are supposed to have had, and left here, a vast quantity of gold.
Various people have come from unknown parts hunting this supposed
treasure, but no special headway was made until, in 1907 or 1908, a
large old gentleman, whose name I cannot now recall, suddenly appeared
in our sleepy little town from somewhere on the Mexican border and
quietly began inquiring about the topography of the country and the
tradition of Spanish treasure. Having learned all that he could, he
took into his confidence a few select men and explained to them that he
had gathered certain definite information from reliable Mexicans on the
Rio Grande, and that he proposed to search for the key to the hidden
wealth.
Adding his own information to what he heard from the native people, the
stranger gradually let out a tale that ran somewhat as follows. At an
early date, when Spanish miners were gathering great quantities of gold
in Mexico, a company of them, in search of further treasure, had
wandered far to the northwest, taking with them a large store of the
precious metal. In their wanderings, directed by some Indian or by
their own keen instinct for such things, the Spanish had located the
copper mines on the Brazos and had proceeded to work them. In some way
they aroused the hostility of the native Indians and were in danger of
massacre. They hastily hid their treasure and escaped for their lives.
Before leaving they made a plat of the country, carefully noting
directions and distances from prominent points of nature. This plat
they took with them, but the Indians continued so hostile that they
could never return to take away their gold. Amidst the turmoil and
dangers of Mexico at that time, the plat was delivered for safe-keeping
to a faithful Mexican convert who was attached to the Spanish party. It
remained in his hands until the old man, approaching death, delivered
it to some friend or to a member of his family as a passport to immense
wealth. Thus the plat passed along for two or three generations until
Texas fell into the hands of the hated gringos and it became certain
that no poor Mexican could ever get possession of the treasure.
Finally, for some small favors and a little money, a Mexican turned the
plat over to the American who had now come with it and its tale to
Haskell County.
Here he organized a small company to assist him in locating and digging
up the treasure. The plat was guarded most carefully and its
information kept most secret. But the detailed intricacy of that
information was very confusing to the possessors of it. The map covered
a large territory, including the two branches of the Brazos, Kiowa
Peak, and numerous minor features of the vicinity. It called for many
specified rocks and many marked trees. The rocks had been covered with
soil or the markings on them had been weathered away. Most of the trees
had perished in fires long years past. An explanation was given to some
of the signs, but the meaning of more had to be guessed at.
The search was thorough and long continued, and a deal of money was
spent in digging. Most of the prospecting was right along the river,
and a Mexican who was herding sheep in the neighborhood began to enter
into the counsels of the treasure hunters. He said that the Mexican
government knew all about this treasure, that it knew, too, of five or
six very rich mines in Texas, some of them the richest in the world,
but that it would never reveal these secrets to Americans. He added
that certain priests in Mexico could locate this treasure that was
being sought on the Brazos.
Thus the Mexican pastor convinced the treasure seekers that he knew
something about the matter, and to use his information they made him a
partner. As soon as he was made a partner, he announced that if a
certain rock was found with a certain letter on it, the picture of
which he drew, he could find the gold. Only a few days after this, the
party did uncover, about eight or ten inches under the surface of the
soil, a rock that they called the “Spider Rock.”
The rock had many curious markings on it, among them the letter H, in
curious old Spanish chirography, as the Mexican had called for. He
pretended to explain the markings on the rock. He said that the little
hill on which the Spider Rock was found was underlaid with the “base
rock”; that underneath the “base rock” were buried a great many bodies;
and that nineteen steps to the west of the dead bodies would be found
buried a large bone of some prehistoric animal. He said that in
excavating the diggers would find a kind of wall, as if a trench had
been dug and then filled in with a much harder substance.
Fired with hope, the treasure hunters set to digging for the “base
rock.” They did find a wall of very firm substance, wider at the top
and narrower at the base, as if a trench had been filled in. When they
had got down some fifteen or nineteen feet, they were met by such a
stench that they could hardly work. They found a great many decayed
bodies and many relics of various kinds. Furthermore, at the specified
distance, they found the bone of the prehistoric animal. It was of
about the thickness of a man’s body and very porous.
The Mexican now directed that the diggers go to the bluff a little
farther to the west. He said that there they would find under a rock a
great bone like the first and other things buried by the Spaniards. The
bone was found, and with it were an old-fashioned sword, some copper
ornaments thought to be epaulets, some silver ornaments also, about
forty-two gold buttons, and a great number of beads.
But here ended the findings. A majority of the relics found were placed
in Doctor Terrell’s drug store at Haskell, and were lost in a fire
about 1909. The treasure hunting expedition is said to have turned up
more than an acre of ground, the depth of the excavations varying from
a slight distance to nineteen or twenty feet. The diggers dispersed to
their farms, the large man from the border left, and after remaining
around a few weeks the Mexican disappeared. Many men think that he knew
more than he would tell. Not long after he vanished, a skeleton was
found several miles to the east across the river, in the opposite
direction from that in which the Mexican had led the Americans. Near
the skeleton were two small, heavy copper pots, one shaped oblong
somewhat in the form of a canoe, the other round and of the capacity of
a gallon and a half, built much stronger than any vessel now made for
commerce and capable of holding itself full of the heaviest metal. The
popular conclusion is that the Mexican took from these copper vessels
at least a part of the vast Spanish treasure. A man in Haskell now is
trying to organize an expedition to seek the remaining part of the
treasure and to gather more relics.
Nearly every man of that searching party of seventeen years ago was a
friend of mine. I wish to give an illustration of the sanguine nature
of these treasure seeking folk. At one time the party believed that
they were within a foot or two of their treasure, but they feared to
uncover it before they had made arrangements to take care of it. They
were afraid, so one of them confided to me, to put much of the money in
local banks, lest the banks be robbed; they wished, he said, to entrust
it to our private vault, where no one would suspect its presence. I
agreed to take care of the money and was to be notified a little after
midnight. The amount to be deposited was $60,000 in gold. I was never
called to open the vault.
Regarding the copper mines that the Spanish are said to have worked in
this country, I can add little. It is known that a company of wealthy
men, principally from Baltimore and Washington, came out near Kiowa
Peak in 1872 to locate a copper mine. H. H. McConnell, “Late Sixth U.
S. Cavalry,” in a book published in 1889, Five Years a Cavalryman, page
294, gives a concise account of the expedition. It consisted, he says,
of about sixty men and was almost luxuriously provided for. Its
distinguishing feature was the character of its “bosses,” ranging as
they did from a Virginia congressman of ante bellum days to an
orientalist named Kellog, and including Professor Roessler, “sometime
State Geologist of Texas.” According to McConnell, who was with the
party, it did little but travel leisurely and “locate ten or twelve
sections of land” near Kiowa Peak. The clue on which it set forth was a
report of copper deposits on the Wichita and Brazos rivers made by some
prospectors who had been driven back by Indians before the Civil War.
LOST LEAD MINE ON THE BRAZOS, KING COUNTY
By L. D. Bertillion
Thirty-five years ago, at some horse corrals on Chickamauga Creek, just
west of Dalton, Georgia, I heard Thomas Longest tell of having
discovered a ledge of lead on the Salt Fork of the Brazos. I do not
know whether this story is popularly told or not. Longest did not, I
think, leave a way-bill to the mine.
In 1886, Thomas Longest of New York City decided to travel
southwestward in search of a basis for horse dealing. He settled in
Dalton, Georgia, forming a partnership with Luke Callaway, and
established a livery, feed, and sale stable. In 1887, horses went up in
price, and the partners came to Texas to buy five carloads of horses.
They bought the horses; and then Longest remained to look over the
country.
On the east side of the Brazos River at a point where the Double
Mountain Fork intersects with the Salt Fork, Longest saw a steer with a
very fancy head of horns. He desired to have the horns removed from the
animal that he might send them to a friend in New York. Upon learning
what he wanted, however, the cowboy who was with him told him that
these horns were little compared to what might be found a day’s ride to
the northwest. Longest promptly set out to make the ride, the cowboy
going with him only far enough to show him a crossing safe from the
quicksands, and telling him the general direction of trails to what he
designated as the Croton Creek.
After he had ridden a good many hours, a storm came up, and Longest
took shelter in a break of a very rough and desolate looking country.
Here, back under the bank of a canyon, he noticed a rusty piece of
iron. Upon closer investigation, he found it to be an old pick. With it
he prized around in the dirt and uncovered the remains of a shovel.
Longest kept on investigating and presently discovered a ledge of ore.
From it he broke off a piece weighing about four and one half pounds.
He was sure that it was silver and returned to Georgia at once.
As soon as he had disposed of his horses in the East, he sent the ore
to New York to be assayed. To his great disappointment, it was
pronounced lead, but seventy per cent pure—a valuable find.
Longest at once set about interesting a mining company in the ore and
by the spring of 1888 had arranged to show its representative the mine.
However, during his trip the year before he had contracted a severe
cold, which developed into tuberculosis. He put off the trip in the
hope of getting better, but in a few months he was dead.
Thus became a second time lost what is perhaps one of the richest lead
mines in America. From the descriptions and directions given by
Longest, it would appear that it is located in either Stonewall or King
County, more likely in the latter.
THE ACCURSED GOLD IN THE SANTA ANNA MOUNTAINS
By J. Leeper Gay
[I have little doubt that the negro who figures in this legend is a
survival of the Moor, “Black Stephen,” who preceded Coronado’s gold
seeking expedition of 1541, though the real “Black Stephen” never
returned to Mexico to tell his tale.—Editor.]
This story was told me by a Mexican who said that he heard it from his
grandfather in Sonora, Mexico. It well represents the many legends that
cluster around the so-called Santa Anna Mountains and are believed in
by various inhabitants of that region. It is a tradition of the country
that the mountains and town are erroneously named; that they should be
called Santana instead of Santa Anna, it being believed that the Indian
chief often referred to as Santa Anna was really named Santana. He is
supposed to lie buried among the mountains in a cave stuffed with gold
from the San Saba mines. The Spanish had started with a few cart loads
of it on their way to St. Louis, when they were overtaken in a certain
mountain pass. This pass was frequently used by the Spanish at San
Saba, according to legend, in order to communicate with another fort at
what is now Colorado, Texas.
Years and years past while Mexico was still under Spanish rule, stories
came sifting down far into Mexico that somewhere in Colorado was a
great tribe of Indians with many sacks of gold in their tepees. Finally
a troop of cavalry was fitted out and sent north to explore, and if
there was gold to bring it back. Hardened raiders as they were, even
they had fear of such a long and wild adventure. At last they came into
the region where the tepees of gold were believed to be situated. They
made a swift attack, which was fiercely resisted, but all they found
was about fifty pounds of gold dust and gold nuggets.
The repulsed Indians rallied and made a counter attack. The Spanish
were driven back. They retreated slowly, in good order, steadily
followed by the Indians. At each attack upon their rear, the Indians
became fiercer, bolder, and stronger in numbers. The exhausted
Spaniards were losing hope of ever reaching the Rio Grande with their
lives, much less their treasure. A month after their assault on the
Indian village, they were camped for the night on a little creek not
far from what are now called the Santa Anna Mountains in Coleman
County. A lookout who had been dispatched in the late afternoon to make
observation from the nearest mountain had not returned. At dark all
fires were extinguished and the camp waited. Some time before midnight
the lookout dashed in to report that a large band of Indians was
advancing within a few miles. The commander of the expedition ordered
his men to entrench themselves as best they could and to maintain
silence. With them was a very strong negro who had acted as a kind of
guide. He was well able to dig a hole for the gold, and he was detailed
with some of the exhausted Spaniards to hide the treasure. They buried
it on top of a hill, under a flat rock on which they carved three M’s.
It is estimated that pure ore to the value of about ten thousand pesos
was buried.
The detail had barely returned to camp when the Indians began their
attack. They rushed the camp in overwhelming numbers. Only three
prisoners were taken, two Spaniards and the negro guide. The Spaniards
were burned at the stake at once. The negro was kept as a slave. He
alone lived to tell the tale.
Some years after his capture, broken and crazed from continual cruelty,
he escaped into Mexico. There he seemed always thinking of the death of
his troop, and the Mexicans shunned him as bad company except when some
raider wanted to get his tale of buried gold. He refused many times to
guide parties back to it. According to him, there was a curse on the
gold for whoever should find it. No one has ever found it, and if it
ever was buried in the Santa Anna Mountains, it is buried there yet.
THE HOLE OF GOLD NEAR WICHITA FALLS
By J. Frank Dobie
I am indebted for this legend to Mr. Bob Nutt of Sabinal. Once in the
early days a band of men who were going across the Plains to trade in
New Mexico were attacked by Indians somewhere near the present town of
Wichita Falls. They made a corral of their wagons and fought off the
Indians as long as they could, but when night came they were so thinned
in numbers and the Indians were so strong that they decided to break
for their lives. They broke, and all but one man were speedily
overtaken, killed, and scalped.
The man who escaped saved his life by stumbling into a hole that lay
concealed near a little ravine. It was a kind of pothole with rounded
pebbles at the bottom; among them the man soon noticed what looked like
gold. He was in a hole of gold nuggets! He remained there for three
days, and during all that time he was sorting the nuggets from the
rocks, digging out the gravelly bottom with his bare hands. He said
afterward that there must have been a barrel of the nuggets. Finally,
when he could no longer hear Indians, he peeped out. Seeing that the
way was clear, he bundled up what nuggets he could carry and set out
for a distant fort. The Indians had burned all the supplies, with the
wagons, and on his way to the fort he nearly starved. He had his gun
but he was afraid to disclose his whereabouts by shooting at game. At
length he grew so weak that he had to throw away all the gold but two
or three specimen nuggets. He was hardly conscious of the loss when at
last he staggered into the army walls.
It was several years before he could get back into the Wichita country.
Meanwhile, day and night, he never ceased to think of the hole of gold
nuggets. The country around it was pictured clear in his memory. The
exact spot would be located by the irons of the burned wagons. For a
long time the man was afraid to tell his secret. At last he returned,
but no hill or draw of the region seemed familiar, and he could never
come upon the wagon irons or the pothole of nuggets. Some years ago he
died in Wichita Falls, leaving his descendants a few nuggets that bore
testimony to the truth of his often told tale.
BURIED TREASURE LEGENDS OF COOKE COUNTY
By Lillian Gunter
[In 1759 Parrilla marched from San Antonio with a force of about six
hundred men and attacked the Taovayas villages on Red River somewhere
in the vicinity of what is now Montague County, Dr. Herbert E. Bolton
says near the present Ringgold. Parrilla found the Indians “intrenched
behind a strong stockade with breastworks, flying a French flag, and
skillfully using French weapons and tactics.” A sanguinary battle
followed, resulting in heavy loss on both sides. The Spanish withdrew,
leaving “two cannon and extra baggage behind.” [71] Seventeen years
later the cannon were recovered. [72] In my mind there is no doubt that
the long unexplained “Old Spanish Fort” of Miss Gunter’s legend was the
fortification attacked by Parrilla. [73] The source of the relics
mentioned by Miss Gunter is accounted for also.
Thus is seen again how legend has preserved in a vague way what history
long ignored but eventually established. Comparison should be made with
“The San Gabriel Mission in Legend.” [74] Again, “Old Spanish Fort” was
the name given by Westerners to the ruins of the San Saba presidio
before the history of the site became generally known. [75] The
deduction need not be made that legend is always correct in
anticipating history!—Editor.]
I
The buried treasure legends of Cooke County, so far as I have been able
to investigate, center around two localities. The first legend with its
variants is current in the Cross Timbers and relates to that part of
the county immediately northwest of Burns City, extending to within a
few miles of Gainesville. An outcropping of the legend persists also in
the Cross Timbers near Dexter. The descendants of the first settlers,
some of whom still live in the country, tell of many hunts for buried
treasure made by different people who were guided by maps or oral
directions furnished by Mexicans.
Marks of fish, turtles, serpents, and other easily drawn animals were
once found on trees and stones; but no master mind, such as reveals
itself in Poe’s “Gold Bug,” came to deduce their true meaning. So the
treasure has never been found, although an effort was made to locate it
quite recently. Most of these marks have long since been removed or
destroyed; however, it has been the writer’s fortune to see the outline
of a crudely cut fish upon the side of a large boulder, probably the
only mark of its kind left in the county.
It may interest Texas readers to know that in support of the claim that
this part of what is now Cooke County was visited by Spanish explorers,
there now repose in the Cooke County museum, which is a part of the
county library, a one-pound brass cannon ball, picked up one mile
northwest of Burns City, and a brass spear-head, found in a gravel
drift near Dexter. Brass cannon balls went out of date long before
Americans ever reached this part of Texas; and, as an old Texas ranger
has pointed out, the only metal that the Indians used for their spear
and arrow heads was iron—not brass.
II
By far the most widespread and generally known legend of Cooke County
and vicinity deals with the Red River front; i.e., that part of it
extending from Spanish Fort Bend on the west nearly to Preston Bend on
the east, thus extending into both Montague and Grayson counties.
Mr. Pete Davidson, who came to Cooke County about 1856 to live with his
two uncles, Captain Rowland of the Texas Rangers, and Doctor Davidson,
proprietor of the first station west of Gainesville for the Overland
Stage Route, his station having been located on Blocker Creek, relates
that he made his first trip to Spanish Fort in 1857. “At that time,” he
says, “the earthworks were still plainly discernible and would hide a
cow or horse from observation from the outside. Good-sized trees were
then growing from the top of the earthworks, showing that a long time
had elapsed since they were thrown up. The country was still virgin
prairie, and every once in a while you could see the bleached bones of
a human skeleton, showing that some sort of battle had been fought
there; but some of the skeletons were so small that they must have been
of women or children who were among either the Indians or the soldiers
of the fort.” Just before his death in 1922, Mr. Davidson told me that
he had recently made a trip to Spanish Fort Bend, though not to the
fort itself, with a man who was seeking to trace the locations on an
old Mexican map that called for a tree on a bluff where the river
touched and turned south. This tree, so the man claimed, was the
location of the long sought buried treasure; and, indeed, the old
Mexican map and the lone tree on a bluff skirted by the water are
essentials of all the Red River legends of buried treasure.
For years an old fellow dug for treasure on the Oklahoma side, just
across from Sivill’s Bend where the river turns south to make in a
twenty-mile sweep the biggest bend in its whole course. West of Dexter,
near Walnut Bend, tradition calls for another location of similar
marks, but here the treasure is said to be buried on the Texas side.
III
It is noticeable that none of these legends refer to gold and silver
but always to treasure. As I have been able to piece it together, the
legend is this.
In a very early day a Spanish exploring party passed through this
country, going in a northeasterly direction. As was the custom, the
expedition included a large number of monks and priests with all the
holy vessels and rich paraphernalia necessary to administer to the
spiritual needs of the party itself and to convert the heathen Indians
according to the ritual of the Catholic church. Unfortunately the
aborigines proved unfriendly and disputed the way to such an extent
that the ranks of the Spaniards were decimated, and the remnant saw
that they were going to be hard put to it to make an escape. Rather
than have their holy vessels, valuable in a material way, but more
precious spiritually, desecrated by savage touch, they decided to bury
them. In selecting a suitable place for this operation they bore in
mind that it must be stable, above the reach of the mighty river or the
changes made by the hand of man under ordinary conditions; so they
selected a bold promontory on the river, as stated above.
When the treasure was buried, not one, but several rude maps of the
location were undoubtedly made, probably each by a different person.
These maps were in the nature of things ambiguous, and the legends
touching them furnish much food for speculation.
THE TREASURE CANNON ON THE NECHES
By Roscoe Martin
[The treasure rammed cannon is more or less common to Texas legends.
The early Spanish in Texas sometimes buried cannon on account of
military expediency, [76] and it may be that the modern tradition
connects back with such disposition of artillery, although the
tradition is doubtless widespread. [77] A Spanish cannon stuffed with
treasure is supposed to lie deep buried in a lake near Carrizo Springs,
Dimmit County. [78] On the banks of the Big Sandy (or “Sandies”) of
Lavaca County, legend has buried a third cannon. Mr. Whitley of
McMullen County told me the story connected with it. He heard it half a
century ago from a veteran of the “Mexican War” (War of Texas
Independence) in the Refugio country. The veteran was named White, as I
remember.
When the Mexicans were retreating from San Jacinto towards Goliad,
White was in the pursuing party of Texans. The Texans camped for the
night on the eastern bank of the Big Sandies, and the next morning when
White walked out to gather some firewood, he discovered that the
Mexicans had been at the same site twenty-four hours before. Besides
the usual camp signs, there was the trail of something that had been
dragged to a motte of trees and buried. The marks of the digging were
as plain as daylight. White supposed that one of the wounded Mexicans
had died and been buried.
Years later he fell in with an old Mexican who turned out to have been
in the retreat from San Jacinto. Naturally the two veterans reviewed
their march.
“There is one thing I have often thought about, though it seemed simple
to me at the time,” said White one day to the Mexican. “That is the
drag-trail I saw at you-all’s camp east of the Big Sandies. What made
it, anyhow?”
Then the Mexican told how he had helped to drag a small cannon plugged
full of rings, jewels, and money, and had seen it buried. The Mexicans
intended to come back for it very soon, he said; they were bent at the
time on getting away with their bare lives. But when it was known that
Texas had won her independence and that the country was settling up
with men bitter towards Mexico, the scattered men who buried the cannon
were afraid to come back.
The upshot of the Mexican’s explanation was that he and White went to
the Big Sandies in search of the precious cannon. They found the
country cut up by fences and fields and grown up in timber so that they
could not locate a single landmark.
It will not harm Mr. Martin’s vivid narrative to remark that after the
battle of San Jacinto, Burleson with a detachment of troops followed
the Mexicans westward across the Brazos and San Bernard, instead of
going northward. At the time of the battle, General Ganoa, with a small
number of Mexican troops, was at Fort Bend on the Brazos with orders to
proceed to Nacogdoches; but immediately after the battle he received
orders to retreat to Mexico and he joined in the general retirement.
[79]—Editor.]
In the fall of 1920 I was one of a hunting party that camped for about
two weeks in Tyler County on the Neches River. Our guide for the trip
was “Uncle Jimmy” Clanton, a typical old hunter and pioneer, whose head
was full of stories of Indians and buried treasure. Some of these
stories were obviously concoctions of his own mind, but others were
based on historical facts, with, of course, touches of glamour and
romance which had grown into the story gradually through constant
telling and retelling. His best-loved story, one which I took great
delight in listening to more than once during those two weeks and which
was common chatter among the backwoodsmen of the locality, is related
below. It was, I think, on the second night of our camp that he lighted
his pipe, settled down with his back to a tree, and told us the
following tale.
“My father was in the Texas Revolution of 1836. He was in all the
earlier fights and skirmishes of the war, and was one of the men who
helped capture Santa Anna at San Jacinto. After the treaty of peace was
signed, or maybe it was just before the war ended, he was sent to
Nacogdoches in a company under Burleson to drive out the Mexicans that
held the fort there. This is really where my story begins. You-all have
likely read some of this in history, but I’ll tell you some things that
never got in history at all.
“Burleson’s bunch got to Nacogdoches late one evening and decided to
wait till morning to storm the fort. They camped for the night a mile
or so away, and bright and early next morning they marched on the fort.
They were some surprised at not getting fired at, and still more
surprised when they got up close enough to see that there wasn’t a soul
stirring in or about the fort. Burleson ordered a grand charge, and his
army of about fifty men charged, only to find nobody there to receive
them. The men nosed around a little, found the Mexicans’ trail leading
due south, and determined to follow them. The trail was fresh and the
Mexes were traveling with wagons; so they figgered they could come up
on them before dark. You see, the men had been hearing stories about
the bunches of gold the Mexicans had; so they were pretty keen to catch
up with them wagons.
“Well, they pulled out down the trail, traveling full speed ahead and
making good time. They rode all that day without seeing the enemy, but
they knew they were getting close because the trail was getting
fresher. They camped that night about fifty miles from Nacogdoches, and
hit the trail agin early next morning. About ten o’clock they come upon
a couple of wagons, and figgered that the dagoes were getting scared
and leaving all unnecessary junk behind. They pushed on without
stopping for dinner, and about three o’clock sighted the Mexicans
trying to cross the river at Boone’s Ferry. That ferry is about two
mile up the river. I can show it to you in the morning.
“As soon as the Texans saw the Mexicans, they made a dash, hoping to
get a fight before they had time to cross the river. Just as they got
up within shooting distance, the ferry-boat landed on the opposite side
of the river with a wagon and three Mexicans. The wagon drove off, but
the Texans were too busy at the time to notice any details. The Mexes
took to the timber and there was a right lively little scrap. Paw was
lying behind a log firing away, when he looked up in time to see three
men on the other side rolling a cannon along toward the river. They
rolled it up to a high bluff and dumped it right off into the deepest
hole in ten miles. He said he wondered at the time what the idea was,
but was more interested in number one than in cannons; so he didn’t
take time to investigate.
“To make a long story short, about fifteen of the Mexicans were killed
and the rest captured. That is, they were all captured except the three
men that got across the river. A detachment was sent after them, but
they got away. The wagon, empty as a last year’s bird’s nest, and one
dead Mexican, were found about a mile and a half away from the river,
but the other two had disappeared completely. Burleson rounded up his
bunch and his prisoners, and found that he had lost only one man, who
had drowned when he got chased off the bluff into the river. He
reported to Houston with his prisoners, and that was the end of the
expedition.
“As soon as Paw got out of the army, he come back up into this country
and settled. His old homestead is about eight mile from here. He used
to take me up the river often and show me where the battle took place,
where the ferry-boat used to land, and where the cannon was pushed into
the river. He used to talk a whole lot about that cannon, and to wonder
what the idea was in dumping it into the river. He also wondered a good
bit about what was in that wagon that the Mexicans had been so anxious
to get across the river with. We never could quite decide why they were
so bent on crossing the river with an empty wagon.
“Well, the things that happened in the next few years won’t interest
you any. Paw died when I was ten years old, but I remembered all he had
ever told me about the fight. When the Civil War broke out, I joined
the Confederate Army, fought through the war, then come back to my
folks here. About 1875 things begin to happen that made me remember
everything I had ever heard about the fight at Boone’s Ferry.
“In or about that year, a slick-haired young Mexican come into the
neighborhood and begin nosing around. He didn’t appear to have any
particular business here, but seemed to be just looking around for
somebody or something. After he’d been here for a month or two he come
to me one day and says that, as I was the oldest man in these parts,
he’d like to make me a proposition. I didn’t get the connection between
my age and his proposition, but agreed to listen; so we got down to
what he wanted. He had a map that he claimed he got in an old monastery
in Mexico, and that map proved to be right interesting. It outlined a
piece of country beginning at Nacogdoches and coming due south. The end
of the trail marked off was just about a mile and a half across the
river, and the crossing was marked ‘Boone’s Ferry.’ I become all eyes
and ears at once, specially when he started his story. He asked me if I
knew where Boone’s Ferry was, and I says, ‘Sure.’ Then he opened up:
“‘My grandfather was with the Mexican band that was defeated by
Burleson at this ferry. He was one of the two men that got away. Are
you by any chance acquainted with the details of the battle?’
“And I says, ‘Some. My paw was in the fight, and has told me about it
many a time.’
“‘Did he ever tell you about seeing a cannon shoved off in the river?’
“‘Many a time,’ says I.
“‘Mr. Clanton, did it ever occur to you to wonder just why that cannon
was thrown into the river?’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve wondered about it lots of times.’
“‘I’ll tell you why,’ he says, getting kinder excited, but lowering his
voice. ‘It was filled from end to end with gold!’
“‘Gold!’ I whistled. ‘So that’s it.’
“‘Yes, that’s it,’ he says. ‘Not only that, but I have in my pocket
another map giving the exact location of more gold, beginning with the
ferry as a center. You see, the wagon that crossed the river carried a
chest of money. The three men that were with it went on till they
became afraid of being overtaken; then they buried it. They had a
quarrel over it, and one of them shot another to shut him up. Then he
and my grandfather took down some landmarks on a crude map, and pulled
for Mexico. On the way the other Mexican died, leaving my grandfather
with the map. He died before he could come back and get the money. My
father was killed by bandits; so I was left with the one and original
map of the buried treasure. With your help, your knowledge of the
country around here, and so forth, we should be able to locate that
chest and the cannon easy. Now, I propose to give you half of whatever
we find. If we don’t find anything, you don’t get anything. What do you
say?’
“You-all can easily guess that I jumped right on his offer. He showed
me the other map, and I located the landmarks as near as I could on the
map; we got our tools together, and started our treasure hunt. We
looked for the cannon first, because I knew exactly where it should be.
We dredged and dredged and fished and fished for that thing, but never
could locate it. You see, it took about a forty-foot jump off into the
river and it had had about forty years to settle; so I guess it must
have been several feet deep in river mud when we were hunting it. We
finally gave up hopes of finding it and went to hunting the chest. The
map called for three landmarks all an equal distance apart. The chest
was supposed to be buried in the center of the triangle made by these
points. We found the first one, a big rock in a funny shape, without
any trouble at all. The others were big pine trees, but all the trees
in that country had been cut down and rafted down the river since the
map was made; so we couldn’t ever find the other two marks. We sighted
off places by every tree-stump in that neighborhood and dug down at the
points we found, but must not ever have sighted by the right stumps.
Anyhow, we hunted gold for about two months and never found a cent of
anything. The Mexican finally got discouraged and went home, but I got
a copy of his map and have been looking for that money off and on ever
since.
“And I guess that’s about all there is to it. If any of you-all want to
see where the ferry was and where the cannon was rolled off into the
river, we’ll go up there in the morning and look around.”
THE DREAM WOMAN AND THE WHITE ROSE BUSH
By Mary A. Sutherland
This story, or legend, or what you will, was told me by an
ex-Confederate soldier, an intelligent man.
“After the war I got back to Texas broke, as were all my people, but I
bought a little farm in Leon County on credit, married, and began to
build a home. I was progressing fairly well when one summer I had a
dream, or vision. I was sleeping on the gallery, my wife and two small
children occupying the bed just inside the door.
“I saw a woman come into the yard through the gate, a strange looking
woman with strange headgear and queer dress, and I marveled that my
fierce watch dogs did not attack her. She came to the side of the
gallery and said in a clear voice: ‘Dig in your little pasture and you
will find treasure.’
“I sat up and watched her go out of the gate, just as she had come, and
could hardly persuade myself that what I saw was a dream. The next
morning I told my wife of the dream—and then forgot it. Now the little
pasture was a few fenced acres near the house where we kept our milk
calves. It was drouth stricken; the soil was hard and dry and had no
growth except a few brambles.
“Not many nights later while I lay as before, the same woman came
again. I saw her plainly in the moonlight. She spoke, very quietly but
distinctly, the same words: ‘Dig in your little pasture. Dig beneath
the white rose.’
“Now I knew that there was no growth in the little pasture excepting
the few brambles I have mentioned. But on my telling my wife of seeing
the woman again in a dream, she said: ‘Come on; let’s look for roses.’
And catching my hand, she laughingly dragged me to the pasture. There,
as sure as I am a Reb, we found a rose bush with two white flowers on
it. Then we got busy, but, after digging down about two feet, I found a
large rock and quit.
“The story got out and I became the butt of many jokes. A few months
afterward my brother-in-law offered me a fancy price for the place and
I quit farming. Later on in the year I noticed that the little pasture
had been plowed—the only mark of improvement noticeable. About the same
time I noticed my brother-in-law buying property, including a fine
family carriage, sending his daughter to boarding school, and getting
himself elected to the state legislature. Maybe there was something
under the roses.”
After the “Reb” had told me the foregoing story, I heard from his wife
that a legend about their farm was current in the settlement. According
to the commonly told account, three men camped one night in the
vicinity of the “little pasture.” In the morning one of them went to a
settler’s cabin nearby to borrow tools, saying that one of their party
had died during the night from wounds received in an Indian fight a few
days before. The man declined all offer of help from the wife and
daughter of the settler—the settler himself being absent—but after the
campers had departed, the women went out, smoothing the ground over the
mound and placing a stone above it.
Now what they buried or why no one knows to this day, but, as was
remarked at the time, their horses bore marks of long travel. The women
of the cabin saw three men arrive; they saw the mound; they saw three
men depart. If a dying comrade was with them, they asked no aid.
It only remains to be said that, though a fine man, Mr. H—, the teller
of this story, was the kind of man who would miss a chance at wealth
rather than incur the ridicule of neighbors or exert himself in raising
a stone.
STEINHEIMER’S MILLIONS
By L. D. Bertillion
It seems that almost all of the people in the rural districts of Bell,
Falls, and Williamson counties must know something of Steinheimer’s ten
jack loads of hidden treasure, for it is continually being searched for
and has been searched for over a long period of years. The search has
extended to many places, the locations varying as much as seven miles.
Some claim that the treasure is buried at Reed’s Lake; others, at
Bugess Lake; but the general opinion is that it is buried at what is
known as the Three Forks. All of these places are in Bell County. The
Steinheimer map is believed to be in the hands of persons residing in
old Mexico, but how it got to Mexico no one seems to know. However,
Mexicans searching for the treasure have claimed to have the map or a
duplicate of it. Various white men have worked with these maps; others
have used “gold rods” and similar instruments.
My own version of the story I secured from a man named Frank Ellis. He
secured his information from a man named Nalley Jones, who, in turn,
got his account from three Mexicans who spent three months searching
for the treasure. There are forty other versions in and around Bell
County. Some people will give you the exact amount of the treasure in
dollars, but the consensus of opinion is that it was what could be
carried on ten Mexican jacks. I have termed the treasure “millions” and
consider my version of the story as nearly correct as any.
According to legendary information, Karl Steinheimer was born near
Speyer, Germany, in 1793. At the age of eleven he ran away from home,
became a sailor, and, in spite of his limited school attendance,
acquired the fluent use of seven languages and a fair knowledge of
three other languages. While yet in his teens he took a prominent part
in several piratical expeditions, and by the time he had reached the
age of twenty-one, captains commanding pirate vessels frequently sought
his advice, for which he was liberally paid.
Among the pirate captains who came to Steinheimer was Louis Aury, [80]
who sought counsel relative to traffic in negro slaves between Cuba and
America. Steinheimer gave his advice and ended by furnishing a
considerable amount of capital to the enterprise. Later, when Aury
visited the Island of Galveston, which Steinheimer had recommended as a
rendezvous, he was so well pleased with Steinheimer’s ability that he
and others concerned unanimously made him dictator over the gang of
slave dealers and sea terrors. However, on account of a broken leg,
Steinheimer left the island but once during his dictatorship. That was
when he made a run to Cuba in 1817. This hugging of a land berth by
Steinheimer brought about a break with Aury, which resulted in a
dissolution of partnership and the abandonment of the island by the
slave smugglers.
Soon after the break, Steinheimer went far into the mountainous
interior of Mexico and became interested in mining operations. In
March, 1827, news reached him that Hayden Edwards, the noted Texas
empresario, had started a revolution for the purpose of freeing Texas
from Mexico, and had established the Republic of Fredonia. [81]
Thereupon Steinheimer, in the hope of becoming dictator to a new
country, decided to make his way to Edwards’ forces and to offer his
assistance in person and in money. However, when he reached Monterrey
he learned that the revolt had been put down and that Edwards and his
followers had fled to the United States. Thus disappointed in his
plans, Steinheimer returned to his mines in Mexico. Here he was
prosperous and contented until the latter part of 1838, when he
suddenly learned something that turned all his plans upside down and
eventually brought about his death.
He learned that a sweetheart of his boyhood days in Europe was living
in St. Louis, and was as yet unmarried. Immediately he arranged to
leave for St. Louis. His affairs closed, he found that his fortune
amounted to ten jack loads of silver and gold. His purpose was to carry
the entire fortune with him, and he picked two men to aid him.
When Steinheimer got to Matamoros, he found that, notwithstanding Santa
Anna’s defeat nearly three years before, Mexico still hoped to
repossess Texas. As a preliminary to conquest, one Manuel Flores with a
few warriors was preparing to start from Matamoros early in 1839 for
Nacogdoches, his mission being to instigate an Indian uprising in
Texas. Learning further that the Apaches were both numerous and hostile
north of the San Antonio road, Steinheimer decided to wait for Flores
and his party. He waited until early spring and then the entire company
set out. When they reached the Colorado River, they were dismayed to
learn that General Burleson was advancing on them and that an
engagement was only a matter of hours. Here we may safely presume that
there was a secret compact between Flores and Steinheimer. At any rate,
the adventurer was permitted to slightly out-distance Flores and to
switch his men and burros some miles north. Consequently, when Flores
met his doom, [82] Steinheimer was unknown to the Texans.
After a complete rest for his men and animals, he cautiously picked his
way across prairies and canyons, avoiding all trails, until he reached
a place where three streams intersect and combine into one. Here he
decided to bury all of his fortune but one small package of gold that
might be needed for immediate use. Accordingly, he unpacked the burros
and concealed their freight. The only mark made to designate the spot
of concealment was a large brass spike driven into an oak tree some
forty or sixty feet away, the spike being of the type used to take the
place of bolts in early boat construction. The animals that had so
faithfully borne the treasure over mountains and deserts were now
liberated, and with his two trusted men Steinheimer took a southeastern
direction.
When they had traveled, as he judged, some twelve or fourteen miles,
they came to what, in his meager descriptions that have come down to
us, he terms “a bunch of knobs on the prairie,” from the tops of which
they could see a great valley skirted with timber some ten miles east.
While they were getting their bearings from these knobs, the party was
attacked by the Indians. Steinheimer’s two aides were both killed
outright, and he escaped badly wounded. He hid himself on the center
hill of the group, and here it was that he buried his remaining gold,
with the exception of six Spanish coins, the place of deposit not
marked. In the encounter he had lost his mount and supplies, though he
still had gun and some ammunition.
He set out afoot, choosing a northern direction, subsisting as best he
could off roots and water, for he was afraid to shoot at game until he
was out of the vicinity of the Indians. Finally he got to where he
could kill meat. But now his wounds were growing more painful, and at
the juncture when he thought that gangrene was setting up in them, he
fell into the hands of some travelers.
Realizing the threat of immediate death, he made a crude map as best he
could of the region of his buried millions and wrote to his early
sweetheart a concise account of his fortunes and misfortunes, informing
her of the critical condition in which he was writing. He explained
that the strangers to whom he was entrusting this message knew nothing
of his name or history and would get nothing of his but the six Spanish
coins. Finally, he requested that she keep his message secret for three
months. If he recovered, he would, he explained, reach St. Louis by the
expiration of that time; if he did not arrive, she was to understand
that he was dead and that his fortune was hers. These are the last
tidings of Steinheimer; it is, therefore, to be presumed that death was
quite as near as he had supposed.
In the course of time the letter reached its destination, but a number
of years passed before conditions in Texas were such that the relatives
of the lady felt that they could look for the treasure with any degree
of safety. Then after months of search and inquiry they were convinced
that the three streams referred to in the directions were the Nolan,
the Lampasas, and the Leon, which unite not far from the present town
of Belton to form what is now called Little River. Here must lie the
vast fortune. In consequence, it is deduced that the small parcel of
gold could not be over two or three miles from the town of Rogers, in
Bell County also, as near it are what are, indeed, still called the
Knobs, a small bunch of hills lying between the Santa Fe and “Katy”
railroads, at about the charted distance from the Three Forks.
While, as I said in the beginning, the history of Steinheimer’s buried
wealth is at present known to many persons, there is no evidence that
any part of it has ever been found, despite the great amount of time
and money that have been spent in quest of it. Alike unknown is the
place of the death and burial of the man Steinheimer, though he was
once notorious both on land and sea. Unknown is he, too, to the
histories of the several countries in which he lived. The relatives who
came to Texas in search of the vast fortune bequeathed to the lady in
such a strange manner were careful never to reveal her name. And this
is perhaps the first time that the name of Steinheimer has appeared
before the general public. [83]
THE SNIVELY LEGEND
By J. Frank Dobie
I
Major, or Colonel, Jacob Snively (also spelled Schnively) led the kind
of life that inspires legend. [84] In 1843 he headed an expedition to
capture a great Mexican wagon train on its way from St. Louis to Santa
Fe; but he was balked in his design by United States troops, and his
men were disarmed in New Mexico and sent back to Texas. A quarter of a
century later, in 1867, he aided in raising a second expedition of
about one hundred men to go up the Rio Grande in search of gold reputed
to be inestimably plentiful. His base of organization was Williamson
County, and one would fain identify this Snively with the Snively of
Miss von Blittersdorf’s legend of Milam County, which adjoins
Williamson. It is known that Snively was at one time looking for the
old San Gabriel Mission, cornering on which he claimed thirty leagues
of land. [85] If he found the ruins, his nature would certainly have
provoked him to do a little treasure hunting. However, Colonel Snively
is said to have died in Arizona, a citizen of California. [86] A little
personal investigation among the records and oldest inhabitants of
Williamson and Milam counties would no doubt disclose interesting
information about Colonel Snively and probably establish a close
relationship between him and the Snively of Miss von Blittersdorf’s
legend. I regret that I have been unable to conduct such investigation.
From a veteran, more than eighty years old, of the Texas Rangers and of
the Civil War, the elder Mr. Burton of Austin, two legends connected
with Snively’s two respective expeditions have come to me.
II
When Snively’s men were disbanded in New Mexico in 1843, they came back
to the Texas settlements more eager than ever for Mexican prey. About
the time of their return a Mexican train was going across the Republic
with a cargo of money for St. Louis. By agreement with the Texas
authorities it was accompanied by a detachment of Texas Rangers, who
traveled nearly a day’s ride behind. The Mexicans distrusted them; yet
they wanted them, for they were afraid of the Snively gang. At Red
River they expected to be met by United States troops, who could not
cross into Texas. When the advance scout of the train came in sight of
Red River, he saw two men riding towards him, and at once concluded
that they were Snively bandits. He galloped back and reported them as
such to the train. The Mexicans at once began a retreat and a safe
disposition of their precious cargo.
On a hill about a mile south of a cottonwood tree that grew on the bank
of Red River, four or five hundred yards below an old Spanish crossing,
they buried five hundred dollars. On the top of the next hill south of
that they buried five hundred more. These two deposits were to be
markers and were buried in shallow holes. On the third hill they buried
the remainder of their money, many thousands. Then they destroyed their
wagons and beat back towards the Rio Grande as best they could. They
had become convinced that their escort, even though kept a day’s ride
behind, was in collusion with the supposed Snively gang. Very shortly
after this event the Mexican War broke out, and by the time it was over
and affairs had settled down in Texas so that Mexicans could travel
inland with security, most of the little band of gold transporters had
died or had been killed in battle. The remnant had forgotten the
location of the money. Men, though, still look for the tree on Red
River bank, below an old crossing, with a line of three hills to the
south.
Mr. Tom L. Walker of Montague County, which fronts on Red River, has
supplied me a legend somewhat similar to the foregoing. He says that it
is current in the county. About 1856 four white men and six Mexicans
were transporting a wagon load of gold bullion across Texas from Mexico
to St. Louis. Near the Illinois Bend of Red River they were set on by
Comanches, and dumped their gold into a lake. Only one of them, a
Mexican named Gonzales, survived the attack. He would never return to
the site of his terrible experience. In 1890 some men went from
Montague County to Mexico City to interview the old man. They found
him, but he was blind, crippled, and feeble. He could only tell them
that the gold was “on the south side of the largest of the lakes.” Time
had so shifted the positions of the lakes, however, that the men who
got the information could never determine where to make a thorough
excavation.
III
Snively’s second expedition belongs in a large way to lost treasure
lore. In Hunter’s Magazine for January, 1911, page 5, John Warren
Hunter has an article on “The Schnively Expedition,” in which he quotes
“Bud” (W. H.) Robinson’s account of the two gold hunting expeditions
that Snively and Colonel William C. Dalrymple, of Williamson County,
organized in 1867 and 1868. The first was made up of only sixteen men
and was turned back by the Indians; the second, much larger, was able
to ward off the Indians, but it could not locate the gold that had been
so luringly promised by Snively.
“From the Pecos,” says Robinson as quoted by Hunter, “the expedition
went forward and finally reached Eagle Springs, not a great distance
from the Rio Grande. This was to be our camping place, as Mr. Schnively
had told us that the gold mine was in the vicinity of the springs. He
said he had first received information from a dying soldier touching
the existence of gold in the region and later he had prospected and
found the mine. He knew right where to go to point out the location, he
said.”
But evidently Snively did not know. His men came to believe that he had
never before visited the place but had raised the expedition in order
to have protection in his prospecting. In anger and in disappointment
the expedition broke up, the men scattering to the four winds. And here
my informant, the old Texas Ranger, takes up the tale. Some of the men,
he says, came back home; some went on to California and to Colorado;
some continued prospecting in a westerly direction. Three of them got
lost in the desert, and while trying to make their way to the Rio
Grande came into what must have been the Apache Canyon.
In that canyon they stumbled upon two Mexican carts loaded with gold
bullion. About were the bleached skeletons of men and oxen, the remains
of some old Spanish gold plundering expedition that had perished in the
desert. Some men used to say that Coronado’s men must have started back
with this gold. The three Texans loaded themselves with the precious
metal, but before very long they had to cast it away in their struggle
to reach water. Fortunately, they did reach water and were saved. Later
they equipped themselves and went back into the desert to take the
immense wealth. They could never find it. Landmarks are scarce in that
country. Very likely, too, the shifting sands of the desert had covered
the wagons with their freight of gold. They may be uncovered some day;
if so, it will likely be for only a day or an hour, and the man who
sees them will probably be perishing for water, so that the sight of
them and the white bones near will strike him as a terrible prophecy
rather than as a life-time of hope realized.
BURIED TREASURE LEGENDS OF MILAM COUNTY
By Louise von Blittersdorf
These legends were told me by Mr. Mike Welch, an old gentleman living
near Thorndale.
I
THE SAN GABRIEL MISSION IN LEGEND
[Although up to ten years ago Texas history had hardly recognized the
existence of the San Gabriel missions, legend had kept the fact and the
place green for generations. In April, 1914, an article by Dr. Herbert
E. Bolton, on “The Founding of the Missions on the San Gabriel River,
1745–1749,” appeared in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. The next
year Dr. Bolton’s book entitled Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century
was issued by the University of California Press; in it pages 135–278
treat of “The San Xavier Missions.” These are the main and almost only
accessible sources for whoever would know the history of the San
Gabriel missions. There were three missions, the principal and most
enduring one being the Mission San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas
(1748–1755). The name San Xavier was later corrupted into San Gabriel.
[87] The San Gabriel missions had trouble with the Indians, and it is a
fact that a priest, Father Ganzábal, as in the legend, was killed by
them. [88]
Before the mission was abandoned in 1755, legend had seized upon it;
and when Dr. Bolton discovered the site hardly a dozen years ago, he
found that legend had kept treasure hunters familiar with the grounds
and ruins. [89] He quotes Father Mariano, [90] priest of the time, on
legendary causes that contributed to the final abandonment of the
mission: “The sacrilegious homicides having been perpetrated, the
elements at once conspired, declaring divine justice provoked; for in
the sky appeared a ball of fire so horrible that all were terrified,
and with so notable a circumstance that it circled from the presidio to
the mission of the Occisos [Orcoquiza], and returned to the same
presidio, when it exploded with a noise as loud as could be made by a
heavily loaded cannon. The river ceased to run, and its waters became
so corrupt that they were extremely noxious and intolerable to the
smell. The air became so infected that all who went to the place, even
though merely passing, became infected by the pest, which became so
malicious that many of the inhabitants died, and we all found ourselves
in the last extremes of life. Finally, the land became so accursed that
what had been a beautiful plain became converted into a thicket, in
which opened horrible crevices that caused terror. And the inhabitants
became so put to it, in order to escape the complete extermination that
threatened them, that they moved more than thirty leagues away, with no
other permission than that granted them by the natural right to save
their own lives.”
We learn how rich was the San Gabriel Mission, for whose cross of solid
gold men have blithely sought, when we read that the total properties
transported from it and its two sister missions, including six bells,
were inventoried at $1804.50. [91]—Editor.]
In the early days of Texas, when the missionaries were bringing old
world civilization to the new world, there stood a mission on the San
Gabriel River between what are now the towns of San Gabriel and
Rockdale. The mission was a thriving one, and before many months a
large rock church had been built. The crowning glory of this church was
a solid gold cross on the steeple.
Many converts were made to the new religion, and the small community
soon became so powerful that the Indians began to fear it and decided
to put an end to it. Accordingly, they murdered the priest there. The
surviving Spaniards decided to abandon the mission at once. First, they
buried the body of the murdered priest; then they took the cross from
the steeple of the church and buried it, together with some gold found
in the priest’s possession, until they should have time to return for
it and carry it away. By covering the gold with charcoal and ashes,
they took precautions that no mineral rod should locate it.
Many years later a church was being built in Mexico, and an old Mexican
who had heard from his ancestors the story of the buried cross and
treasure, came to the priest and prevailed upon him to go to the San
Gabriel River and try to find the gold cross to put on the new church.
During the journey the Mexican died, leaving with his companion
directions for finding the cross. Duties back home were urging the
priest’s return, and when he met a young Irishman named Mike Welch, he
entrusted him with the secret and obtained his promise to carry on the
search. With two men to help him, Mr. Welch went to the site of the old
mission. Digging a certain distance from a specified tree, the men
unearthed the skeleton of the priest together with a small crucifix.
Then, according to directions, they measured the distance from the
grave to the nearest corner of the church and began to dig again. They
came at last to some charcoal and ashes and knew that they were near
the object of their search. One of Mr. Welch’s men took sick, however,
and, as it was nearly dark, they decided to postpone further digging
until morning. That night the other man slipped away from camp. As soon
as Mr. Welch discovered next morning that one of his helpers was
missing, he went to the unfinished hole. There he saw where a large pot
had been taken out. It is well understood that the gold cross and other
treasures were found and stolen away. The thief left that part of the
country and has never been heard of since. Mr. Welch kept the crucifix
until a few years ago, when it was lost.
II
THE GOLD PROTECTED BY SNIVELY’S GHOST
An old man by the name of Snively once lived near what is now Thorndale
in Milam County. He owned a great deal of property along the San
Gabriel River. One night some Mexicans with nine jack loads of stolen
gold passed near Snively’s house. The times were troublesome, and
traveling was beset with dangers. When the Mexicans neared the river,
they decided that it would be well to bury their cargo here and wait
for more peaceful times to carry it on into Mexico. After they had put
it in the ground and covered it over with isinglass to prevent its
being discovered by a mineral rod, they realized that the only sure and
safe protection would be to bury a man with the gold. No one of them
seemed willing to give his life to such a cause; so in search of a
victim they rode back to the house they had passed. They found Snively
alone. They made him swear to protect the gold, then killed him and
buried him with it. Then they marked the site and went on their
way—never to return.
Many have searched for the treasure since but have failed to find it.
Snively has taken care of that. Mr. Welch claims that he once found the
place where it was buried, but that before he could dig for it, a flood
came down the river and covered the place. When the water subsided, it
left no trace of where the gold was buried. Snively will always have
the help of the elements, if necessary, to protect the gold.
On dull, rainy nights a light may be seen going across the field. It is
not carried by anyone, but moves of itself. People say that the light
leads to Snively’s grave and the nine jack loads of gold, but, because
of the rain perhaps, no one has ever followed the light and it is still
a mystery.
Another story in the Thorndale neighborhood very much like this one
asserts that some Mexicans, wishing to protect buried gold, killed a
priest and buried him with it, and that whenever anyone starts to dig
where the gold is buried, he is run away by an angry bull that has fire
coming out of its nostrils. [92]
III
POPE’S GHOST AT THE GAP
Pope was a man who lived in the post oak grove near what is now
Thorndale. He lived entirely alone, and, as that part of the country
was then newly settled, there was not a house within miles of Pope’s
log hut. It would, therefore, be easy to attack him some night as he
came along the road, kill him, and steal his hoard of gold. The murder
could be committed, and the murderer could escape into Mexico and live
in luxury on the stolen money, with nothing to fear save his own
conscience. Such must have been the idea of the villain who murdered
Pope one dark night just as Pope turned into the gap to go to his hut.
Perhaps the gold was hidden too well for the murderer to find it. No
one knows. At any rate, after Pope’s body was found and decently
buried, his spirit was apparently not at rest; near the gap for a long
time thereafter a strange dog was seen. It was undoubtedly the ghost of
Pope, for no other dog would venture near it, much less fight it.
Horses shied at it when they met it in the road. When a man hit it with
a stone, it refused to move, and a bullet had not the slightest effect
upon it. Some tried to touch the dog, but when they were about to lay
hand upon it, it disappeared. Whoever rode by the gap at sunset was
almost sure to see it; often, however, if a party of several persons
came by, it would be invisible to all save a particular individual. The
ghost dog continued to appear for several years, but after a time he
disappeared forever. [93] The gate, however, that has taken the place
of the gap near which Pope was killed, will not stay shut. No matter
how you close it, it will open of itself and remain open.
THE WAGON-LOAD OF SILVER IN CLEAR FORK CREEK
By L. W. Payne, Jr.
The following legend was written up at my suggestion by Mr. Tom
Gambrell of Lockhart. He says that it is well known in the neighborhood
of Lockhart, and that he has followed accurately the account as given
by the two oldest inhabitants of Lockhart.
The last trouble that the early settlers in Caldwell County had with
the Indians was just before the great war between the states. At that
time about twenty of the savages suddenly swept down from the north,
plundering and devastating where they would. They had with them a wagon
into which they put stolen valuables, and by the time they got to
Lockhart it was pretty well filled with silver in various forms. Here
they seized a white woman, and then turned to follow along the eastern
bank of Clear Fork Creek, which runs directly south about two miles
west of town.
The whites hastily united to pursue the Indians and soon were close
upon them, for the marauders could not flee very fast with their
wagon-load of silver. As soon as they saw their peril, they unhitched
the horses, emptied the silver into the creek, left their wagon on the
bank, and continued their flight with the woman still their captive.
The white men passed the wagon and continued the chase. Nearer and
nearer they drew on the Indians, who had now turned southwest and were
approaching the steep hills and treacherous valleys that surround Round
Top Mountain, some eight miles southwest of Lockhart. Here the Indians
used to build their fires to call together their warriors. The whites
were within half a mile of the redskins when the latter, beating their
horses furiously and riding at full speed, entered this almost
impenetrable region. The Indian who was carrying the woman in front of
him realized that his horse was overburdened and that he himself would
certainly be caught unless he lightened the load. Consequently he
knocked the woman in the head with his tomahawk, threw her off, and
entered the border of the thicket at increased speed. When the whites
reached the woman, she was dead. They pursued the brutes a little
farther, but soon found out that the Indians were the better runners
among the underbrush, and gave up the chase.
On returning, the men took up the corpse and carried it close to town,
where they buried it. Many years later, the Prairie Lea-Lockhart road
was laid out. The grave, neatly arched with stones, lies close by the
roadway, and can be seen by any one who will go from Lockhart about a
mile and a half down that road.
Owing to the death of the captive woman and to the near approach of
night, the whites did not search for the silver that evening. But next
day they went to the creek and looked for the booty. They found none,
but carried away the wagon. Since then others have sought in vain for
the treasure. The creek has been dredged and seined, and its bottom
gouged, but no silver has been found. Some say that the Indians
returned that night and recovered it. Others believe that it has sunk
into the boggy mire of the creek bottom.
However this may be, the grave is still a visible evidence of the
essential truth of the legend. A number of the pursuers of the Indians
said that they saw the silver tumble into the water. And the two
surviving pursuers, recognized as reliable and honorable men, insist
that the whole story is based on fact.
MORO’S GOLD
By Fannie E. Ratchford
I heard the story of Moro’s gold first, when a very small child, from
my mother, who herself remembered it from her tenth year, and from my
grandmother, who, except for its tragic outcome, would have forgotten
the whole incident in her busy life as mistress of a large plantation.
I heard it when several years older from my father, who knew it merely
as a family and neighborhood legend, and I heard it again a few years
ago from my mother’s cousin, Judge W. P. McLean of Fort Worth, who as a
young man was living in my grandfather’s home at the time the incident
occurred. The story as I give it here contains elements of all four
slightly varying accounts.
Before the Civil War, my grandfather, Preston R. Rose, lived on a large
plantation, called Buena Vista, lying along the Guadalupe River, seven
miles from Victoria, near the Indianola road. Late one afternoon, two
years before the Civil War began, he was sitting on the porch reading,
when my mother, who was playing near, called his attention to the
unusual sight of a stranger coming across the field from the direction
of the river. The stranger was of small stature and dark complexion,
evidently a Spaniard. When he had reached the porch, he addressed my
grandfather in the easy, courteous manner of a gentleman and an equal,
and requested hospitality for the night, explaining that his pack mule
had gotten away from him and that he had exhausted himself in a
fruitless search.
His request was granted without question, and Moro took up his
residence at Buena Vista, which on one pretext or another lasted for
several months, in spite of the suspicious and disquieting
circumstances that soon arose. The first of these was the report
brought in by the negroes the next morning after Moro’s arrival, that a
mule with a pistol shot through his head had been found partially
buried in the river bottom. Another was the fact that Moro was never
seen without a glove on his right hand, not even at meal time. The
negro boy who waited on him in his room reported that he once saw him
without the glove when he was washing his hand, and described a strange
device on his wrist that was probably a tattooed figure. But the most
disturbing circumstance connected with Moro was his eagerness to get
rid of money. He distributed gold coins (of what coinage, I never
heard) among the household servants like copper pennies, until
Grandfather rather sharply requested him to stop.
Though there was not much to be bought in the little town of Victoria,
Moro never came back from a trip to town without the most expensive
presents that could be bought for all the family in spite of the fact
that they were invariably refused. My mother seems to have been
particularly impressed by a large oil painting which he once bought
from a local artist at an impossible price, as a present for my
grandmother. When she refused to accept it, he asked permission to hang
it in the library, and there it hung as long as the house was in
possession of the family.
Frequently Moro proposed the most extravagant things. Once he urged
Grandfather to allow him to build a great stone house of feudal
magnificence to replace the colonial frame house in which he lived.
Again he proposed that he take the entire family to Europe at his
expense, leaving the girls there to receive an elaborate education in
the best schools to be found on the continent.
One day as Moro was walking about the plantation with Grandfather, the
question of plantation debts came up, and Moro remarked in a
significant tone that Grandfather was at that minute standing within
fifty feet of enough gold to enable him to pay all the debts of the
plantation and still be a rich man, even if he did not own an acre of
land or a negro slave. Grandfather’s anger prevented his continuing the
disclosure that he was evidently eager to make. The only landmark of
any kind near was a large fig tree about fifty feet away.
In the meantime the negroes had caught the idea of buried treasures,
and many were the tales they told of seeing Moro digging about the
place at night.
A guest staying in the house one night reported that he had been drawn
to the door of his room by an unusual noise, and had seen Moro
painfully heaving a small chest up the stairway, step at a time.
My grandfather was a man in whom the spirit of adventure was strong. He
had left his plantation to the direction of his wife while he went
adventuring into the California gold fields in ’49. Consequently Moro
was able to catch his interest by the story of buried treasures down on
the Rio Grande, and Grandfather consented to go if he were allowed to
make up his own party. The party as finally organized consisted of
friends and neighbors, most of whom were well-to-do planters, but there
was one man included somewhat out of the social class of the others,
though well known and trusted throughout the neighborhood. To this man
Moro objected strenuously, saying that he would either prevent their
finding the treasure, or if it were found, would murder them all to get
the whole for himself. Grandfather insisted, and the man went.
Moro was nervous and sulky from the start, and so aroused the
suspicions of the party that by the time they reached the Rio Grande,
he was not allowed out of sight. But despite the close watch kept upon
him, he finally made his escape by diving from one of the boats in
which the party was crossing the Rio Grande to the point where he said
the treasure was to be found. The man whom Moro feared would have shot
him as he appeared above the surface of the water if Grandfather had
not prevented.
There was nothing left for the party to do but return home, for Moro
had given them no map or directions that would enable them to make an
independent search. But before setting out on the return, Grandfather
foolishly accepted a dare to swim the river in a very wide place, and
in doing so caught a severe cold that developed into “galloping
consumption,” from which he died a few months later.
The rest of the story, so far as there is any, is confused and
contradictory. A few weeks before Grandfather’s death, some of the
negroes on the place came to the house, begging for relief from Moro’s
ghost, which was seen almost nightly digging at various spots on the
plantation, but most often near the big fig tree in the field.
Grandfather was too ill to make any investigation for himself, but he
questioned the negroes closely, and came to the conclusion that all the
stories had grown out of one real incident—that Moro had probably come
back to recover money that he had buried on the place.
The man whom Moro feared went to Mexico to escape service in the
Confederate Army, and his sudden rise to fortune, coupled with a wild
story he told on his return of having met with Moro in Mexico,
convinced my grandmother that he had in some way come into possession
of the treasure.
Judge McLean, who was a member of the original party, believed the
story of buried money on the Rio Grande to be nothing more than a ruse
on the part of Moro, representing a band of border outlaws, to kidnap
Grandfather and hold him for a ransom. He was very positive that he saw
Moro hanged as a Yankee spy during the Civil War, while he was
stationed on the border near Rio Grande City.
The legend of buried money still lingers around the old plantation of
Buena Vista. [94] About ten years after the Civil War, my father bought
the part of the plantation on which the home was situated, and during
the years that he lived there was much annoyed by treasure seekers who
begged permission to dig for “Moro’s gold,” or who came at night and
dug without permission. In telling me the story, as he had heard it
from various members of my mother’s family and from the negroes on the
place, he expressed his belief that Moro had at one time buried money
there. He told me that one day as he was showing a “free negro” how to
run a straight furrow in the field not far from the old fig tree, the
horse stumbled and his right foreleg sank in the ground up to the
shoulder. The thought of Moro’s gold seems not to have entered my
father’s mind at the time, but later he remembered it, and said that he
was convinced that if there had ever been any money buried on the
plantation it was in that spot.
LEGENDS OF THE SUPERNATURAL
THE LEGEND OF STAMPEDE MESA
By John R. Craddock
[Of all the legends in this volume “The Legend of Stampede Mesa” shows
most of native originality. Like all true legends, it has had a wide
vogue, though I have never heard it in the cattle country of the
border. A few years ago a young man from the Panhandle, named Roy
Ainsworth, gave me this abbreviated variant of it. Back in the days
when range men paid in coin rather than in checks, a certain cattle
buyer on one of the big ranches of Northwest Texas is believed to have
been murdered for his money and his body put away in a shack or dugout
near the principal round-up grounds of the ranch. After the murder,
whenever an outfit tried to hold a herd of cattle on these grounds at
night, they were sure to have a stampede. Cowboys reported many times
having seen the murdered man’s ghost wandering about among the cattle
in the darkness and, of course, stampeding them. Naturally, the place
came to be avoided for night herding.—Editor.]
Among cattle folk no subject for anecdote and speculation is more
popular than the subject of stampedes. There has always been a certain
mystery surrounding the stampeding of cattle. Sometimes they stampede
without any man’s having heard, seen, or smelled a possible cause. The
following account of how Stampede Mesa got its name, together with the
legend, told in many variations, of the phantom stampede, is current
among the people of the Panhandle and New Mexico. I was a mere child
when I heard it first, and I have since heard it many times.
Stampede Mesa is in Crosby County, Texas, about eighteen miles from the
cap rock of Blanco Canyon, wedged up between the forks of Catfish
(sometimes called White or Blanco) River. The main stream skirts it on
the west; to the south the bluffs of the mesa drop a sheer hundred feet
down into McNeil Branch. The two hundred acre top of the mesa is
underlaid with rocks that are scarcely covered by the soil, though
grazing is nearly always good. Trail drivers all agree that a better
place to hold a herd will never be found. A herd could be watered at
the river late in the evening and then be driven up the gentle slope of
the mesa and bedded down for the night. In the morning there was water
at hand before the drive was resumed. The steep bluffs to the south
made a natural barrier so that night guard could be reduced almost
half. Nevertheless, few herd bosses of the West would now, if
opportunity came, venture to hold their herds on Stampede Mesa. Yet it
will never succumb to the plow. Scarred and high, it will stand
forever, a monument to the days that are gone, a wild bit of the old
West to keep green the legend that has given to it the name, “Stampede
Mesa.”
Early in the fall of ’89 an old cowman named Sawyer came through with a
trail herd of fifteen hundred head of steers, threes and fours. While
he was driving across Dockum Flats one evening, some six or seven miles
east of the mesa, about forty-odd head of nester cows came bawling into
the herd. Closely flanking them, came the nester, demanding that his
cattle be cut out of the herd. Old Sawyer, who was “as hard as nails,”
was driving short handed; he had come far; his steers were thin and he
did not want them “ginned” about any more. Accordingly, he bluntly told
the nester to go to hell.
The nester was pretty nervy, and seeing that his little stock of cattle
was being driven off, he flared up and told Sawyer that if he did not
drop his cows out of the herd before dark he would stampede the whole
bunch.
At this Sawyer gave a kind of dry laugh, drew out his six shooter, and
squinting down it at the nester, told him to “vamoose.”
Nightfall found the herd straggling up the east slope of what on the
morrow would be christened by some cowboy Stampede Mesa. Midnight came,
and with scarcely half the usual night guard on duty, the herd settled
down in peace.
But the peace was not to last. True to his threat, the nester,
approaching from the north side, slipped through the watch, waved a
blanket a few times, and shot his gun. He did his work well. All of the
herd except about three hundred head stampeded over the bluff on the
south side of the mesa, and two of the night herders, caught in front
of the frantic cattle that they were trying to circle, went over with
them.
Sawyer said little, but at sunup he gave orders to bring in the nester
alive, horse and all. The orders were carried out, and when the men
rode up on the mesa with their prisoner, Sawyer was waiting. He tied
the nester on his horse with a rawhide lariat, blindfolded the horse,
and then, seizing him by the bits, backed him off the cliff. There were
plenty of hands to drive Sawyer’s remnant now. Somewhere on the
hillside they buried, in their simple way, the remains of their two
comrades, but they left the nester to rot with the piles of dead steers
in the canyon.
And now old cowpunchers will tell you that if you chance to be about
Stampede Mesa at night, you can hear the nester calling his cattle, and
many assert that they have seen his murdered ghost, astride a
blindfolded horse, sweeping over the headland, behind a stampeding herd
of phantom steers. Herd bosses are afraid of those phantom steers, and
it is said that every herd that has been held on the mesa since that
night has stampeded, always from some unaccountable cause.
I have a tale connected with two of these noted stampedes that I will
relate here in the words of Poncho Burall, who told it to me.
“It was in the fall of 1900. This country was just beginning to settle.
I was working for old man Jeff Keister’s outfit then, taking a herd
through to New Mexico. We’d been on the trail some ten days, I guess,
when we came to a ranch in a valley down on the Salt Fork. Keister says
a friend of his lives there, and he rides off. After a while two boys
ride up and tell us that they will herd the cattle while the outfit
goes down to the ranch to dinner.
“When we rode down to the house, Keister and an old man were sitting
under a brush arbor that represented the front porch. First thing I
noticed about the old man was that one of his arms is only about
two-thirds as long as the other, and that he has to put it where he
wants it with his other hand. We meets him and sets down to wait for
dinner, not saying much but listening some.
“‘You’ll find a-plenty good places to hold ‘em nights, Jeff, but about
the third night out you will be some’ers near Stampede Mesa. Don’t you
try to hold them thar.’
“‘I’m aimin’ to hold them right there, Bill,’ Keister says.
“‘Now, Jeff, you ain’t forgot that stampede in ’91, have you? Well,
maybe you have, but I hain’t. I carry a little souvaneer that won’t let
me forget. There was phantom steers in that herd that night. You
recollect as how them steers went over the steep side of the mesa,
Jeff? I must a been a sight when you found me. It’s right nigh onto
twenty year now, and I ain’t moved this old arm since.’
“Well, the wife called dinner just then, and the old man got strung out
on something else, but that stampede business jest stuck to my mind.
“Along late one evenin’ old Keister and I were riding the drag, when he
puts the dogie he’s been a-carryin’ on his saddle down on the ground,
and says, ‘Taint fer now, yuh kin walk. We are campin’ on Stampede
Mesa, as they call it.’
“‘I guess yuh noticed that feller’s arm, back there in the valley,’
says Keister, jerking his hand back toward the way we come.
“‘Yes,’ I said, waiting for him to go on.
“‘Well, he got it up there on the south side of that mesa. Hoss went
plumb crazy. Bill’s allys said they wuz ghost steers in that herd that
night. I think I seen ‘em too. They jest came a-sailin’ through the
herd and right past your horse. I don’t believe in hants, but it wuz
scary.’
“Well, we drove ’em up on the mesa and let ’em graze. A feller and me
took first guard that night. The herd settled down pretty soon, but I
couldn’t get that stampede tale out of my mind; every time a cow moved
I thought something was going to happen. It was a mixed herd, and they
lay as quiet as a bunch of dead sheep. It got so quiet that I could
hear my pardner’s saddle creak, away off to one side. The moon set, and
it got darker. Just about then something passed me. It looked like a
man on a horse, but it just seemed to float along. Then there was a
roar, and the whole bunch stampeded straight for the bluffs. I rode in
front of one critter like, and he jest passed right on, jest kinder
floatin’ past me. Then some old cow bellered and we milled ’em easy—but
they wouldn’t bed down again that night and it took every derned one of
us to hold ’em.”
There are some who say that the phantoms of this legend are tumble
weeds, blown by the wind. But there are many honest men who will tell
you of the weird calls of the phantom nester and of the galloping
phantom steers. Knowing the story, you cannot look at the mesa, branded
by the white scar of the old trail, without a strange emotion.
THE WOMAN OF THE WESTERN STAR: A LEGEND OF THE RANGERS
By Adele B. Looscan
(With apologies to the memory of Judge Hugh Duffy.)
Judge Hugh C. Duffy, to whom I am indebted for this legend, was
identified with the interests of Bandera County for fifty-four years.
As host of the Duffy Hotel, his genial gifts made friends of all who
shared his hospitality. His acquaintance with the rangers enabled him
to gather from them and others a rare collection of tales, which he
related with convincing accuracy of detail. The Pioneer History of
Bandera County, by J. Marvin Hunter, contains an appreciative sketch of
his life and a tribute to his many fine qualities.
I tell the tale now as it was told to me, when the moon was full and
shone on a merry group of friends seated on the ground, in the
neighborhood of Polly’s Peak. The narrator began with these words: “It
was on just such a night as this.” Then followed the legend in the
time-honored style sacred to legendary lore, impossible for me to
imitate.
A more charming landscape cannot be found than the hills and dales of
Bandera County. The Indians loved this country, and every year resorted
thither, to fish in the waters of the Medina and to hunt deer and
turkeys on the mountains. But their intentions were not always so
peaceful, and Texas Rangers were not infrequently called upon to
protect the few white settlers who were bold enough to call this region
home.
In the summer of 1844, there had been some fierce conflicts between the
white and the red men; the latter had fled precipitately, showering
their arrows behind them upon the rocky ground. The battle having ended
with slight loss to the victorious rangers, they were taking their rest
near the base of a conical eminence, afterwards known as Polly’s Peak.
The moon was at its full. The rangers lay at ease near their camp fire,
whose glowing coals of red and yellow seemed to vie with the moon’s
glorious golden hue. The story-hour had come, and each in his turn told
of his own or another’s thrilling experience or hairbreadth escape. A
mocking bird, perched on the topmost bough of a gnarled oak, poured out
the melodious measures of comedy and tragedy that make up his wonderful
repertoire. The story tellers were forced to listen to him and
interpret, as best they might, the infinitely varied notes of his song.
Now it seemed a human voice, calling, “Come here! Come here! Come
here!” Now, a cry of distress, as of a captive frog in the toils of a
snake; again, household words pealed forth: “Tut! Tut! Tut! Chick!
Chick! Chick! Mew! Mew! Mew!”; then came high pitched trills of
bewildering sweetness, rivaling those of the most gifted prima donna,
followed by a low, soothing, caressing lullaby. The song ceased
suddenly and left as its echo an uncanny stillness. The breeze had
entirely died away; the leaves on the near-by trees seemed to stand at
attention, as if awaiting orders. From whom? A voiceless presence
commanded an attitude of motionless silence.
The rangers felt its strange influence and looked inquiringly at each
other; meanwhile not a word was uttered. The tense silence became
painful. A cloud, veiling the face of the moon and dimming its light
for a few moments, invited them to watch its passing, and, as they
gazed upon its flitting shadows, there suddenly stood in their midst a
tall, beautiful Indian woman.
Her hair hung in long braids over her shoulders; her brow was crowned
by a circlet of sparkling crystal beads; countless strings of colored
beads and shells adorned her body; a skirt of a filmy blue fabric
reached nearly to her ankles. She carried a bead-embroidered quiver at
her side, and swung across her back was a bow of bois d’arc. The
rangers arose and gazed in amazement at her majestic attitude, and
several minutes elapsed before their captain controlled his voice to
ask: “Where do you come from, and why are you here alone?”
Quietly folding her arms, she replied: “My people are tired of
fighting. So many of our braves have fallen, victims of your
death-dealing weapons, that we are helpless. I come to ask that the
path between my people and yours be again made white! I come alone,
because I know not fear. The Great Spirit is my father!”
She laid three polished arrows at her feet and stood for a moment
looking up into the sky, while the moonlight glittered on her shining
ornaments, and the blooming white yucca that surrounded her gleamed
like silver. She turned toward the west and, pointing to a star,
wonderfully brilliant in spite of the moonlight, exclaimed, “That star
is my home! I go there!”
Her listeners, almost breathless from amazement, were men accustomed to
danger; it was their daily duty to meet it. They now saw no threatening
danger, no indication of a cowardly ambush; but the silence, like that
of the desert, created a feeling akin to awe, and acted like an
admonition. But for a hasty sign of the cross, a slight movement of the
lips on the part of a few, they stood as lifeless as a group of
statuary.
A dark cloud had been rapidly gathering about the summit of Polly’s
Peak, but the rangers, bewildered by the strangeness of the situation,
seemed transfixed as by some magic spell, and saw naught but the
graceful figure and pointing finger of the woman. Their senses were
dulled as in the mazes of a dream. The plaintive note of a whippoorwill
began to tell his mournful tale, the piercing shriek of an owl startled
the little company, and a blinding flash of lightning and crash of
thunder broke the spell of their enchantment.
They sprang to their stack of arms, seized their guns, and made ready
to face an enemy. Some cursed, with wild unreason. Others cried: “Where
is the woman, damned siren that she is, who made it her business to
bewitch us men, while the red devils of her tribe prepare to attack and
kill us! Let’s find and follow her! Look for the arrows she laid at her
feet!”
One swore he had seen her caught up into the black cloud as it opened
to emit the thundering electric bolt—plain proof that she was an
emissary of the devil.
While confusion thus reigned, some tried in vain to find the arrows,
which might give a clue. With the earliest dawn, a careful and
persistent search failed to discover the arrows, or the presence of a
single Indian within the radius of a hundred miles.
The presence and disappearance of the “Woman of the Western Star” must
be classed as a mystery, and, like many another mystery, its influence
was not only felt at the time, but had lasting beneficial effect.
Henceforth the Indians came and went peacefully, committing no
depredations, and unmolested by the white men. At a certain season of
each year, they placed flint arrowheads and beads of many colors in the
grave of their most noted chief and planted a peace feather at its
head. In the long ago, he and his tribe had resisted the Spanish
invasion and he had fallen, mortally wounded, in battle against them.
On a high cliff overlooking Bandera Pass, his grave could still be seen
thirty years ago.
THE DEVIL AND STRAP BUCKNER [95]
By N. A. Taylor
[The legend of “The Devil and Strap Buckner” reprinted here in a much
abridged form, through the courtesy of Mrs. Natalie Taylor Carlisle and
Miss Grace B. Taylor, of Houston, daughters of the deceased author,
affords sufficient perplexity to the folk-lorist. There is no doubt
that the legend as told is based on a pure folk tale; there is no doubt
that the author in telling it took many liberties with it, much as
Washington Irving took liberties with the legends of the Hudson; and
there seems little doubt that the legend has perished from the folk
among whom it once existed. The book in which it is preserved is very
scarce, hardly procurable at any price.
Colonel Nathaniel Alston Taylor came to Texas shortly before the Civil
War and began his travels of “2000 miles on horseback,” concluding them
after the war was over. I should say that in addition to being the most
delightful of all Texas books of travel, his book contains the most
incisive information on the social conditions of pioneer Texans.
According to Mrs. Carlisle, though the name of H. F. McDanield is
printed as an associate author, he had absolutely nothing to do with
the authorship. Mr. Taylor needed financial help to publish the book
and McDanield gave it on the condition that his name should be used as
joint author. Mr. Taylor left manuscript journals containing notes on
his travels in which the legend is mentioned; and Mrs. Carlisle writes:
“As told me by my father, the legend of Strap Buckner is really
folk-lore. It was told to him in very simple form by a ‘dapper young
man’ explaining why the creek was named Buckner’s Creek. The young man
said that Strap Buckner came to Texas with Austin’s colony and gained
his queer reputation for good naturedly knocking men down, and that he
had several times knocked down the great Austin himself; he would not
hesitate to knock down anything. My father remarked, ‘He’d try to knock
down a bull, wouldn’t he?’ Thereupon the young man said that it was
related that Strap Buckner had tackled and put to flight, with his bare
fists, a great black bull that occasionally made himself obnoxious in
Austin’s colony. But Strap became unpopular and betook himself to the
La Grange vicinity, where he settled in a log cabin of his own
construction near the creek. Here he ‘tried to be good,’ but finally
again began knocking men down, and knocked down the Indians and even
the chief and his ‘queen’ and the chief’s daughter. The Indian chief
admired him so much that he presented him with the swiftest horse he
had, a gray nag. This recognition of ‘his genius’ so aroused the
spirits of Strap that he became gloriously drunk and declared himself
‘the Champion of the World’ and challenged any and everybody to
fight—the whole Indian tribe, the Devil himself. At this point, a
terrible tempest arose, during which the air was charged with
brimstone, and the Devil appeared, and a dreadful fight took place,
lasting all the day and night. The Devil conquered, and carried Strap
and his gray nag away on a cloud of pale blue smoke that arose from the
‘battle ground.’ My father was so impressed by the tale that he added
to it with the result to be read in his book.”
In hope of finding some survival of the legend in the La Grange
neighborhood, I sent a copy of it to Mrs. W. H. Thomas, a member of the
Texas Folk-Lore Society, who has long lived at La Grange. She and her
son, Mr. Wright Thomas, circulated the legend widely without being able
to get a surviving trace of it. Nevertheless, there is a large creek
that empties into the Colorado River near La Grange called “Buckner’s
Creek.” The country up it “used to be considered wild and rough,” says
Mrs. Thomas, “and when I was a child and we wanted to describe anyone
as rough, rude, or illiterate, we would say that he must have come
‘from high Buckner.’”
Mr. Wright Thomas interviewed an old German woman known as “Aunt Vogt”
who came to the settlement in 1840. She says that a carpenter named
Buckner lived in the country before she came but that she never heard
any legend connected with the name.
The legend of a hero of superhuman strength is as old as the
imagination of man. In America it has thrived, particularly among the
lumber camps of Maine and of the Northwest, in the myth of Paul Bunyan
and his wonderful Blue Ox, “Babe,” “seven ax-handles wide between the
eyes”—some say, “forty-two ax-handles and a plug of chewing tobacco.”
In the Century Magazine for May, 1923, pages 23–33, Hubert Langerock
has reported in detail, as from original folk sources, concerning “The
Wonderful Life and Deeds of Paul Bunyan.” In West Virginia, according
to Margaret Prescott Montague, the performer of deeds of superhuman
strength is known as Tony Beaver. See her article called “Up Eel
River,” in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1923. The superhuman hero in
the Southwest has thrived in the person of Pecos Bill, who really
belongs in a large part to Texas. Those who would know of him are
referred to “The Saga of Pecos Bill,” by Edward O’Reilly in the Century
Magazine for October, 1923, pages 827–833. Thus we see that Strap
Buckner, no matter what his derivation or what his lamentable death, is
no alien to our soil. It is a pity, though, that he is not thriving
like his brothers Paul Bunyan, Tony Beaver, and Pecos Bill.—Editor.]
A mile above the ferry, I entered a charming valley leading from the
west. It was a succession of farm after farm. The song of the plowman
was merry in the air, and there was an odor of the newly-turned soil,
which showed just a tint of the coloring matter of the Colorado,
proving that the mighty river had invaded the valley with its
back-water. Gentle slopes and eminences and detached groves of oak
looked upon this pleasant valley from either side. Through the middle
of it flowed a small stream known as Buckner’s Creek. I had ridden a
few miles up this attractive valley when a young horseman cantered up
by my side, traveling the same direction with myself. I said
involuntarily as he checked his prancing steed beside me and bowed
politely: “A young gentleman and a scholar!”
After an interchange of courtesies and some pleasant conversation, I
asked why the sparkling brook was called Buckner’s Creek, and why it
had not been named for some water nymph, who, in the mythological days,
must have chosen it for her haunt; or for some Indian princess with a
musical name who had lived and loved on its banks?
“Ah,” said he, turning upon me with his beaming eyes, which grew larger
and brighter, “and thereby hangs a tale—a tale of the olden time. And
as I perceive that you are one who loves knowledge, I will tell it to
you if you will have the patience to hear me.”
I thanked him and begged him to proceed.
“You must know then,” continued he, “that this vale in which you are
riding is one that has witnessed strange company and remarkable events.
In the olden time there came to Texas with Austin, who, you are aware,
brought ‘the first three hundred’ Americans who founded this great
commonwealth, a youth whose name was Strap Buckner. Where he was born,
whence his lineage, or why he bore the name of Strap the records do not
tell. Certain it is, he was of giant stature, and of the strength of
ten lions, and he used it as ten lions. His hair was of the redness of
flame, as robust as the mane of a charger, and his face—it was
freckled. He was of a kindly nature, as most men of giant strength are,
but he had a pride in his strength which grew ungovernable. With no
provocation whatever, he knocked men down with the kindest intentions
and no purpose to harm them. He would enter a circle of gentlemen with
a smiling visage, and knock them all down; and when any received
bruised or broken limbs, he nursed them with more than the tenderness
of a mother, and with a degree of enthusiasm, as if his whole heart was
bent on restoring them to health as soon as practicable, in order that
he might enjoy the pleasure of knocking them down again. His genius was
to knock men down. He knocked down Austin’s whole colony at least three
times over, including the great and good Austin himself.
“He could plant a blow with his fist so strongly that it was merry
pastime with him to knock a yearling bull stark dead; and even the
frontlet of a full grown animal could not withstand him. In those days
a huge black bull appeared mysteriously in Austin’s colony, who by his
ferocity became a terror to the settlement, and was known by the dread
name of Noche. Strap challenged this bull to single combat, and invited
the colony to witness the encounter. When the day came, the entire
colony looked from their doors and windows, being afraid to go out,
every one, probably, praying that both Strap and the bull would be
slain. He threw a red blanket over his shoulder, and walked on the
prairie with the air of a hero who goes forth to meet a mighty foeman.
He bore no weapon whatever. When the bull perceived him, he tossed his
tail, pawed the earth, and emitted a roar of thunder. Strap imitated
him, and pawed and roared also; which perceiving, the bull came toward
him like a thunder-bolt clothed in tempest and terror. Strap received
him with a blow on his frontlet from his bare fist, which sent him
staggering back upon his haunches, and the blood flowed from his
smoking nostrils. Recovering from his surprise, Noche, to the
astonishment of all, turned his tail and fled away, bellowing. He was
never more seen in those parts.
“Strap’s fame greatly arose, insomuch that men looked upon him in awe,
and maidens and strong women pined in secret admiration. He became a
great hunter, using no other weapon but his fist and an iron pestle, or
mace. About this time also Strap became addicted to strong drink and
grew boisterous, to such a degree that people shunned him in spite of
his kindly nature. No man would meet him alone; but when he was seen
approaching, men would shut themselves up in their houses, or collect
in knots, all with guns and pistols cocked. Strap now determined that
he would seek other fields of glory. So, early on a bright spring
morning he arose, and throwing his bundle of raiment over his left
shoulder, and bearing his iron pestle in his right hand, he turned his
back upon the unappreciative community.
“He traveled west over the great plains. After days of wonders Strap
reached the site where La Grange now is, and to his surprise found a
solitary trading house, where Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall exchanged
beads and liquor with Indians for furs and skins, and for horses they
might steal. He liked the country greatly, and whiskey being
accessible, he determined to abide in these quarters. On the first day
of his arrival, he knocked down both Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall,
but so handsomely and with such an air of unspeakable kindness that
they could conceive no offense. Before a week had elapsed he had
knocked down every Indian brave who dwelt within ten miles round; and
finally he knocked down the great king himself, Tuleahcahoma. The
Indians called him the Red Son of Blue Thunder. The great king held him
in such reverence that he presented him with a gray horse with a
bob-tail, which, though ugly and lank to look at, was famed as the
swiftest horse known to all the Indians.
“Now this great king and his powerful tribe dwelt in this fair valley
in which you ride. Strap saw it, and he loved the beautiful land. He
resolved to settle within it, and chose yon lovely site, and there
built his residence of cedar posts. He procured a jug of whiskey and
set up housekeeping, an object of great reverence to his neighbors.
Daily he went forth and knocked down many Indians with great grace. At
last they conceived that they did not like this, and they determined to
abandon the vale. On a dark night they silently stole away, and next
morning Strap found himself alone. When he beheld the deserted valley,
but yesterday teeming with braves and fair maidens, he wept in the
kindness of his heart. ‘Other friends,’ said he, ‘have left me before.
Such is the common penalty of greatness.’
“Two days he pondered on his greatness and his misery, and the struggle
between his genius and his better spirit was terrible. He who hath
genius hath a heaving ocean or a volcano in his breast. At length, a
dark light gleamed in Strap’s impatient eyes; it was his genius
startled and indignant. He arose with a proud air, admiringly gazed
upon his enormous fists, and groaned deeply for the presence of some
one whom he might knock down. His bosom heaved and swelled. And then a
sweet gentleness stole into his eyes, as his better spirit spoke to him
in a soft voice: ‘Ah, Strap, hast thou not glory enough? Hast thou not
knocked down many times nearly every man in Texas ... even the great
Austin and the mighty king Tuleahcahoma? Come, gentle Peace; encircle
thy pleasant arms about me and bathe my brow with kisses. My laurels
are sufficient, and the great man shall have repose.’
“He felt a thirst, and he reached forth his hand for his jug, but found
it empty. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘this will not do.’ He called his swift gray
nag, and holding his jug in one hand and the rein in the other, hied
away, his long red hair streaming like a meteor behind him. When he
rose on the east bank of the Colorado, as fate would have it, he saw
twenty-two Indian braves, who, having exchanged their skins for whiskey
and trinkets, were having a gay dance under the boughs of an oak. Strap
dismounted, and stepping lightly into the circle of braves, knocked
them all down. He then turned to each one and bowed with exquisite
grace, and the gentleness on his countenance was sweet. You see how
treacherous genius is, and how feeble are the best efforts to withstand
it. He that hath a genius must needs let it work. Lightly he stepped
into the trading house, smiling as the dawn, carrying his clenched
fists before him. He met Bob Turket at the door, and instantly knocked
him down. His eyes sparkled, his genius was aglow. Bill Smotherall,
beholding the light of his countenance, essayed to escape, but a
powerful blow overtook him between the shoulders and felled him face
downward to the floor. Strap jumped upon the counter and flapped his
elbows against his flanks, and crowed a crow which rang among the hills
and forests of the Colorado. His genius for the first time had overcome
his kindness of heart; for never before, in all his achievements, had
he uttered a note of triumph. I fear me it was a mark of the decadence
of his noble spirit.
HE COMETH!
“But all of this perhaps had not been so bad had he not now resorted to
whiskey. Calling for his jug, he ordered it filled, and seizing a quart
measure, he drank at one draught all it would hold. Instantly, as might
be supposed, his genius broke all bounds; it raged. Filling the quart
measure with water, he made with its contents a wet ring on the floor,
in the center of which he leaped like a savage beast. He smote the air
with his fists and exclaimed in a loud voice: ‘Behold in me, Bob
Turket, Bill Smotherall, and ye red men of the forest and
prairie—behold in me the champion of the world! I defy all that live. I
wager my swift gray nag. I defy the veritable old Devil himself—him of
the cloven hoof and tawny hide. Black imp of hell, thou Satanas, I defy
thee!’
“Scarcely had he uttered these words when a singular murmuring sound
issued from the forests of the Colorado, which, growing louder and
louder, at last seemed to quiver under the whole heavens. Bob Turket
and Bill Smotherall looked at one another, speechless and pale. The
braves gathered about the door stricken with terror. Said the great
Medicine Man, sounding his big bongbooree: ‘It is—it is—it is he! The
Great Father of the Red Son of Blue Thunder has descended from the
clouds. He cometh to aid his great son.’
“Outspake Bob Turket: ‘Mighty champion of the world, norate to us what
is that!’
“The champion of the world, still occupying the center of the ring,
responded: ‘It is not the Great Father of the Red Son of Blue Thunder.
I know that familiar voice: it is Noche—it is dread Noche! I conquered
him once before, and I will conquer him again. Black, dread Noche, I
defy thee!’
“The singular murmuring sound again issued from the deep forests of the
Colorado, growing louder and louder, till the everlasting hills
trembled with the reverberation, and the great oaks bowed their heads.
It articulated distinctly, according to the true report of Bob Turket:
‘Ah, Strap—ah, Strap! Remember, Strap, remember!’
“The champion seized his jug by the handle, and pouring out a quart
measure of the treacherous liquid, imbibed it at a single draught. He
then mounted his swift gray nag and sped away with the fury of a
whirlwind. Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall watched him as he passed out
of view, and then listened to the rapid clatter of hoofs till they died
away in the distance, but durst not venture out of their doors....
Strap entered his cabin.
LA NOCHE TRISTE
“Night was rapidly falling, and rolling clouds involved the heavens in
pitchy blackness. Fearful thunder resounded through the deserted vale.
A storm of wind and rain burst upon the cabin with terrible fury. In
the midst of it Strap proceeded to cook his supper of hoe-cake and
fried bacon. The bacon sizzled deliciously, and the hoe-cake grew to a
rich brown. When all was ready, he spread his table, and was invoking
an earnest blessing on him who invented fried bacon and hoe-cake, when
suddenly an impetuous blast of the tempest blew open one of his
windows. Strap raised his eyes and saw two fiery balls, about four
inches apart, staring at him through the open window. ‘Ah,’ said Strap,
‘Ocelot—wildcat—hast thou come to interview me?—or wouldst thou forget
thy sorrows in a sip from my jolly jug?—or wouldst thou take a little
fried bacon and hoe-cake?—or is the tempest too much for thy glossy
skin that thou comest to implore refuge with me under my roof? Truly, I
might accord thee of all these and feel myself blessed to do it, but
thy glaring, infernal eyes betray thee, and say that thou wouldst
return villainy for these mercies. Speed thee away! What! Starest
still? Wouldst fight? Then take this!’
“He plucked a stone from his hearth and threw it with all his might at
the glaring balls, but it missed its mark and they did not move.
“‘Ah, thou art brave,’ said he, ‘and my hand is unsteady. Wouldst beard
me in my den? Then let me try thee with my pestle!’ With that he seized
his iron mace and strode with it uplifted to the window. He drew back
to plant the blow of a giant between the glaring balls. The blow fell,
but it struck only against the window-sill, with such force that it
sank half through the heart of oak. The balls disappeared in the outer
darkness. Strap then barred the window more firmly than before, and sat
down to sup.
“He was chewing a lengthy piece of bacon, whose ends protruded from
each corner of his mouth, when a blinding flash of lightning fell,
accompanied with a burst of thunder. For a moment Strap felt himself
stunned with the flame and concussion. ‘Bless me,’ said he, ‘now has
the Father given us enough of lightning and dire thunder! But what, ye
gods, is this?’
“He beheld, dancing on the floor before him, a remarkable black figure,
with insolent eyes of fiery redness. It was in the shape of a man, but
was not three feet high, it had two red horns on its head, and its
feet, which were large, were cloven like the hoofs of a bull. Its nose
was prominent and hooked like the beak of an eagle, and its face was
gaunt and thin. Though so small of stature, its visage was hard and
wrinkled, and showed age and infinite villainy. As it danced before
him, it placed the thumb of the right hand against its nose and made at
Strap the insulting sign of derision; but it spake not.
“Strap was amazed, but he was not overcome. He let the long piece of
bacon drop from his mouth. The singular object ceased to dance, and
stepping by Strap’s side, took a seat unbid in a chair upon the hearth.
As it did so, it commenced growing, and did not stop until it had grown
to twice its original proportions. It drew from between its legs a long
tail, with a hard pronged point, which Strap had not observed before,
and twirled it over so that the point fell on Strap’s knee. This
disgusted Strap. He hastily pushed his chair away to the opposite
corner of the hearth, and observed: ‘Keep thy prolongation to thyself,
strange visitor!’
“‘Skin for skin,’ said the figure. At the same time he twirled his tail
over again with such force and accurate aim that the sharp point of it
stuck deeply into the mantel-piece, and there it hung fixed.
“‘What might thy name be,’ said Strap, ‘who visitest me at this
unseemly hour? Speak! thy name and thy business!’
“‘Sir,’ said the object, rising from the chair, extracting its tail
from the mantel-piece, and advancing a step toward Strap, ‘men call me
by many names. Thou hast called me “black imp of hell, thou Satanas!”
So be it. Skin for skin! Thou hast thrice challenged me to duel, and
thrice have I accepted. I have come to meet thee now, or to fling thy
challenge into thy teeth.’
“He seized his tail in his right hand, and held it like a javelin about
to be thrust. Strap gazed upon this singular instrument, and
meditatively spake: ‘Good Sir Devil, take a seat. Wouldst thou attack a
gentleman in his cups? None but a thief and coward would do that. Put
thy prolongation away, I prithee. Leave me to my sleep and restoration,
and I will meet thee man to man. Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock will
I meet thee.’
“The Devil advanced again, saying: ‘Give us thy hand, Strap Buckner;
skin for skin: tomorrow morn at nine o’clock, under yon oaks that
overlook thy dwelling from the south.’ They shook hands heartily.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘will I leave thee to sleep and restoration. Truly, he
hath neither courage nor honor who would attack a gentleman in his
cups.’
“The Devil then stepped toward the door. Strap moved forward to unbar
it and let him out, but the Devil made a bound for the key-hole, and
passed through, tail and all, in the twinkling of an eye. As he did so
he filled the room with a strong odor of brimstone. The champion burned
a few cotton rags to deodorize the room, and then sat quietly by his
table and ate a hearty repast of hoe-cake and bacon. Afterward he
walked his cabin an hour to promote digestion.
THE DAY OF EVENTS
“Day had dawned, but its light struggled almost in vain with the storm
which held carnival in the valley. Strap arose refreshed and vigorous.
He breakfasted on the remnants of the hoe-cake and bacon of the night’s
repast. The merry jug stood near, but he turned away from it with a
look of reproach. Donning his garment of buckskin, he said: ‘The hour
arrives!’ Then taking his iron limb in his right hand, the only aid he
asked from art, this matchless hero stepped out into the storm, called
his swift nag, and rode away to war.
“He had advanced but a few paces when the Infernal Fiend, in the form
of a skinny, ugly dwarf, appeared before him, dancing a jig, but he did
not make the insulting sign of derision. He bowed politely and said:
‘Hail to thee, Strap Buckner! I see that thou art a man of honor.
Receive my obeisance to a man of courage! I will lead and thou wilt
follow.’
“‘I dare follow where the Foul Fiend leadeth,’ said Strap. And both
moved onward through the storm, the Fiend in advance. A white flame of
lightning illuminated the valley, and when Strap looked again the Fiend
had disappeared, but an enormous bull, black as night, strode before
him. ‘Ah,’ said Strap, ‘this is my old friend Noche, I perceive. How is
thy frontlet, Noche? Hast thou had the screw worms picked out of thy
wounds? Better betake thee to a pretty, protected nook, and eat
cowslips and make calves for an honest milk-maid.’ Again the blinding
lightning came, and when Strap recovered his sight, Noche had departed;
in his stead the Fiend in stately form marched before him.
“They had now reached the foot of the upland that looks into the vale.
Silently they ascended to a cluster of noble oaks. The green sward was
rich and level around them. Rather seemed it a place for fairies to
dance under the moonlight than for Fiend and hero to meet in the
struggle of death. Strap dismounted and, turning his gray nag loose,
said to him: ‘Charge thyself with grass, whilst I charge myself with
the Devil. Prosper my work like thine!’ The gray nag wagged his
bobtail, and said, ‘I charge.’ Without the tremor of a nerve, without
air of fear or air of boast, this matchless hero confronted the Fiend.
As he did so, the latter meanly commenced to grow, and ceased not to
grow till he had achieved such stature that his head was a hundred and
ninety feet in the air, and he was eighty feet in girth. His tail grew
in correspondence, till, seizing it, he gave it a twirl, and the point
struck in the bosom of a black cloud. As he had a right to do, Strap
complained of this injustice. Said he: ‘Foul Fiend, thou art no fair
man to ask me to fight with thee on unequal terms. If thou choosest
such terms, I brand thee villainous coward.’
“The Fiend looked down from his lofty stature, and with a voice that
confused all living things within a vast circumference, said: ‘Put
aside thy iron limb, thy mace, thy pestle, and I will accommodate me to
thy size. Skin for skin!’ Strap tossed his pestle aside, whereat the
Fiend commenced shrinking, and ceased not to shrink till he had
shrunken to Strap’s size—all save his tail, which still remained
hitched in the bosom of the cloud. He now took position before Strap in
the attitude of a boxer, and Strap took position before him in the same
attitude. He kept his eye on Strap, and Strap kept his eye on him,
either guarding against any advantage or cheat by the other. The Fiend
now drew back for a pass at Strap, but just at that moment the black
cloud in which his tail was hitched was rapidly passing beyond its
length, and it drew the Devil backwards and upwards with great force,
causing him exceeding great pain at the point of its juncture with the
body. Now had Strap but used the advantage which offered itself to him,
what infinite fame would be his. Instead of this, under a false sense
of honor, and in the kindness of his heart, he proffered the Fiend
assistance to unhitch his tail! The Devil leaped up in the air and
rolled himself up in the coils of his tail till he had reached the
cloud, and there, with the help of claws and hoofs and horns, succeeded
at last in unhitching it. Immediately, back he sprang, and stood before
Strap in the attitude of a boxer.
“The battle raged with varying fortunes all day, till the Devil grew
again to monstrous size, and at last wore Strap out on the unequal
terms, till the mighty champion sought quarter, crestfallen and utterly
overcome. The country for a great circuit round rang with the hideous
noise of battle, and Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall and forty Indian
braves stood on the bank of the river and hearkened to it, amazed. As
night fell they saw a great gray horse riding through the air down the
valley, with the dread form of a red monkey astride his back in front,
and the form of an overpowered man dangling across him behind. The
horse and riders lit on the top of yon cedar-covered mountain that
looks down upon La Grange from the north, and then all disappeared in
the forest. On the spot of the dread encounter no earth has ever
accumulated, and no green grass or tree has ever grown there since; but
it remains, and will forever remain, in black deformity.
HE RETURNS
“Three months passed, and one morn as Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall
were counting their skins, they were stricken with amazement to see
Strap Buckner ride up before them on his swift gray nag. He dismounted
and stood before them, and they were the more amazed. And he looked
distant and sad and solemn, as if he were contemplating things afar
off. He spake to them not; but they fell on their faces before him, and
said: ‘Mighty champion of the world, depart hence!’ He said simply:
‘Skin for skin!’ and sadly and slowly rode away. Bob Turket and Bill
Smotherall watched him depart, and counted no more skins that day.
“Three months he dwelt in his cabin, and thrice weekly he visited the
trading house, where he walked about like one contemplating the dead,
with a sad and distant air. He was a changed man. He would drink no
whiskey, and would knock no man down. Finally, one night, a great blue
flame rose far above the valley, and cast a pale, deathly light over
the land. On the top of the blue flame appeared a great gray nag, and
astride him sat the dread form of a red monkey, and behind the red
monkey sat the form of a gigantic man waving a gigantic iron pestle,
whereat the dread form of the red monkey seemed to cower. When morning
arose, Strap’s house was in ashes and cinders.
“Evasit, abiit! Since that mysterious and perhaps fatal night, he has
never been seen in his proper person as in the olden time. Yet often at
night when the tempest howls and the thunders roar, his form, or
shadow, or image, or whatever it be, is seen to stride this valley in
which we ride, on his swift bob-tail nag. When a Buckner’s Creek baby
cries, whether from pure perverseness or from colic, only say to him
‘Strap Buckner’ once, and he will forthwith scrooch up in his cradle,
and you will hear no more from that baby for hours. Behold in him the
titular divinity to whom all the cowboys lift up their emulation and
prayers.”
“I perceive, sir,” said I, “that thou art a true poet, and I thank
thee.”
“And I perceive, sir,” said he, “that thou art a true epilogue, and I
thank thee. This is the road which bids me depart from thee. Farewell!”
He turned his horse and departed from me, as other friends had done
before.
THE LEGEND OF CHEETWAH
By Edith C. Lane
[To me, this legend sounds like some naive excuse invented by the
Spanish to account for their great overthrow by the Indians of the
Southwest in 1680. Just as likely it is an Indian boast of that
overthrow. An observation recorded by the observant Josiah Gregg in
1844 seems to me luminous here. Gregg says that, according to
tradition, numerous and productive mines were “in operation in New
Mexico before the expulsion of the Spaniards in 1680; but that the
Indians, seeing that the cupidity of the conquerors had been the cause
of their former cruel oppressions, determined to conceal all the mines
by filling them up, and obliterating as much as possible every trace of
them. This was done so effectually, as is told, that after the second
conquest (the Spaniards in the meantime not having turned their
attention to mining pursuits for a series of years) succeeding
generations were never able to discover them again. Indeed it is now
generally credited by the Spanish population, that the Pueblo Indians,
up to the present day, are acquainted with the locales of a great
number of these wonderful mines, of which they most sedulously preserve
the secret. Rumor further asserts that the old men and sages of the
Pueblos periodically lecture the youths on this subject, warning them
against discovering the mines to the Spaniards, lest the cruelties of
the original conquest be renewed towards them, and they be forced to
toil and suffer in those mines as in days of yore.”—Gregg, Josiah,
Commerce of the Prairies, Philadelphia, 1855, Vol. I, pp.
162–163.—Editor.]
Upon a northwestern peak of Mount Franklin, near El Paso, there stands
out against the brilliant blue of a western sky the distinct outline of
an Indian’s head. It is plainly visible at almost any hour of the day
and is an object of wonder and speculation to the majority of
beholders.
According to the legend told me many years ago by an old, old Indian,
Cheetwah was the chief of an ancient tribe in New Mexico. He was
accustomed to go into old Mexico every few years, and often at the
point in the mountains where the Indian head now shows, he with his
followers encountered hostile wanderers, whereupon followed battles
short but fierce.
Finally, after about two centuries of goings and encounters, Cheetwah
came upon a band of another and a strange race, the Spaniards. With
much pomposity, they commanded him and his people to surrender to them
all their gold and silver and then to be gone. The order so incensed
Cheetwah that, climbing to the top of the peak, he sent forth a great
call to all the Indians in the spirit world to rally to his assistance
and rout the haughty Spaniards forever from their usurped power in
Mexico.
After a battle in which the Indians seemed guided by some supernatural
power, the Spaniards were vanquished. Then Cheetwah and his men
vanished into the mountains, there to keep vigil through all the
centuries that no alien should prosper from the mineral wealth of their
land. Eventually the pale-faces came back, but it was further decreed
by the Great Spirit that for all time the face of Cheetwah should
remain upon the peak whence he had issued his great call, a reminder
that, though conquered outwardly for a time, the Indian shall yet come
back into his own and rule the mighty country that his ancestors
possessed in freedom. Thus stands Cheetwah today, aloof and majestic,
biding his time.
THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN IN BLUE
By Charles H. Heimsath
So far as I know, the first mention of the legend of the “Blue Lady” is
in the Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, 1630. Benavides was
(1621–1629) Father Custodian of the province of New Mexico, and his
Memorial was written to present Philip IV of Spain an account of the
“treasures spiritual and temporal” which that remote province
contained. In the course of this highly entertaining document Benavides
recounts at length, and with pious zeal, the miraculous conversion of
the Jumano tribe of Indians. Benavides was at that time (probably 1629)
somewhere in the upper Rio Grande valley. In this region, he states,
the Jumano Indians had been demanding missionaries for “years back.”
Finally he granted the missionaries.
“And before they went,” to quote the document literally, “[we]
asked the Indians to tell us the reason why they were with so much
concern petitioning us for baptism, and for Religious to go and
indoctrinate them. They replied that a woman like that one whom we
had there painted—which was a picture of the Mother Luisa de
Carrion—used to preach to each one of them in their own tongue,
telling them that they should come and summon the Fathers to
instruct and baptize them, and that they should not be slothful
about it. And that the woman who preached was dressed precisely
like her who was painted there; but that the face was not like that
one, but that she [their visitant] was young and beautiful. And
always whenever Indians came newly from those nations, looking upon
the picture and comparing it among themselves, they said that the
clothing was the same but the face was not, because the face of the
woman who preached to them was that of a young and beautiful girl.”
[96]
Another early reference to this mysterious lady appears in a letter of
Fray Damian Manzanet to Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora, 1690. In it
the writer goes on to say as follows:
“At that time I was living in the Mission Caldera, in the province
of Coahuila, whither I had gone with the intention of seeing
whether I could make investigations and obtain information about
the country to the north and northeast, on account of facts
gathered from a letter now in my possession, which had been given
in Madrid to the Father Antonio Linaz. This letter treats of what
the blessed Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda made known to the
Father Custodian of New Mexico, Fray Alonso de Benavides. And the
blessed Mother tells of having been frequently to New Mexico and to
the Gran Quivira, adding that eastward from the Gran Quivira are
the kingdoms of the Ticlas, Theas, and Caburcol. She also says that
these are not exactly the names belonging to these kingdoms, but
come close to the real names. Because of this information brought
by me from Spain, together with the fact of my call to the ministry
for the conversion of the heathen, I had come over and dwelt in the
missions of Coahuila.” [97]
And in the same letter a little further on Manzanet recounts this
incident:
“For lack of more time I shall only add what is the most noteworthy
of all, namely this: While we were at the Tejas Hasinai village,
after we had distributed clothing to the Indians and to the
governor of the Tejas, that governor asked me for a piece of blue
baize in which to bury his mother when she died; I told him that
cloth would be more suitable, and he answered that he did not want
any other color than blue. I then asked him what mysterious reason
he had for preferring the blue color, and in reply he said they
were very fond of that color, particularly for burial clothes,
because in times past they had been visited frequently by a
beautiful woman, who used to come down from the hills, dressed in
blue garments, and that they wished to do as that woman had done.
On my asking whether that had been long since, the governor said
that it had been before his time, but his mother, who was aged, had
seen that woman, as had also other old people. From this it is
easily to be seen that they referred to the Madre Maria de Jesus de
Agreda, who was frequently in those regions, as she herself
acknowledged to the Father Custodian of New Mexico, her last visit
being in 1631, the last fact being evident from her own statement,
made to the Father Custodian of New Mexico.” [98]
It appears, therefore, that after the publication of his Memorial in
1630, Benavides visited Maria de Jesus de Agreda. She was already
famous because of the publication of her La Mistica de Dios Historia
Divina de la Virgin, Madre de Dios in 1627, [99] in which she recounts,
among other preposterous things, what happened to the Virgin while she
was in the womb. The mind of this woman, therefore, filled with the
most extravagant fancies, was fertile for the story of Benavides. She
immediately assumed the identity of the unknown female missionary; and,
in the course of the visit, which lasted probably two weeks, elaborated
fully the exact method of the holy visitations. Benavides with his
charming medieval mind readily accepted her story. Because of the
prominence of the two, and because of the universal interest in the New
World, it obtained rapid and wide circulation and credence.
The story must have reached America quickly. Manzanet, in the above
quotations, speaks of it as being in general circulation thirty years
later. That it spread is also indicated by the fact that De Leon in a
letter, May, 1689, accounts for the religious knowledge of the Texas
(or Tejas) Indians through the ministration of a woman. The following
extract from his letter reveals the fact that he was not so well
acquainted with the Benavides account as Manzanet had been:
“They [the Texas] are very familiar with the fact that there is
only one true God, that he is in Heaven, and that he was born of
the Holy Virgin. They perform many Christian rites, and the Indian
Governor asked me for missionaries to instruct them, saying that
many years ago a woman went inland to instruct them, but that she
has not been there for a long time; and certainly it is a pity that
people so rational, who plant crops and know there is a God, should
have no one to teach them the Gospel, especially when the province
of Texas is so large and so fertile and has so fine a climate.”
[100]
And Shea asserts that “the Franciscan writers all from this time [when
Benavides published his account] speak of this marvelous conversion of
the Xumanos by her instrumentality as a settled fact.” [101] The legend
must have had wide acceptance in the Southwest in the last half of the
seventeenth century. Among the important historians who take account of
it are Bolton, Chapman, and Hodge. Bolton calls the story a “classic in
the lore of the Southwest”; [102] Chapman refers to Maria Agreda as
“the celebrated ‘Blue Lady’ of the American Southwest”; [103] and Hodge
as editor of the translation of the Benavides Memorial gives a full
account of the story in his excellent notes. [104]
So far as I know, the identity of the Blue Lady has been accounted for
by no one except Benavides. What is the real basis of the story? Could
there actually have been a female missionary who labored in the wilds
of New Mexico and Texas before the coming of the Fathers? Or was there
some young priest whom zeal led into that romantic region ahead of the
most daring, and whom the natives mistook for a beautiful woman because
of his youthful face and priestly robes? I wish I could answer.
THE HEADLESS SQUATTER
By John R. Craddock
A little to the right of where the old “Kenzie” Trail winds around the
head of Presslar’s Draw, on the — C Ranch in Dickens County, Texas,
stands a lone cottonwood tree that has for many years been a landmark.
Just below the tree, one of the most beautiful springs of the western
country empties out, and a short distance from the bank are the remains
of a dugout—once the home of the first settlers in the country. By some
miracle, the spring and the land immediately about it have escaped the
ravages of progress and are as wild today as they were when the
McKenzie Trail was dusty with travel. Only now, so the people say, the
grass grown trail near by, with its rain-washed ruts cut deep, and the
ruins of the long ago abandoned dugout, with broken bits of domestic
utensils still strewn about, have become the habitation of phantoms—the
haunt and the haunted.
Years ago, Ben —— and Burl —— squatted here and made what they called
the Cottonwood Claim. They were firm friends and shared alike the joys
and hardships of frontier life. Travelers came but seldom, and in their
lonely seclusion the two men came to know each other and to depend on
each other for human understanding as few brothers ever know or
understand one another. When the cottonwood Burl had planted reached a
height of some twelve feet, the country began to settle and land values
to soar. Ben wanted to hold the claim, while Burl wished to sell out
and return to the East. Their differences developed into a dispute that
ended in a tragedy.
The dispute came to the point that neither of the men spoke to the
other. For weeks they lived in sullen silence, wrath and hatred damming
up for some terrible outbreak. It came one evening when Burl was
digging out a grub with his spade. Ben was standing by, the ax that he
had been chopping with in hand. Suddenly, while Burl was bent over
almost to the ground, Ben swung the ax with a great choking cry and
curse and at one blow cut his head off. Then he buried the body under a
small cliff not far from the spring.
A few months afterward Ben became crazy, driven, it is said, into
insanity by the ghost of his dead partner, which was constantly
appearing before him as natural as in life—except headless. Of nights
as Ben sat by his fire the ghost of his partner would steal in and take
the vacant chair. As soon as he had done with supper and had sat down,
Ben could hear a horse coming up the trail; he could hear the creaking
of the saddle; he could hear the whir of the spurs as the ghost came in
from the darkness; and then seated in his old chair, it mattered not
whether the room was lighted or in darkness, would appear the murdered
squatter. Sometimes when Ben was riding far out on distant ranges he
would suddenly hear the galloping of a horse, and there alongside him
would be coming the same apparition, headless, always headless.
Thus hounded, Ben finally told the story of his deed to a sheriff. But
he had already acquired the reputation for being “cracked” and the
sheriff paid no attention to him. Then one day a rider found the
bloated body of Ben hanging from a limb of the cottonwood. Beyond all
doubt he had killed himself.
The folk of the country still tell this tale, and they say that at
night the phantoms can be seen crossing the old Trail or stealing about
the dugout. Some say that they have heard the cry of “O-O-O, Ben” come
as from far away and then a cry of despair answer back from the
cottonwood tree.
MYSTERIOUS MUSIC IN THE SAN BERNARD RIVER
By Bertha McKee Dobie
[Material for this compilation, with the exception of Mr. Morris’
accounts published in the Freeport Facts and Mrs. West’s folk tales,
was supplied through the Editor.]
The mysterious music in the San Bernard River at Music Bend in Brazoria
County is not so haunting as the siren strains against which Ulysses
waxed his ears or as the luring song of the Lorelei. But perhaps all
that it lacks is its Homer or its Heine. This Texas music, if less
enchanting, is less deceptive. It draws no one on to his destruction.
The legend of the San Bernard is widely known and, like all truly
popular legends, as yet unfixed by a master’s using, has many forms.
The account most expressive of the folk that has come to my notice is
that supplied by Mrs. West of Velasco. This account is chiefly
concerned with the character of the music and with the apparitions that
appeared to Mrs. West’s mother and brother. According to Mrs. West, the
music never plays for those who laugh at it or doubt it, but those who
row out over Music Bend with an open mind may hear music sweeter than
any played with hands. It sounds, she says, like the music of violins.
Sometimes it is preceded by a very dreadful noise, resembling the
sounds made by a steer which, having been knocked in the head, falls,
kicking and beating the ground and bellowing in pain. After the noise
has passed, the violins begin to play. Mrs. West is the only one of my
authorities who mentions the dreadful noise. Mr. Eugene Wilson, Jr.,
writes in “Mysterious Music on the San Bernard,” The Gulf Messenger,
Volume VII, December, 1894: “It has been likened to a number of musical
instruments, by a few to the soft, sweet notes of the Aeolian harp.”
This last is the sound most frequently heard by Mr. J. W. Morris of
Freeport, though he also mentions the violin, the flute, and the human
voice.
There is equal variation, indeed contradiction, in accounts of the time
when the music may be heard. Mrs. West, who grew up on the San Bernard,
says that the music may be heard by day or by night, though not
continuously or regularly even by those who “believe in it.” This
testimony is corroborated by Mr. F. D. Letts, an abstract of whose
article, published years ago in the Galveston Daily News, has been
supplied by Mr. E. G. Littlejohn. Mr. Wilson, in the article referred
to above, states that it is audible at night only, and can be heard
most distinctly when the moon is full. Miss Lorene Cook, who lived for
a time at the mouth of the river, limits the music strictly to the time
of the full moon, between the hours of twelve and one. Mr. Morris, in
three separate accounts, published in the Freeport Facts, 1922, records
impressions of the music at night, but does not expressly state that it
cannot be heard during the day.
One point of interest, to which several auditors testify, is the
permeating quality of the music. Some of them, in attempting to
describe this quality, fall back upon other senses than hearing. Mrs.
West says that she could almost see the sound, which began softly, as
if at an elevation, and slowly came down to the boat. Miss Cook reports
that the sound was “so close at times that I felt as if I could touch
it with my hands.” Mr. Wilson’s article contains this sentence: “On
first coming within its limits, one can easily perceive that it
proceeds from under the water, but in a short while it is impossible to
locate it, as it gets under the seats, in the bow and in all parts of
the boat, overhead and around; in fact, it seems to pervade the
atmosphere.”
I have heard of no apparitions in connection with the music except
those seen by Mrs. West’s mother and brother. However, as they
illustrate very well the workings of folk imagination, I record them
here. Mrs. West’s mother, Mrs. Mary Ducroz, was one of a considerable
party rowing at midnight on the river. Just as the boat drew over Music
Bend she saw a man, with a bridle over his arm, come down to the water,
turn, and go back into the woods. She could see only the upper part of
his body. He seemed not to walk but to glide. He was not visible to any
other member of the party, though Mrs. Ducroz tried very hard to make
the others see him. She is quite certain about having seen him herself,
as the moon was very bright. At another time Mrs. West’s brother, then
a boy of fourteen years, was riding horseback at night when he saw
before him a man and a woman sitting in the middle of the road. They
did not seem to see at all a very large ant bed just in front of them.
The boy had seen the ant bed many times in passing along the same road.
Now he saw the most beautiful horse he had ever seen, dappled gray,
tied with an extremely large and knotted rope to a tree at the side of
the road. The horse evidently belonged to the man and woman who were
sitting in the middle of the public way. The boy urged his horse
forward, but the horse refused to go. Then the boy remembered that he
was just above the ghostly Music Bend, and turned his horse about.
To Mrs. West I am also indebted for a relation of the effect of the
music upon some of those who have heard it. When she was a child, an
old gentleman boarded for a time at her father’s house. The old
gentleman used to row out over the Bend day after day on the chance of
hearing the music, and return at night to tell his hosts that surely
they imagined the music. They knew that they did not imagine the music,
but thought that perhaps the old gentleman could not hear it, as it is
not given to all to hear such ghostly music. One evening, however, he
came back in terror. Suddenly, as his boat was over the Bend, he had
begun to tremble as if in a chill, and his hat seemed to rise from his
head. At once he had begun to hear the sweetest and most terrible music
that ever he had heard. He never wished to hear it again. In 1920—Mrs.
West is again my informant—two girls were drowned in the San Bernard;
and when the searchers told of finding the bodies, they told also of
hearing the most beautiful funeral music that ever they had heard. But
it was music that they hoped never to hear again.
The real legend of the music is the story of its origin. The several
versions have only one point of identity: that a fiddler who played on
the bank in life plays on in the waters in death; and in one version
the fiddler played from a boat. One common story is that two men who
froze to death beneath a tree at Music Bend were fiddlers. As Miss
Lorene Cook has heard the tale, an old hermit fiddler was murdered by
pirates who sought refuge in the San Bernard River during a storm. Mr.
Wilson’s account explains: “The negroes really believe it to be a
ghost. They say that many years ago, on a dark and stormy night ... a
sloop with two sailors aboard ... was forced to seek shelter in the San
Bernard; that one of the sailors was a fiddler, and that as soon as the
winds began to lay, he began to fiddle for joy; that his mate, desiring
to sleep, was so enraged that he attempted to stop him by force, and
that in the scuffle the fiddler fell overboard and was drowned; that
the other sailor, while angry, threw the fiddle and bow into the river;
and that on that very night the ghost of the dead sailor played so
touchingly that the living mate could not sleep, and that every night
since then it has played the same tune, again and again.”
In most of the stories the musician lived alone at the Bend. The most
romantic of them is that retold by Mr. J. W. Morris in the Freeport
Facts with certain variations. “In life the musician lost his fiancée a
few hours before they were to have been married. She walked to the
river to pluck a white water-lily to braid in her shining hair for the
marriage, but as she reached for the flower, a snake head sprang forth
and bit her on her white neck and she fell dead in the water.” The
musician then threw himself, with his violin, into the river. According
to another account of Mr. Morris’ the lover moved to a small island in
the stream, and there lived. At his death his violin and bow were
buried with him, and still he plays strange, sweet music.
Another version of the love legend has been contributed by Miss Sarah
S. King of San Antonio, who heard the story from Miss Arline Rather. In
it the maiden was accustomed to go to the stream each evening for
water, and there to meet her lover. One day an arrow struck her down.
Her lover, approaching, called and played his liveliest tunes, and then
found her dead in the waist-high ferns. As in the preceding account,
the musician then flung his violin and himself into the river.
The version supplied by Mr. E. G. Littlejohn has considerable
circumstantial detail. According to this account, the young hermit, son
of a wealthy Eastern gentleman, had been jilted in a love affair, and
had come to the lonely hut on the San Bernard in hope of forgetting his
grief. This was long before Texas gained her independence. The young
gentleman was a violinist of so much repute that the officers of a
military post in Central Texas sent two troopers to engage his services
for a ball. They found the violinist lying dead upon the floor, and
near him an ax covered with congealed blood. His murderer had taken
from the shack everything of value, even wearing apparel, except the
violin, which hung still in its accustomed place on the wall. The
troopers buried the body under an oak tree, and took the violin and
private papers to the commanding officer of the fort. But on a spirit
violin the young hermit has played for a century.
THE DEATH BELL OF THE BRAZOS
By Bertha McKee Dobie
[More than one early Texan was concerned with slave-running. Yoakum
[105] says that the three Bowies, Rezin, James, and John, made
sixty-five thousand dollars in this trade. Fannin also ran slaves,
operating from Cuba to Texas under the name of J. F. Walker. With him,
as with others, the Brazos was a port of entry. Writing from “Velasco,
Rio Brazos, Prov. Texas, Aug. 27, 1835,” he says: “My last voyage from
the island of Cuba (with 152) succeeded admirably.” [106] On May 26,
1837, it was reported from New Orleans to the British minister,
Pakenham, that “some slaves were brought from Cuba and landed in Texas
by the Am. Schooners Waterwich and Emperor. A some few Months ago a
Cargo was run at the Brazos River by a Vessel under the Texas Colors.”
[107] Until a few years ago the ruins of a house near Velasco were
pointed out as marking the habitation of a man whose business had been
the buying and distributing of smuggled slaves.
Charles D. Hudgins, a lawyer who grew up near the mouth of the Brazos,
says in his book of poems called The Maid of San Jacinto: “It is said
that shortly after Texas obtained her independence, a ship loaded with
slaves from Africa was chased into the Brazos by a United States man of
war; that she had a number of sick negroes on board; that the well
negroes were landed and hurried through the woods, while the sick ones
were weighed down with chains and thrown into the river.” [108]
However, Mr. Hudgins does not connect the “mysterious music” of the
Brazos with the slave ship, though such a connection is common in the
vicinity. He continues: “Three miles above the mouth of the Brazos
River is what is known as the haunted Labore. Twain causes conspire to
give rise to the superstition among the ignorant with regard to this
spot. The first is a grave near the bank of the stream; the second is a
peculiar humming noise, that can be heard there on still summer
nights—this noise is soft, like the notes of an Aeolian harp, and
superstition, coupling it with the grave, has woven many a tale of the
haunted Labore.”[108]—Editor.]
This legend is set down in the words of Mrs. A. F. Shannon of Velasco.
“This is the account I heard as a child of the music in the Brazos.
About 1836 or 1838 Texas passed a law forbidding the bringing of slaves
from Africa. But boats, slave runners they were called, used to come
from Africa to Cuba and wait there until they thought they could slip
across the Gulf. One of these ships with three hundred slaves nailed
down into the hold—they brought them over like freight—put into the
Brazos. But before it could reach the safety of the timber, it was
followed by—I don’t know exactly what it was, whether it was a revenue
cutter or what, but anyway a government boat. This boat gained on the
slave ship, and seeing that they were lost, the crew of the slave ship
scuttled it, and it went down with its three hundred negroes in the
hold, at Seaview Bend, about four miles from Quintana.
“When I was a child we could hear every evening at sunset the ringing
of a great bell. Very plain it was. The negroes called it ‘the death
bell.’ Mammy Kitty had stayed on with my grandmother after the Civil
War, and when I was a child was about eighty or ninety years old and
always sat in the ‘chimley corner.’ Every day when the bell tolled at
sunset I would run to Mammy Kitty and put my head in her lap. She would
run her hands over my head and croon until the bell stopped. The other
negroes whispered ‘the death bell,’ and stood still while it rang. They
thought the bell was ringing for the three hundred negroes in the
scuttled ship. And then whenever we passed over Seaview Bend we could
hear faint music like that of a guitar played at a distance. Since the
jetties have been built and there has been so much traffic on the
river, the music has gone away, and I have seen no one who has heard it
of late years. I know now that ‘the death bell’ must have been the
sunset bell of a big sugar plantation ten or twelve miles up the river.
The water carried the sound down. But I still hear the death bell
ringing in my ears and feel Mammy Kitty’s hand passing over my head.”
THE LEGEND OF THE SALT MARSHES (SAN LUIS PASS, BRAZORIA COUNTY)
By Bertha McKee Dobie
This legend was told me by Mrs. A. F. Shannon of Velasco. San Luis Pass
is the narrow entrance from the Gulf into a small and sheltered bay on
the Texas coast. It is a wild and mournful spot, where sea gulls scream
and breakers roar. It is especially wild and mournful when the wind is
east, as the few settlers say. Then three great billows roll in
successively from the Gulf, overtake each other on the bar, and break
together with the sound of thunder. This breaking together of the
billows is called the boor [109] on the bar.
A great many years ago a fisherman lived with his wife and young child
at the Pass. One day when the wind was east and the boor was on the
bar, he went out in his boat to fish. The wind blew stronger, the
billows rose higher, and a great tide came in, flooding the salt
marshes that border the Pass. The fisherman did not return. A few days
later other fishermen found the young wife, quite demented, wandering
in the salt marshes and calling, “Come back! Come back!” Since that
time, when the wind is east and the boor is on the bar, the white form
of the woman flits over the marshes and cries, “Come back! Come back!”
in warning to fishermen whose boats are on the water.
It is probable that the white wings and the hoarse cries of the giant
gulls that come in to the marshes only when there is a high east wind
and the lives of fishermen are threatened have given rise to this
legend of the salt marshes. Such an explanation, at least, was
suggested to Mrs. Shannon by Mr. Lon Follet.
RHYMES OF GALVESTON BAY
By John P. Sjolander
Years ago, when I used to run vessels on Galveston Bay and along the
coast, I gathered up some stories told by old boatmen on nights when we
lay wind-bound. Later I put them into rhyme and I may have tried to
ornament them with some phrases of my own. Some of the “Rhymes” were
published in the Galveston News, 1910, and later came out in the Texas
Magazine (Houston).
THE BOAT THAT NEVER SAILED
(Note: In the early 70’s the hull of a boat, all overgrown with vines
and briers, was found at a place then known as Hungry Cove, on San
Jacinto Bay. The story of it was told me by an old boatman who had been
a settler of that section of the country for many years.)
Like the moan of a ghost that is doomed to rove,
Is the voice of the wind in Hungry Cove.
And the brier bites with a sharper thorn
Than the fang of hate, or the tooth of scorn.
And the twining vines are as cunningly set
As ever a poacher placed snare or net.
And the waves are hushed, and they move as slow
As fugitives making headway, tiptoe.
For Nature remembers, as well as Man,
The time and the place, and the Mary Ann.
The time, man-measured, was long ago,
Some seventy fleeting years, or so.
The place, where the sea was with light agleam,
And the shore shone white as a maiden’s dream.
And the Mary Ann—how a prayer prevailed!—
Was the name of the boat that never sailed.
For the men who built it, a blackguard twain,
Had taken a maiden’s pure name in vain.
And she prayed that for taunts, and for many mocks,
The boat would not move from its building blocks.
But the builders laughed at the maiden’s prayer,
And spit on her name they had painted there.
And they swore, in defiance of God and man,
They would launch the boat they had named Mary Ann.
But when they stood ready at stern and stem,
The boat fell down on the heads of them.
And no one came to where crushed they lay,
And no one will come until judgment day.
For their guards are briers with thorns that bite
With a pain as keen as the sting of spite.
And their only dirge is the song of the loon,
When the sea is black, in the dark of the moon.
THE PADRE’S BEACON [110]
(Note: Boatmen, at night, staring into the fog and haze in search of
certain marks and objects, often think to see them, only to have them
disappear again when they blink their eyes. These visual illusions are
called Padre’s Beacons. An old boatman, many years ago, told how the
name originated, and his story is here set down in rhyme.)
With eager eyes an Indian peered
Into the darkness of the night,
And his canoe he swiftly sheered
From right to left, from left to right;
For lost within the blinding fog,
He saw the mad waves roll and toss,
And found both snag and sunken log
But not the Padre’s beacon cross.
He dipped his paddle in the sea,
And found its depth now less, now more;
And where he thought the Pass would be
He only found a weedstrewn shore.
He questioned of the hidden star,
And counseled with the waning moon,
But found no answer, near or far,
Only the lone cry of the loon.
And he had steered by wave and wind
To where the beacon cross should be,
That marked the place where all might find
The way into the Trinity.
For there, ’mong cypress trees grown gray,
The padre’s little hut showed white,
Beneath a shining cross by day,
And in a taper’s gleam by night.
But vandal hands had cut adrift
The padre’s beacon in the night,
And without prayer, and without shrift,
A sea wrecked soul at dawn took flight.
And now who sails the bay at night,
And scans the dark with eager eyes,
Out of the sea, grown gray with light,
Can see a beacon cross arise.
For since that night long, long ago,
When clouds hang wide and fogs lie deep,
For him that laid that beacon low
There is no rest in death, or sleep;
All night he lifts it from the sea,
All night he strives, and strives in vain;
He stands it up, but when set free
It sinks into the sea again.
BAFFLE POINT
(Baffle Point is on the north side of Bolivar peninsula, in what is
known as East Bay. Many small sail-boats have been dismasted and upset
in the vicinity of this point.)
A boatman loved a maiden, long ago,
And good and fair was she;
A maiden loved a boatman, even so,
And strong and true was he;
And one dark night the lovers sailed away
To where the good priest dwelt, across the bay.
A father’s heart grew fierce with raging hate,
And cruel as could be;
But he would plan and work, and work and wait—
A cunning man was he;
He swore that boatmen all, excepting none,
Should penance pay for the sin of one.
He planned and worked, and then he worked and planned,
Not idle night or day;
Sentinel sandhills raised he on the strand
In some mysterious way;
On sloping hills he planted phantom trees
That changed their shapes with every changing breeze.
Now when the south wind, singing, came inshore,
As gentle as could be,
For it he opened wide a cavern door
That none but him could see;
And then the trees would groan, and cringe, and sway,
Casting long shadows over shore and bay.
When the work was done as he had planned,
He laughed and danced in glee;
Then as the waters of the bay he scanned,
A boat his eyes did see;
And then the south wind in the cavern pent
Over the hills down to the sea he sent.
When he saw the wind in madness reel,
And strike the little boat,
And how down went the mast and up the keel,
A glad cry left his throat.
The waters grew quiet and dull as a sea of lead;
A man and woman at his feet lay dead.
By them, some boatmen found him, long ago,
As dead as he could be;
Deep, deep, they dug two graves, and all arow
At night they buried three.
Since then the winds are ever out of joint,
And play strange tricks and pranks at Baffle Point.
POINT SESENTA
(Note: All that is left of Point Sesenta—presumably so called from the
sixty (sesenta) trees—is a reef known as Fisher’s Reef, on the north
shore of Trinity Bay. The story of the Point was told to me by Captain
James Armstrong, just as it had been told to him by an old Indian chief
whose tribe used to visit the bay shore many, many years before the
Republic.)
The mocking birds sang in the sixty trees,
And Inez walked in their shadow;
The soft winds came laughing from southern seas,
And the bay seemed a green-waved meadow;
But a wealth of song, and of wind and water,
Requites not the love of an Indio’s daughter.
Don Miguel’s pastures lay far and wide,
His herds by peons were tended,
But all he possessed was as naught beside
Fair Inez so young and splendid.
Still his heart was sore, for the winds kept saying:
“The trees sesenta are graying, graying.”
Inez the fair walked ’neath the moss-grown trees,
By the side of her gray-grown lover;
And oft times she dreamed that o’er many seas
He had come like a brave young rover;
But when for sight of him her dark eyes gleamed
They met dim eyes in a face deep seamed.
Then out of the north came a viking ship,
With a viking young and brawny;
A snare for love was his tender grip,
And a net were his locks so tawny.
Wherever man goes over hill and hollow,
There a woman loving him dares to follow.
Ah, that is the tale told in every zone,
A story told over and over.
Don Miguel one morning found Inez flown,
And the ship, and the bold young rover.
And the winds were hushed, and the trees unshaken,
And the birds had fled, their nests forsaken.
The boatmen passing beheld the trees,
Saw how they all were dying;
The winds grew fierce and angered the seas,
And the flurrying sands went flying,
Until Point Sesenta was quite departed,
And left but a name and a place uncharted.
GUMMAN GRO
(Note: Gumman Gro is phonetic Swedish for “The Woman Gray.” Skell,
master of Sweet Cecilia, was a Swede; he and his boat disappeared from
Galveston Bay one night and were never heard of again.)
They said that Gumman Gro had a great store
Of private treasure hid in Lone Tree Cove;
That she with cunning eyes watched sea and shore,
And that a curse was upon all who strove,
Always in vain, to cross the line afar
That she had marked outside of shoal and bar.
And it was said that many who had rushed
Upon the Cove with favoring wind and tide,
Had come away with heart and spirit crushed,
Bereft of courage and of manly pride,
To live their lives perpetual exiles,
Beyond the reach of cheering songs and smiles.
And so the boatmen, sailing up and down,
From Lone Tree Cove would sheer their boats away;
For on the shore a small hut loomed up brown,
And in the doorway stood a woman gray;
Whence she had come, or when, none seemed to know,
But Skell, the boatman, named her Gumman Gro.
And Skell would laugh the hearty laugh that springs
Straight from the hearts of men when young and strong,
While with a merry jest at men and things
He sailed his course, and hummed a seaman’s song;
Oft in passing Lone Tree Cove he’d sheer
His boat more close, and shout a word of cheer.
Then one dark night a storm swept o’er the bay,
And the mosquito fleet was scattered wide;
And many men and boats until this day
Have not returned to watch for wind and tide;
And ’mong the missing ones that all loved well,
Was Sweet Cecilia, and her master, Skell.
Often on nights when winds and tides are fair,
On nights of calm, when God’s stars search the deep,
Sounds from afar, like multitudes in prayer,
Across the waters to lone boatmen creep,
And then they see the dead sail to and fro,
But none knows whence they come, or where they go.
After the storm, when winds came from the west
On nights like these, Skell’s ghost from Lone Tree Cove
Set sail, so seamen saw; then on Skell pressed
To shun the shoals; straight out for the deep he drove,
But just so far he came, and then he stopped,
As if an anchor sternward had been dropped.
Then from the shore a cry, half laugh, half pain,
Mocking and pleading, rose, and dipped, and fell,
Stirring the waters like a shower of rain,
While Sweet Cecilia, and her master, Skell,
A moment wavered like a light wind blown,
Then flashed across the darkness and were gone.
Thus every night, when out of sunset land
The warm winds came and drowsed upon the bay,
Skell and his Sweet Cecilia left the strand,
And sailed and sailed as if to sail away;
And every night that cry, half laugh, half pain,
Would pleading come and call him back again.
This is the tale that old-time boatmen told,
One to the other, long, long years ago;
But not the greediest for shining gold
Would risk the fearful curse of Gumman Gro—
He’d hope, at last, whatever else befell,
Death would not land him where it landed Skell.
LEGENDS OF LOVERS
LEGENDS OF LOVERS
Legends of lovers are almost as numerous as those of treasure; in
Texas, at least, the lovers are generally hapless and are nearly always
associated with precipitous cliffs. Indeed, legends of lovers’ leaps
principally make up this group. Some well known legends, such as those
about the Lovers’ Leap at Waco and about the Lovers’ Leap at Denison,
have been omitted. Reference to them is made in the bibliography near
the end of this volume. On the other hand, various versions of certain
other legends of lovers’ leaps are given in detail that the manner of
legend growth may be fully illustrated. The lovers’ leap legend was
popular in the time of Sappho (see Spectator paper Number 33, by
Addison), and probably had vogue for as many years before her time as
have passed since. A feature to be remarked about the lovers’ leap
legends of Texas is that seemingly all of them purport to be of Indian
derivation. The state is yet so young that to go back to anything like
remoteness one must go to the time of the Indian—and all legend runs to
remoteness. One need not be learned in Indian lore, however, to know
that in many instances the basic customs of Indian marriage are
violated in these legends; the attributing of his own customs of
love-making and marriage by the white man to the Indian is indeed
naive. [111] As a class, I should say that of all our Texas legends
these of lovers are least indigenous and least varied.—J. F. D.
THE ENCHANTED ROCK IN LLANO COUNTY
By Julia Estill
[The fame of the Enchanted Rock in Llano County, as Miss Estill has
pointed out, goes back a long time. There are various references to it
in Texasana, as the bibliography will show; but it is noteworthy that
none of the early accounts of the Enchanted Rock even so much as refer
to the legend of the lovers, the details of which are very similar to
those in the most popular version of the legend of Mount Bonnell.
However, in more recent years the lover legend seems to have had a wide
vogue. It has appeared in print various times, once in the form of a
German novel, Die Tochter Tehuans, printed at Fredericksburg, and my
correspondence files indicate an extensive popularity of the legend.
The Indians no doubt had an awe for the mountain that they expressed in
narrative detail; the early Texans heard these accounts; then the
descendants of those early Texans invented a story in which the
Spaniard played a part to fit the legendary atmosphere of the mountain.
Thus should I account for the genesis of the legend that is now told.
Writing from “Colorado River, Texas,” October 31, 1834, W. B. Dewees
tells of what must be the Enchanted Rock of the Llano. He says: “A
short time since, a few of our young men started to go up to the
headwaters of the Colorado and Brazos rivers to examine a large rock of
metal which has for many years been considered a wonder. It is supposed
to be platinum. The Indians have held it sacred for centuries, and go
there once a year to worship it. They will not permit any white person
to approach it. It is almost impossible to make any impression on it
with chisel and hammers. When struck it gives forth a ringing sound
which can be heard miles around. The party were successful in finding
the rock, but were unable to break off any specimens to bring home.”
Dewees, W. B., Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, Louisville,
Kentucky, 1852, p. 152. (Mr. E. G. Littlejohn contributes this
reference.)
Doctor Alex. Dienst of Temple, Texas, sends in an item copied from the
New York Mirror of October 20, 1838, in which a traveler, lately
returned to New York from a prospecting tour in the San Saba country,
tells of having found an “Enchanted” or “Holy Mountain” on the upper
waters of the Sandy—beyond all doubt the Enchanted Rock of other
accounts. The traveler reports that “the Comanches regard this hill
with religious veneration, and that Indian pilgrims frequently assemble
from the remotest borders of the region to perform the Paynim rites
upon its summit.”
Samuel C. Reid, Jr., in a book published in 1848, The Scouting
Expeditions of McCulloch’s Texas Rangers, pages 111–112, says, in
connection with a scouting trip that Captain Jack Hays had made into
the then unsettled vicinity of the Enchanted Rock:
“We are unable to give to the reader the traditionary cause why
this place was so named, but nevertheless, the Indians had a great
awe, amounting almost to reverence, for it, and would tell many
legendary tales connected with it and the fate of a few brave
warriors, the last of a tribe now extinct, who defended themselves
there for many years as in a strong castle, against the attacks of
their hostile brethren. But they were finally overcome and totally
annihilated, and ever since, the ‘Enchanted Rock’ has been looked
upon as the exclusive property of these phantom warriors. This is
one of the many tales which the Indians tell concerning it.”
Reid goes on to tell that at one time Hays saved himself from such a
tight place in a fight with the Indians near the Enchanted Rock that
they became more convinced than ever that “Devil Jack” bore a charmed
life.—Editor.]
In the southwestern part of Llano County, very near the Gillespie
County line, lies a huge mound of solid granite covering 640 acres and
known far and wide as the Enchanted Rock. At night spirit fires dance
on the summit, and by day millions of isinglass stars glint in the
sunlight. During an early morning shower in the hills, when the sun
shines out from under the passing cloud, the streams of water coursing
down the sides of the massive boulder resemble sheets of molten silver.
Then above the gigantic dome there forms a rainbow-path which will lead
the seeker directly to a mine of gold, so the old legend goes. In fact,
the sands of the sluggish stream winding lazily around the base of the
rock testify of gold in the vicinity. And the oldest pioneer in the
neighborhood will tell you that there is a lost mine somewhere near the
rock, the shaft having been sunk by Spaniards in the eighteenth
century.
The Indian legends woven about the enchanted mound are, however, far
more interesting to the folk-lorist than is the story of a fabulous
mine. My great-grandfather, Thomas A. Likens, who was first lieutenant
of Captain Highsmith’s Company of Texas Rangers when, in 1847, they
camped near the Enchanted Rock, told my grandfather, William H. Estill,
of the remarkable veneration the Comanches had for the Rock, and of the
awesome fear they manifested when at night the spirit fires danced
aloft on it. The daring ranger always knew that if he could induce his
sure-footed pony to climb the Rock, horse and rider would be safe from
the pursuing savage, for the Comanche would not follow, nor would he
direct an arrow toward the white man who sought the protection of the
Spirit of the Rock.
At the foot of the enormous boulder the Indians offered
sacrifices—sometimes a beautiful captive snatched from the white man’s
clearing at the edge of the woods. Then, for months, perhaps, the
Spirit of the Rock would smile on the savage tribe, and success would
attend their raids down the river valleys to the south.
On one such expedition, according to the story told by Father Hörmann,
[112] a priest at one of the missions near San Antonio, the marauders
ventured farther than usual and were within attacking distance of
Mission San José, near San Antonio, when José Navarro, commander of the
mission, learned of their designs. Forthwith, preparations for the
defense of the mission were begun, Don Hesu Navarro, a recent arrival
from Spain and a bold soldier of fortune, aiding enthusiastically in
strengthening the defenses.
Now, within the mission lived the Indian chief Tehuan and his beautiful
daughter, christened Rosa by the good fathers of the mission. The
dashing young Spaniard fell desperately in love with the pretty
dark-skinned maid, and succeeded in winning her love in return. Soon,
though, came a desperate separation. In the attack by the Comanches
that had been expected, Don Hesu fell by an Indian tomahawk and pretty
Rosa was carried away by the alien savages. Fortunately, however, the
young Spaniard had received merely a stunning blow, and, after a time,
revived and dragged himself back within the mission walls, only to find
his beloved gone. From an Indian boy, the distracted lover learned that
Rosa was being taken away to the Enchanted Rock to be offered as a
sacrifice to the Spirit of the Rock.
Realizing the futility of a single-handed combat with the fleeing
Indians, Don Hesu hastened to Goliad for aid, and, together with a
daring band of Spaniards and Texas colonists, started in pursuit of the
Comanches. Upon discovering the camping place of the savages, the
impetuous Spaniard proposed an immediate attack; but the remainder of
the party, who were better versed in Indian ways and beliefs, persuaded
Don Hesu that a better way would be to play upon the superstitious
beliefs of the savages. Accordingly, the party secretly harassed the
Indians by stampeding their horses and assaulting their guards in the
dark. And the red men, believing that the spirits were incensed by the
recent attack upon the mission, mounted their mustangs, and, with the
captive maid safe in their midst, galloped away to the hills, where
they intended to offer to the Spirit of the Enchanted Rock the fair
prize they had won at San José.
The pursuers followed as best they might. However, when they reached
the gulch between the Enchanted Rock and a neighboring peak, they saw,
to their horror, that the beautiful captive was already bound to the
stake, the faggots piled high around her. The rescue party was divided
into two sections, one section skirting the peak so as to surprise the
Indians encamped on the north while Don Hesu and a few chosen men
rushed upon the guards who stood in the gulch. Frenzied by the sight of
his beloved at the stake ready to be offered as a sacrifice, Don Hesu,
fighting like a demon, succeeded in freeing the captive maid and
escaping with her beyond the reach of the savages. Thus was the Spirit
of the Enchanted Rock once, at least, deprived of the joy of a human
sacrifice.
FRANCESCA: A LEGEND OF OLD FORT STOCKTON
By L. W. Payne, Jr.
This legend of old Fort Stockton was written for me in short-story form
in 1911 by Miss Josephine Brown, on whose father’s ranch in Brewster
County are the ruins of the old fort. The legend is frequently related
by ranch people as well as by Mexicans in West Texas.
Fran——ces——ca! Fran——ces——ca!
I straightened up, listening. The low wailing sound that seemed to
pronounce a name came again.
“Juan, what makes that noise?” Juan did not answer, and I turned in the
seat to look at him. He was terrified. His eyes were stretched wide
open, and he gasped out something about praying to the Virgin.
“What’s the matter, Juan? Tell me!”
“Oh, señor, that noise! The Virgin protect us!” he exclaimed. He began
whipping the horses.
“Juan, stop! The road is rough. Be careful. There, give me the reins.”
He began saying his prayers, and I could occasionally distinguish the
word “espiritus.”
I was very curious to know why he was so excited, but I thought I would
wait until he calmed down a little before I asked him. Finally he
became more calm, and I handed him the reins.
It was a cold, rainy night in the late fall. The big, piled-up
mountains, at one side of the road, were barely visible through the
rain. The creek, which ran on the other side, made a subdued, rustling
sound. I could scarcely distinguish the road, and knew when we went up
or down a hill only by the movement of the vehicle. We ran over a rock
in the road, and the jolt seemed to loosen Juan’s tongue.
“You saw those big piles of rocks back there, señor? They are all
that’s left of old Fort Stockton. Long time ago, in Indian times, there
were a lot of soldiers here, and they lived in those houses. I’ve heard
the padre tell tales of them. That one with the walls still standing is
what was the church, and that’s where Ferenor”—here he interrupted
himself to say some prayers.
“Well, Juan?” I said encouragingly.
“That’s where Ferenor calls for his sweetheart,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, as he seemed loath to continue.
“Get up, Maria! Steady there, Pierto. You see, señor, she was the most
beautiful girl in all the country. Many young men wanted to marry her,
but she loved Ferenor, the padre’s nephew, who was almost a padre
himself, for he had taken some of the vows. His uncle preached to the
soldiers and lived there behind the church. There were lots of Indians
in those times, and one of the chiefs wanted Francesca for his wife.
All this time Francesca was in love with Ferenor, but she couldn’t
marry him on account of his vows.
“But one day Ferenor got desperate and swore he would marry Francesca
anyway. That night, about this time of the year—and a night like this,
only worse—they went to the padre to be married. Of course, he would
not marry them, for it is unlawful for a young priest to marry. They
begged and implored, but the padre refused to comply with their wishes.
Finally the padre became very angry, and opening the door, he commanded
them to go. Somehow, in the storm, they missed the trail to Francesca’s
house, and after wandering around a while, they realized that they were
lost. On and on they wandered, until Francesca was ready to drop with
fatigue.
“Suddenly Ferenor exclaimed, ‘A light, Francesca!’ There was a light in
the distance. They started toward it but Francesca dropped to the
ground exhausted.
“‘I can’t go, Ferenor,’ she sobbed.
“‘I’m too tired to carry you that far, Francesca. You stay here, and
I’ll come back for you when I get help.’
“He started out toward the light, but walking brought him no nearer to
it. It seemed to move and lead him astray. He was very cold and sleepy.
And where was Francesca? He knew; right over there she was waiting. He
started to the place where he thought he had left her. Suddenly he
slipped and fell, hitting his head on a stone. It was several hours
later, just about dawn, that he regained consciousness.
“‘Francesca! Francesca!’ he cried, starting up. Vainly he searched. She
was gone. Neither of the lovers was ever seen after that. Several
months later a rumor was heard that just such a girl as Francesca was
in the camp of Red Blanket. And Ferenor? On such a night as this, at
this time of the year, he wanders around the old Fort, searching for
his sweetheart, and always calling her name, ‘Francesca, Francesca.’
And señor, when a lover hears it, it means there is danger to him or
his betrothed. Santa Madre preserve us!” Here Juan began saying his
prayers again.
“What is that light, Juan?” I asked a few minutes later.
“That’s the headquarters of the H-Triangle, señor,” he said.
A good fire and jolly company did not altogether dispel the memory of
the weird tale that Juan told me when we heard those strange sounds
made by the wind in the ruins of the old Fort.
LOVER’S RETREAT AND LOVERS’ RETREAT (PALO PINTO)
By J. S. Spratt
I
Lover’s Retreat, or Lovers’ Retreat, as some would have it, is in Palo
Pinto County, four miles west of the town of Palo Pinto. I got the
first version, in which Lover makes his escape, from my father, Dr. J.
T. Spratt. He heard it from a man named W. H. Walker, who related it in
an address delivered while he was state secretary of the I. O. O. F.
Walker said that the escape was made in the neighborhood of 1870 and
that he was lying out on the prairie near by on the night that Lover
eluded the Indians.
The other version I remember from a paper read in an English class in
the Palo Pinto High School. I do not remember who wrote it, but I
remember that we had a discussion over the place at the time, and that
when I gave my version as to how Lover’s Retreat had got its name, none
of the class had ever heard it, though most of them had heard the tale
of the Indian lovers.
II
LOVER’S RETREAT
By 1870 the Indians had for the most part abandoned all that part of
Texas east of the Colorado River. However, a few scattered bands still,
on occasions, roamed over the territory east of the river, plundering
lonely settlements and, when an opportunity presented itself, killing
the pioneers. There is a story connected with one of these Indian raids
into what is now Palo Pinto County.
Some four miles west of the town of Palo Pinto is a rough and beautiful
ground covered with immense boulders. The enormous rocks have been left
in an arrangement that reminds one of the streets of a badly surveyed
old town. Vegetation of all colors and sizes grows on top of the old
rocks and hangs down over the edges. Occasionally a tree rooted in some
deep crevice reaches up thirty or forty feet, brushing the tops of the
rocks. One has but to start climbing over the roots and gulches and
through the breaks to think of what a good place it is to hide in. More
than one man has found it to be such a place.
In the early seventies a man by the name of Lover was camped on a
prairie near the place, loose herding a bunch of cattle. He had taken
the bridle off his horse and was letting him graze out a short distance
with the saddle on, when along late in the afternoon he was suddenly
aware that the horse had stopped chewing and was watching something.
Lover looked in the direction towards which the horse was pointing his
ears. Just beyond the rigid animal, he saw a band of Indians coming at
a long gallop through the soft grass. They were so close and were so
increasing their speed that he did not have time to catch his horse.
There was but one thing for him to do. He made for the rocks.
Running with the superhuman speed of deathly fright, he managed to
reach them a little ahead of the Indians; but the Indians were so near
that they would be upon him before he could climb down the side of the
boulder that he had run up on from the sloping side. If he jumped, he
was likely to kill or cripple himself. For the fraction of a second he
wavered. Then he saw a tree below him. He leaped, caught a branch, and
slid and swung to the ground. When less than two minutes later the
warriors peered over the edge of the cliff, he was not to be seen.
In the little time that remained till night, Lover managed to dodge
them. Then for hours he knew that they were watching for him to move.
But when morning came, probably thinking that he had somehow slipped
out past them, the Indians left, and Lover was safe. Since that time
the place has been known as Lover’s Retreat.
The old tree that Lover is said to have slid down still stands,
although it has been dead for several years and has fallen over against
the bluff from which Lover made his desperate leap.
III
LOVERS’ RETREAT
Many years ago, in the northern part of Texas, lived a small band of
Indians among whom were a young brave and a young maiden lost in love.
For the sake of convenience, we shall call the young brave Running Elk
and the maiden Laughing Water. She was the daughter of old Chief White
Eagle, but in the veins of the warrior lover there was no royal blood,
and the father refused to allow the marriage that both of the lovers so
greatly desired.
The refusal was not, however, based primarily on the difference in
rank. Running Elk was an ideal young brave. He was the best hunter in
the band; no other could run so swiftly, ride so skilfully, or shoot an
arrow so truly as he. His bravery had been tried more than one time. In
a battle he had once, single handed, fought and killed six of the
enemy. Many a chieftain would have been proud to claim such a warrior
for son-in-law. Indeed, Chief White Eagle was pleased with the suitor,
but his tribe was a weak tribe and he wanted his daughter to marry into
a strong tribe. Such an alliance he regarded as necessary against
powerful enemies.
After many pleadings with the old chief and as many refusals, the
lovers saw that there were but two courses left to them. They could
give up all hope of marriage and let the negotiations that were already
under way for the marriage of Laughing Water into a powerful tribe
proceed; or they could run away and seek united refuge in a strange
tribe. They chose the latter course.
It was dark midnight when Laughing Water met Running Elk at the
outskirts of the Indian village. He had two ponies ready, and the
lovers were on their way immediately. They rode during the remainder of
the night and almost all the following day. Late in the afternoon they
saw a cloud of moving dust rising perhaps an hour’s ride behind them.
The pursuers were gaining ground rapidly.
The runaways were now in the edge of a strange, mountainous country.
Their horses were tired and farther journey on them meant capture, then
torture. Running Elk called a halt, and when the girl had dismounted,
he tied a thorny stick to the tail of each horse, gave the horses a
slash with the thong of buffalo hide that he used for a bridle, and saw
them disappear down a draw. Then he and the maiden set out on foot,
selecting rocks and hard gravel for a path. Their tribesmen would be
baffled by the trail for a little time at least.
After the couple had traveled in this way for what seemed to them a
long while, they reached the top of a mountain covered with cedar,
walnut, and scrub oak. All at once they came upon a wide crevice. They
turned their direction and were as suddenly confronted by another
crevice, narrow and forty or fifty feet deep. This they descended,
taking care not to loosen rocks or earth.
The two Indians were surprised to find that this break led to a network
of such passages, the widths of which varied from a foot to twenty or
thirty feet. The walls were of solid rock and rose to a height of from
forty to sixty feet. On the tops of these rocks had formed a soil that
sustained a variety of vegetation. A greenish moss covered the sides of
the rocks and against them clung straggling vines; from the tops and
from niches along the sides, prickly pears hung; here and there a tree
grew up out of the bottom of the fissures and swept its branches over
the tops of the cliffs. A cold spring trickled from the bottom of one
of the rock walls.
The lovers knew that there must be a cave somewhere amid such
surroundings. They began to search for it, and had searched only a
little while when they came to a small mountain lake. It was at a kind
of gateway between mountain and plateau, and on the mountain side was
the cave. It opened into the lake, its floor well above the level of
the water, and extended back into the enormous boulder.
Running Elk swam to the mouth of the cave and climbed in, and with his
senses as alert as those of the panther explored the darkness. He found
that the recess ran back some twenty feet and that it was clear of
harm. He swam back to the shore, got his beloved, and returned to the
cave. The two had not been hidden ten minutes when they heard their
tribesmen making camp by the water. Presently a few of the young bucks
went into the lake for a swim. One of them discovered the mouth of the
cave and called to his companions. They all came to him and began to
talk of exploring the place.
Huddled close to each other in the remotest part of the cave, the
lovers waited. Though they were themselves in pitchy darkness, they
could see the world outside; however, dusk was approaching. Then they
saw one of the bucks raise his body into the edge of the cave. He
paused, fixed himself, and reached down to give a hand to a companion.
Just then the lovers heard a wild shouting. They recognized the voice
of their Medicine Man. He was screaming to the braves to come away from
the cave, and telling them that all caves with their openings in or
just above water were inhabited by evil spirits. The braves left the
cave with frenzied strokes and soon the silence told that all the
Indians had deserted the region of the lake. Again the lovers breathed
freely.
But they would not leave their refuge until they were sure of safety.
All that night, all the next day, and all the next night, they remained
in hiding. Then they left in search of a friendly tribe to take up
with, and the story generally goes that they found hospitality and
security.
The white man has changed the looks about the picturesque region where
the couple wandered and hid; but the cave and lake where they evaded
their pursuers bears in memory of them the name of Lovers’ Retreat.
LOVER’S LEAP IN KIMBLE COUNTY
By Flora Eckert
[This legend, like others of its kind, is on all sides asserted to have
come down from the earliest pioneers. When, less than a century ago,
settlers first moved into any part of Texas where there is a cliff,
what was their initial act: to get a meal, to start out hunting for
buried treasure, or to christen the cliff with a tale of lovers? At any
rate, thirty years ago, in 1894, Mary J. Jaques, an English lady who
had resided for a time on a ranch in the Llano country, saw in London
the fresh pages of her book, Texan Ranch Life; and in that book on page
255 is a version of the legend of Lover’s Leap in Kimble County:
“The lover of Leona, a beautiful Indian girl, having been sent on a
distant raid, she promised to light a beacon fire on the cliff each
night of his absence. But alas! weeks grew to months, but he didn’t
return, and the old chief, her father, ordered her to marry
‘another.’ In despair one night Leona threw herself down the
precipice, ever after known as ‘Lover’s Leap.’ The gorge below is
still haunted by her restless spirit.”
Slightly different in detail is a version that was given to me in the
summer of 1923 by Miss Grenade Farmer of Junction City, in Kimble
County, a form of the legend from the same source having been written
out by Miss Velma Crank. Miss Farmer’s father was a pioneer settler on
the upper Llano and he has often told this legend to her, Miss Farmer
says.
About seventy years ago there was an Indian village at the base of the
bluff now called Lover’s Leap. The chief had a brave and handsome son;
he fell in love with a maiden of his tribe “who was beautiful and good
but who was not his equal in rank or fortune.” The father forbade the
marriage desired by the lovers. In the obedient way of Indian youth,
the son obeyed his father, but he continued to meet his love in secret,
always under the bluff. In some way the unchanging nature of that great
pile of rocks seemed to have an influence on the souls of the lovers.
They, like it, would be unchanging in their devotion. So, when one day
the youth received an order from his father that he must marry in order
to perpetuate the noble line, he resolved with his sweetheart to
preserve their fidelity by death.
They climbed the cliff and cast themselves into the gorge below. A few
days later their bodies were found and were buried on top of the
bluff.—Editor.]
The cliff called “Lover’s Leap” by the inhabitants of the Llano Valley
stands today a rock-bound sentinel and watchtower, even as it stood
during the legendary times of Texas. At its foot flows the cool,
sparkling mountain stream that joins the Llano only a short distance
beyond. Its sheer face forms a perpendicular wall that is one of the
least accessible in a land of inaccessible cliffs.
Legends concerning the days of the Indians cluster about this sentinel
rock. They are still told by pioneers to their children and are often
related to the summer tourists of Junction, the little town that lies
almost within the shadow of Lover’s Leap. Perhaps the most beautiful
and plausible of these legends is the one that tells of the Indian
maid, Winona, and her lover, Mewanee, both of the Comanche tribe.
In those days there was an Indian encampment at the foot of this cliff.
No other situation for miles about was so well adapted to the needs of
the tribe. Fish teemed in the clear stream; deer and other game roamed
in the woods; the climate was mild at nearly all times of the year, and
in winter the camp was protected from the fierce norther by the sheer
wall behind it. It was mainly because of this shelter that the place
had been chosen by the scouts of the party; but they had also another
reason. This particular cliff reared its head higher than any of its
sister cliffs along the river and therefore afforded a more distinct
view of the surrounding country. In fact, it was the veritable sentinel
of the valley. And such a watchtower was then a prime necessity.
The quiet beauty of the inclosing hills and the calmness of the deep
pools of the stream were not reflected in the hearts of the Indians,
who had, indeed, much cause for disquiet. Forty miles to the north the
hated Spaniards had reared a hastily-built wooden structure to serve as
a mission, and had filled it with soldiers and priests. This mission
and all those connected with it were bitterly hated by the remnants of
the tribes of Comanches, Cheyennes, Apaches, and Arapahoes. The priests
endeavored to dissuade them from their age-old religion and to force
new beliefs and institutions upon them. The soldiers, in jest and in
earnest, treated them with brutal cruelty. [113]
The band of Comanches in the Llano Valley had special reason to
distrust and hate the Spaniards at Menard, for Don Juan, one of the
boldest of the soldiers there, had looked upon Winona, the fairest
maiden of the Comanches, with lust and desire in his eyes. This evil
look had not escaped the eye of the chief, White Cloud, whose daughter
Winona was, nor of Mewanee, Winona’s favored lover. Therefore, the
departure of the tribe from the mission had been abrupt. A double vow
of vengeance was solemnly sworn as the councilmen gathered about the
council fire in the chief’s tent there on the Llano. It was a vow to
revenge the insult upon Winona and to destroy the mission which menaced
the peace of the red men.
Many councils were held and the plans were carefully laid. The date of
the attack was chosen in accordance with the Indian belief in time and
season. Mewanee, as one of the most stalwart warriors, held an honored
place in these councils. Meanwhile, high upon the cliff, the scouts
kept a steady watch for the Spanish, who were believed to be on the
trail of the rebellious Comanches.
Of all the sad, heavy hearts in that camp, Winona’s heart was the
saddest and heaviest. It was partly because of her that the attack was
being planned. Furthermore, Mewanee, she knew, in the zeal of his rage
against Don Juan, would be heedless of the most perilous danger.
Winona’s dark eyes plainly showed the anguish in her heart. Mewanee’s
solemn and dignified mien reflected the gravity of the situation. The
pain of parting was heavy upon them both.
To add to their grief, White Cloud issued an order forbidding marriages
while the tribe was preparing for its attack of vengeance, for the most
cherished plan of the lovers was that they should be married on the day
preceding Mewanee’s departure. Now, however, their plans were broken.
All Winona’s pleadings were in vain. White Cloud, her father, shook his
head in obstinate refusal of their marriage. At their farewell meeting,
even Mewanee allowed his love for Winona to show as he comforted her
and promised eternal faith. His love, he told her, would reach out to
her from the Happy Hunting Grounds and beckon her to him. And Winona
whispered that she would come at his slightest call. As their lips met
in a last, long, unaccustomed kiss, the drum signaled the inevitable
separation.
And so, among the other braves, Mewanee rode away to the north to begin
the raid on the mission. Winona was left at camp—to wait. Days passed
with no word of the warriors or of the result of their undertaking.
Then suddenly, just at noon, when the watcher on the summit of the
cliff could see farthest over the valley toward hated Menard, he gave a
mighty shout. He could discern the returning warriors. They traveled
swiftly, and in a short time reached the camp. Even at a distance the
watchers perceived that the raid from which their braves were returning
had been successful. Each was weighted with plunder from the soldiers
and from the mission. But their faces and their scanty number gave the
lie to all these signs of success. It was at once evident that fewer
men, by far, were returning than had gone out. Winona’s quick eye gave
her instant proof that her lover had not returned.
His companions told her of his death at the hands of a Spanish soldier
who had stabbed him in the back while he was engaged in a violent
hand-to-hand combat with his enemy, Don Juan. Winona heard the story as
in a dream. More real to her was a spirit voice calling, calling
insistently.
When the moon rose over the cliff that night it outlined a solitary
figure upon the bluff. Only for an instant, however, did the silhouette
remain stationary. With a gesture of grief and longing, the figure
flung out its arms and dropped over the edge into the vast darkness
below. The water flowed on, lapping against the rocks upon which Winona
lay, broken and lifeless. Her soul had answered the call from the Happy
Hunting Grounds. And to this day the cliff, called “Lover’s Leap”
because of this wild plunge, stands as an everlasting monument to the
exceeding love and faith of the simple Indian maiden.
Some facts relative to the legend follow. 1. The headwaters of the
Llano River were once a refuge for Indians. 2. There was a mission near
Menard. It was destroyed by Indians. 3. Evidences of the camp at the
foot of the cliff are plain. 4. In tribal emergencies marriage was
sometimes (perhaps rarely) forbidden. I realize that there are slight
grounds for such a statement, but it is a part of the legend as given
by my informants. 5. The legend is given as told me by Frank H. Wilson
and N. R. Skaggs (about seventy-five years old) of Junction.
THE WAITING WOMAN
By John R. Craddock
This legend, though it cannot be said to be retold in his exact words,
came to me from a wood-cutter named T. W. Williams, who while hauling
wood about the streets of Austin had time enough to stop and talk.
Out in the hills of Williamson County, a certain old path can still be
found leading down to the San Gabriel River. If you follow the ancient
path from the west bank of the Gabriel for a distance of some two
hundred yards, you will find there on the hill the remains of the old
Lazy J ranch house. If you follow the path from the east bank, you will
soon come to its end among the rock-strewn hills. Years ago a foot-log
connected the parts of the path, and at it in days now long past a man
and a beautiful young woman were accustomed to meet. The girl came from
the ranch house on the hill, and the man, a cowboy, came from somewhere
out beyond the trail’s end, no one now knows where.
A little before sunset one evening, the girl walked down to the
crossing to meet her lover. A few minutes later the cowboy sprang from
his horse on the opposite bank, and, scarcely waiting to tie his mount,
started across the foot-log. The ride had been long, and the man was
unsteady on his feet after being for such a long while in the saddle.
He wore heavy leggins and Mexican spurs, and in his haste he lost his
footing on the log and fell into the river. He was never again seen.
The sight of the tragedy and the loss of her lover caused the maiden to
become, as people believed, insane. Every evening at sunset throughout
the remaining days of her life, she went to the foot-log to meet a
phantom lover who came, as in life, to meet her. Her dying request was
that if she lived until sunset, she should be carried to the bank of
the stream. This request was complied with, and her attendants, on
reaching the spot, witnessed a strange and pathetic ritual. The dying
woman raised herself on her elbow and spoke a few words to the
invisible lover, and then fell back lifeless on the stretcher. They
buried her there by the foot-path, and the good folk will tell you yet
that at dusk you can hear the lovers as they whisper by the path, or
that sometimes in the coming shadows you can see the phantom woman
drooped and waiting at the place where the foot-log used to be. [114]
LOVER’S LEAP AT SANTA ANNA [115]
By Austin Callan
Tradition tells us that long ago an Indian village nestled at the foot
of “Santana Peaks,” called Las Mesas. It was before the white man’s
ambition for new territory led him into the wild haunts of the savage;
before Anglo-Saxon enterprise transformed the West from a wilderness of
romance to a vulgar land of farms and ranches. Herds of buffaloes and
deer roamed the prairies; wild turkeys, geese and game birds were as
plentiful as the leaves on the trees; and the people were happy and
indolent.
Among the inhabitants was Fox-Deer, who had taken unto himself a
pale-face for a wife. He had an only daughter, called Lentalopa,
Laughing-Eye, and he loved her poor, heart-broken mother, whose soul he
gave to the Great Spirit in the forest, and whose body was laid to rest
among the flowers on the “Little Table.”
One evil day a band of white men, with a great train of wagons and an
Indian guide, passed through the gap of Las Mesas and were soon in view
of the little village. Immediately the war-whoop rent the air. The
soldiers and teamsters barely had time to corral their wagons and
prepare for battle before the fierce red devils were circling round and
round them, leaning low on their horses and gradually drawing in. The
lieutenant gave orders not to fire until the enemy came near enough to
the wagons to make every shot count a dead savage.
Each man stood in place, sighting down his musket, waiting breathlessly
for the order. Fox-Deer, clad in a buckskin suit ornamented with
silver, turned his horse towards the wagon corral and gave a signal. In
an instant every warrior was charging the temporary barricade, all
howling like a pack of fiends in hell. Then, from behind the wagons,
there came a hundred puffs of smoke, and a hundred Indians fell
lifeless on the sward.
Fox-Deer led his redskins back to the base of Las Mesas; the soldiers
reloaded their muskets and made ready for a second attack. In the
meantime several of the men reported to the lieutenant that the savages
had a beautiful white girl in captivity.... The lieutenant immediately
sent two men under a flag of truce to the Indians, with the information
that he would withdraw and leave them alone if they would surrender the
white prisoner into his hands.
The answer came back, as quick as a flash of lightning, from the ashy
lips of Wounded Hawk. He said that Laughing-Eye belonged not to the
pale-faces, that he had won her heart for bravery in fighting the
battles of Fox-Deer. “We love each other,” he said in tones of pathos
to the Indian guide, who acted as interpreter; “we have asked the
beautiful moon to melt our hearts into one, and its spirit came down
and danced for joy on the bosom of the silvery stream, because we were
happy. Go away and leave us alone, leave Laughing-Eye among the flowers
and the birds, close to her mother’s grave.”
The men returned and reported the effort to compromise with the Indians
unsuccessful. Wounded Hawk’s story was put down as one of those slick
lies characteristic of his race, and it was decided to attack the
village at once and finish the job of whipping the devils, who had been
rendered inferior by their first charge. As the soldiers drew up near
the wigwams, the golden sun was hanging over the western point of the
mountain. A beautiful valley swept off for miles to the north, and in
the green grass droves of antelopes and deer were playing. Around the
wigwams several squaws were seated upon buffalo robes and among them
was Laughing-Eye, downcast and frightened.
Fox-Deer asked for permission to send his child to a cliff on the
mountain where she could watch the battle without danger. “If the Great
Spirit decides against the poor Indian,” he said, “the white man can
take her, but if He answers her prayer, she will remain in the forest
with Wounded Hawk and be happy.”
Laughing-Eye gave the signal for battle by waving a branch of cedar
from the brow of Las Mesas, and a savage yell went up, as fierce as
mortal ever heard. Fox-Deer led his warriors forth, playing for two of
the highest earthly stakes—the happiness of his daughter and his own
life. In an instant the whites were surrounded. The Indians, riding at
full speed and lying low on the off-side of their ponies, poured volley
after volley of deadly arrows into their dismayed ranks. The lieutenant
fell mortally wounded; a dozen others were dead upon the ground. Closer
and closer the savages came and more hideous grew their war-whoops.
Laughing-Eye knelt upon the cliff to pray; no doubt she had learned to
lisp the name of God at her mother’s knee, and I fancy she asked Him to
restore safe to her bosom the young chief she loved. But the tide of
battle turned, turned at a moment when Wounded Hawk felt the flush of
victory and was almost ready to wave his love back to the joy of the
wigwam.
The surviving soldiers formed a little square, dropped to their knees,
and prepared to receive the last desperate charge of the savages.
Fox-Deer brought his men up, this time in silence. Pointing to the girl
on the brow of the peak and giving a signal which they all understood,
he led a mad rush. A deadly stream of fire poured forth from the little
group of determined whites, and then they sprang to their feet with
bayonets fixed. For a moment the fate of Wounded Hawk hung in the
balance. The struggle was as fierce as opposing forces ever waged.
Indian and Caucasian fell together, with the cold steel in each other’s
breasts, and their mingled blood crimsoned the grass-spears and the
daisies. There was a hush; a little flag bearing the Stars and Stripes
shot up just as the sun was setting. From the overhanging cliff a
scream of agony rent the air. Laughing-Eye understood and leaped upon
the rocks below, into the arms of death.
ANTONETTE’S LEAP
OR
THE LEGEND OF MOUNT BONNELL
By J. Frank Dobie
I
The legend of Mount Bonnell is among the half dozen most widely known
Texas legends. It has been printed again and again, both in prose and
in verse; it is still told in many quarters; and the details of the
various versions have come to a wide divergence. So far as I can learn,
the oldest printed account of the legend is that given by Morphis,
published in 1874. For other accounts, the reader is referred to the
bibliography.
In the main, there are three versions of the legend: first, the Morphis
account in which an Indian chief steals a Spanish belle, who is rescued
by her lover only to perish later with him at the cliff; second, a
version, the details of which are similar to those of various other
Lovers’ Leap legends, in which an Indian maid and an Indian brave make
an interdicted elopement and are finally forced to the leap; third, a
version in which an Indian maiden in love with a white man is forced to
a precipitate death. It is an interesting fact that all the versions
hitherto printed follow very closely the Morphis story, all being
revampings of it. Noteworthy variations seem to exist in oral accounts
only. As Morphis’ history has long been out of print, his version of
the legend is here reprinted.
The word Antonette belongs to no language: the French spelling is
Antoinette; the name in Spanish is Antonia. No lady of pure Castilian
blood would have borrowed a French translation for her name. Yet
Antonette is the spelling generally given in the legends.
II
THE LEGEND AS TOLD BY MORPHIS [116]
The following legend of the Colorado Valley was related to me years ago
by that reliable gentleman, good citizen, and gallant soldier, George
L. Robertson of Austin.
Mount Bonnell was called by the early settlers of Colorado Valley,
Antonette’s Leap, which name was given to it in consequence of the
self-immolation on that picturesque spot, at an early day, of a most
lovely and accomplished señorita, who came over from Spain at the first
settlement of the mission of San José, San Juan, Espada, and the Alamo.
“The fame of Antonette’s beauty and intellectual charms was spread
abroad through the settlements, and even extended to the hunting ground
and camp fires of the red men of the forest. It came to the ears and
inflamed the passions of Cibolo, the chief of the Comanches, who
selected a band of his favorite warriors, made a raid upon the
settlements, captured the beautiful Antonette, and carried her far away
to his camp in the wilderness, on the headwaters of the Colorado.
“The parents and friends of the unfortunate señorita mourned her as
lost forever, except Don Leal Navarro Rodriguez, her betrothed lover, a
brave and elegantly educated young Spanish caballero, of fine personal
appearance and honorable, as well as brave to a fault, who determined
to follow the murderous Indians to their homes and rescue his beloved
Antonette, or perish in the attempt.
“Don Leal mounted his favorite steed and, well armed, started from the
Alamo alone in pursuit of the Indians, and after many hair-breadth
escapes, undiscovered, descried the camp of the savages. Selecting a
dark night, he entered it, and by imitating the mocking bird, of which
Antonette was very fond, and whose singing they could both imitate to
perfection, he soon discovered at what spot inside the encampment she
was, then came into the very tent which she occupied and found her tied
securely to prevent her escape.
“In an instant the lover severed the bonds which confined the dear idol
of his heart, and with her cautiously returned to where he had left his
horse when he entered the Comanche camp; then quickly mounting and
taking Antonette up behind him, he started to regain the Mission of
Alamo.
“The fury of Cibolo in the morning, when he discovered the escape of
his fascinating captive, knew no bounds. He raved and blasphemed
terribly; then, sounding the alarm, with a hundred chosen warriors, he
hastily started in pursuit, leaving the main body of his tribe to await
his return.
“For several days Don Leal and his beloved Antonette made good speed
toward the settlements, subsisting most bountifully upon game, which
was easily obtained through Don Leal’s rifle, and at night sleeping
under the forest trees; but on the seventh day, leaving the prairie
land, they became tangled in the mountains bordering the Colorado.
Early in the morning of the eighth day the lovers discovered themselves
surrounded upon all sides by the cruel savages. All attempts at further
flight were hopeless.
“The wrathful Cibolo, with cow horns on his head and face horribly
painted, advanced in all pride of power to where they had fled as a
last refuge, but when he was about fifty yards off, Don Leal, who had
firmly resolved to fight and die rather than surrender, raised his
rifle to his shoulder and, taking deliberate aim, fired! In an instant
the savage chief bounded in the air and fell to the ground a corpse;
but in another instant at least twenty arrows pierced Don Leal’s body,
and he, too, fell to the earth and expired without a groan.
“After surveying the situation and revolving in her mind the miserable
fate awaiting her from the merciless Comanches, ... the poor,
unfortunate girl bent over the prostrate and lifeless form of her lover
and kissed his dear lips. Then rising, with her eyes toward heaven, and
murmuring her last prayer to God, she plunged headlong down the
precipice and struck the rocks beneath, mangled, bleeding, and dead!
“For a long time the place where these rare, devoted, but most
unfortunate lovers met their sad and untimely fate was called
‘Antonette’s Leap,’ but years ago a wandering Bohemian, who happened to
pass a few days in Austin ... blotted it out and substituted his own,
and now Antonette’s Leap is Mount Bonnell.”
III
For the details of the second version of the legend as here summarized
I am indebted to Mr. Billy Minter, a West Point cadet from Austin.
Once two tribes of Indians living far to the north were at deadly
enmity with one another; one tribe lived in what is now Oklahoma, the
other in what is now the Panhandle of Texas. One day the son of the
chieftain of the southern tribe was walking in the woods. It was
springtime, the time to be in the woods, and there he met the daughter
of the chief of the northern tribe. It was springtime; their hatred was
forgotten, and often thereafter they met under the trees. But one day a
brave of the northern tribe discovered the lovers. He was afraid to
fight with this strong young Indian of the south whose fame as a
warrior was already far known; so he watched from the bushes and then
slipped away to tell the maiden’s father what he had seen.
When the lovers were parting, they discovered the trail of the watcher.
They realized that they could never meet thus again and that if the
maid returned to her people she would be terribly tortured. They fled
to the south, hoping to find refuge in some friendly tribe that knew
nothing of the quarrels of their ancestors. The next morning the father
of the maiden sent to the enemy’s camp a demand for his daughter. Then
the elopement was revealed. A truce was made and forthwith fifty picked
trailers and warriors from each tribe were sent to pursue and capture
the fugitives.
For many days the lovers fled, followed closer and closer by the
warriors. At length they found themselves hemmed in on top of a
mountain that faced precipitously on the Colorado River. Out of the
scrub cedars and from over the gullies, they saw the cordon of pitiless
pursuers nearing; beneath them they saw the swollen waters of the
Colorado whirling over the rocks. On the one hand, was a captivity
worse than death; on the other, the river below. “With one last prayer
to the Great Spirit, the lovers embraced and, still locked in this
embrace, leaped into the hungry water.”
“This,” concludes Mr. Minter, “is the legend of the Lovers’ Leap as
told to me when I was eleven years old by an old settler, himself the
son of a pioneer. He lived near the place, and told me the story while
I was camped on Mount Bonnell. Last week (July, 1922) I went again to
try to find him and have him retell the story, but I found that he had
been dead for two years, and so I have not been able to use the names
of the lovers, of the chiefs, and of the tribes, as well as many other
minute circumstances that he made the tale vivid with. The river does
not touch the foot of the cliff at the Lovers’ Leap. Indeed, it is a
good stone’s throw from it to the water’s edge. The old man explained
this discrepancy by saying that the legend was ages old and that at the
time of the leap the river did touch the bottom of the cliff when it
was on a big rise.”
IV
The third version of the legend was given me by Miss Etta Maddrey, a
student at the University of Texas in the summer of 1922, who in turn
heard it from an Austin woman who worked at the Driskill Hotel. This
woman claimed that the witness in the circumstances that follow was one
of her ancestors.
A pioneer couple had built a log hut near what is now the road to Deep
Eddy. It was near a spring in some woods, and sometimes Indians camped
near by. In the band was the tribal chief, and he had a daughter. He
had, too, a hardened and cunning warrior who was in love with the
daughter, and the chief was pleased at the match. The daughter was not
pleased, and soon the brave came to realize that he was being repelled.
One evening when the settler’s wife was going to the spring for water,
she saw in the dusk a tender greeting between the Indian maid and a
young white man of the settlement. She saw too the form of a slinking
Indian warrior spying on the lovers. The next evening the meeting was
repeated, and the man and the young woman sat on a rock and watched the
sunset. They parted; the paleface disappeared; the girl turned to go
back to her camp and was confronted by the giant and menacing form of
her spurned suitor. With vivid gesture he pictured the wrath of the
father and chief when he should learn that his daughter had scorned one
of his tribe for a hated paleface, and he gloated as he told how he
would report her treachery.
The girl broke away from her tormentor. Perhaps she thought to return
to her father and ask forgiveness; but the folly of such a course must
have been apparent to her. Perhaps she thought of taking refuge with
her lover, but then his helplessness in protecting her must have
flooded her mind with the conviction that by such an act she would only
bring about his death. A moment after she left the warrior she bounded
out of the woods in a direction to the north. On and on she ran until
she reached the topmost point of what is now Mount Bonnell. Below her
was the dark river. “There was but a moment’s hesitation, and then the
fatal leap—lover’s leap then, certainly; and Lover’s Leap today.”
PIRATES AND PIRATE TREASURE IN LEGEND
From SUNSET IN AUGUST: GALVESTON BEACH
By Stanley E. Babb
[“Sunset in August: Galveston Beach,” from which the following lines
are taken, is one of a group of poems entitled “Arrows of Loveliness.”
The group won the first prize from the Poetry Society of Texas in 1922.
The poems were printed in the Poetry Society’s Book of the Year, 1922.
In addition to giving a picture of the great Texas pirate, the lines
illustrate what a poet may do with legend.—Editor.]
Old Jean Lafitte once paced along these sands,
Surveyed the misty sea for Spanish galleons
Sweeping up from Panama with gold
And precious freights—and lusted for the sharp
High clamour of battle: rattle of pistol-shots—
Thunder of broadsides—crash of falling spars—
Loud cries to Christ for quarter—shouts of joy—
Spurts of hot blood—surrender—sharp commands—
And then the scuttling of the captured vessels:
The wild red laughter of the rioting flames
Above a littered sea ...
Old Jean Lafitte once wandered down these sands,
And watched the day’s red death, the swirling gulls,
The golden doubloon of the rising moon,
Remembering days of splendour: mornings when
He buried gold ashore on Los Muertos,
Midnights when his little schooner “Pride”
Cut past Nigger Head with all sails drawing,
Wild battles with great storms off Yucatan,
And nights with wine and girls at Porto Bello ...
Old Jean Lafitte once paced this beach and cried
From wanderlust that shook his heart, and looked
Up to the sky for winds and clouds, and told
His aves on the rosary of stars,
And then along the last bleak beach of life,
He proudly strode, and out across the sea
Into the white mists of oblivion ...
LIFE AND LEGENDS OF LAFITTE THE PIRATE
By E. G. Littlejohn
[The pirate legends of Texas are all so bound up with the name of
Lafitte that they may well be prefaced by a sketch of that remarkable
personage. Perhaps there is as much legend about the man as about his
treasure. Even his name seems to be in dispute, for, whereas he is
generally known in this country as Jean Lafitte, the Nouveau Larousse
Illustré Dictionnaire Encyclopédique denominates him, the “corsaire
français,” Nicolas Lafitte. A historian can hardly write of him without
arousing controversy. Dr. J. O. Dyer, of Galveston, in a letter to the
editor says: “Lafitte was no pirate, but the head of two noted
buccaneer or privateer camps.... He never went to sea; he was a poor
sailor because he suffered from sea-sickness; he never was in any fight
on the sea.”—Editor.]
I
JEAN LAFITTE: MAN AND PIRATE
The European wars of the early part of the nineteenth century, the
consequent passage of the Embargo Act by the Congress of the United
States, and the act prohibiting the importation of slaves after the
year 1808, all conspired to bring about a great volume of clandestine
trade at the ports of the United States. This trade was especially
active along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Here resorted the
privateer and the smuggler, the one to dispose of his booty, the other
to receive it and to distribute it.
The labyrinthine waters of lower Louisiana were the smugglers’
paradise. Here they could carry on their business almost without fear
of detection. Just prior to the War of 1812, a flourishing
establishment of this kind sprang up on the island of Grand Terre, some
sixty miles west of the mouth of the Mississippi, under the management
of the two brothers Lafitte, Jean and Pierre, former blacksmiths of New
Orleans. At first, the brothers were mere agents and distributors for
the privateers who resorted to Grand Terre, but they soon got vessels
for themselves, and began privateering on their own account. Letters of
marque and reprisal were granted to them by the Republic of Cartagena,
erstwhile a colony of Spain, and with this authority they went forth
with other Robin Hoods of the sea to ravage and to plunder. They soon
grew immensely wealthy and their business became so extensive as to
almost paralyze the legitimate trade of New Orleans.
The governor of Louisiana, on being appealed to by the merchants of the
city, issued several proclamations against “pirates and smugglers,” who
were bringing disgrace and ignominy upon the state, ordering them to
disperse and threatening dire punishment in case of their refusal to do
so. When his fulminations went unheeded, he offered a reward of five
hundred dollars for the capture of Jean Lafitte, now become the leader
of the smugglers. Lafitte promptly responded by offering fifteen
thousand dollars for the capture of the governor. The merchants then
appealed to the United States government for protection, and Commodore
Patterson was sent with a fleet to break up the Grand Terre
establishment. This he succeeded in doing, taking a number of prisoners
and much valuable merchandise. The brothers Lafitte, with the greater
number of their followers, fled to the woods and so escaped capture.
Shortly after this event, when the battle of New Orleans was impending,
we find Jean Lafitte, who seems to have cherished no animosity for his
summary ejectment from Grand Terre, informing the United States
authorities of the plans and movements of the British fleet, and
offering his aid in defending the city. At first declined, the
proffered assistance was later accepted by General Jackson, and Lafitte
with several of his lieutenants fought with conspicuous bravery in the
memorable battle of January 8, 1815. In his report of the battle,
General Jackson spoke in the highest terms of these “gentlemen,” and
recommended that they be pardoned for any offences they might have
committed against the laws of the United States. This recommendation
was promptly acted upon by President Madison, who issued a full and
free pardon to Jean Lafitte and such of his men as participated in the
battle.
With the close of the war, Othello’s occupation was gone, and Lafitte
returned to his old practices of privateering and smuggling. This time
he established his headquarters on Galveston Island, then uninhabited,
where he built a fort and a town which he called Campeachy. His
followers at one time numbered fully one thousand men, and these he
ruled with a rod of iron. He became very wealthy and lived in lordly
style. The “Red House,” Lafitte’s residence, so called on account of
its color, was the scene of many princely entertainments given in honor
of distinguished visitors. Colonel James Gaines, who was on the island
in 1819, states that while he was there several rich prizes were
brought into port, and that Spanish doubloons were as “plentiful as
biscuits.”
Though Lafitte claimed to make war only on Spanish commerce, he showed
little squeamishness in attacking vessels of other nations when no
Spaniard was in sight. In 1820 an American vessel was captured and
plundered and then sunk in Matagorda Bay. This act spelled the ruin of
Campeachy. Early the next year the United States Government dispatched
a man-of-war to break up the establishment. Lafitte went out to meet
the captain, conducted him to Red House, and entertained him in a
magnificent manner, in the meantime trying to persuade him from
executing his orders. But the captain was not to be influenced by
blandishments or money. His orders were peremptory. Lafitte must leave
the island. Bowing to the inevitable, Lafitte convoked his followers,
supplied them with money, and dismissed them from his service. Then,
with a chosen few, in his favorite vessel, the Pride, he sailed away
from Galveston forever.
II
CREDENCE IN THE LAFITTE LEGEND
As Captain Kidd, according to legend, left more wealth on Long Island
than the vaults of Wall Street have measured, so Lafitte is reputed to
have secreted immense treasures on Galveston Island and the adjacent
mainland. Early inhabitants of Galveston can tell of many a midnight
quest for the hidden hoards of pirates; and in sundry places certain
mounds, with accompanying depressions on one side, were but recently
pointed out as “where they have been digging for Lafitte’s treasure.”
Unlike Captain Kidd, however, Lafitte left no screeching Hannahs to
guard his treasures. No such dog-in-the-manger spirit was his. On the
contrary, he seems to have desired that they should be found and put to
some useful service. I have an old letter purporting to reveal the
hiding place of this treasure. It was written in the late fifties by a
strong-headed old lawyer, who at one time held high office in the
Republic of Texas, to a scientist of considerable reputation in that
day. The letter is too long to quote, but it recounts in detail
Lafitte’s attempt through a medium at a “sitting” of spiritualists to
reveal the whereabouts of a ship-load of concealed treasure. According
to the lawyer, the Lafitte “influence” yearned to have the directions
corroborated so that the investigators might be filled with sufficient
faith to go after the waiting treasure.
III
THE HORROR GUARDED TREASURE OF THE NECHES
This story, under the title of “Seeking for Buried Treasure,” appeared
many years ago in the Houston Post. It was said to have been related by
a Mr. Marion Meredith of Port Neches.
Said Mr. Meredith: “It was before the Civil War that a neighbor of mine
got hold of a chart from an old Mexican woman purporting to locate a
vast treasure hidden by pirates in the marsh near the mouth of the
Neches River.
“It was said that the vessel bearing this treasure was so closely
pursued by a Spanish craft that the crew cut their cable and left their
anchor. The man who got the chart felt so sure of finding the treasure
that he concluded to go alone to seek it in order that he might not
have to divide it. He located the spot where the vessel was reported to
have left her chain and found the chain there without any trouble. He
soon found where the treasure should be and began to dig. After he had
dug a few feet, some unseen power seemed to seize him and he fled from
the place. A few days later he died without having been able to speak.”
Mr. Meredith subsequently obtained the chart and, knowing the
circumstances of the former effort, he associated with a man noted for
his bravery, an old Texan who had roughed it for years. We will call
this man Clawson. After making all necessary preparations, he and
Clawson proceeded to investigate. They found the old rusty chain,
whence, a certain direction and distance, the chart called for a tree
with a heart cut in the bark. They located the tree. The heart was
there; then in a certain direction and at a certain distance they found
the spot sought for. It was located on a small island, a mere shell
bank in the marsh. The tools of the former treasure hunter were there,
and the hole he had dug. They began digging and soon found a human
skeleton, which they carefully removed from the hole and laid upon the
bank. Meredith dug till he was tired, when Clawson relieved him. He was
resting on the edge of the hole, expecting every turn of the spade to
uncover the treasure, when suddenly Clawson clambered from the hole,
his face drawn and pale. Clutching Meredith’s arm, he said in a husky
voice, “Come, for God’s sake, let’s get away from here.”
“What’s the matter? What have you seen?” asked Meredith.
“I have seen hell and its horrors. Come away from here,” and he pulled
Meredith to their boat. They left so hurriedly that they forgot to take
their tools. No other explanation could be got from Clawson, but he
begged Meredith, if he valued his life, not to dig there again. Years
afterwards Meredith met Clawson in Beaumont and begged him to tell what
had frightened him. “For God’s sake,” he answered, “don’t ask me about
that; it has haunted me all these years.”
After a time Meredith returned to the spot, recovered his tools, and
buried the skeleton in the hole, but he had so much confidence in
Clawson that he could not dig again. Since then he has several times
visited the spot. Once a party of young men volunteered to go with him
and dig up the ghost and the treasure. His reply to them was: “I will
take you there and stay with you, boys, but there is not enough money
in Texas to get me to dig in that hole.”
IV
PIRATES AND THEIR SACKS OF GOLD
This story appeared many years ago in the Galveston Daily News as a
“special” from Corpus Christi.
“One morning far back in the receding past, just as the sun was casting
his first golden beams of light over the lovely prairie, then robed in
the sublimity of wild solitude, Lafitte and ten or fifteen of his
buccaneers called at the humble home of an old lady and her husband who
then lived on Kellar, or Cox, Creek in what is now embraced in Jackson
County. Here these pirates got their breakfast and then handed the old
people $1000, in which sum were found coins from the then leading
commercial governments of the world. During their stay at this house
the pirates made frequent references to the hot pursuit of English or
American war vessels. After they had dispatched the morning meal, they
shouldered what purported to be sacks of gold and departed, going
toward the head of Cox Creek, presumably to bury or secrete their
ill-gotten treasure. After a few hours they passed back by this house,
going in the direction of Cox Bay. They were never seen or heard of
again by the old people who supplied them with breakfast.”
In the article from which the above excerpt is made, it is stated that
some years ago certain respectable citizens of Corpus Christi who had
enlisted the services of a lad with an “affinity” for gold made an
extensive search for the supposed hidden treasure. The expedition was a
failure, but the leader was confident that somewhere between Cox Bay
and the mouth of the Lavaca River large sums of the pirates’ coins
would some day be found, and intimated that they would be fished out of
Swan Lake.
V
LAFITTE’S TREASURE VAULT
Legends of Lafitte’s treasure in Louisiana often come down the Texas
coast and become Texan by adoption. In the Abbeville country,
Louisiana, there is a legend, handed down from the last century, to the
effect that Lafitte and his pirate crew, having run a schooner up into
White Lake (Louisiana coast) through a bayou which has long since been
filled and grown over with marsh grass, at some spot along the shore
built a brick vault in which they stored a vast amount of their
ill-gotten treasure.
About the year 1908 a man named C—— claimed to have stumbled upon the
vault while hunting alligators. He further claimed to have torn away,
though with much difficulty, portions of the brick work, revealing
untold wealth in gold coin, the hidden treasure of Lafitte.
Numbers of persons to whom this story was told became interested in
making a search for the treasure. Owing to the swampy condition of the
country and the inaccessibility of the spot where the vault was
located, C—— advised the digging of a small canal as the best means of
reaching it. This idea was adopted, money was advanced for the purpose,
some five or six thousand dollars, and the digging of the canal was
begun. After weeks of toil, of chopping through dense canebrakes, and
of floundering through the swamp mud, the party reached a lone cypress
tree that was supposed to stand sentinel over the crypt. The treasure
could not be found.
Disappointed in their quest and disgusted at their own credulity, the
treasure seekers caused the arrest of C—— on the charge of having taken
their money under false pretenses; C—— claimed as the reason for their
failure that he had lost his bearings. Who knows?—Adapted from a story
in the Galveston News, October 27, 1908.
THE UNEASY GHOST OF LAFITTE
By Julia Beazley
“Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it.”
“It faded on the crowing of the cock.”—Hamlet.
Within the memory of men still living, Texas coast dwellers used to
gather around firesides on northery winter nights, and while the rich
juice of sweet potatoes roasting among the ashes oozed through the
jackets, tell tales of “the Pirate of the Gulf.” Not a few of these
tales centered about an ancient and dilapidated house at Bayshore Park,
La Porte, in Harris County. Under it, so they say, is the blood marked
booty of Lafitte; and though old tales and old times and old houses
pass, anyone hardy enough to spend the night in this deserted building
may yet, according to report, receive a visit from the guilt-harried
spirit that sometimes in distress and sometimes in anger is still
trying to win absolution for his earthly sins.
The legend runs that upon a certain occasion Lafitte and his
buccaneering crew sailed up to what is now Bay Ridge (which is opposite
the haunted house of La Porte). He anchored his schooner offshore, and
rowed to the beach with two trusted lieutenants and the heavy chest
which none dared touch except at his orders. When the skiff grounded,
the watchers on the schooner saw their chief blindfold his helpers;
then they saw the three disappear with the chest behind a screen of
grapevine-laden trees. Two hours later Lafitte returned alone. He was
in a black mood and no one had the temerity to question him. It was
supposed that he had caught one of his helpers trying to mark the
location of his cache, and had killed them both. Some say that he led
them back to the pit they had dug and filled up, made them reopen and
enlarge it, and while they were bent down digging, shot them dead. Soon
afterwards Lafitte and his followers went down together in a West India
hurricane, and his crime-stained treasure still lies buried in its
secret hiding place.
Yet to many, as I have intimated, that place has not been secret. It is
under the old house. As faithfully as I can follow the tale, I shall
relate an experience connected with that old house as it was told me by
a Confederate veteran who has now passed on. For personal reasons I
shall call him Major Walcart, though that was not his real name. The
tale, however, is a genuine legend in that it has long been current in
the vicinity of La Porte.
“It was on a February night back in the eighties,” the Major used to
say. “The early darkness of a murky day had overtaken me, and I was
dead tired. I do not think mud ever lay deeper along the shore of
Galveston Bay, or that an east wind ever blew more bleakly. When I came
to a small stream I rode out into the open water, as the custom then
was, to find shallow passage. A full moon was rising out of the bay.
Heavy clouds stretched just above it, and I remember the unearthly
aspect of the blustering breakers in its cheerless light. The immensity
and unfriendliness of the scene made me feel lonesome, and I think the
horse shared my mood. By common consent we turned across before we had
gone far enough from shore, and fell into the trench cut by the stream
in the bottom of the bay.
“We were wretchedly wet as we scrambled up a clayey slope and gained
the top of the bluff. A thin cry which I had not been sure was real
when I first heard it now became insistent. It was like the wail of a
child in mortal pain, and I confess that it reminded me of tales I had
heard of the werewolf, which lures unwary travelers to their doom by
imitating the cry of a human infant. By the uncertain light of the
moon, which the next moment was cut off entirely, I saw that I had
reached a kind of stable that crowned the bluff, and from this
structure the uncanny summons seemed to come.
“The sounds were growing fainter, and I hesitated but a moment.
Dismounting, I led my horse through the doorless entrance, and now the
mystery was explained. Huddled together for warmth lay a flock of
sleeping goats. A kid had rashly squeezed itself into the middle of the
heap, and the insensate brutes were crushing its life out. I found the
perishing little creature, and its flattened body came back to the full
tide of life in my arms. Its warmth was grateful to my cold fingers,
and I fondled it a moment before setting it down on the dry dirt floor.
“I tied my horse to a post that upheld the roof of the stable, and with
saddle and blanket on my arm started toward the house, which I could
make out in its quadrangle of oaks, not many yards distant. The horse
whinnied protestingly as I left him, and when the moaning of the wind
in the eaves smote my ears I was half in mind to turn back and bunk
with the goats. It was a more forbidding sound than the hostile roar of
the breakers had been in the bay.
“I called, but only the muddy waves incessantly tearing at the bluff
made answer. I had scarcely hoped really to hear the sound of a human
voice. The great double doors leading in from the front porch were
barred, but the first window I tried yielded entrance. Striking a
match, I found myself in a room that gave promise of comfort. Fat pine
kindling lay beside the big fireplace, and dry chunks of solid oak were
waiting to glow for me the whole night through.
“I was vaguely conscious that the brave fire I soon had going did not
drive the chill from the air so promptly as it should, but my head was
too heavy with sleep to be bothered. I spread my horse blanket quite
close to the cheerful blaze, and with saddle for pillow and slicker for
cover I abandoned myself to the luxury of rest.
“I do not know how long I had slept when I became aware of a steady
gaze fixed on my face. The man was looking down on me, and no living
creature ever stood so still. There was imperious command in the
unblinking eyes, and yet I saw a sort of profound entreaty also.
“It was plain that the visitant had business with me. I arose, and
together we left the room, passed its neighbor, and entered a third, a
barren little apartment through whose cracks the wind came mercilessly.
I think it was I who had opened the doors. My companion did not seem to
move. He was merely present all the time.
“‘It is here,’ he said, as I halted in the middle of the bare floor,
‘that more gold lies buried than is good for any man. You have but to
dig, and it is yours. You can use it; I cannot. However, it must be
applied only to purposes of highest beneficence. Not one penny may be
evilly or selfishly spent. On this point you must keep faith and beware
of any failing. Do you accept?’
“I answered, ‘Yes,’ and the visitant was gone, and I was shivering with
cold. I groped my way back to my fire, bumping into obstructions I had
not found in my journey away from it. I piled on wood with a generous
hand, and the flames leaped high. I watched the unaccountable shadows
dance on the whitewashed walls, and marked how firebeams flickered
across the warpings of the boards in the floor. Then I dozed off.
“I do not know how long I had been asleep when I felt the presence of
the visitant again. The still reproach of his fixed eyes was worse than
wrath. ‘I need your help more than you can know,’ he said, ‘and you
would fail me. The treasure is mine to give. I paid for it with the
substance of my soul. I want you to have it. With it you can balance
somewhat the burden of guilt I carry for its sake.’
“Again we made the journey to the spot where the treasure was buried,
and this time he showed it to me. There were yellow coins, jeweled
watches, women’s bracelets, diamond rings, and strings of pearls. It
was just such a trove as I had dreamed of when as a boy I had planned
to dig for Lafitte’s treasure, except that the quantity of it was
greater. With the admonition, ‘Do not force me to come again,’ my
companion was gone, and once more I made my way back to the fire.
“This time I took up my saddle and blanket and went out to the company
of my horse. The wind and the waves were wailing together, but I
thought I saw a promise of light across the chilly bay, and never was
the prospect of dawn more welcome. As I saddled up and rode off, the
doleful boom of the muddy water at the foot of the bluff came to me
like an echoed anguish.”
But Lafitte does not appear to every one who spends a night in the
house, and any person seeking the treasure from purely selfish motives
is likely to rue his pains. A story is told of an acquisitive and
enterprising man who came hundreds of miles with the purpose of helping
himself to the chance of finding pirate gold, but who abruptly changed
his mind after spending a night in the house. As Lafitte steadily
pursues his object of finding a fit recipient for his dangerous gift,
never succeeding, his disappointment is sometimes terrible, so they
say, and some simple folk believe that when there is a particularly
dolorous moan in the wash of the waves, it is the despair of the pirate
finding voice in the wail of the waters.
LAFITTE LORE
By J. O. Webb
John Smith and W. C. Callihan of the old town of Liverpool, Brazoria
County, are each eighty-four years old; each is sound in mind and body;
and each has spent practically his entire life in the vicinity of
Liverpool. These men speak familiarly of Warren D. C. Hall, of Lamar,
and of Lafitte’s lieutenants. The legendary material here given is
based on their separate statements. However, the stories told by them
coincide to a remarkable degree. Liverpool is situated on Chocolate
Bayou, and is so near Galveston Island that the early history of the
two places is closely related. Consequently Smith and Callihan are
familiar with the lore bearing on Lafitte’s life. What they have to say
is not based so much on legends in general circulation as on the
stories told them by Lafitte’s associates. One of these followers of
Lafitte was Jim Campbell, who, after the departure of his chief from
Galveston Island in 1821, settled on what became known as Campbell’s
Bayou. The other was an odd character called Captain Snyder.
No story of Lafitte proceeds very far without referring in some way to
buried treasure. The lives led by the two strange characters just
mentioned caused many to believe that they had stored away some of
their chief’s wealth. According to Smith and Callihan, these
ex-associates of Lafitte never lacked money, although they were engaged
in no profitable business. Long after the death of Jim Campbell, it was
generally believed that his widow knew where money was buried but was
unwilling to reveal the place.
Captain Snyder was likewise known to have plenty of money. He was
engaged in carrying some kind of trade from the Brazos to Liverpool,
for which he used a one-eyed mule, but he got little income from this
occupation. His actions at times, too, were rather strange. Smith was
often on the boat with him, and when they would approach Galveston
Island, Snyder would frequently get off and go ashore. There he would
go to a clump of bushes, and apparently try to get his bearings for
some point.
Some of the buried treasure stories, however, are based on more direct
information. In the fifties, according to the authorities already
quoted, there appeared at the mouth of Chocolate Bayou a small vessel,
which remained in that vicinity for several days. During the daytime it
would go to the opposite side of the bay, and at night it would return
to the near shore. This odd procedure aroused a little curiosity, but
would doubtless have been soon forgotten had not an important discovery
followed. A few days after the vessel had gone, Smith and Callihan paid
a visit to the mouth of the Bayou and, to their surprise, found that
excavations had been made. Beginning at the shore, a long trench had
been opened, and at the end of this a large hole had been dug.
Apparently, a chest of some kind had been taken out, for the imprint of
the box—even to the handles—was plainly visible. As further evidence,
there was lying to one side a broken earthen jar that had been sealed
with sealing wax, and upon its fragments were imprints of coins.
A less realistic story is told of the region around what was called
Dick’s Camp, on Chocolate Bayou. A Mrs. Adams who lived in the vicinity
had had a persistent dream of buried treasure. For three successive
nights she had the same dream, and in these dreams she was told that
$100,000 in gold was buried near Dick’s Camp. The exact spot was to be
found by sighting with three stakes due east from a certain point. Mrs.
Adams was so impressed with the repetition of this dream that the third
morning she and her son set out in search of the hidden treasure. On
the way they were joined by Smith, who at first was not told the
purpose of the excursion. On reaching the spot they did not find any
stake set up, but they did find three china trees in a line running due
east. The son, whose name was Brunner, began sighting and measuring,
and finally he said, “Here it is.”
“What?” asked Smith.
“$100,000 in gold,” replied Brunner.
Excavation was begun at once, but had not proceeded far when the
treasure hunters dug into an oyster bed. Thinking there was little hope
of finding treasure in that medium, the search was abandoned and, so
far as is known, it has not been renewed.
Captain Snyder, who has already been mentioned, was a strange
character. Those who knew him declare that he slept with one eye open,
and that often he would cry out in his sleep, “Boys, the Spaniards are
coming.” He told many Lafitte stories. He had seen service with his
chief on voyages against the Spanish. According to his description,
these encounters with the Spaniards were bloody affairs. Blood ran off
the decks like water, and when the fight was over, the enemy dead were
thrown into the sea. One of the most remarkable incidents related by
Snyder, however, pertained to the storm of 1819. Lafitte, with his four
ships, was in the bay when the hurricane arose. The storm became so
intense that he decided to go with his vessels to the high seas and
take his chances there. He headed toward the channel, but, as the wind
was blowing from the east, he was unable to get out that way. He
therefore came back and drove his vessels straight across the island in
six or seven feet of water.
THE PIRATE SHIP OF THE SAN BERNARD
A LEGEND OF THEODOSIA BURR ALLSTON
By J. W. Morris
Rumor of a pirate ship wrecked at the mouth of the San Bernard River,
Brazoria County, has persisted for more than a century. Colonel
Hunnington, who is seventy-eight years old, and who has lived near the
mouth of the San Bernard for sixty years, heard of the wrecked
privateer from the McNeill family, which established itself on the
Bernard in 1822. Colonel Hunnington says that the ship was wrecked
about 1816. It had put into the river to escape a great hurricane. The
crew buried their golden pillage, some say ten million dollars, before
the water rose to their destruction. When the storm passed, only one
pirate remained alive. Colonel Hunnington says that the buried money
has never been found, and he believes that it still lies where pirate
hands placed it more than a hundred years ago. Captain William
Sterling, who died a few years ago at the age of eighty, gave me
corroborative evidence concerning the pirate ship. He said that during
his boyhood he knew a solitary fisherman on Matagorda Peninsula who
claimed to be the sole survivor of the wrecked privateer. He often
showed the boy gold coins, which he called Spanish doubloons.
A wild and fascinating legend of the storm-wrecked ship was told me
many years ago by Doctor Sid Williams, who was then a practicing
physician near the mouth of Old Caney in Matagorda County. Mr. Jacob
Smith told the same story. It is ascribed to a chief of the Carancaguas
Indians, who spoke broken English and often visited the white settlers.
He said that his tribe had always lived along the coast—a fact
substantiated by history. A small band, of which he was chief, lived in
the timber a few miles from the San Bernard River, along which clear to
its mouth grew live oak trees and tough salt cedars. One day a great
storm came out of the Gulf; the wind blew with fury that increased as
the darkness came, and the waters rose upon the land. The chief and his
people climbed into the salt cedars, which bent with the wind but did
not break. After two days the storm passed and the tidal waters fell
back. Many of the huge live oaks were destroyed utterly, and the
remainder were so twisted and broken that they soon died. Since that
time there has been no forest along the lowest reaches of the San
Bernard.
As soon as the storm abated, the chief went from his camp to the bank
of the river, where a pale-face lived alone. He found the hermit’s body
tied with a rope to the splintered stump of a tree. There the waves had
overwhelmed him. The chief also saw, partly in the water and partly on
the land, the wreckage of a great ship. As he looked, he heard a faint
voice. He followed the sound to what had been a cabin, and saw the
ghost-like form of a white woman chained to the side. She stood with
difficulty, and presently fainted, perhaps from weariness, perhaps from
fright at seeing an Indian savage, for the chief made a habit of
wearing deer antlers on his head. He broke the chain from the wall and
carried her to the shore and laid her on the sand. He bathed her face
in cold water, and she revived. She told him that her father had been a
great chief away back somewhere, but that he had been misunderstood and
had had to leave his country. Her husband was governor, she said, of a
great state. She had been in a ship on the ocean when pirates destroyed
the ship and killed all aboard it except herself. She was put on the
pirate ship, which, returning to its Gulf headquarters, had been
encountered by the storm and driven inland. There was, she said, a
chest of gold on the wrecked ship, but the Indian could not find it. He
did find the captain and some of the crew lashed to parts of the
wreckage, dead. The chief made every effort to revive the woman, but
she grew steadily weaker. She took from her neck a chain and locket and
gave them to him. She began to sing, very faintly and beautifully. The
Great Spirit spread a white wigwam around her so that the Indian could
not see her. The voice sang on into the night, more and more faintly.
When the morning star rose, the voice was still. At daylight the white
wigwam was gone, and the woman lay dead. The Indian dug a grave with
broken pieces of the wrecked ship, laid her there, and covered the
grave with a broken door from the wreck. No man knows where that grave
lies.
The Indian took the locket and chain to some white men, who read on the
locket the word Theodosia and found within pictures of a fine-looking
man and a little boy. Long afterward coast dwellers told this story in
explanation of the mysterious fate of Theodosia Burr Allston. [117]
LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF TEXAS FLOWERS, NAMES, AND STREAMS
AN INDIAN LEGEND OF THE BLUE BONNET
By Mrs. Bruce Reid
[Considering the popularity of Texas blue bonnets, it is rather strange
that legend concerning the flower is not more widespread. Corroborative
versions prove conclusively that there is a legend. The first version
is supplied by Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, of the University of Texas;
it was given her by a Mrs. Lida Lea of Austin.
When the first Spanish missionaries came to the Southwest, they brought
with them the seeds of a blue flower which grew originally on the
hillsides of Jerusalem. They planted the seeds first within the walls
of the mission gardens; they sprouted, and, though the soil was alien,
the flowers grew and bloomed and soon spread far beyond the mission
lands. Thus came the blue bonnet to Texas.
Another version of the legend was given to Mrs. Hatcher by a Mexican
lady from the City of Mexico. She said that she had always heard that
the flower came to the Southwest in this manner: There was a terrible
pestilence in the land of the Aztecs. The prayers of the priests and
the pleadings of the people had brought no relief. At length the voice
of the god to whom they prayed proclaimed that a living sacrifice of
some sinless human being must be made to atone for the wickedness of
the people. A certain Aztec maiden offered to make the sacrifice. Her
offer was accepted. When she went up to the altar on the hillside, her
little bonnet dropped from her head without being noticed, and the next
morning the ground around the altar was covered with flowers in the
pattern and color of her bonnet, each splotched with the hue of her
spilt blood. The pestilence passed. Now the Mexicans call the flower el
conejo (cotton-tail rabbit), but in Texas it is the blue bonnet.
This legend is very characteristic of the Southwest. Mr. J. H. Tipps of
San Antonio saw a cross high on a hill near Roma, Texas. He asked an
old Mexican why it was there. The Mexican said that it was to
commemorate the life of a girl who had saved the community by prayer. A
terrible drouth was ruining the country, the most terrible ever known.
There was not a sprig of forage for animal kind to eat; the people were
starving. Then the girl went up on the mountain to pray for rain. For a
long, long time she prayed. She prayed until she was no longer
conscious. Then it rained, but the girl died before she could be
brought down. She gave her life, and the cross was erected on top of
her Mount of Olives.
Comparative folk-lorists will associate the springing of the blue
bonnet from human blood with the Greek legends of the hyacinth and the
narcissus. It is related, too, to the legend of the bleeding heart
shamrock, said to have first appeared in Saint Roche’s Cemetery at New
Orleans, from the blood spattered on some clover by a lover who stabbed
himself to death over the grave of his sweetheart.
The legend told by Mrs. Reid must have come from the Comanches rather
than from the Cherokees (who did, however, bring with them to Texas the
legend of the Cherokee Rose). The Cherokees were in Texas only twenty
years, and then hardly into the blue bonnet lands. See “The Last of the
Cherokees in Texas,” by Albert Woldert, Chronicles of Oklahoma, issued
by the Oklahoma Historical Society, June, 1923, pp. 179–226.—Editor.]
The teller of legends often adds details to his narrative in order to
give it reality. I do not pretend that all of the details in the
following legend are as I heard them, but something like this legend
was told me by the late “Jack” Mitchell, whose people lived for fifty
years among the Indians of the piney-woods and cross-timbers of Texas.
My understanding is that the legend came to him either from the
Cherokees or the Comanches. There is another Indian legend about the
blue bonnet. It has to do with a fight among warriors in the happy
hunting grounds, during the course of which they knocked from the sky
chunks of blue that fell to the earth and assumed the form of the blue
bonnet.
There had been a great flood followed by a greater drouth, and then on
the drouth came a bitter winter of sleet and ice. Even in the far
south, where the cold breath of winter is seldom felt, the woods and
grasses of the coastal plains were sheathed with a rattling icy armor.
All the game was dead or gone. The Indian people were starving to
death. A dreadful disease had broken out among them. It was clear that
the Great Spirit had indeed turned his face away from his children. Day
and night the medicine men chanted their incantations, danced to the
music of the sacred tomtoms, and mutilated their bodies in agony for a
promise from the angered Spirit. At last the Great Spirit spoke. This
was his message. In penance for the wrong-doing that had brought the
evils upon the tribe there must be a burnt offering of its most valued
possession, and the ashes of this offering must be scattered to the
east and to the west, to the north and to the south.
Now among those who sat in discreet and becoming silence, beyond the
anxious warriors gathered about the fires, was a little maid, too young
for the heavy burdens of Indian womanhood to have yet begun to fall
upon her small shoulders. Hidden among the folds of her scanty garments
she tightly clasped a tiny figure of white fawn-skin, rudely shaped
into the likeness of a papoose, with long braids of black horse-hair,
and eyes, nose, and mouth painted on it with the juice of various
berries. This figure the little maid had robed in a skirt, mantle, and
high head-dress, out of the feathers of a bird of the rarest of hues in
nature—the big, proudly crested, black-collared bird that calls “Jay!
Jay!” through the topmost branches of the tallest and largest trees.
Very, very beautiful were the feathers of this bird, soft, richly blue
as the late afternoon skies when they clear after showers which have
lasted through a day; and as an older mother loves her living child, so
did the little maid love her deer-skin baby. Almost would she rather
have died than have parted with it. Well she knew that it was by far
the most precious of things owned by the tribe; and her heart was very
heavy indeed for the rest of that day, and the part of a night that she
lay beside her mother in their tepee, sleepless for that she saw her
duty so clearly.
At last she arose, and stooping to lift from the smouldering fire
within the tepee a bit of wood, one end of which was a glowing coal,
she slipped out into the night. Under the twinkling, frosty stars she
knelt, and prayed that her offering might be accepted and the fact of
the acceptance made known to her.
Then blinking her eyes to keep back the tears, which an Indian child
early learns must never be shed, she made a fire of twigs and grasses,
and thrust her beloved papoose deep down into the glowing heart of the
blaze, till the last bit of skin and shred of feather were consumed to
ashes. The ashes she carefully scooped up in the hollow of her hand and
scattered, to the east and the west, to the north and the south. Then
putting out what remained of the fire, she patted the earth smooth and
flat again.
As she did this last she felt beneath her palms something as fine and
soft as the plumage with which she had clothed her doll—something that
had not been in that place upon the ground when she cleared it to make
her little fire. Believing that this might be the sign for which she
had prayed, she would have picked up what lay against her hand, but she
found it to be rooted in the soil.
So, returning to the tepee, she waited until morning and then with her
mother, whom she told of what she had done, she went to the place where
she had burned the little deer-skin papoose. But all about, as far as
the ashes had traveled upon the early spring night breeze, was nothing
but a blanket of such flowers as had never before enriched the
landscape; and their thick tassels, in so great a profusion as nearly
to hide the tender green of their leaves, were of the same deep, deep
blue as the feathers of the bird that calls “Jay! Jay!” through the
high tree-tops.
When the chief of the medicine men heard the story told by the mother
and daughter, and saw for himself the expanse of blue flowers, he
called the tribe together, and solemnly informed them that the command
of the Great Spirit had been obeyed and the sacrifice accepted, and
that the evil which had for so long pursued them would now be at an
end.
It was even so. At once the plains and the open places, between lines
and clumps of trees, began to renew their verdure, scattered over with
gayly colored wild flowers; the birds and four-footed things came back
to raise their families; and the tribal crops, natural and cultivated,
gave every sign of abundant harvest.
In place of the name the little maid had borne, another was given her,
a name of many musically flowing syllables, the meaning of which, in
the red men’s tongue, was “she who dearly loves her people.”
Because the great shaggy animals, whose herds of old thundered across
the far-flung prairies, were so fond of its succulent green abundance,
the blue flower was called an Indian name which the pale-faces
translated into “buffalo clover.” After the manner of its class of
plant, it bore prodigious quantities of fertile seed and rapidly
extended the limits of its growth.
HOW THE WATER LILIES CAME IN THE SAN MARCOS RIVER [118]
By Bella French Swisher
[This sentimental legend is not an invention of Bella French Swisher’s,
who was given to turning legends to literary uses, but not to
manufacturing them. I have heard of it from a lady who grew up on the
San Marcos and was familiar with the story of the Indian lovers
forty-five years ago. It is akin to another Indian legend of the same
flower, Castalia elegans, according to which a star maiden fell in love
with the red people of the earth and came down to live among them in
the form of a water lily. This latter legend is quoted from the Grolier
Society’s The Book of Knowledge, by Kate Peel Anderson in the Houston
Chronicle, September 16, 1923, page 8. The San Marcos version is
probably appropriated from some other stream.—Editor.]
All pearly and bright, by the day and the night,
(Beautiful, beautiful river)
Reflecting the sky and the clouds passing by,
Flows the San Marcos forever.
The lilies arise in their damp paradise,
And they open their petals in glory;
But on every leaf is written, in brief,
Such a sweet little Indian story!
Far back in a day when the red men held sway,
On the banks of the beautiful river,
An Indian maid of the world grew afraid,
And gave back her sweet life to the Giver.
A princess was she of a royal degree.
Who had loved far beneath her high station;
She suffered the blame, the sorrow and shame,
Like a maid of some wealthier nation.
But her heart-strings were torn, when one bright April morn,
He was slain—her most worshipful lover.
On the green banks he lay, all the long, weary day,
With only the sky for a cover.
But just at the night, when the star-beams were bright,
Her despair gave her power to sever
The terrible bands, that imprisoned her hands,
And she fled to the banks of the river,
To the spot where he lay ’mid the shadows so gray,
Colder still than the bright pearly water.
Just a prayer and a breath, and they met there in death,
The slain lover and the chieftain’s mad daughter.
But the breath and the prayer, as a seedling fell there,
Though the waters were ever so chilly.
They discovered her not, but morn found on the spot
Where she died, a white water-lily.
Since then, waxen and white, in the sun’s golden light,
And as well in the evening glooming,
May ever be seen, ’mid their foliage green
In the water, the white lilies blooming.
And e’er since that day, tradition doth say,
Have the Indians shunned the fair river;
Though pearly and bright, by day and by night,
Flows the San Marcos forever.
THE LEGEND OF EAGLE LAKE
Reprinted from the Morning Star, Houston, 1839
[The following legend (reference to which was contributed by Mr. E. W.
Winkler, Librarian of the University of Texas) is taken from the first
daily newspaper of Texas, the Morning Star, Houston, June 13, 1839,
Vol. I, No. 56, pp. 2–3, which in turn reprinted it from the Richmond
Telescope. A week after the Morning Star printed the legend, the
Telegraph and Texas Register reprinted it, June 19, 1839. A few
typographical errors have been corrected in this reprinting and some of
the original punctuation has been redistributed. The legend of how
Eagle Lake got its name has persisted down to the present day, but this
version is probably the oldest that we shall ever find.
A version with many changes was published in The American Sketch Book
(Texas Pioneer Magazine), Austin, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1881), pp. 99–102.
The article in which it is embodied is unsigned, but the legend itself
is said to be “fresh from the pen of Mrs. F. Darden” [Mrs. F. A. D.
Darden], and it is apparently quoted from some other publication.
According to this version, one of the lovers, Sonoto, was old and
fierce; the other, Gray Cloud, was youthful and bold. The tree that the
rivals climbed was a cottonwood. Gray Cloud reached the nest first and
had grasped one of the eaglets to bring it down when he was assaulted
by the fierce parent eagle. Sonoto seized the opportunity to hurl his
opponent to the ground a hundred feet below. Out in the lake were the
Indians, watching the contest from their canoes. When she saw her
lover’s fate, the maiden, Forest Flower, began the death chant; then
she leaped into the water and was drowned. Later the two lovers were
buried side by side at the foot of the tree.
The Eagle Lake Headlight, according to its editor, Mr. Bruce W.
McCarty, printed in 1903 a version of the legend written by Mrs. Emma
Duke, now dead. A year ago another version, in verse form, “written for
the Eagle Lake Chamber of Commerce” by Mrs. H. W. Carothers, formerly
of Eagle Lake but now of Houston, and printed on a folio leaflet for
popular distribution, was sent me by the mayor of Eagle Lake. It shows
all the crassitude of modern “boosting.” In it a smug young Indian gets
the eaglet and presents it to the maiden—his success an emblem of “the
spirit of endeavor” that characterizes the modern “progressive”
inhabitants of Eagle Lake! Mr. Louis Landa, who is Oldright fellow at
the University of Texas and whose home is at Eagle Lake, says that the
legend in one form or another is common in the vicinity.
Thus may be traced over a period of almost a century the progress of
what was originally a very simple, a very dramatic, and a beautiful
legend.—Editor.]
Eagle Lake is a beautiful sheet of water, about seven miles in
circumference, and is connected by a bayou bearing the same name—a kind
of outlet—with the Colorado. That body of land through which Eagle Lake
Bayou passes may be said to be without exceptions the most fertile in
the world. Besides its qualities of unsurpassed fruitfulness, there is
no part of the known western hemisphere where the common grape grows so
abundantly or abounds so spontaneously.
A large sycamore tree is shown on the west shore of the lake, where a
large eagle, the Falco Washingtonianis, built her nest. The remains of
the nest are there, consisting of branches of trees and tufts of grass,
which hang fully 110 feet from the surface of the earth below. The bird
was called by the inhabitants of the country the king eagle, and its
nest was considered inaccessible. The “king eagle’s nest” and “eagle’s
water’s wave” were proverbial phrases with the various tribes of
Indians in western Texas.
The daughter of an Indian chief—a beautiful, dark-eyed girl—was wooed
by two young warriors of equal pretensions to consideration among the
Indians. Each was anxious to obtain the hand of the fawn-like damsel of
the woods, and each, no doubt, loved with all the ardor and fervency,
simplicity and sincerity, of a rude youth of the forest. To say which
should become the husband of his daughter was a great perplexity to the
mind of the maiden’s father. He had his political interests to
strengthen and his views to carry out, as have greater men in greater
nations. After many cogitations he resolved upon the following plan by
which the suitors themselves could give a decision.
It was in the summer season, and the “great eagle” had hatched her
young. The old chief’s plan was no more nor less than that the young
man of the two in question who could bring him the young eagles alive,
by a certain time, without cutting down the tree, should have his
daughter. The proposition was accepted, and the rival lovers set out to
procure, if possible, the young eagles. Each prepared himself with a
raw-hide rope to throw over some limb of the tree, which could be
fastened and facilitate the ascent. They both arrived alone and about
the same time at the king eagle’s tree.
Each had precisely the other’s means to come at the young eagles, and
the other’s means seemed to each so sure to succeed that neither would
consent for the other to make the first attempt; whereupon arose a
dispute, a quarrel, and a fight, which terminated in the immediate
death of one, and the infliction of a mortal wound upon the other, who
died a few days after the combat upon the spot where they had fought,
being unable from debility to leave it.
Meantime the maiden, becoming anxious for their return, and
apprehending some such catastrophe, seized her father’s spear and
hastened to the place. She arrived there in the afternoon of the day on
which the last one of the two lovers breathed his last. Frantic with
frenzy and despair, she plunged the lance into her own breast, and died
as she had always lived, in the language of the Indian who related the
story, “the wife of no one.”
Ever afterwards the spot was regarded with a superstitious veneration
by every tribe of Indians to whom was related their hapless story. Once
in every seven moons the young men and maidens assembled to consecrate
the spot, and each time they erected a cenotaph of flowers to their
memory. Thus Eagle Lake took a name by which it is now known and will
ever be.
THE HOLY SPRING OF FATHER MARGIL AT NACOGDOCHES
By E. G. Littlejohn
[Fray Don Antonio Margil de Jesús was one of the most active of Spanish
missionaries in Texas during the first quarter of the eighteenth
century, preaching and founding missions. Legend has remembered him
well. The Margil Vine is named for him, the legend of which is told in
History and Legends of The Alamo and Other Missions, by Miss Adina de
Zavala, under the title “Legend of the First Christmas at the Alamo.”
But the most remarkable Margil legend—and this told by Mr. Littlejohn
is but a variant of it—is that connected with the origin of the San
Antonio River. It has been realistically told by Major Charles Merritt
Barnes in his Combats and Conquests of Immortal Heroes, pages 76–79,
and retold by Mrs. Wright. [119] According to Major Barnes, he heard it
in 1875 from a venerable San Antonian of Spanish blood.
Father Margil was with a company of priests and soldiers spying out the
land when they were almost overcome by the heat and drouth. At length
they came into a valley where there was green grass for the horses but
not a drop of water. The priests kneeled under a tree to pray for
water, and as he prayed Father Margil’s eye fell on bunches of mustang
grapes above him. With praises to God, he began to climb for the juicy
fruit. While he was reaching for a cluster, he fell. In falling, he
swung to the grapevine and somehow uprooted it with a sudden jerk. Then
from the hole left by the root a plenteous and refreshing spring of
water gushed out. Thus was the origin of what is now called the San
Antonio River.
Finally, at the very moment of his death, which was in the City of
Mexico, August 2, 1726, all the mission bells in Texas, so legend runs,
rang out of their own accord, without hands. [120]—Editor.]
The story of the “Holy Spring of Father Margil,” as it is called in the
country around Nacogdoches, was told by H. C. Fuller in the Galveston
News more than twenty years ago. The spring is situated just back of
the city cemetery of Nacogdoches, overlooking La Nana Creek. Every
other spring in the neighborhood has gone dry, but this one has never
been known to cease its abundant flow. By some devout people its waters
are thought to have healing power. The story of its miraculous origin
runs as follows.
In 1716, or thereabout, the zealous Franciscan missionary, Father
Margil, visited the Nacogdoches country, preaching to the Indians and
projecting missions. His work accomplished, he and a few devoted
followers started back for San Antonio, then the headquarters of the
missionary movement. It was midsummer, the heat was terrific, and a
burning drouth had made the whole country as dry as a rock. As Father
Margil’s band traveled on and found no water, they began to suffer from
thirst, but they felt sure that they would come to water in La Nana
Creek. Imagine their disappointment upon arriving to find the bed as
parched as the banks.
Overcome with heat, thirst, and fatigue, the entire party, with the
exception of Father Margil, sat dejectedly on the ground. Taking his
walking staff, Father Margil set out down the creek in search of water.
About four hundred yards from where his companions lamented, he
observed signs of moisture upon a high bluff overlooking the creek;
here he knelt and prayed that like Moses he might be allowed to find
water. Then with full faith he arose and smote with his staff the rock
whereon he stood. Immediately there issued forth a living stream of
cool, clear water. He tasted of it and hastily ran for his companions.
Then they all drank and went on their way rejoicing at their miraculous
deliverance.
INDIAN BLUFF ON CANADIAN RIVER [121]
By L. W. Payne, Jr.
This story, or legend, came to me in 1911 from a University of Texas
student named W. Higgins, who got it from a guide called “Doctor”
Barton on a camping trip up the Canadian River near the Oklahoma
boundary line. Mr. Higgins admits that he has used his imagination
somewhat in writing the legend, but says that its basis is real legend.
“Well,” began the “Doctor,” “see that tall rocky cliff over there?
There’s kind of a legen’ ’bout that. Seems like durin’ early times
there was a man an’ his family a-livin’ out here on this side the
river, not so fur away. He had a mighty beautiful little baby, ’bout
two years old. Besides her, there was three or four older children;
then their ma and pa. There was lots of Indians livin’ on th’ other
side the river, near the bluff; and some lived in the cliff. Yes, they
did. But I think they just kept their bows and arrers in there, for I
don’t see how they could breathe good. An’ in this day an’ time
everybody’s tryin’ to get all the fresh air they can. But maybe them
kind of people didn’t need air. Well, anyhow, some of them Indians was
on mighty good terms with these white folks. One old Indian in
partikler. He used to climb down the cliff an’ come ’cross the river in
his boat to see his neighbors. He used to take th’ little two-year-old
in his canoe for a ride, sometimes. Mighty queer they would let him do
it, but they did anyhow.
“One day the white settler an’ the Indian had a fuss. What ’bout, I
don’t zactly recollect; but seems like the white man hit the Indian
with a piece of wood. He had tried to make the Indian do some dirty
work for him, an’ when the red-skin refused, the white man beat him
nearly to death. The Indian swore revenge. He went home terr’ble mad.
He didn’t go to see the settlers for a long time. They kind-a missed
him too.
“But one day they looked out and saw him a-crossing the river. They
didn’t know whe’r to be glad or sorry. The Indian dragged the canoe up
on the shore and came straight to their hut. He looked happy and glad
to see them. They was glad to see him too, I can tell you.
“Finally he took the little girl and started down to the canoe. He
pushed ’cross the river. It took him a long time, for you all know this
here river is pretty wide. He climbed the cliff with the child in his
arms. He’d never done this before. The white man got scared. He called
loud to the chief to come back; for an answer the Indian turned ’round
and looked at the man with a horrible grin. Then he climbed on to the
top of the cliff. When he reached the top, he stopped, threw up his
hand to the anxious folks on the other side, and with a deadly Indian
whoop, leaped over the cliff into this here river.
“‘What did the child’s parents do?’ you ask. Nothin’; there wasn’t
nothin’ to do. The Indian and baby was both dead. But the folks moved
away and never was heard of agin. We call the place Indian Bluff, and
now you know why.”
HOW MEDICINE MOUNDS OF HARDEMAN COUNTY GOT THEIR NAME
By L. W. Payne, Jr.
This legend was contributed by a University of Texas student named W.
A. Darter, from Hardeman County, a number of years ago. He says that
though some of the details are “made up” the main incidents are based
on legendary material current in the country of the Mounds.
The Medicine Mounds, as they are called today, are located in Hardeman
County, about nine miles southeast of Quanah. They are four in number
and extend north and south in a direct line. The tallest one stands to
the north two thousand feet above the surrounding country. The lowest
one stands to the south of the other three, fifteen hundred feet lower
than the tallest one. The other two are of such heights that if a line
were determined by their peaks, it would pass through the top points of
the two extreme ones. To the west of these mounds, running almost north
and south, is a deep-worn trail said by the old settlers to have been a
buffalo trail. About these mounds and about this trail especially are
to be found today many flint arrow-heads that the Indians let fly at
the buffaloes as they passed back and forth on these hills.
On the top of the tallest mound, there is a great, flat, over-hanging
rock. This rock, the Indians used to say, was the dwelling place of a
good spirit. From this position one can see the surrounding country for
miles and miles; and it was on this account that the good spirit took
up its abode there. While the red man was in search of game, the good
spirit would direct his arrows straight toward the mark; and while he
was on the war path, this good spirit would also help him to defeat his
enemies.
Now, during early days, a tribe of Indians were roaming over this rich
country, killing big game with their arrows and big fish with their
spears. And in this tribe, as in every tribe, was a medicine man. This
medicine man had a beautiful daughter who had been asked to become the
first squaw of the brave young chief. But she was sick with a fever,
and she became worse as time passed on. Her father had done all he
could for her. He had driven away all the evil spirits that, by his
many devices, he could drive away, and at the same time he had brought
in all the good spirits that he could in order that they might help
her; but his beautiful daughter only grew worse. He had mixed his
different medicines in every way that he could think of, but all in
vain. At last he despaired of saving her. He went outside of the little
wigwam, squatted down, and prayed to the good spirit that dwelt upon
the high rock.
Instantly almost, the expression of his face changed from gloom to
hope. The idea had come to him that if he would but mix his medicine on
the rock, the remedy would in some way receive the power of the good
spirit. He returned for one more glance at his daughter, and then,
pulling his bright-colored blanket about him, left for the high rock.
It was not long before he returned. He found his daughter resting well.
He felt her face; it was not so hot as it had been when he left. He
stopped and looked. Had he lost her? Then he thought of the good spirit
and the medicine. It was his last hope. He gave it.
Outside the wigwam, the medicine man once more drew his blanket tightly
about him and squatted down. He prayed for many hours—he knew not how
many. It was nearing evening when he heard a faint voice calling him by
name; it was the voice of his daughter. He rose as if he had been on
springs; and in two steps, he was by her side. The fever had left her
while he was away, and she had simply fallen into a deep sleep. The
good spirit had saved her.
From this time on, the medicine man did not forget the good spirit on
the high rock; and it is said that every year thereafter he went
regularly to these mounds in order to instil some of this good spirit
into his medicine. From this habit of the medicine man, these hills
have been called the Medicine Mounds.
THE NAMING OF METHEGLIN CREEK, BELL COUNTY
By Alex. Dienst
Metheglin Creek of Bell County is the only creek, so far as I can
learn, in the United States bearing its name. The account of how it got
its unique name I have derived from old-timers familiar with the
naming, and just this year the facts as given below were confirmed to
me by the son of the pioneer Morrison.
One of the oldest pioneer settlers of Bell County was a ranchman named
Morrison. He settled in the extreme northwest part of Bell County, and
his land extended into Coryell County. His home was close to an unnamed
creek. Like many other pioneers of unexceptionable character, he was
inclined to imbibe too freely at times. His wife never called him by
any other name than “Honey,” a fact well known to the neighbors. One
day his wife asked “Honey” to fetch her a bucket of water from the
creek. He was pretty well “shot” when he leaned over to fill the
bucket, and fell into the creek. A waggish neighbor who witnessed the
accident instantly christened the creek “Metheglin”—a mixture of honey
and water. And Metheglin Creek has been the name ever since.
Metheglin was a favorite improvised drink of Texas pioneers. It was a
mixture of honey and water, boiled, fermented, and then spiced to suit.
HOW DEAD HORSE CANYON GOT ITS NAME
By Victor J. Smith
This brief account of a name was secured from Mr. E. E. Townsend,
sheriff of Brewster County. Shortly after 1880 General Geno, of the
United States Army, and a party of surveyors were making their way down
the Rio Grande when they entered the upper mouth of a rugged canyon. To
proceed with their horses meant a detour of many miles via Fort
Stockton. To continue travel directly meant that they must abandon
horses and use the river for transportation. It was finally decided to
proceed down the river on rafts. In order to prevent their mounts from
falling into the hands of Indians and being used in forays against the
whites, the exploring party shot all their horses, some thirty or forty
head. To this day the rugged canyon through which the Rio Grande winds
its way for several hundred miles above Del Rio is called Dead Horse
Canyon.
HOW THE BRAZOS RIVER GOT ITS NAME
By J. Frank Dobie
The Spanish word brazo means arm. The word, like its English
equivalent, has a wide pictorial use; thus the Spanish speak of un
brazo (an arm) of the sea, and as applied to streams the word may mean
fork or branch. The complete name of the great Texas river as given by
the Spanish was Los Brazos de Dios—The Arms of God. The name is
remarkable, and in attempting to explain its origin legend has been no
less remarkable. Old histories have contributed to the legend. At last,
the history of the naming of the stream is clear; yet the name itself
has something of mystery that will always provoke speculation.
According to Miss Eleanor Claire Buckley, [122] when the Spaniards of
the Aguayo Expedition in 1621 struck what is now called Little River,
in Bell County, they called it “Espíritu Santo (Holy Ghost), having
reached it on the eve of Pentecost. As will be remembered, the Brazos
had, in 1690, been given the name of Espíritu Santo or Colorado by De
León, who, however, had struck it before its branching (Diario, entry
for May 14). In the next expedition, 1691, Massanet, though he knew
that it had been called the Espíritu Santo, named it the San Francisco
Solano (Diario, entry for July 24); while Terán, ‘though the natives
called it the Colorado,’ named it the San Geronimo (Demarcación, entry
for July 25). Espinosa and Ramón, in 1716, crossed Little River just
above its junction with the Brazos. The former did not give it any
name; the latter called it la Trinidad. Both of them called the Brazos
proper la Trinidad, thinking doubtless that it was the river that De
León had named thus in 1690 (Diario and Derrotero, entries for June
14). Rivera called it the ‘Colorado o de los Brazos de Dios’ (Diario,
entry for August 30).” “It may be noted,” adds Dr. Bolton, “that the
name los Brazos de Dios was applied to the Little River and to the main
Brazos, and not to the main Brazos and the Little Brazos.”
But why the arms de Dios? asks legend. I have heard that Corpus Christi
was named through belief that the sacred words would act as a
protection against harm to the inhabitants of the place. Probably the
old custom, still maintained in Catholic countries, of giving holy or
sainted names had its origin in some such belief. Many other streams in
Texas than the Brazos were given holy names; as, the Trinidad
(Trinity), the Navidad (Nativity), and the Arroyo de las Benditas
Animas (Creek of the Blessed Souls). Thrall says that the Trinidad and
Navidad were so named because they were discovered on Trinity Sunday
and Christmas day respectively. [123] He offers no authority.
The version of the Brazos legend to be quoted presently from Mollie E.
Moore Davis’ Under the Man-Fig goes back at least a century to Austin’s
colonists, who, in all likelihood, derived it from the Spanish. It is
probably the source of all the other versions and seems to be by far
the best known. Incidentally, it appears in a book replete with
folk-lore—one of the half dozen best Texas novels. The scene of Under
the Man-Fig is Columbia, on the Brazos River, in Brazoria County. Now,
among the oldest inhabitants of Columbia is Mr. J. P. Underwood, whose
mother was one of the “first three hundred” of Austin’s colonists.
Acting upon a request, Mrs. V. M. Taylor of Angleton secured from Mr.
Underwood his version of how the Brazos got its name. Mrs. Taylor
writes:
“Hostile Indians were pursuing a body of Indians under the care of
the Catholics who were trying to reach the Tockanhono, ‘mighty
water of the Tejas.’ They reached it in time to gain the opposite
shore, but the hostiles trying to follow were swept away by a
mighty current. The joy of the padre and company was expressed by
their calling the Tockanhono (Indian name) ‘Los Brazos de Dios’—The
Arms of God. Mr. Underwood gave me the account as above, saying
that it is the true version of the origin of Los Brazos as he heard
it from old settlers of Austin’s colonies.”
It will be noted that Mr. Underwood says nothing of the “mission” that
figures so largely in Mrs. Davis’ account. There was no Spanish mission
on the Brazos; Nuestra Señora de la Luz was a mission on the not
distant Trinity, and at it there was a miraculous escape, but from
fire, not from water. [124] The mission is but ambiguously hinted in a
song entitled “Los Brazos de Dios,” [125] written years ago by Mrs.
Laura Bryan Parker, formerly of Houston, now of Washington City.
Another poetic version, [126] printed in 1897, makes use of the
mission, but the details of this poem seem to have been taken entirely
from Mrs. Davis’ narrative. It may be, after all, that the mission is
borrowed from the San Saba, and that the fifth and last version of the
legend given in this compilation is the oldest of all versions.
It is to be observed that in its lower reaches the Brazos does not come
down with a sudden sweep like a mountain canyon, a fact that would
still further indicate a borrowing from some upland stream, such as the
San Saba or higher Colorado.
But it is high time to get to Mrs. Davis’ complete, if somewhat
belletristic, tale. [127]
I
THE MIRACULOUS ESCAPE
“The name of the river is Los Brazos de Dios, which is to say, The Arms
of God.
“The bed of it is very deep; and the color of the water—when it creeps
sluggishly along between its banks, so shallow in places that the blue
heron may wade it without wetting his knees—is the color of tarnished
brass. But when it comes roaring down from the far-away Redlands, a
solid foam-crested wall, leaping upward a foot a minute, and spreading
death and destruction into the outlying lowlands, then it is as red as
spilled blood.
“On its banks, more than a century and a half ago, a handful of
barefoot Franciscan friars, who had prayed and fought their way across
the country from Mexico, founded the Presidio of St. Jago, and
corralled within the boundary walls a flock of Yndios reducidos.
“There were the stately church, cloistered and towered and
rose-windowed—a curious flower of architecture abloom in the savage
wilderness—and the blockhouse with its narrow loopholes, and the hut
into which the Indian women were thrust at night under lock and key.
“The mighty forest and open prairies around teemed with Yndios bravos,
who hated the burly, cassocked, fighting monks, and their own
Christianized tribesmen.
“These came, in number like the leaves of the live oak, to hurl
themselves against the Presidio. And, after many days of hard fighting,
the single friar who remained alive turned his eyes away from the
demolished church, and, under cover of smoke from the burning
blockhouse, led the remnant of Yndios reducidos (who because they had
learned to pray had not forgotten how to fight) out of the enclosure by
a little postern-gate, and down the steep bank to the yellow thread of
the river below.
“Midway of the stream—thridding the ankle-deep water—they were, before
the red devils above discovered their flight. The demoniac yell from a
thousand throats pushed them like a battering ram up the opposite bank,
whence, looking back, they saw the bed of the River Tockonhono swarming
with their foes. Then the Yndios reducidos opened their lips and began
to chant the death-song of the Nainis; and the friar, lifting his hand,
commended their souls and his own to the God who gives and who takes
away.
“But, lo, a miracle!
“Even as the waves of the Red Sea—opened by the rod of Moses for the
passage of his people—closed upon Pharaoh and his host, so, with the
hoarse roar of a wild beast springing upon his prey, the foam-crested
wall of water fell upon the Yndios bravos, and not a warrior of them
all came forth from the river bed but as a bruised and beaten corpse.
“So the friar, falling on his knees, gave thanks. And the river, which
was the Tockonhono, became from that day Los Brazos de Dios, which is
to say, The Arms of God.
“Such is the legend of the river.”
II
HOW PERISHING SEAMEN NAMED THE RIVER
The following account comes from Mrs. A. F. Shannon of Velasco, who was
reared near the mouth of the Brazos. Velasco, be it remembered, was, in
ancient days, a port of many ships—the rival of Galveston. Whether or
not this legend is indigenous to the mouth of the Brazos cannot be
asserted; however, it is but natural that in such a place the legend
should be connected with the sea.
Now this is Mrs. Shannon’s version: “My uncle said that he always heard
the story like this. A ship out in the Gulf was without water, and the
crew were parched with thirst. Suddenly, one of them saw a muddy
current reaching far out into the clear blue of the salt water. The
ship followed the current to a wide river, which was on a great rise
and so threw its muddy waters far out to sea. It must have been a
Spanish ship. The crew drank the saving fresh water, and in gratitude
named the unknown stream Los Brazos de Dios—the Arms of God.”
III
THE GREAT DROUTH AND THE WATERS AT WACO
The third legend is connected with the famous “Bowie,” or Los Almagres,
Mine on the San Saba. Like many other legends, it came to me from West
Burton of Austin. He got it from an old man named White, now living out
in the Big Bend country, but formerly of Mason or thereabouts.
According to Burton, White got the account, written on a parchment,
from a grateful old Mexican whom he had befriended in a spell of
sickness. The Mexican claimed to have secured the parchment from his
grandfather, the date it bore being over one hundred and fifty years
old. When the aged Mexican took sick on Mr. White’s place in Mason
County, he was traveling through the country with a crude Mexican cart
and two burros, looking for two dugouts somewhere between the old San
Saba Mission or mines and the site of the Waco Indian village, which
was located at about the present site of Waco. As the parchment reads,
thirty-six (or it may be forty-six, Burton says) jack loads of silver
bullion were buried in these two dugouts.
It was a time of terrible drouth. The drouth had lasted two years and
the little colony of Spaniards at San Saba had gone on mining with
their captive Indians and their peons until the Indians had deserted,
the peons had died, and there was absolutely no water left in the river
or springs. Each month the band of Spaniards hoped that the next new
moon would bring rain, but no rain came, and they knew that in the
nearly always dry region towards Mexico, the drouth must be even worse.
So, instead of going south towards San Antonio as they would normally
have gone, the Spaniards set out eastward toward the village of the
Waco Indians. They had often heard of a great river flowing by the
Wacos’ camp, and there they hoped to find water. They left not a soul
or a hoof behind, but packed on the burros their little store of
provisions and what bullion they had accumulated, well knowing that
they could not return until the drouth was broken.
At Las Chanas (the Llano), they found a dry bed; the Colorado was as
dry as the top of a rock. Arrived at the Lampasas Springs, they found a
little water, a great deal of mud, and dead buffaloes covering the
ground. They pulled some of the dead buffaloes out of the bog, got a
little stinking water, and slowly moved on. But the burros were poor
from want of grass and starved from want of water. To carry the heavy
bullion much farther was impossible. The provisions had to be taken at
any price. So two small dugouts were made in the side of a hill, the
bullion was buried therein, and after the captain of the band had
called on all to witness the marks of the place, the cavalcade moved
on.
The trail on eastward was marked by dead beasts and dead men, but at
last, depleted in numbers and wasted in fortune, the travelers arrived
at the village of the Wacos. There they found a great river flowing
clear and fresh, and when they had drunk and had seen their beasts
drink, they knelt down to give God thanks, and the padre with them
blessed the stream and called it Los Brazos de Dios—the Arms of God.
The Spanish built a kind of rude fort and waited. The drouth kept on
for three more years. Los Brazos still flowed clear and sweet, and
memories of the rich mines and the rich bullion left behind began to
grow dim. But at last the drouth broke and the grass and weeds sprang
from the earth with a great rush. The grass grew so quickly that a
powerful and fierce tribe of Indians was down upon the Spaniards before
they could leave. Their little settlement was annihilated. Only one man
lived to get back to Mexico, and that years later when he was old and
feeble; he was so broken that he had no desire ever again to come into
the region of the terrible drouth. But a while before he died he wrote
out on a piece of parchment the history of that search across the
desert for water, the directions, as well as he could give them, to the
buried bullion, and this account of the settlement and disaster on the
river called Los Brazos de Dios. The hidden dugouts with their wealth
have never been found, and history has forgot to record that tragic
episode of the first Spanish settlement on the Brazos.
IV
A MIRACULOUS SWIM
The meager details of this legend were supplied by Mr. Charles B.
Qualia, Instructor in Spanish at the University of Texas. He says in
explanation: “I heard or read the story when I was a child—where or
under what circumstances, I know not.”
A Franciscan, so the legend goes, was running for his life from some
terrible pursuer. He came to the river, which was so swollen and
turbulent that no human being could hope to swim across it. The waters
were swirling around tree tops on the banks, and in the middle of the
stream great drift trunks were sweeping by. Nevertheless, he plunged in
and was miraculously enabled to reach the other side. After he had
looked at his helpless pursuer standing far away on the opposite bank
and after he had gazed steadily at the waters he had escaped, he
kneeled, and, thanking God, said that his deliverance was by “los
brazos de Dios.” After that time the phrase came to be applied to the
river.
In some way this version may be connected with the “Legend of the
Monk’s Leap” as told by Gustave Aimard, in his The Freebooters, A Story
of the Texan War. [128] In this legend a pursued monk is helped over a
gorge near Galveston by two angels. However, Aimard was one of the most
brazen liars that ever lived, and he probably made up the legend as
facilely as he made up history and geography.
V
ARMS AVENGING AND SAVING
The following account from Kennedy’s History of Texas [129] has been
contributed by Mr. E. G. Little John. As I have suggested, it may,
after all, be the original of the better known version quoted from Mrs.
Davis. The endless confusion among the earlier Spanish regarding the
nomenclature of rivers is fully set forth in the extract from Miss
Buckley’s article on the Aguayo Expedition already quoted. Thrall makes
the matter a little too simple perhaps when he says: “The Spaniards
gave the name of Brazos de Dios to the Colorado, and Rio Colorado to
the Brazos, but blundering geographers afterwards interchanged their
names.” [130] A French map dated 1733, in the University of Texas
archives, has the Brazos River marked the “Therese” and the San Marcos
the “San Markos or Colorado.” Mr. Littlejohn’s “Indian legend” of a
flood, which follows this legend, seems largely based on the early
Spanish confusion of the Brazos and the Colorado.
“About thirty miles from the mouth of the San Saba, there was once a
Spanish mission and fort, the destruction of which is thus recorded in
Mexican tradition:
“Prosperity reigned at the post, which carried on an extensive trade
with the Comanche Indians, and a large revenue was derived from certain
silver mines in the vicinity. The mines occupied about one hundred
laborers; the post was protected by an equal number of soldiers, and
there were some women, who manufactured articles for the Indian trade.
At a time when all the soldiers, save about a dozen, were absent on an
expedition, the Comanches appeared, under pretense of traffic, and were
admitted to the fort in great numbers. At a signal from the chief, the
Indians drew weapons concealed under their buffalo robes, and massacred
the small guard and the women. The laborers in the mines fled, and were
butchered in detail. The priest alone escaped, and by a miracle. The
holy man having fled to the Colorado River, the waters divided,
permitted him to pass through, and closed upon the pursuing Indians,
consigning them to a common grave. After great suffering, the priest
reached the Spanish mission of San Juan, at that period the only
settlement on the San Antonio River. The absent soldiers, returning in
a few days to the fort, where lay the mingled bodies of their
companions, found the banks of the Colorado covered with dead Indians,
and as they could discern no marks of violence upon them, they
pronounced it a retributive miracle, and named the river Brazos de
Dios, or ‘the Arm [sic] of God.’ In the ignorance of after times, it
received the name of Colorado, which previously distinguished the red
and muddy stream now known as the Brazos. The preceding tradition is
devoutly believed by the old Mexicans about San Antonio.”
HOW THE BRAZOS AND THE COLORADO ORIGINATED
By E. G. Littlejohn
[It is hardly necessary to point out that this is not an undiluted
Indian legend, the names and other elements in it showing Spanish and
even American influence. La Salle is said to have called what is now
the Colorado “The River of Canes”; the Indians—and again we go back to
Thrall [131] for authority—called it the “Pashohono.”—Editor.]
The following legend is an adaptation of “An Indian Legend of the
Flood,” signed by Jas. Spillane, reprinted a number of years ago in the
Galveston News from the Philadelphia Times.
Long, long ago, long before the coming of the white man, in all the
country drained by the Brazos and the Colorado, there was but one great
river. It was a mighty stream, the Caney (Old Caney). To the east lived
and hunted the Caranchuas; to the west the Ripas, the Lipans, and the
Tawakonies. The Wacos lived to the north. The Ripas were warlike and
powerful. They made war on the Caranchuas and drove them far to the
east, stealing their squaws, killing their young men, and forcing the
remnant of the tribe to flee to the islands of the sea. Likewise the
Lipans, the Tawakonies, and the Wacos were driven from their hunting
grounds, and the Ripas were masters of the whole land.
The Great Spirit was angry with the Ripas. He sent a messenger to them
telling them to restore the squaws that they had stolen, and the horses
and cattle, and to make no more war upon his other children. But the
Ripas would not listen. They thought themselves more powerful than the
Great Spirit himself, and determined to make war upon him. They sought
out the messenger with defiance in their hearts, to challenge the Great
Spirit to battle. But no messenger could be found. They searched the
woods, the prairies, the river, the sky, but he had left no trail.
Then a great fear fell upon them, and some of the chiefs wanted to make
peace with the Great Spirit. They called their wise men together to
take counsel as to what they should do to turn away the anger of the
Great Spirit. And while they held talk the heavens opened, the rain
fell, the thunder roared, and the sky seemed all afire. In the midst of
the fire the messenger appeared, his face glowering, his hand raised in
menace. The Ripas threw themselves on their faces and begged the Great
Spirit for mercy. And still the rain poured, the lightning flashed, the
thunder crashed, and the whole earth rocked and shook as with an ague.
The water soon rose and covered the earth. Then the Ripas ran for the
trees. The wind blew down the trees and many of the Ripas were killed
or drowned. The water rose higher and higher, and the rain and the
thunder and the lightning lasted for many days. And there was no earth;
all was water.
Then the Great Spirit smiled. The Ripas were no more. The waters had
swallowed them up. To the Caranchuas on the islands came the messenger.
He told them of the fate of the Ripas. He bade them return to their
homes.
When the Caranchuas returned, all was changed. Where had been the great
river was now but a small stream, Caney. The great river was now two
rivers, the white man’s Brazos on the east, the red man’s Colorado on
the west. Between the rivers were the hunting grounds of the
Caranchuas, the gift of the Great Spirit.
MISCELLANEOUS LEGENDS
THE WHITE STEED OF THE PRAIRIES
By W. P. Webb
The wild horses of the plains were descendants of the Spanish horses
that escaped from the conquistadores of the sixteenth century. Under
the favorable conditions these horses multiplied and spread from Mexico
and Texas up the great plains corridor to Canada. They went in large
herds, each led by a stallion. Now, this stallion was leader because he
was the best horse in the herd. He led by fleetness of foot, by courage
to fight, and by strength sufficient to kill or drive out every horse
that disputed his supremacy. Not only did he lead the horses, but he
actually herded them, controlled them, dominated them. By the very law
of survival he had to be unusual. Not only did he have to be strong and
fleet, but he had to be wise and wary as well, full of good horse
sense.
When settlers began to push on to the plains of the West, and to
capture and domesticate wild horses, it was quite natural for the
leaders of these herds to captivate the imagination of the vaqueros and
cowboys. The stallion leader of the herd was the object of desire of
every man of the West. Where a man was little better than the horse he
rode, he naturally desired a good horse above all else, save a saddle
to house him under. Now, the leader of the herd was not only a good
horse; he was the best horse, with all the endurance, speed and
intelligence that were so dear to the riders of the plains. These
qualities made him the object of desire of every plainsman, and the
hero among them was the man who could take the stallion leader. But to
take the leader today was not to destroy leadership. Tomorrow another
stallion would lead the herd. There was always a leader. The individual
horse might be captured, but the quality of leadership could never be
caught—it resided in the herd because it was a part of it. Now, it was
this quality of leadership that became the object of desire. But since
this quality of leadership could never be captured, the desire for it
was a desire for the unattainable, the impossible.
Out of these conditions and facts grew the legend of the White Steed of
the Prairies, that superb horse, a super-horse that had all the
desirable and unusual qualities, all the speed, all the endurance, all
the beauty that imagination could give him. Since he had all these
attributes, everybody wanted him, but nobody could take him. He was
ubiquitous, ethereal, a mere ideal, a phantom of the plainsman’s mind,
and he ranged from Canada to Mexico.
One of the best accounts of the White Steed of the Prairies, or the
Pacing White Stallion, as he was sometimes called, was given by
Kendall, [132] when writing of his experiences in Texas in 1841.
“Many were the stories,” he says, “told that night in camp, by some of
the old hunters, of a large white horse that had often been seen in the
vicinity of the Cross Timbers and near Red River. That many of these
stories, like a majority of those told by gossiping campaigners, were
either apocryphal or marvelously garnished, I have little doubt; but
that such a horse has been seen, and that he possesses wonderful speed
and great powers of endurance, there is no reason to disbelieve. As the
camp stories ran, he has never been known to gallop or trot, but paces
faster than any horse that has been sent out after him can run; and so
game and untiring is the ‘White Steed of the Prairies,’ for he is well
known to trappers and hunters by that name, that he has tired down no
less than three race-nags, sent expressly to catch him, with a Mexican
rider well trained to the business of taking wild horses. * * *
“The Mexican who was sent out to take the wild steed, although he
mounted a fresh horse as the one he was riding became tired, was never
near enough the noble animal to throw a slip-noose over his head, or
even to drive him into a regular gallop. Some of the hunters go so far
as to say that the white steed has been known to pace his mile in less
than two minutes, and that he can keep up this rate of speed until he
has tired down everything in pursuit. Large sums of money have been
offered for his capture, and the attempt has been frequently made; but
he still roams his native prairies in freedom, solitary and alone. The
fact of his being always found with no other horse in company is
accounted for, by an old hunter, on the ground that he is too proud to
be seen with those of his class, being an animal far superior in form
and action to any of his brothers. This I put down as a rank
embellishment, although it is a fact that the more beautiful and highly
formed mustangs are frequently seen alone.” [133]
Kendall’s account in the New Orleans Picayune inspired the poet to sing
of this wonderful horse. The following, by J. Barber, appeared in The
Democratic Review for April, 1843: [134]
THE WHITE STEED OF THE PRAIRIES
Mount, mount for the chase! let your lassos be strong,
And forget not sharp spur and tough buffalo thong;
For the quarry ye seek hath oft baffled, I ween,
Steeds swift as your own, backed by hunters as keen.
Fleet barb of the prairie, in vain they prepare
For thy neck, arched in beauty, the treacherous snare;
Thou wilt toss thy proud head, and with nostrils stretched wide,
Defy them again, as thou still hast defied.
Trained nags of the course, urged by rowel and rein,
Have cracked their strong thews in the pursuit in vain;
While a bow-shot in front, without straining a limb,
The wild courser careered as ’twere pastime to him.
Ye may know him at once, though a herd be in sight,
As he moves o’er the plain like a creature of light—
His mane streaming forth from his beautiful form
Like the drift from a wave that has burst in the storm.
Not the team of the Sun, as in fable portrayed,
Through the firmament rushing in glory arrayed,
Could match, in wild majesty, beauty and speed,
That tireless, magnificent, snowy-white steed.
Much gold for his guerdon, promotion and fame,
Wait the hunter who captures that fleet-footed game;
Let them bid for his freedom, unbridled, unshod,
He will roam till he dies through these pastures of God.
And ye think on his head your base halters to fling!
So ye shall—when yon Eagle has lent you his wing;
But no slave of the lash that your stables contain
Can e’er force to a gallop the steed of the Plain!
His fields have no fence save the mountain and sky;
His drink the snow-capped Cordilleras supply;
’Mid the grandeur of nature sole monarch is he,
And his gallant heart swells with the pride of the free.
The legend of the White Steed of the Prairies has almost died out. One
can pick it up now only from the older generation, from those who have
recollections of the open country when Texas was held together by
rawhide and dominated by horsemen. When one of these early Texans was
asked if he had heard of the Pacing White Stallion, he replied: “Yes, I
have heard of him from the Canadian to the Llano.” But one finds little
variation in these stories. There is no room for the White Steed of the
Prairies in a country where horses are no longer wild and free. He is
now all but a forgotten memory of a past unreality. [135]
THE LEGEND OF SAM BASS
By W. P. Webb
Sam Bass was born in Indiana—that was his native home,
And at the age of seventeen young Sam began to roam.
He first came out to Texas, a teamster for to be;
A kinder hearted fellow you scarcely ever see.
This bit of biography of the Texas bandit was probably the first poem
the writer learned outside the home circle. He learned it at the age
when it was a great privilege to be permitted to pad along in the
freshly plowed furrow at the heels of the hired man, Dave. Not only was
Dave the hired man, he was a neighbor’s boy, and such a good poker
player that he developed later into a professional gambler. But at the
time I write of Dave was my tutor in Texas history, poetry, and music,
all of which revolved around Sam Bass. To me and to Dave, Sam Bass was
an admirable young man who raced horses, robbed banks, held up trains,
and led a life filled with other strange adventure. At length, this
hero came to an untimely end through a villain named Murphy, “who gave
poor Sam away.” It was a story calculated to capture the imagination of
young men and small boys. All over Texas hired men were teaching small
boys the legend of Sam Bass, a story which improved in the telling
according to the ability of the teller.
Not only was the story thus told. Men of high station in life, the
lawyers, judges, and oldtimers, congregated around the courthouse of
this western county and told of how Sam rode through the country at
night after one of his daring robberies. Once a posse organized to go
out and take Sam Bass. The leader of the posse was a lawyer, a smart
man, and he knew exactly where Sam could be found and how he could be
taken. He bravely placed himself at the head of a group of heavily
armed men; he assured them that they would take the bandit and share
the liberal reward that had been set on his head. They rode away into
the night, they approached the lair of the fugitive; they knew they had
him—at least the leader knew it. But that was the trouble. Sam did not
run; therefore, the posse could not pursue. Sam seemed too willing to
be approached; that willingness was ominous. Sam was such a good shot,
so handy with a gun. The posse paused, it halted, consulted with the
leader. The leader’s voice had lost its assurance. The posse that had
ridden up the hill now rode down again. Sam Bass could not be found!
And until this day, when old-timers get together in that county some
one is sure to tell the story of that hunt. The wag of the courthouse,
a lawyer, reduced it to writing, and on such public occasions as
picnics and barbecues, he will read the account of “How Bill Sebasco
Took Sam Bass.” It was cleverly done and made as great hit with the
public as did Dave’s rendition of the song and story to the small boy.
In both cases all sympathy was with Sam Bass, all opinion against
Murphy and Bill Sebasco.
Thus in West Texas, from the judge in the courthouse to the small boy
in the furrow behind the hired man, was the story of Sam Bass told.
What was taking place in this county was occurring, with proper
variations, in every other county in the state, especially in those of
the north and west. The legend of Sam Bass was in the process of
becoming. Today it would fill a volume.
Few are the facts known relative to Sam Bass, but some of them are
these: Samuel Bass was from Indiana. He was born July 21, 1851, came to
Texas, raced horses, made his headquarters in Denton County,
participated in some bank robberies and train holdups. He became the
recognized leader of his band and enjoyed a wide reputation, which he
achieved before he was twenty-seven years old. In the summer of 1878 he
left Denton County with the intention of robbing a bank or train. With
him were Murphy, the man who had arranged to sell him out to the
officers of the law, also Seaborn Barnes and Frank Jackson. The plan
was made to rob the Round Rock bank on Saturday, July 20, 1878. En
route to Round Rock, Murphy sent a note to Major John B. Jones,
adjutant general of Texas, giving their plan. The result was that when
Bass reached Round Rock the town was full of Texas Rangers and other
officers of the law. On Friday Bass with Jackson and Barnes went into
Round Rock to look over the ground before their attempt to rob. While
purchasing tobacco in a store adjoining the bank, they were accosted by
officers of the law, and a battle ensued. Barnes was killed on the
spot, along with an officer. Bass escaped with a mortal wound, was
found next day in the woods, and died the following day, Sunday, July
21, 1878. On that day he was twenty-seven. Frank Jackson made good his
escape and has never been heard from since.
From these facts, the legend of Sam Bass has grown. Legend and fact are
inextricably mixed. I shall make no effort to separate the one from the
other, but shall set all down, much as I heard it.
Bass died gamely, as he lived. He refused to give any of his comrades
away, though he was rational until the end. “If a man knows any
secrets,” he said, “he should die and go to hell with them in him.”
Bass said that he had never killed a man, unless he killed the officer
in Round Rock. Frank Jackson wanted to remain and help Bass, but the
latter, knowing he was near the end, persuaded Jackson to leave him,
and gave him his horse to ride.
Bass and his men had camped near some negro cabins at Round Rock, not
far from the cemetery. Bass had an old negro woman, Aunt Mary Matson,
to cook some biscuits for him and to grind some coffee. When she had
done this, Bass gave her a dollar. He then asked, “Have you ever heard
of Sam Bass?” She told him she had. “Well, you can tell them you saw
Sam Bass,” he said, and went away.
His generosity was well known. He always paid for what he got from
individuals. He was particularly considerate of poor people. He would
give a poor woman a twenty-dollar gold piece for a dinner and take no
change. He paid the farmers well for the horses he took from them,
though sometimes he did not have time to see the farmer.
Sam Bass relics are scattered over the country, everywhere. Some say
that he gave his gun to Frank Jackson. Others declare he surrendered it
to the officers who found him. His belt with some cartridges in it is
in the library of the University of Texas. A carpenter at Snyder has a
horseshoe from Bass’s best race horse nailed to the top of his tool
chest. Near Belton are some live oak trees that Bass is said to have
shot his initials in while riding at full speed. Horns of steers
supposed to have been killed by Bass sell over the country at fancy
prices. In Montague County there is a legend of $30,000 of loot buried
by Sam Bass. Again, he is supposed to have left treasure in the Llano
country. At McNeill, near Austin, there is a cave in which Sam Bass hid
when he was in retirement. There he kept his horses and from there he
made his forays.
Finally, when Sam was dead, legend wrote an epitaph on his monument
which is not there. The legendary epitaph reads:
“Would That He Were Good as He was Brave.” No such inscription can be
deciphered on Bass’s monument. The monument has been badly mutilated by
souvenir collectors, but the inscription remains.
Samuel Bass
Born
July 21, 1851
Died
July 21, 1878
Aged 27 Years
In the lower right hand corner of the block on which the inscription
appears is the name of the maker, C. B. Pease, Mitchell, Indiana. The
people of Round Rock say that the monument was erected by a member of
his family about a year after Bass’s death.
More interesting than Bass’s rather pretentious monument is that of his
comrade, Seaborn Barnes, who sleeps the long sleep by his side. A rough
sandstone stands at the head of this grave. It has been chipped away
until the name is gone. The inscription, however, remains along with
the date of his death. Were there no legend of Sam Bass in Texas, this
inscription would make one. It is written in language Bass would have
loved; it has a certain impertinence to law abiding people in the
nearby graves, a certain pride in the leader at whose heels Barnes
died. The epitaph contains seven words. The spirit of the person who
wrote the seven words of that epitaph is the spirit that has created
the legend of Sam Bass in Texas.
He Was Right Bower to Sam Bass
THE HORN WORSHIPERS
By L. D. Bertillion
[From an ethnological point of view, the legend, or more properly myth,
of “The Horn Worshipers” is the most interesting in this collection of
legends. None of the scholars at the annual meeting of the American
Anthropological Society held in New York, December, 1923, knew any
parallel for it among the aborigines of America.
However, horns have been significant among many primitive peoples. Many
of the Plains Indians of America, notably the Sioux, wore buffalo
horns, and if I mistake not the totem of one tribe was a head of
buffalo horns. However, the buffalo horn was to the Plains Indian
merely a symbol of the power that he admired, an emblem of the animal
that he was so far dependent on for food and shelter. In the Asia
Magazine for December, 1922, is a picture of a pair of ox-horns
fastened over the entrance to a village near Rodosto, Turkey. The horns
so fastened are said to bring good luck to those who pass under them.
The medicinal properties ascribed to horns among primitive peoples have
a corollary interest here. In a letter accompanying his legend of “The
Horn Worshipers,” Mr. Bertillion says: “As late as ten years ago I
bought a beautiful pair of buck horns, several points of which I had to
sharpen because they had been sawed off a half inch or more for the
purpose of curing some disease, which, to the best of my memory, was
measles, the cure being a dose of pulverized horn, about a
teaspoonful.”
In the same letter, Mr. Bertillion encloses a clipping from a
syndicated article appearing in the McKinney, Texas, Examiner, November
9, 1922, which tells of an Indian rhinoceros horn presented to Pope
Gregory XIV in 1590 as a protection against poisoning. According to the
article, “The horn given to the pope by the prior and brothers of the
monastery of St. Mary of Guadalupe in Spain, was credited with sweating
in the presence of poison, by the way of warning, and if powdered and
taken internally, with acting as an antidote. The tip is missing. It
was cut off in 1591 and administered to the pope in his last illness.”
I myself recall as a pioneer remedy for distemper in horses, the smoke
of burning horn-chips and rags, funneled through a horn up the horse’s
nostrils. The Mexicans sometimes used the same remedy for colds.
The underground palace of this legend of “The Horn Worshipers” is a
feature common to the lore of many peoples. “The Aztecs,” says Lewis
Spence, [136] “believed that the first men emerged from a palace known
as Chicomoztoc (The Seven Caverns), located north of Mexico. Various
writers have seen in these mystic recesses the fabulous ‘seven cities
of Cibola’ and the Casas Grandes, ruins of extensive character in the
valley of the River Gila, and so forth.” [137] Then Spence adds a
comment on the number seven pertinent also to the legend of “The Horn
Worshipers”: “The allusion to the magical number seven in the myth
demonstrates that the entire story is purely imaginary and possesses no
basis of fact.”
The legend of the underground palace has various forms even in Texas.
There are rumors of an underground palace near Leander in Williamson
County and of another on the Blanco River. Some such story is connected
with the Devil’s Cave on the Devil’s River; with a vast underground
passage that workmen are said to have discovered while excavating for
the foundation of the second Austin dam; and with the Carlsbad Mammoth
Cave, located on the Texas-New Mexico line in the Guadalupe Mountains.
Mr. Bertillion says that he knows a man who claims to have discovered
about fifteen years ago a great house within a mountain in West Texas,
perhaps a hundred and fifty feet below the surface. This man was out
with a surveyor. Searching for a place to set up the flagpole, he
discovered a small hole in a rock, “not larger than an ordinary apple.”
Secretly, he flashed sunlight into the hole by means of a pocket
mirror, and down in a great cave he beheld a wonderful edifice. The
details he has kept secret, for he intends to return to the place some
day and make his fortune.
Back in the sixties, according to his own account, a Mexican living in
Fort Stockton (1911) was carrying the mail between Fort Davis and El
Paso. On one trip a band of Indians led by some renegade Mexicans
confiscated his mail and express, burned the mail coach, and took him
and his horses into an unknown region afterward identified as the
Guadalupe Mountains. There, high up on a barren peak, he discovered
some giant mahogany logs, “so big that there never has been a car on
the Southern Pacific Railroad that could have hauled one of them.”
Query: For what else than the palace of the Horn Worshipers could these
mighty logs have been transported to that region?
Finally, the palace of the Horn Worshipers inevitably suggests the
great legend of the Cave of Montezuma, a version of which follows
this.—Editor.]
I am a great lover of horns and have collected and sold many fine
pairs. In order to make my collections I have had to keep constantly
inquiring for specimens. On one such expedition, a good many years ago,
down on the border, I met a very old Yaqui Mexican, by the name of
Pedro Osabia, as I remember.
When I made inquiry after long-horned cattle, he told me that the
long-horned cattle were all dead and that their worshipers were all
dead, but that the spirits of the Horn Worshipers never die, but enter
into new men when the bodies they inhabit decay. He said that if I
continued strong in the worship, some day I would find plenty of long
horns.
Further interrogation brought out the story that long years ago—more
years than man can count—this whole world belonged to one man, and that
this one man lived in a grand temple, such as men do not know how to
build any more, and that this temple is located inside one of the great
peaks of the Jeff Davis Mountains. This Ruler of the whole world had
his subjects scattered over all the earth wherever caves could be found
or made in cliffs. And every seven years these subjects journeyed from
their caves and their cliffs to the Great Palace to worship, each
worshiper bringing the longest horns he had collected from any animal
during the seven years. Then the horns were hung in the great hall of
horn worship, and the Supreme Ruler stood amidst the horns as judge.
The man bringing the longest horns received the first blessing and was
not subject to the laws of the great Ruler for seven years, and those
bringing the second and the third longest horns received second and
third blessings and were immune from the laws for five and for three
years. Furthermore, those who willfully refused to bring horns to the
general worship were made servants of those bringing the longest horns
to the shrine, and would eventually become dead in soul, thus losing
the power to rise after death and enjoy the great horn worship in the
wide, free spaces and the open air, where search for food would no
longer be a necessity.
Finally, though, a great bird came and flew to the cliffs, and
destroyed the dwellers throughout the world, and then, when none came
to worship at the great palace, the great Ruler died of grief. Our
present race is the offspring from a man who had been banished from
some colony for his refusal to contribute horns and to join in their
worship. Consequently, the great bird on his flight of destruction
missed this outcast, who, having lost his blessing through neglect to
worship, was doomed, he and all his generations, to work for a living.
Before he died of his grief the great Owner of the world, knowing that
some day the mountain would decay and the deserted palace be exposed,
placed a magic wand in the greatest horn in the great horn room. It is
there now, waiting for the hand of some one of the soulless to touch
it. Finally when the horn is touched, it will rise into space and draw
all those who worshiped in full faith to the great horn worship above,
where manual labor and death shall be forever unknown.
Such is the story of the first world of men, who were probably the
Cliff Dwellers, or the Horn Worshipers!
THE CAVE OF MONTEZUMA
By Leeper Gay
[This legendary “Cave of Montezuma” is in Mexico, but so persistent and
numerous are rumors of it across the border in Texas that I do not
hesitate to include it among Texas legends. Mr. Gay knows many legends,
and he has told me that he has often heard Texans mention Montezuma’s
Cave; I myself have heard of it from treasure hunters in Texas. Indeed,
legend has placed an Aztec cave, presumably Montezuma’s, in Texas. I am
indebted to Mr. W. D. Notley, superintendent of public schools at Del
Rio, for the following account:
On the south edge of Del Rio there is a mound of considerable size
called Sugar Loaf. Legend has it that it was built by the Aztecs and
stored with treasures. In the troublesome times that followed the
conquest by the Spanish, the Aztecs built an acequia (irrigation ditch)
around it, or alongside it, so as to cut off entrance through the
subterranean passage that once led to the great storehouse.—Editor.]
I have at last learned one complete version of the legend of the
Montezuma Cave. It cost me seven hours’ hard work, a delay of
twenty-four hours in getting home, a deal of cheap drink, a headache,
and the suspicion of my relatives; but the man who told me the story
was alone worth the price. He is a broken-down newspaper man, “whose
story is the story of every man that ever went down into Mexico. It is
the story of a coward, the story of a man with a yellow streak down his
back.” I was sitting on the plaza at Juarez, absorbed in a religious
dance of the Festival, which was being held in front of the cathedral
by people dressed as Indians, when Alec Martin came strolling along and
sat down beside me. He was a colorless blond, white-faced, and rather
small of figure, his neat dress falling into untidiness. His pale blue
eyes were supplemented with powerful shell-rimmed spectacles, and as
they continued to watch the dancers, I asked him how he liked the
dancing. “But you should see the Festival of la Cruz Verde, at Tepic,”
he replied without turning his head. From this auspicious beginning, we
drifted into conversation, and he told me the legend of the Cathedral
de la Cruz Verde. It is a simple story, such as, he explained, overruns
Mexico. Observing that he wore no overcoat, although the day was cold,
and that he shivered at frequent intervals, I suggested a hot Tom and
Jerry. He was not slow in accepting, and since I had begun to find his
company excellent, I suggested another, and then a glass of Bordeaux as
a lid. He seemed quite shame-faced about not paying for the drinks, and
somehow I believed him when he told me that, whatever he was at
present, he had been a gentleman at one time.
He could not stay away from the subject of Mexico for long at a time,
and since he continued to tell me legends, I asked him for the one
about the Montezuma Cave. The liquor that he had taken in the course of
the day had begun to affect him, but he would not say anything about
the Montezuma Cave except that it had broken him. Presently he insisted
that he take me to a bar up next to the Market, where he had credit. I
went with him, and we began to drink sotol, which is said to be a fiery
liquor, but which I found no worse than red whiskey. But whenever I
asked him for the particulars of his story, he would say: “But that is
not the important thing; a drink is all that matters.” In the course of
time, however, he became thoroughly inebriated, as he confessed to me
in a precise, though sometimes uncertain voice. Finally, while my
relatives waited in El Paso and my train left without me, he told his
story and the legend of the Montezuma Cave. This is the legend that he
told me.
When Montezuma was killed by Cortez at the City of Mexico, the room
full of gold that had been offered as a ransom for Montezuma was too
heavy for Cortez to carry with him in his flight to the coast.
Montezuma had foreseen this, and before his death had ordered that the
gold be stored safely, where it could lie without danger until his tree
fell and he came back to save his people. The Aztec generals, having
seen the lack of respect for their gods that the Spaniards had shown,
were afraid to bury the treasure in the tomb of Montezuma, and instead
had it taken to a cave in the mountains. This cave was at the end of a
long canyon, a mere crack in the rock only a few feet wide, although
the walls were hundreds of feet high. At the mouth the canyon was
twelve feet wide, but it became narrower toward the cave, until there
was not passage for a man, unless he crawled on his belly for the last
few hundred yards. The Indians worshiped the cave as a shrine after the
treasure of Montezuma had been stored there, and made pilgrimages to
it, although none but priests were allowed to enter the cave itself.
The guardians disposed of unwelcome visitors by dropping rocks on them
as they wormed up the narrow canyon.
After the Aztecs perished as a nation, the cave was in Yaqui territory,
what was called the Sonora Mountains, and the Yaquis continued to guard
the shrine. Renegades and half-breeds sometimes whispered the story of
the cave to the Spaniards, but since none of the men who went to hunt
for it ever returned, the story became a legend.
Some hundreds of years later, a very drunk Mexican told the story to
Martin, who remembered it the next day. At that time he was a
correspondent to certain American newspapers, and when he told the
story to two of his friends, they wanted to go after the treasure
immediately. The Mexican agreed to go with them, and claimed to know
where the cave was, having seen the canyon for himself. The expedition
was so carefully planned and executed that the little party camped
within a few miles of the cave without being discovered by the Indians.
That night they went into the cave, taking water and food enough to
last them the following day. The next night they came out safely, each
carrying about one hundred and fifty pounds of gold. Their good fortune
did not desert them, and they were out of Yaqui country before the loss
was discovered. When they arrived at the City, they cashed the gold for
forty thousand dollars apiece, and for some months lived in great
state.
Then, having spent all of their fortune, they decided to return to the
Montezuma Cave and to bring out a little more this time. This gold was
to be invested, so that each could live off his interest. As they had
done before, they camped a few miles from the mouth of the canyon, and
entered the cave at night. The next night they started out of the
canyon, but as they stepped out on the plain in front of the canyon,
they were taken quietly in charge by the Yaquis, who had watched them
from the time that they had first come into the country. The Mexican
was sacrificed to the old gods, for he was part Indian and had betrayed
the secret of the cave, but the Americans were first tortured and then
kept about the camp as slaves. In a few weeks two of them died. Martin
finally escaped, but not until he was broken physically.
From that day on, his bad luck had followed him. He had come back to El
Paso, on his way to Mexico, but on the morning that he arrived, he had
broken the mirror in his room and the friends that he had expected did
not arrive. His savings had gradually dribbled away, until he had sold
his watch and pawned his overcoat, with winter almost at hand.
When the story was finished, Martin added, somewhat lamely: “This
Mexico has broken me; it’s made a bum and a drunkard out of me, but I
love it. I can’t stay away from it. I’ve been out of it fifteen months
this time, and now I’m going into it again.”
THE FIRST CORN CROP IN TEXAS
By A. W. Eddins
Have you ever heard how Grandma when she was a young girl made the
first corn crop in Texas, and how the only tools she had to make it
with were a hound dog and a big stick? This is the way she told the
story.
After Stephen F. Austin had secured the grant of land for his colony in
Texas, he returned to his home and gathered the families to settle it.
He leased the schooner Lively at New Orleans, loaded it with farm tools
and supplies, and sent it to the mouth of the Colorado River to meet
the colonists. The Lively was lost, and no word of her or her crew has
ever been heard. [138]
Meanwhile, Grandma and her family were on their way in an ox wagon. She
walked nearly all the way with her sister behind the wagon. They
entered Texas at the Red River, and reached the mouth of the Colorado
about Christmas. Here they built a cabin and waited in vain for the
Lively. The men hunted and the women kept house. They ate venison for
bread and fresh bear steak for meat. They needed bread, but had no
tools for planting the corn.
Now the Colorado River bottom was covered with a heavy growth of reed
cane. The dogs ran a bear into this canebrake and the boys set it on
fire, and as it burned the cane popped and roared like guns in a
battle. When the fire was out, where the canebrake had been was a
wonderfully clean field, covered with ashes and as loose and mellow as
plowed land.
Grandma took a sharp stick and punched the holes, and her sister
dropped a grain of corn in each hole and then covered it with her foot.
In a few days a beautiful crop of corn was growing, but the ground was
also covered with young shoots of cane. The planters had neither plow
nor hoe but they took big sticks and went in the field and knocked down
all the tender cane shoots; they did this three times and then the corn
was big enough to shade out the cane. But when the roasting ears began
to make, the coons began to destroy the crop. So Grandma tied an old
hound dog in the midst of the corn field, and he barked all night and
scared the varmints away. The colonists soon had plenty of bread, and
before time to plant the next crop they had secured farming tools from
the East.
LA CASA DEL SANTA ANNA
By A. W. Eddins
The children in the Navarro School of San Antonio often express some
original and interesting ideas in their Texas history classes. They do
not know such a thing as the Alamo; to them it is “La Casa del Santa
Anna” (Santa Anna’s house), and they have many interesting stories of
what “mi padre grande” said about this old landmark in Texas history
and the remarkable things that have happened there.
A very interesting story that seems to be known and believed by nearly
all the pupils is that of the old cave, or underground passage, that
formerly connected the Alamo with the San Pedro Springs. The entrance
to this cave was covered with a big round stone in the very middle of
the Alamo. By lifting the stone and going down the steps and following
the dark, crooked path, first down, then up, through some water and
some mud, one finally came out in a clump of bushes near the big spring
in what is now the San Pedro Park. The priests often used this passage
to communicate with their friends when the Indians made it unsafe to
leave the Alamo by any other way.
Santa Anna learned about it from an old priest, and by this means was
able to get his men inside of the Alamo on the last, fatal day of the
siege. Since that time the cave has been partly filled and cannot be
used any more, but the place where it formerly opened in the park is
still pointed out by the old people, and the children are strong in
their belief of its existence.
LOST CANYON OF THE BIG BEND COUNTRY
By J. Frank Dobie
I
The legend of a lost canyon somewhere in the Big Bend country has had a
long and wide circulation. When I was in the Big Bend country some
fourteen years ago I heard of it as being “an old story.” A version of
the legend came out in the Western Story Magazine, December 2, 1922.
Early in 1923, the “Cattle Clatter” department of the San Antonio
Express reprinted an enlarged version of the Western Story Magazine
legend, giving its source as the New York World. A syndicated feature
article was probably the source of both versions.
According to the World legend, a Mexican by the name of Lopez had come
into Sanderson from an exploring expedition initiated on the Mexican
side of the Rio Grande. He and a Mexican vaquero had followed up a
gorge that emptied into the Rio Grande until the gorge widened out into
a green valley, an oasis, wherein were grazing a herd of perhaps five
hundred buffaloes.
In all of the legends the valley is stocked with buffaloes,
notwithstanding the fact that buffaloes were never in the Big Bend
country. [139] The wild and inaccessible nature of this country,
however, gives color to the idea of a lost canyon. Maps in the State
Land Office at Austin still show a stretch of unsurveyed territory
along the river. Akin to “Lost Canyon” must be the “Lost Mountains,”
which are said to lie beyond the Davis Mountains.
The idea of a “lost” land is probably as old as any legend of mankind;
it luxuriates in the lore of modern seamen; but it may not be generally
known that regions of the modern West other than the Big Bend also
claim “lost” areas. No longer ago than February 2, 1923, the San
Antonio Express published a news story to the effect that Zane Grey had
discovered a lost plateau in Arizona inhabited by mustangs that had
some secret pass, unknown to man, down to water in the valley. Six days
earlier the same newspaper printed a dispatch from Scenic, South
Dakota, descriptive of a legendary oasis in an uncharted Bad Lands.
According to a tradition handed down by the Sioux Indians, inaccessible
bluffs and walls enclose a garden-like place “rich in food, sunlight,
warmth and pure running water.” Before the coming of the pale-faces
this protected spot was the home of Wankinyan (the Thunder Bird), and
no man has ever entered it to return. The story suggests that the
legend of the Lost Canyon in the Big Bend may be of Indian origin.
There is a legend connected with another secret canyon of the upper Rio
Grande country that seems to owe its existence to the Indians. Walter
B. Stevens in his Through Texas, published in 1892, tells of “The
Mystery of Diablo Canyon.” [140] The canyon, so the legend goes, was
sacred to the Indians, and only a few of their number knew its nature.
In it was an abundance of game and of pure water, but no white man
could ever find the water. Dry hides, sprinkled with sod and covered
with grass, concealed it cunningly.
II
West Burton of South Austin and I were on a hunting trip down below San
Antonio. The talk had been, as usual, on old days and lost mines and
trails. I brought up the subject of Lost Canyon. “Yes,” said he, “I
have heard of the place many times, but I never believed that it
existed till I met an old prospector in Mexico who had once been in the
place.
“This prospector was a broke man when I saw him, broke in more ways
than one, but he could tell his story straight. He was prospecting down
the Rio Grande in a skiff or canoe, putting in at various canyons and
gorges to examine for minerals. At a certain rapids his boat got
snagged so that he could not fix it, and there was nothing for him to
do but to strike out afoot. He made up a small pack of a blanket and
some provisions, and with a rifle struck north up a steep ravine,
intending somehow to reach the Southern Pacific Railroad.
“The ravine that he took up was so narrow and rough that in some places
he could hardly travel, but after a while it began to open out, and
imagine his surprise when it spread into a kind of basin that stretched
out farther than he could see. The grass in it was as green as a wheat
field, though there was a drouth on, as usual, and there were springs
of pure, sweet water; but the thing that made him rub his eyes was a
herd of buffaloes, perhaps a hundred or more. The prospector killed one
for meat, and camped for two or three days by a spring, while he got a
good fill of the meat and jerked as much as he could take with him.
Then he set out towards the north again.
“He found when he tried to get out that the basin was rimmed in by a
high bluff up which there was apparently no trail. But after he had
trailed himself around a good deal, he discovered a kind of gorge that
he climbed out through. No buffalo could ever get out or in through it,
he said. When he got up on top of the rim he was in the Chisos
Mountains, unfenced, even unclaimed, some of them, I guess. He was in a
country that no outpost of a range rider ever comes into, that no
trapper has ever entered. There’s no reason why a human being should go
into that country. The wonder to me is that this prospector tried to
make his way over it. His way was crookeder than a devil’s walking
cane—if you have ever seen one of them. They are about the only things
that grow in that country, you know. But he kept on generally north. He
nearly perished for water, and only the moisture of the jerked buffalo
that he had had sense enough not to salt kept him from parching to
death. He threw away all of his pack but that jerkie.
“Finally, somehow, by the help of the Lord, he reached the railroad
somewhere between Sanderson and Marathon, and as luck would have it, he
stumbled right into the camp of a construction gang. The cook of the
outfit was an old Mexican who had worked for his father and knew him.
This cook gave the prospector only a little beef broth and would not
let him have that except in sips. And so in a few days he got over his
terrible experience.
“From the camp he went on to Sanderson and actually raised an
expedition to go back and find the canyon of buffalo. But he never
could find the way back across to it. He says that he knows now that
the only way ever to reach it is to enter it from the Rio Grande, up
that narrow gorge.”
A TRADITION OF LA SALLE’S EXPEDITION INTO TEXAS
By Alex. Dienst
The original of the letter that follows is in my possession, having
been given to me by Governor George C. Pendleton, to whom it is
addressed. It is my impression that the writer of this letter was, in
1891, connected with the Department of Statistics, History, and
Insurance, at Austin. De León could not have been “Governor of Texas
and Coahuila” in 1688, for the states were not united until long
afterward. [141]
Austin, Texas,
September 9th, 1891
Hon. Geo. C. Pendleton,
Belton, Texas.
Dear Mr. Pendleton: You will please accept my thanks for your note
of the 5th inst. I appreciate very highly your promise to obtain
for me such information as you can in reference to La Salle. I
would however, be very sorry to give you any trouble about the
matter.
I have obtained a copy of the official report made by Gen. Alonzo
De Leon, Governor of Coahuila and Texas, to the Spanish Government.
This report contains the account of a Frenchman who was reported to
be living in Texas where he had congregated several thousand
Indians together and had acquired such authority over them that
they not only recognized him as their chief, but treated him with
the greatest reverence; always kneeling when in his presence. Gen.
De Leon alarmed lest the authority of this Frenchman might be used
by the French Government to assert a claim to Texas organized an
expedition for his capture. After traveling in a northeast
direction for forty leagues from what is now Monclova, Mexico, they
reached the Rio Grande and twenty-five leagues beyond that stream,
still in the direction of northeast, they found the Frenchman, whom
they, with the use of a good deal of diplomacy and artifice
succeeded in persuading to accompany them back to Mexico. This
occurred in May, 1688; and this Frenchman is said to have been the
last survivor of La Salle’s Expedition. I have translated from the
Spanish the account of this Frenchman and De Leon’s Expedition. It
is a very curious and interesting incident in the early history of
Texas, and it was in connection with it that I wished to ascertain
if there was any tradition of La Salle having been killed in Bell
County as the Frenchman indicates....
Yours Most Respectfully,
Betty B. Brewster.
BIG FOOT AND LITTLE FOOT
By Mrs. S. J. Wright
This legend was given me by Mrs. Jack Hardy, now of El Paso, whose home
was for several years in Alpine, Brewster County. The time of it goes
back only thirty or thirty-five years, and the appearance of the
footprints is vouched for today by some of our substantial citizens who
were cowpunchers then.
In the Big Bend country campers would awake in the mornings to see
tracks of moccasined feet leading to and from the vicinity—apparently
of a man and a woman following. Sometimes, after having been trailed
for miles, sometimes for shorter distances, suddenly the trail would be
lost.
A cowboy sleeping out would awake and say: “Well, boys, ‘Big Foot and
Little Foot’ have been here”; and there would be the ghostly
footprints. By whom they were made, whence they came, whither they led,
is still a mystery. Leaving their mysterious tracks, the treaders came
and went as the winds and the rains, and with as little warning.
THE WILD WOMAN OF THE NAVIDAD
By Martin M. Kenney
[This account of “The Wild Woman of the Navidad” has been supplied from
her father’s manuscripts by Mrs. Margaret Kenney Kress, Instructor in
Romance Languages in the University of Texas.
The line between history and legend is not always definitely drawn. Mr.
Kenney called his narrative “a true story”: it is “true” in that it
sets down many of the speculations and some of the probably
unsubstantiated tales connected with “The Wild Woman.” Herein, the
derivation of legend from fact is admirably illustrated, for I must
think that all legends, even such improbable ones as that of Romulus
and Remus, have their inception in fact. The universal practice of
transferring legendary lore concerning one place or person to another
place or person does not disprove the theory that fact is at the basis
of legend.
The theme of the wild man or the wild woman is not uncommon in legend.
People want wild men or wild women to thrill their imaginations.
Twenty-five years ago a number of the inhabitants of Live Oak County,
Texas, were aroused over tales of a “wild woman.” Two or three deputy
sheriffs on her trail stayed at our house one freezing night. The next
day they found her huddled in a Mexican jacal—an addle-brained negro
woman who was trying to get through the country afoot. Fifteen years
later stories in the same county circulated about a “wild cave man.”
His diet, according to the tales, was as miraculous as that of the
fabled chameleon; his elusive powers as incomprehensible as those of
Fortunatus. Rumor grew riotous and fearsome. Finally, some cowpunchers
rode the “wild man” down and roped him. He proved to be a Mexican moron
who was in hiding for having murdered another Mexican.
Mr. Kenney gives 1837 and 1850 as the dates between which “The Wild
Woman of the Navidad” flourished. Victor M. Rose, who treats of the
subject sketchily, gives the dates as 1840 and 1850. [142] Both speak
of the wide newspaper publicity given the “woman”; and it is
interesting to note that during this time of publicity other sections
were claiming their “wild men.” Marryat, who cribbed most of his wild
west material from current newspapers, published in 1843 an account of
a purported “wild man” on Red River.
“One day,” he says, “a report was spread in the neighborhood of Fort
Gibson, that a strange monster, of the ourang-outang species, had
penetrated the cane-brakes upon the western banks of the Mississippi.
Some negroes declared to have seen him tearing down a brown bear; an
Arkansas hunter had sent to Philadelphia an exaggerated account of this
recently discovered animal, and the members of the academy had written
to him to catch the animal, if possible, alive, no matter at what
expense.” [143]
The man, it seems, had endured all manner of adventure, which he
related to some hunters who shot him. Later he became a wealthy river
captain, but probably tales about him as a “wild man” grew even after
his death.
Again, in 1851 there was a “wild man” in the Arkansas woods. On May
26th of that year, the Galveston Weekly Journal reprinted a report from
the Memphis Enquirer of May 9th, concerning this “wild” being. He is
described as long-haired, gigantic in frame, with a footprint thirteen
inches in length.—Editor.]
Rising in the gentle hills, between the Colorado and Lavaca rivers, the
Navidad River, after a short course, expands into a deep stream which
creeps sluggishly through the wide and dense forests that cover the
alluvial lands near the sea. Some of the earliest settlements in Texas
were made on the Navidad. The dense growth of trees and cane in the
river bottom was the haunt of all species of wild animals, which,
through fear or ferocity, seek the recesses of the forest.
About the year 1837 there appeared in the settlements of the lower
Navidad a phenomenon. The barefoot tracks of two human beings were
frequently seen, but the persons who made them kept themselves
carefully from sight. It was inferred from the size of the tracks that
one was made by a boy and the other by a girl or woman of delicate
feet. The two sometimes invaded the sweet potato fields and sometimes
helped themselves to a few ears of corn, but seemed to avoid any
mischief and took only something to eat. Many conjectures were made,
and abandoned as fast as made, as to who they could be. At first they
were thought to be runaway slaves. But the size of the tracks
demonstrated that they were not negroes, and they avoided making
themselves known to the negroes of the country. Then it was supposed
that they were some wandering remnant of Indians, and this conjecture
was favored by the smallness of the feet. But their conduct was foreign
to the Indian character. Indians would not have been so secluded; they
would have committed more mischief—or less. The most probable
conjecture seemed to be that they were lost children who had become
separated from their friends during the hurried retreat of the American
settlers from the invading army of Mexico in 1836. It was supposed that
they had become so alarmed that, believing the whole world hostile,
they kept themselves in innocent ignorance secluded from mankind. But
there were grave objections to this theory also. If the supposed lost
children had been old enough to maintain themselves in the wilderness,
they would not have lacked discretion to make themselves known when
their friends returned. Altogether, the riddle remained unsolved. After
some years the larger track was no more seen, but the small and slim
track frequented the country. Some time later a party of hunters
noticed some bones protruding from a pile of sticks and leaves in the
woods, and upon investigation discovered there the skeleton of a man.
Nothing was noticed by which his race or nation could be determined;
indeed, but little was thought of the matter at the time, but afterward
it was concluded that the larger of the two strange recluses, who was
probably a man, had died, and that his weaker mate, covering his body
with sticks and leaves, had furnished as best she could his primitive
shroud and sepulture.
However this might be, the small track was often found in the potato
fields, where the strange wild being frequently came by night and,
after grappling a few potatoes with the hands, went away as stealthily
as she came. From the impress of the fingers left in the garden mould
it was judged that the hands were small and slim; and from the tracks,
which were only a span long, it seemed certain that the author of these
little depredations was a woman, and not of the black race, whose feet
are all large, flat, and ill-shaped. She was now called “The Wild
Woman,” though some called her “It.”
Curious to know what manner of being she was, some young men set a
watch at a potato patch where were the signs of her recent
depredations. As she was harmless and possibly ignorant of speech, they
planned to seize her with their hands, and for this purpose they
concealed themselves between the high ridges of the potato vines and
waited in silence. At a late hour she came, and as near them as they
had expected. The night was dark, but they could see the shadowy form.
It was slim and apparently unclothed, but the color could not be
distinguished. They sprang out to seize her, but, though they were
active young men, she was more agile still, and bounded away as
silently and quickly as the flitting of a shadow, and was instantly
lost in the darkness.
For a long time she was not heard of. But at length fresh signs of her
appeared in a manner that raised curiosity. The settlers were obliged
to keep vigilant and fierce dogs to protect the houses and domestic
animals against beasts of prey. Trained to guard against the stealthy
approach of wild cat and cougar, and accustomed to battle with bear and
panther, the dogs were trusted security against the clandestine
approach of man or beast. The houses of the early settlers were
constructed on the general plan of two log pens connected by a wide
porch or hall open at both ends, all under one roof, shade and
ventilation being the chief requisites in the southern climate. The
saddles, ropes and other horse-gear hung against the wall in the porch;
the guns were stacked in the corners of the rooms or rested in racks
over the mantels and doors, ready for instant service; and the inmates
of the house, skilled in the use of weapons, were scarcely less
vigilant than their dogs. Thus guarded, they felt secure from prowling
beasts, and confident that no human being would be foolhardy enough to
venture clandestinely upon the premises. In the summer time the doors
and windows stood open day and night, and all wayfarers coming in good
faith were welcome.
To such a house in summer, on a bright moonlight night, when everything
was still and the inmates were asleep, The Wild Woman came and entered,
stepping over dogs, it would seem. What other search or exploration she
made is not known, but she entered the dining room, in which there was
an open cupboard containing a plate of meat and a loaf of bread. She
took part of the meat, and, breaking the bread in two, she took one
half and left the other; and with this mute explanation of her motive,
she departed as silently as she came. Not a dog whimpered, and the
people of the house were none the wiser until the morning, when this
excusable theft excited their curiosity and compassion. But they
wondered at the dereliction of the dogs.
The woman did not return to that house for a long time. But she soon
entered another house of the same style, guarded by particularly
vigilant dogs. In this her search was extended, as shown by the things
she moved; but it was also obvious that her motives were not venal.
There were gold watches hanging over the mantel, where she moved
bottles and powder flasks, and she must have seen them, as the moon was
shining brightly in the room. There was silverware in the cupboard, but
she took only some scraps of food, taking, as before, only half and
leaving half; and she effected her departure without disturbing man or
dog. She afterward entered numerous houses in the same strange manner;
not a dog would notice her. The negroes became superstitious about her.
They called her “that thing that comes,” and for her they used the
neuter pronoun.
One winter it was found that she was in the habit of taking corn from a
crib. The amount she took was wholly trifling; but from motives of
curiosity the opportunity was taken to capture her. All that needed to
be done was to watch when she entered the crib, then close the door.
The watch was kept for several nights without result, but at length the
desired opportunity occurred. The man on watch was inside the crib with
his hand on the door. He had fallen into a doze, when the stealthy
rustling of the corn husks awoke him. The thing had come. He had only
to push the door and call the people. But a superstitious horror seized
him. The thought of being shut up alone in the dark, even for a few
moments, with the mysterious creature was accompanied by a sudden dread
that he could not control. In his fright he cried out, and before he
could move a limb the creature was gone with a single bound through the
door into the enveloping night.
The compassion of the people arose with their curiosity. The poor
creature was welcome a hundred times to what she took in her little
forays, harmless to others but so dangerous to herself. Every means was
used to communicate with her. Diligent search was made in the canebrake
and in the great hollow trees, some of which afforded almost a house.
But all in vain; she avoided black and white alike, and no signs of her
dwelling could be found in the dark forests where she roamed like some
wild animal. Sometimes no sign of her would be seen for months or even
years, and the people would cease to think of her; then suddenly she
would appear with some trick, if it might be so called, more curious
and mysterious than any before.
On one of the plantations the woodworkers’ tools, essential to the
early settlers, were kept under an open shed where there was a rough
work-bench. From this the owner missed his handsaw, drawing knife, and
some other tools. At first he suspected some petty thief. But several
weeks afterward the tools were all found returned to their places, the
handsaw scoured and polished as bright as a looking glass. What could
this mean? It must have been the work of The Wild Woman. The polish put
on the saw was wonderful. No one knew before that this familiar metal
was susceptible of such a gloss, nor did anyone know the process by
which it could be effected. Why did the woman take these tools? Was she
building a hut or fixing her residence in some hollow tree? Was she
making weapons, rafts, boats? For any imaginable purpose the assortment
she took was incongruous, deficient, or superfluous. Why did she return
the tools so soon? What could be the meaning of the curious but useless
pains she had taken with the saw-blade? Was there some symbolic
meaning, a message? Thus speculation ran.
Some time afterward a neighbor missed a log chain. The negro teamster
gave it as his opinion that “dat thing what comes must have tuk it.”
But a chain twelve feet long weighing thirty pounds or more—what use
could that wild animal have for it? The owner said that if he ever
“whipped a nigger for being a fool,” he would “skin” that one. Not long
afterward, The Wild Woman did come to his house and made the usual
round among unconscious watch dogs and sleeping people to her usual
prize, the cupboard, where she found a pan of milk, two loaves of
bread, a plate of butter, and other things. She took half the plate of
butter, dividing it neatly, took one of the loaves, poured half the
milk out of the pan into a pitcher, and, taking the latter, departed.
Two or three weeks afterward, upon awakening one morning, the family
found the pitcher standing on the bare ground before the door and the
log chain coiled around it. The chain was scoured and polished as
bright as the saw had been. To bring this chain and coil it before the
door would seem to have been necessarily a somewhat noisy operation,
but the dogs had taken no notice.
The people ceased to wonder at the recusancy of the dogs; it had become
an established phenomenon. For seven years or more this strange
creature had haunted the country, and all sorts of dogs and several
generations of them had been tested. They were mysteriously insensible
to the coming of The Wild Woman.
Her next exploit surpassed all and set curiosity on tiptoe. A farmer
had a hog fattening in a pen near the house. A bear attempted one night
to take it off, but the dogs seized the beast and after a severe fight
killed it. The combative spirit of the dogs was so raised by this
occurrence that they kept a lively watch, especially on the hog pen;
and expecting every night to be treated to another bear fight, all were
fiercely alive to the slightest alarm. One night during this state of
matters, The Wild Woman brought a poor hog out of the woods and put it
in the pen, taking the fat one out and making off with it safely, and
not a dog barked or growled. The farmer said that he would have killed
every dog on his place if he had thought that they were at themselves
when “that thing” swapped hogs with him. There was but one explanation
possible: she had bewitched both hogs and dogs. There was no use in
fattening the new porker; the negroes would not have eaten a mouthful
of it short of starvation. During several years “the thing” repeated
this mysterious performance at numerous places. There was one
inconvenience attending it: the substituted hog was often the property
of a neighbor.
Numerous attempts were made to trail her with dogs, as it was thought
that she could not carry so heavy a burden as a fat hog to any great
distance. But the dogs always lost the trail as soon as the people
following were left out of sight. When the hog taking achievement had
ceased to be a wonder, some hunters came accidentally upon one of her
camps, and here was material for fresh curiosity. There were piles of
sugar cane, which abounded in the neighboring fields. Much of it had
been cut into short lengths and chewed; hence it was evident that she
knew the use of a knife. There were some curious strings twisted of the
outside bark of the cotton plant. There were no signs of fire and no
implements. A secret watch was kept on the camp for some time, but the
creature did not return. Sometime afterwards, fresh signs of her having
been seen, a general hunt was resolved upon. Dogs were procured that
had been trained to follow runaway negroes. They came upon the trail
and pursued eagerly enough; but the trail led through the ponds of
water that abounded in the swamp and soon put the dogs at fault.
A long time followed during which she was not heard of; then her camp
was found again at a considerable distance from the former one; she had
removed to another section of the country. This fresh evidence raised
curiosity to fever heat. There were several things of her own
manufacture, baskets and a curious snare made from the fibrous bark of
the cotton plant, seemingly intended to catch rabbits or other small
animals. There were several articles taken from houses, a spoon, some
table knives, and a cup. There was no clothing; her bed was moss and
leaves; and there had been no fire. But what excited most curiosity was
several books, and these had keen kept dry. In one of the books was a
letter of old date, containing tender sentiments and addressed to Miss
——. One of the books was a Bible, and in it were the names of the
members of a well-known family in the neighborhood.
What then? Could this strange being not only talk but read? Was she
some too high-strung heart that had been so overstrained or embittered
in the buffets of the world as to renounce human society and resolutely
for many years keep herself secluded in the shadows of the forest? Was
it some wild romantic sentiment which had prompted her to seek the
savage life of the woods with a companion, and losing him to vow so
strange and rude a hermitage? And after so many years was the aching
heart seeking solace in the company of old books? Or was she seeking
for one book only, taking volumes at random in the dark until the light
of morning should reveal the name? Seeking one book, wherein from old
is written the way from this bad world to a better one? Such were a few
of the thousand questions and conjectures which the discovery of the
books suggested. The matter got into the newspapers.
Sympathy and curiosity rose together. If the creature could read, as it
seemed by her taking books that she could, why not write her letters
and place them where she would be most likely to find them? Letters
plainly written in simple language were posted at her recent camp and
other places entreating her to make herself known. Home and friends
were offered her.
This strange and serious drama was not without a comic side scene.
There was an eccentric old bachelor in this country at that time by the
name of Moses Evans, who had been nicknamed “The Wild Man of the
Woods.” Since there was now a veritable Wild Woman of the woods, it
seemed to the wits of the time an eligible match. Several love letters
notable for droll wit, over the signature of “Moses Evans, the Wild
Man,” addressed to the unknown Wild Woman, were published in the
newspapers and widely copied through the United States. But the letters
which had been posted on trees at the camp of the poor recluse remained
untouched, and nothing occurred to indicate that she understood them.
By this time a general resolution had grown up that this riddle must be
solved. A more systematic and cautious plan was adopted. A number of
hunters formed extended lines and drove through the woods with leashed
hounds, while others, well mounted and provided with lassos, took
“stands.” Several fruitless hunts were made, but at length the hunters
became satisfied late one evening that the woman was in a neck of woods
running out into a prairie something more than a quarter of a mile
wide. The men with the lassos took positions along the edge of this
prairie while others drove through the skirt of woods with the hounds.
It was night before the men were well arranged, but a bright moon
shone. It is well known that men accustomed to hunting with hounds, can
readily tell what kind of game they are pursuing by the nature of their
cry. Scarcely were the men at their posts when the hounds raised a cry
never heard before. They were following the track of some strange
creature. Presently the breaking of little sticks and the hurried
rustling of the brush near one of the lasso men announced the approach
of something, which immediately bounded with a light and flying step
into the open prairie in the bright light of the moon.
It was The Wild Woman. She ran directly across the prairie in the
direction of the main forest. The man was mounted on a fleet horse, and
it needed all his speed to bring his rider to an even race with the
object of his pursuit. But the horse was so afraid of the strange
creature that he could not be urged within reach of the lasso. Three
times he came up but each time shied to right or left too far for his
rider to throw, while the flying figure each time turned her course to
the opposite hand and ran with the speed of a frightened deer. They
were now nearing the black shadow of the great forest, which was
projected far on the plain. Spurring his horse with angry energy, the
pursuer came this time fairly within reach and threw his lasso; but at
the instant of throwing, his horse shied as before, and the rope fell
short. In an instant the pursued creature was in the shadow of a vast
forest and further pursuit was useless. Though disappointed in
capturing her, one point was gained: the man had a good look at her as
they ran together across the prairie for several hundred yards. She had
long hair that must have reached to her feet, but that flew back as she
ran. She had no clothes, but her body was covered with short brown
hair. The rider did not see her face, as she was between him and the
moon, so that whenever she turned toward him her face was in the
shadow. Once or twice he thought he caught a glimpse of wild eyes as
she cast a frightened glance over her shoulder. She had something in
her hand when he first saw her, but she dropped it either from fright
or to facilitate her escape. After the chase this was sought for and
found. It proved to be a club about five feet long, polished to a
wonder.
A long time passed without anything further being seen of her. She
seemed to have disappeared. But during the severe winter of 1850, when
there was a great sleet and the ground was covered with snow, her camp,
or its camp, or the thing’s camp, was found in the brush of a tree that
had recently blown down in the tangled thicket of a canebrake in the
dark recesses of the woods. At this place there were large piles of
sugar cane, much of it chewed. There was a rude bed of moss and leaves,
but no fire. There was the strangest set of snares, made like those
found before, of the bark of cotton stalks, but these were much more
complex. The tracks in the snow were numerous and a span long. A watch
was set, but the creature had taken alarm and did not come back.
The winter passed, and some fresh signs being seen, another great
muster was made; and equipped with horses, hounds, and ropes, the
pursuers made a favorable start on the track. The men took up stations
in line and closed in from all sides. In the last resort, as was
expected, the creature climbed a tree and was soon looking down with a
frightened stare at the troops of baying dogs and the faces of the men
upturned in eager curiosity. But here was another disappointment.
Instead of the man-like ape to which the glimpse on the prairie had
directed general conviction, there was only the well known ape-like man
of tropic Africa. The wild creature they were pursuing had, it seemed,
by accident or design crossed the trail of a runaway negro; the dogs,
taking the latter scent, had been misled, and instead of the wonder
they expected the hunters had treed only a negro man. Now they could
remember that the cry of the dogs changed during the chase, and it was
thought that by going back in time the trail might be recovered.
But this negro was somewhat of a curiosity himself, and they stopped to
investigate him. He was entirely nude, an unknown condition for
runaways. The hunters bade him come down, but he made no sign of
obeying. They asked him to whom he belonged, but he made no answer.
They threatened him, but he did not seem to understand. To frighten him
into obedience they pointed guns at him, pretending that they would
shoot him, but he motioned with his hand for them to desist and go
away. They then climbed the tree and took him down by force. He
trembled, but said nothing. While looking at him they observed his feet
and hands. Could it be, after all, that this was the wild being who had
so long evaded the sight of man! They led him through a muddy place to
see the track he made. It was measured and found to agree with the
measure often taken of the strange wild one. The man was kept confined
for some time, and the news of his strange capture was published far
and wide. But no owner came forward nor could anything be learned
concerning him.
At length a wandering sailor came that way who had been at one of the
Portuguese missions on the coast of Africa, and knew the captive’s
tribe and spoke enough words of his barbarous language to learn his
history. The negro had, when a boy, been sold by his parents for “knife
and tobacco” to slave traders, who had him with many others for a long
time in a ship at sea. They came at last into a river, where they were
landed and kept for some days in a large house, where they had plenty
of sugar and sugar cane. He and another, a grown man of his tribe, made
their escape and wandered for a long time in the woods, crossing a
great many rivers and prairies, he did not know how many. Often they
were nearly starved to death, but his companion, skillful to throw the
club, had as often taken some animal with which they sustained life. At
length they came into the section of the country where he afterwards
remained so long. They saw the people passing about, and they saw that
some of them were negroes, but were afraid of their clothes; they
feared that the negroes were cannibals. His companion died after
several years, and ever since he had been alone.
As he was now a man in middle life, he had probably been brought across
the sea between 1820 and 1830. His small feet received some
explanation. It appears that there is a tribe on the west coast of
Africa, perhaps more than one, which have very small feet. We learned
from the savage what we did not know before, that there is a certain
hour in the night, which varies somewhat with the moon, when the most
watchful dogs are sunk in insensible sleep, and a man may walk among
them and step over them with impunity. His most extraordinary feat of
exchanging the hogs was very simple, but if made known it might get
some of his improvident race into trouble.
He was advertised as a stray negro and sold on public account. The
purchaser turned him loose among his other negroes, and according to
the nature of his race, he remained contented in his new home. The Wild
Woman was never afterwards heard of. Public curiosity speedily died
away, and nothing more being heard from the negro, he also disappears
from history and legend.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TEXAS LEGENDS
This bibliography makes no pretension to completeness. Mere references
to legends, such as references to buried treasure, are not listed, the
citations being confined almost altogether to actual narrative or
explanation of narrative. Legends marked with an asterisk are either
quoted or retold in this volume. It is hoped that the bibliography will
continue to grow. Additions, especially of current newspaper accounts,
are invited.
Agreda, Madre de Jesus de. See Blue Woman, The.
Alamo, Ghosts of the. De Zavala, Adina, History and Legends of the
Alamo and other Missions in and around San Antonio, San Antonio, 1917,
pp. 54–56. Included is a ballad, “Ghosts of the Alamo,” by Grantland
Rice, from the New York Tribune.
Alamo, Legend of the Statue of Saint Anthony at the Church of the, De
Zavala, op. cit., pp. 56–57.
Antonette’s Leap. See Lovers’ Leap, Mount Bonnell.
Arroyo Hondo, an Indian legend of the origin of. Dyer, J. O., Galveston
News, March 28, 1922.
Barton Springs, Indian legend of the origin of. Brown, Frank, Annals of
Travis County and the City of Austin, unpublished manuscript in the
archives of the University of Texas, Chap. V, p. 29.
“Black Devil,” Mustang Stallion, Ruled Texas. Pioneer legends of a
mustang, San Saba country. Dyer, J. O., Galveston News, February 10,
1924, p. 15.
“Black Wolf’s” Indian Legend. An Indian Rip Van Winkle and the coming
of the whites. Duval, John C., The Adventures of Big Foot Wallace,
1870, pp. 51–55.
“Blue Woman,” The. Bolton, H. E. (editor), Spanish Explorations in the
Southwest, pp. 354–355, 387. *“Letter of Fray Damian Massanet,”
translated by Professor Lilia M. Casis, reprinted from Texas State
Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. II, pp. 253–312. De Zavala,
Adina, History and Legends of the Alamo and other Missions, San
Antonio, 1917, pp. 61–62; 103–106. See bibliographical references given
by Heimsath, Charles M., “The Mysterious Woman in Blue,” this volume.
Brazos River, legend of the naming of. *Kennedy, William, Esq., Texas:
The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic of Texas, R.
Hastings, London, 1841, Vol. I, pp. 167–168. Thrall, H. S., A History
of Texas, p. 37. *Davis, M. E. M., Under the Man-Fig, Boston, 1895, pp.
1–3. Girardeau, Claude M., “The Arms of God” (verse), Texas Magazine,
Houston, May, 1897, Vol. II, pp. 431–434.
Brazos River, mythical origin of. *Spillane, James, “An Indian Legend
of the Flood,” Philadelphia Times (date?); reprinted in Galveston News
(date?). See in this volume Littlejohn, E. G., “How the Brazos and the
Colorado Originated.”
Brazos River, mysterious music in. *Hudgins, Charles D., The Maid of
San Jacinto, New York, 1900, pp. 12–13n.
Brazos River, sea serpent in. Galveston Weekly Journal, May 12, 1853.
Buckner, Strap and the Devil. *Taylor, N. A., Texas the Coming Empire;
or, Two Thousand Miles in Texas on Horseback, Barnes and Company, New
York, 1877, pp. 74–88.
Cave of Three Raps, The. Stevens, Walter B., Through Texas, St. Louis,
1892, pp. 33–34.
Cherokee Rose, legend of. Austin Statesman, August 25, 1882, p. 3, col.
4. Wylie, Lottie Belle, Legend of the Cherokee Rose and Other Poems,
Atlanta, Georgia, 1887, pp. 5–15.
Colorado River, mythical origin of. See Brazos River, mythical origin
of.
Concepción de Acuna, Legends of Mission de Nuestra Señora de la
Purisima, San Antonio. De Zavala, Adina, History and Legends of the
Alamo, etc., pp. 116–117: the milk moistened mortar, the joyous bells.
Death Bird, The Cry of Served as a Warning. Motes, Isaac, Frontier
Times, Vol. I, No. 1, October, 1923, pp. 20–21; reprinted from the El
Paso Times.
Diablo Canyon, The Mystery of. Stevens, Walter B., Through Texas, St.
Louis, 1892, pp. 28–29.
Eagle Lake, legend of. *Morning Star, Houston, June 13, 1839, p. 2.
Richmond Telescope, June, 1839; Telegraph and Texas Register, June 19,
1839. *Darden, Mrs. F. A. D., The American Sketch Book (Texas Pioneer
Magazine), Austin, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1881, pp. 99–102. Duke, Mrs. Emma,
the Eagle Lake Headlight, 1909. *Carothers, Mrs. H. W., “Legend of the
Lake,” four-page folder, in verse, “written for the Eagle Lake Chamber
of Commerce,” circum 1922.
Egg-Nog Branch, Nacogdoches County, origin of name of. Fuller, Henry C,
“The Story of Egg-Nog Branch and Fall of Fredonia Republic,” Houston
Chronicle, February 4, 1923.
Enchanted Rock of Llano County. *New York Mirror, October 20, 1838, p.
135: letter of a traveler lately returned from Texas. *Reid, Samuel C.,
The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch’s Texas Rangers, Philadelphia,
1848, pp. 111–112. *Dewees, W. B., Letters from an Early Settler of
Texas (compiled by Cora Cordelle), Louisville, Kentucky, 1852, p. 152.
Brown, Frank, Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin,
unpublished manuscript in the archives of the University of Texas,
Chap. I, p. 16. Hörmann, von, Pater Alter, Die Tochter Tehuans oder
Texas im vorigen Jahrhundert, Fredericksburg Publishing Company,
Fredericksburg, Texas, 1917. The book is a fictional expansion of the
legend of the Enchanted Rock as told in this volume by Julia Estill.
Wehmeyer, I. G., “The Enchanted Rock,” Fredericksburg Standard,
September 3, 1921, p. 1. Dietel, William, “An Indian Legend Retold,”
Dallas News, May 28, 1922, Magazine Section.
Fig tree at Columbia, Brazoria County. Tree grew out of blood of a
murdered man. Davis, M. E. M., Under the Man-Fig, Boston, 1895, p. 9.
Fort Phantom Hill, Old (Jones County). Chittenden, W. L. [Larry], poem
in Ranch Verses, New York, 1893, p. 97.
Galveston Bay, legends of life about. Sjolander, John P., “Rhymes of
Galveston Bay”: *“The Padre’s Beacon,” Texas Magazine, March, 1911;
“Pinto and the Stingaree,” ibid., 1911, pp. 48–50; “The Ballad of the
Bayou Belle,” ibid., June, 1912; *“The Boat that Never Sailed,” ibid.,
May, 1913.
Haunted Mansion, Mitchell Lake, near San Antonio. Barnes, Charles
Merritt, Combats and Conquests of Immortal Heroes, San Antonio, 1910,
pp. 240–241.
Headless Horseman on the Nueces, legend of. Reid, Captain Mayne, The
Headless Horseman, A Strange Tale of Texas, London, 1866, pp. 361–362.
The legend may be purely fictitious.
Honca Tree, The Accursed. How it got its thorns. Raht, Carl, The
Romance of Davis Mountains and Big Bend Country, El Paso, 1919, pp.
286–293.
Hornsby’s Bend (Travis County), When Spirits Walked at. Dealey, Edward
M., Dallas News, October 2, 1921, Magazine Section, p. 3. In Morphis,
J. M., History of Texas and Wilbarger, J. W., Indian Depredations in
Texas, the incident is told as history and not as legend, and certainly
the weight of evidence seems to be on the side of history. The story of
“The Scalping of Josiah Wilbarger,” and the consequent apparitions is
reprinted from Wilbarger’s Indian Depredations in Frontier Times,
Bandera, Texas, Vol. I, No. 6, March, 1924, pp. 28–31.
Huisache, The Spring of the—An Apache Legend. Wright, Mrs. S. J., San
Antonio de Béxar, Austin, 1916, 123–124.
Indian Maid’s Vision, An. A legend of the New Braunfels Oak. De Zazala,
Adina, Interstate Index—The Pioneer Magazine of Texas, San Antonio,
April, 1922, p. 12.
Lafitte, Jean, legends concerning treasure of.
*“Lafitte’s Treasure Vault,” Galveston News, October 27, 1908.
*“Seeking for Buried Treasure,” Houston Post, date uncertain. See
“Horror Guarded Treasure of the Neches,” this volume.
*“Pirates and Their Sacks of Gold,” Galveston News, date uncertain.
“Empty Chest Revives Tales of Buried Treasure Horde,” Port Arthur
News, July 1, 1923.
“Buried Treasure of Jean Lafitte,” Frontier Times, Vol. I, No. 8,
May, 1924, pp. 24–26; reprinted from the San Antonio Light,
February 17, 1923.
Lost Canyon in the Big Bend of Texas. *“A Lost Valley in a Texas
Canyon,” Western Story Magazine, December 2, 1922. The same account,
evidently syndicated, appeared in the New York World early in 1923 and
was reprinted in “Cattle Clatter” of the San Antonio Express early in
1923.
Lost Company of Irish Troops, tradition of, on the Rio Grande.
Richardson, T. C, “Trodding [sic] ‘Old Rough and Ready’s’ Path through
the Brownsville Country,” Houston Chronicle, November 26, 1922.
Lost Mines. See Treasure Legends.
Lovers’ Leap (also Lover’s Leap and Antonette’s Leap), Mount Bonnell,
Austin. *Morphis, J. M., History of Texas, New York, 1874, pp. 510–513.
Reprinted in the Austin Tribune, circum 1908, according to Miss Louise
von Blittersdorf. Swisher, Bella French, The American Sketch Book
(Texas Pioneer Magazine), Vol. IV, 1879, pp. 94–95. The legend is
incorporated in “A Historical Sketch of Austin,” and is said to be
reprinted from the Courier-Journal. Two years later Bella French
Swisher incorporated it in a story called “Mount Bonnell,” which
appeared in The American Sketch Book, Vol. VII, No. 1, 1881, p. 34.
Whitten, Martha E., “Mount Bonnell,” in Texas Garlands, “Author’s
Edition,” Chicago, 1889, pp. 218–221; verse. Rumpel, Charles Frederick,
in Texas Souvenir [Poems], Austin, 1903, p. 36. Rumpel plays with the
legend in vers de société. Brown, Frank, Annals of Travis County and
the City of Austin, unpublished Ms., University of Texas, Chap. VI, p.
49. The Brown account, essentially the same as that of Morphis,
appeared in the Austin American, under the title “Austin’s Romantic
History,” January 20 and January 27, 1924. Moreland, Sinclair, The
Noblest Roman, 1910, 1911, pp. 256–257.
Lover’s Leap, South Llano, Kimble County. *Jaques, Mary J., Texan Ranch
Life, London, 1894, p. 255.
Lover’s Leap, Santa Anna. *Callan, Austin, Santa Anna Beautiful, Santa
Anna, Texas, 1907. Pamphlet.
Lover’s Leap, Waco. Everett, W. E., “The Legend of Lovers’ Leap,” Waco
Times-Herald, December 19, 1913; verse. Scarborough, Dorothy,
“Traditions of the Waco Indians,” Publications of the Folk-Lore Society
of Texas, No. I, pp. 50–51.
Margil, Fray Antonio, “The Blessed,” also called “The Venerable,”
legends of.
“The Blessed Margil’s Enchantment—A Legend of the San Antonio
Valley,” Wright, Mrs. S. J., San Antonio de Béxar, Austin, 1916,
pp. 127–128. Barnes, Charles Merritt, Combats and Conquests of
Immortal Heroes, San Antonio, 1910, “Legend of Enchantment,” pp.
80–81. The versions are practically the same.
*“The Holy Spring of Father Margil at Nacogdoches,” Fuller, Henry
C., Galveston News, 1902. Contributed to this volume by Littlejohn,
E. G.
“The Margil Vine, Legend of the First Christmas at the Alamo,” De
Zavala, Adina, folder, stitched, San Antonio, 1916. Reprinted in
History and Legends of the Alamo and Other Missions in and around
San Antonio, by De Zavala, San Antonio, 1917, pp. 65–68.
*Legend of the mission bells ringing at the death of Father Margil,
De Zavala, op. cit., pp. 150–151.
See also San Antonio River, origin of.
Medina, The Maniac of. Domenech, The Abbê, Missionary Adventures in
Texas and Mexico, London, 1858, pp. 113–116.
Mexicans, transmigration of souls of into mesquites. [Page, D.],
Prairiedom: Rambles and Scrambles, “by a Suthron,” New York, 1845, pp.
129–130.
Miracles, The Lord of. “Legend of el Señor de los Milagros,” De Zavala,
History and Legends of the Alamo, etc., pp. 195–196.
Mocking Bird, Origin of. “Origin of the Mocking Bird, A Legend of
Southern Texas,” Sale, Ellen L., Ladies’ Messenger, July, 1888;
reprinted in The Bohemian, “Souvenir Edition,” Fort Worth, 1904, pp.
99–100. Verse; lovelorn Indian maiden drowns herself in the San Antonio
River; her soul takes the form and song of the mocking bird. According
to Mrs. A. B. Looscan, the legend has also been written in verse by Lee
C. Harby for either the Gulf Messenger or Texas Magazine, Houston
publications. Complete files of these magazines are difficult to find.
Monk’s Leap. Aimard, Gustave, The Freebooters, A Story of the Texan
War, Philadelphia (no date given), Chap. XXIII.
Mount Bonnell. See Lovers’ Leap, Mount Bonnell.
Navajoes, a legend of the. “The Dancing Man,” Hunter’s Frontier
Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, May, 1916, pp. 17–18.
Pacing White Stallion, or White Steed of the Prairies. *Kendall, George
W., Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, New York, 1844, pp.
88–89. Marryat, Captain, Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of
Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas, Leipzig,
1843, pp. 155–156. Marryat purloined his material largely from
Kendall’s account as it appeared in the New Orleans Picayune. *Barber,
J., “The White Steed of the Prairies,” The Democratic Review, New
Orleans, April, 1843, Vol. XII, p. 367 ff. A ballad.
Pecos Bill, The Saga of. O’Reilly, Edward, the Century Magazine,
October, 1923, pp. 827–833.
Pirate fortress on Galveston Island, legend of the founding of by Don
Estevan de Sourdis and the Devil. Aimard, Gustave, The Freebooters, A
Story of the Texan War, Philadelphia, Chap. XXI.
Pirates. See Lafitte.
Randado Ranch, Jim Hogg County, origin of name of. Falvella, J. Will, a
feature article in the San Antonio Express, August 12, 1923.
Rio Grande: “Legend of the Great River.” Clark, A., Jr., Add-Rann
(Texas Christian University), Vol. IV, No. 8, 1898. Verse; narrative of
phantom lovers.
Sabine Lake, The Legend of. Reid, Mrs. Bruce, Port Arthur News, July 1,
1923.
San Antonio River, legendary origin of: *“Legend of the San Antonio
River,” Barnes, Charles Merritt, Combats and Conquests of Immortal
Heroes, San Antonio, 1910, pp. 76–79. Wright, Mrs. S. J., “A Legend of
the ‘Blessed Margil,’” San Antonio de Béxar, Austin, 1916, 121–122.
Swisher, Bella French, “The San Antonio River,” in Writers and Writings
of Texas, edited by Davis F. Eagleton, 1913, pp. 86–87; reprinted from
The American Sketch Book (Texas Pioneer Magazine). The versions by
Barnes and Wright vary little. Swisher’s version employs a thunderbolt,
lovers, and fairies.
San Antonio Valley, Discovery of. Wright, Mrs. S. J., op. cit., “An
Apache Legend,” pp. 125–126.
San Antonio River, springs of. Wright, op. cit., “When the Springs
Ceased to Flow,” pp. 124–125.
San Antonio, The Folk of the Underground Passages of. “The Padre’s
Gift,” “The Courteous and Kindly Child and the ‘Good People’ of the
Underground Passageway,” De Zavala, Adina, History and Legends of the
Alamo, etc., pp. 58–65.
San Bernard River, mysterious music in. *Letts, F. D., an article in
the Galveston News, no date given; reported by E. G. Littlejohn.
*Wilson, Eugene, J., Jr., Gulf Messenger, Houston, December, 1894, Vol.
VII, pp. 691–692. *“Wesley,” (J. W. Morris), two articles on “Fiddler’s
Island,” Freeport Facts, summer of 1922; another article, ibid., on
“Mystic Music in the San Bernard.” Western Story Magazine, “Music Heard
on Texas River,” December 2, 1922, p. 131. All these versions are
incorporated in “Mysterious Music in the San Bernard River,” by Bertha
McKee Dobie, this volume.
San Gabriel Mission, early Spanish legend concerning the abandonment
of. *Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp.
268–269.
San José Mission, San Antonio, legends of. “The Windows of the Voices”
and “A Legend of the Bells of the Mission San José,” De Zavala, Adina,
History and Legends of the Alamo, etc., pp. 142–145.
San Marcos River, A Legend of: how water lilies came in. *Swisher,
Bella French, The American Sketch Book (Texas Pioneer Magazine),
Austin, Vol. I (Vol. IV), 1879, p. 146; reprinted in Vol. II (Vol. V),
1880, pp. 91–92.
Santiago Peak, Big Bend, how it got its name. Raht, Carl, The Romance
of Davis Mountains, El Paso, 1919, pp. 77–81.
Snively. See Snively under Treasure Legends.
Sour Lake, The Legend of. Young, Maud J. The legend is referred to in
various places in Texasana, including Raines’ Bibliography of Texas,
but I have been unable to find time or place of its publication.
Staked Plains, origin of name of. Gregg, Josiah, Commerce of the
Prairies, 1855, Vol. II, p. 181. Marcy, Randolph B., Captain United
States Infantry, Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana, 1852,
Washington, 1854, p. 92. Parker, W. B., Notes ... Through Unexplored
Texas ... 1854, Philadelphia, 1856, p. 161. Sneed, John, “Many Legends
as to Staked Plains,” Dallas News, June 9, 1923.
Steed, White, of the Prairies. See Pacing White Stallion.
TREASURE LEGENDS
Almagres Mines, Miranda’s reports on. Archives University of Texas. See
pp. 12–13, this volume, notes. See Bowie, Cerro de la Plata, San Saba,
and Llano.
Anna Cache Mountains, Kinney County, treasure in. San Antonio Express,
“Cattle Clatter,” January 5, 1924.
Bowie Mine. *Hunter, John Warren, Rise and Fall of the Mission San Saba
to which Is Appended a Brief History of the Bowie or Almagres Mine,
Mason, Texas [Austin, 1905], pp. 42–59. Pamphlet, 84 pages, very rare.
*Hunter, John Warren, “The Hunt for the Bowie Mine in Menard,” Frontier
Times, Bandera, Texas, Vol. I, No. 1, October, 1923, pp. 24–26. “Fight
by Bowie Brothers while in Search for Mine,” Dallas News, January 28,
1921, Pt. II, p. 7, col. 1. Stoddard, William O., The Lost Gold of the
Montezumas—A Story of the Alamo, Philadelphia, 1897. A highly
fictionized account of some of Bowie’s treasure hunting expeditions.
See also Almagres, Cerro de la Plata, San Saba, and Llano.
Brand Rock Water Hole, Dimmit County, treasure in. Honnoll, W. V.,
Galveston News, 1909.
Casa Blanca, Jim Wells County, legends of treasure at. Sutherland, Mary
A., The Story of Corpus Christi, Houston, 1916, pp. 2–3.
Cerro de la Plata. Bolton, H. E., Spanish Explorations in the
Southwest, pp. 283–284.
Coleman County, Dig for Treasure in. Dallas News, December 9, 1923.
Ebony Cross, legend of. Brown, Clinton G., Ramrod Jones, Akron, Ohio,
1905, pp. 316–317.
“Escondida” and “Big Rocks,” treasures of, Victoria County. Rose,
Victor M., Some Historical Facts in Regard to the Settlement of
Victoria Texas, Laredo [1883?], p. 9.
Franklin Mountains, Lost Mine in to be sighted from the tower of the
church in Juarez. Stevens, Walter B., Through Texas, St. Louis, 1892,
pp. 61–63.
Guadalupe Mountains, Lost Mine in. *Hunter, J. Marvin, “Mysterious Gold
Mine of El Paso County,” Hunter’s Frontier Magazine, Vol. I, No. 6,
October, 1916, pp. 177–179; reprinted in Frontier Times, Vol. I, No. 7,
April, 1924, pp. 24–26. “Lost Gold Mine of the Guadalupe Mountains,”
Frontier Times, Vol. I, No. 6, March, 1924, pp. 1–3; reprinted from El
Paso Times.
Leander, old Spanish mine near. Fulcher, Henry C., “Corn Tassels Wave
over Spot where Legend Says Earth Gave up Fortune,” Austin American,
October 14, 1923; reprinted in Frontier Times, Vol. I, No. 4, January,
1924, pp. 16–17, under title of “Legend of the Old Spanish Mine.” A
variant of the same legend appeared in the Galveston News, March 8,
1906.
Leon County, treasure in a lake near Trinity, in. Wood, W. D., “History
of Leon County,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. IV,
p. 208.
Llano country, legends of rich minerals in. *“The Brook of Gold
Discovered by Lost Rangers,” and *“The Smelter on the Little Llano,”
both printed in this volume, were adapted from stories printed in the
Galveston News of uncertain date. “Llano Treasure Cave,” Naylor, Dick,
Texas Magazine, Houston, Vol. III, pp. 195–204; reprinted, under name
of T. B. Baldwin, in the Dallas Semi-Weekly Farm News, July 11 and July
14, 1922. See also Almagres, Bowie, Cerro de la Plata, San Saba.
Lometa (Lampasas County) Wakes up to Find Evidence that Landmark Held
$49,611 Treasure, San Antonio Express, March 1, 1923.
Mexican diggers for buried money follow white horse, San Antonio.
“Report of Mysterious Diggers Leads Police to Treasure Hunters,” San
Antonio Express, January 29, 1923.
Mexican Government gold dumped into Attoyaque Bayou, Nacogdoches
County. Fuller, Henry C., “Neutral Ground of Louisiana Line and Legend
of Buried Treasure,” Houston Chronicle, October 29, 1922. The legend
involves Aaron Burr, General Wilkinson, and the Mexican Army.
Moro’s Gold. Rose, Victor M., Some Historical Facts in Regard to the
Settlement of Victoria, Texas, pp. 36–37.
Nigger Gold Mine of the Big Bend. *Raht, Carl, The Romance of Davis
Mountains, El Paso, 1919, pp. 331–334.
Peak of Gold, The. Lummis, Charles F., The Enchanted Burro, Chicago,
1912. The “Peak of Gold” may be in New Mexico, but seems to be in
Texas.
*Realitos, six loads of treasure in a well below. In a news item
regarding the Texas Folk-Lore Society, Dallas Times-Herald, October 22,
1922; also in other Texas papers about the same date.
San Pedro treasure, the guarded. Barnes, Charles Merritt, Combats and
Conquests of Immortal Heroes, pp. 88–91.
San Saba Mines. Hornaday, William D., “The Lost Gold Mines of Texas May
Be Found,” Dallas News, January 7, 1923. Sturmberg, Robert, “The
Elusive City of Gold,” in History of San Antonio and of the Early Days
in Texas, San Antonio, 1920, Chap. III. Webber, Charles W., The Gold
Mines of the Gila, New York, 1849, pp. 190–191; 196–197. Webber makes
vague use of the legends in Old Hicks the Guide, 1848, to which The
Gold Mines of the Gila is a sequel. Bonner, J. S. (K. Lamity), in The
Three Adventurers, Austin (undated), elaborates the legend of the lost
mines. See Bowie, etc.
Snively (Schnively), Jacob, gold hunting expedition of. Hunter, John
Warren, “The Schnively Expedition,” Hunter’s Magazine, January, 1911,
p. 5. Whitehurst, A., “Reminiscences of the Schnively Expedition of
1867,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. VIII, pp.
267–271.
Starr County, treasure of “Casa de Bob” in. Lott, Virgil N., “Unbroken
and Unsuccessful Buried Treasure Hunt along Mexican Border Goes Merrily
on,” Houston Chronicle, November 5, 1922.
Wichita Mountains, quicksilver in. Kendall, George W., Narrative of the
Texan Santa Fe Expedition, New York, 1856, Vol. I, pp. 183–186; Vol.
II, p. 425.
Wichita, origin of the name. Dallas News, Magazine Section, September
30, 1923, p. 4.
Wold Woman of the Navidad. Rose, Victor M., op. cit., pp. 71–72.
CONTRIBUTORS
From the brief sketches of contributors that follow, something is
revealed of the humanistic interest in their own social inheritance
that is stirring among men and women over the State of Texas. If
culture is a cultivation of the inherent rather than a grafting of the
extrinsic—and history shows that it is—then surely no small debt will
be acknowledged to these individuals by the growing number of children
of Light who claim also to be children of Texas.
Stanley E. Babb, a young man of Galveston, has written some genuine
poetry of the sea. He is literary editor of the Galveston News.
Julia Beazley of Houston is a gatherer of Texas folk-songs as well as
of legends.
L. D. Bertillion’s business of mounting horns has carried him into many
parts, and apparently he has always traveled with open ears. Only lack
of space has prevented the inclusion of other legends of his gathering.
He lives at Mineola.
Austin Callan, who used to live at Santa Anna, is a newspaper man.
John R. Craddock is a true product of the rangy West, and he is
gathering all manner of folk material from the old-time Plains people.
Only one to the manner born can seize a legend as he has seized “The
Legend of Stampede Mesa.” At present Mr. Craddock is ranching in
Dickens County. He has written good ballads and has been a student at
the University of Texas.
Dr. Alex. Dienst of Temple is a well known scholar in Texas history. He
has contributed to the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and is engaged
on a bibliography of Texasana.
Bertha McKee Dobie has from childhood been familiar with the country of
the Brazos and the San Bernard rivers.
Flora Eckert is a native of the Llano region. At present she is
teaching in the Fredericksburg Public Schools.
A. W. Eddins, who is engaged in school work in San Antonio, has
contributed to both preceding Publications of the Society. He promises
more lore from the Mexicans.
Julia Estill is president of the Texas Folk-Lore Society and one of the
most useful members that the Society has ever known. Last year she
contributed an article to the Publications on German lore of Gillespie
County. She is principal of the Fredericksburg High School.
Jord Leeper Gay has played tramp, cowboy, treasure hunter, and
collegian. At present he is attending the School of Mines at El Paso.
Lillian Gunter is librarian of the Cooke County Free Library at
Gainesville. There she has a county museum and is inspiring a
widespread interest in local history.
Charles Heimsath is instructor of English at the University of Texas.
Frontier Times, issued monthly at Bandera, is, to one interested in
Texas folk-lore and pioneer reminiscences, the most interesting
magazine ever published within the borders of the state. Of it J.
Marvin Hunter is editor and publisher. During the eight months that
Frontier Times has appeared it has printed as many Texas legends, in
addition to folk-lore of other forms. One who is interested in folk
diction, folk metaphor, etc., will find in this magazine invaluable
source material. Mr. Hunter compiled the two volumes of Trail Drivers
of Texas published by George W. Saunders of San Antonio. He has written
also a history of Bandera County.
Martin McHenry Kenney (1831–1907) was born in Illinois and at the age
of three came to Texas with his parents, members of Austin’s colony. He
was a forty-niner, captain of a company in the Confederate Army, a
Texas Ranger, and for thirteen years Spanish translator of the State of
Texas. He was a diligent student of Indian life and knew the Indians at
first hand. He wrote “The History of the Indian Tribes of Texas,” which
is included in Wooten’s Comprehensive History of Texas.
Edgar B. Kincaid is a ranchman of Uvalde County.
Edith C. Lane is an active member of the El Paso Archaeological
Society.
E. G. Littlejohn is well known among Texas historians. He is the author
of Texas History Stories, familiar to many school children of the
state. He is secretary of the Texas Historical Society at Galveston and
principal of the Alamo School.
Adele B. Looscan, president of the Texas State Historical Association,
has made many valuable contributions to the history of Texas and has
largely encouraged the cultivation of literature in this state. Her
home is in Houston.
Roscoe Martin is a student at the University of Texas.
J. W. Morris is a lawyer at Freeport. He has written various legends of
the coast country that have been published in the Freeport Facts.
L. W. Payne, Jr. has perhaps done more than any other man to keep alive
the Texas Folk-Lore Society. He was the first president of the Society,
having been largely instrumental in founding it, and has been a
constant contributor to its Publications. Dr. Payne is now gathering
the folk-songs of Texas for a proposed volume. He is Professor of
English at the University of Texas.
Fannie Ratchford is assistant in the Wrenn Library, in connection with
which she has done interesting research.
Mrs. Bruce Reid, of Port Arthur, has put a series of legends into story
form for children. She acknowledges her inspiration to Mrs. E. C.
Carter, until recently Chief Librarian of the Memorial Library at Port
Arthur. In this library Mrs. Reid’s folk-stories are read and told to
children. Mrs. Reid has made extensive studies of birds.
R. E. Sherrill, a business man of Haskell, has written a history of
Haskell County. Working through the public schools, he has stimulated a
lively interest in the history and lore of his county.
John P. Sjolander, a veteran of seventy-three years, will long be
remembered as a pioneer Texas poet. He was born of a noble family in
Sweden, was educated in England, and came to Texas more than half a
century ago—as a seaman. For a long generation he has lived at Cedar
Bayou, cultivating poetry and the art of life. He has translated many
folk-songs from the Swedish and has contributed to various magazines of
this country and Sweden. A sketch of his life by Hilton R. Greer is to
be found in Library of Southern Literature. Only some of his “Rhymes of
Galveston Bay” are here reprinted.
J. S. Spratt, recent student of the University of Texas, lives at
Mingus in Palo Pinto County.
Mary A. Sutherland is the author of The Story of Corpus Christi, an
interesting history not only of her home city but of the lower Nueces
country. She contributed to the Publications of 1923.
Victor J. Smith, a member of the faculty of the Sul Ross State Normal
College at Alpine, is the acknowledged representative of the Texas
Folk-Lore Society for the Big Bend country. He combines anthropology
and folk-lore and contributed an article of such blend to the 1923
Publications.
As editor of The American Sketch Book, which she brought to Texas from
the north and continued to edit under the sub-title of Texas Pioneer
Magazine, Bella French Swisher was during the eighteen eighties rather
prominent in Texas literary circles. Her romantic nature took her to
California, to the stage, and to a young husband. She died some fifteen
years ago.
In the note to “The Devil and Strap Buckner” something is said of the
author’s life. Nathaniel Alston Taylor was born in North Carolina,
1835. He graduated from the University of Virginia, came to Texas, and
served as colonel in Polignac’s Brigade during the Civil War. After the
war he settled in Houston.
Louise von Blittersdorf is an enthusiastic worker in the Texas
Folk-Lore Society. Her home is in Austin, and she is a student in the
University of Texas.
J. O. Webb, Superintendent of Schools at Alvin, is writing a history of
Galveston for his Master’s thesis at the University of Texas.
W. P. Webb perhaps knows more about Texas Rangers and frontier outlaws
than any other man living. He has written various articles on Texas
history and Texas folk-lore; at present he is working on a book having
to do with Texas Rangers. Mr. Webb is Adjunct Professor of History at
the University of Texas.
Mrs. S. J. Wright is the author of San Antonio de Béxar, Historical,
Traditional and Legendary, which contains a number of legends
pertaining to San Antonio. Mrs. Wright is a leader in Texas women’s
club work. San Antonio is her home.
NOTES
[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.
[2] 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.
[3] Brewster County, in which mines were worked, was not in the old
Mexican state of Texas and Coahuila.
[4] Sutherland, Mary A., The Story of Corpus Christi, Houston, 1916,
pp. 2–3. Mrs. Sutherland does not give her authority.
[5] 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.
[6] 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.
[7] Austin Papers in University of Texas archives. Information given by
Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Archivist.
[8] See “The Legend of the San Saba, or Bowie, Mine.”
[9] 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.
[10] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Book V, Chapter III. I am aware of
the fact that some historians question the loss of any great treasure.
[11] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Philadelphia, 1874, I, pp. 420–422;
453 ff. Also, Bandelier, A. F., The Gilded Man, p. 19.
[12] Bandelier, p. 26.
[13] Zahm, J. A. (H. J. Mozans), Through South America’s Southland, New
York, 1916, p. 361.
[14] 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.
[15] Zahm, J. A. (Mozans), Through South America’s Southland, pp.
353–362.
[16] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, “The Seven Cities,” p. 125 ff.
[17] Skinner, Chas. M., Myths and Legends of Our New Possessions,
Philadelphia, 1902, p. 103.
[18] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, “The Amazons,” p. 113 ff.
[19] Bolton, H. E. (Editor), Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, New
York, 1916, pp. 130, 156, 184, 186.
[20] Ibid., p. 130.
[21] Ibid., pp. 283–284.
[22] 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.
[23] Bolton, Spanish Explorations, pp. 313–317.
[24] Lummis, Chas. F., The Enchanted Burro, p. 161 ff.
[25] Zahm, J. A., The Quest of El Dorado, p. 6.
[26] Ibid., pp. 197–200.
[27] 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 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.
[28] The Alhambra, “The Journey.”
[29] Bandelier, The Gilded Man, p. 223 ff.
[30] See “The Snively Legend,” infra.
[31] 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.
[32] Galveston Weekly Journal, May 13, June 6, June 16, 1853.
[33] “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.
[34] San Antonio Express, October 21, 1923, p. 1.
[35] 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.
[36] Bolton, H. E., Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, pp. 283–284.
[37] “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.”
[38] “Miranda’s Expedition to Los Almagres,” etc. Vide ante.
[39] 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.
[40] Bolton, supra, p. 83.
[41] 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 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.
[42] Op. cit., p. 47.
[43] History of San Antonio and the Early Days of Texas, compiled by
Robert Sturmberg, San Antonio, 1920, Chap. III.
[44] “Report on Disposition of San Saba.” Vide ante.
[45] Op. cit., p. 48.
[46] See, for instance, “The Lost Gold Mines of Texas May Be Found,” by
W. D. Hornaday in the Dallas News, January 7, 1923.
[47] 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.
[48] 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.
[49] 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).
[50] Sowell, A. J., Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Texas, pp.
405–408.
[51] “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.
[52] 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.
[53] A signed article on the Calf Creek fight in the Dallas News,
January 28, 1923.
[54] “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.
[55] Vol. I, No. I, October, 1923, p. 25.
[56] 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.
[57] This latter explanation is more probable. The feminine Santa is
never apocopated in Spanish, and caja is feminine.
[58] 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.
[59] “The company, being six months’ men, were discharged at Fort
Merrill on the Nueces, on the 4th day of May, 1851, but reorganized as
a new company for another six months the next day.”—Brown, John Henry,
History of Texas, Vol. II, p. 356. See a report to the Secretary of
War: Sen. Ex. Doc. 1, 32d Cong., 1st Session, Serial 611.
[60] See, for instance, “The Mission de Los Olmos, near Falfurrias,” by
Marshall Monroe, reprinted from the Houston Chronicle, in Frontier
Times, January, 1924, pp. 44–45.
[61] Sutherland, Mary A., The Story of Corpus Christi, Houston, 1916,
pp. 2–3.
[62] A euphemism of the Texas Rangers.
[63] Old-timers still call much of the “Magic Rio Grande Valley” by
nothing else than The Sands.—Editor.
[64] This last legend was printed in the Dallas Times-Herald, October
22, 1922, and in other papers over the state about the same time, I
having given it to the press in the hope of creating a wider interest
in legends.
[65] The mine is often referred to as the “Nigger Ben Mine.” I have not
been able to learn why, but I have a guess. In the early seventies a
half-breed negro-Mexican named Ben Hodges, but known as “Nigger Ben,”
went up the trail to Kansas with a herd of Texas cattle. “Nigger Ben”
remained in the vicinity of Dodge City and became a notorious, almost
legendary, fraud. He claimed to possess a Spanish grant to lands on the
Rio Grande on which were located wonderfully rich mines. It would be
very much in the manner of legend to blend “Nigger Ben’s mine” with
another mine on the Rio Grande claimed by another negro. For an account
of “Nigger Ben,” see Wright, Robert M., Dodge City the Cowboy Capital,
Wichita, Kansas, 1913, pp. 273–280.
[66] Raht, Carl, The Romance of Davis Mountains, El Paso, 1919, pp.
331–334.
[67] In Hunter’s Frontier Magazine, October, 1916, I, 6, 177–179.
Further testimony to the existence of “the Sublett Mine,” given by an
old buffalo hunter and prospector named Dixon, is printed in Frontier
Times, March, 1924, Vol. I, No. 6, pp. 1–3. Dixon heard of the mine in
1879 from his sweetheart, daughter of a Mescalero Apache chief.
[68] Bolton, H. E., Athanase de Mézières, II, 33–34; see also p. 47;
also, Vol. I, p. 104.
[69] Shipman, Daniel, Frontier Life: 58 Years in Texas, 1879, pp.
23–26.
[70] Edward, David B., History of Texas, Cincinnati, 1836, pp. 44–45.
[71] See Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp.
89–90, for an account of the Parrilla Expedition.
[72] Ibid., 129, 414. See also Bolton’s De Mézières, II, 187–238.
[73] After having written the above, I was informed by Mr. Joseph B.
Thoburn, secretary of the Oklahoma Historical Society, that he had
received a letter from Dr. Bolton identifying “Old Spanish Fort” with
the fortification attacked by Parrilla.
[74] See page 99.
[75] See Roberts, Capt. Dan W., Rangers and Sovereignty, San Antonio,
1914, pp. 185–186.
[76] Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp. 114,
391; Cf., also, pp. 90, 414.
[77] According to Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own
Land, Vol. II, pp. 279–280, the Hessian troops, after the surrender of
Burgoyne, packed their plate, pay, and jewels into a howitzer and
buried it somewhere near Dalton, Massachusetts.
[78] I have never heard the details of the legend, though I have heard
of it from several sources. Mr. E. G. Littlejohn sends in a legend
clipped from the Galveston News of 1909, in which a Spanish prince,
besieged by Indians about the year of 1700, cast a great quantity of
“gold, silver, and jewels” into Brand Rock Water Hole, of Peña Creek in
Dimmit County.
[79] Wooten’s Comprehensive History of Texas, Vol. I, p. 292; Brown,
John Henry, History of Texas, Vol. II, pp. 46, 66, 67.
[80] In 1816, Luis de Aury, well known in Texas history as a slave
smuggler and privateer, was, by the incipient republic of Mexico, made
civil and military governor of the province of Texas. He stationed
himself on Galveston Island and among other acts made an alliance with
the romantic Colonel Perry. See Bancroft, H. H., History of the North
Mexican States and Texas, Vol. II, 34–39. Dyer, J. O., The Early
History of Galveston, Galveston, Texas, 1916, pp. 4–9, has a rather
detailed account of Aury.—Editor.
[81] The Republic of Fredonia was announced December 16, 1826.—Editor.
[82] Manuel Flores, Mexico-Indian agent, with a party of twenty-five
men, was met by Lieutenant James O. Rice, with seventeen men, near
Austin, May 14, 1839, and Flores was killed. Burleson shortly afterward
met and defeated Vicente Cordova, Flores’ aid. See Yoakum, History of
Texas, Vol. II, 257–261.—Editor.
[83] According to his own statement, Mr. J. O. Webb of Alvin, Texas,
who is writing a history of Galveston, has never met the name of
Steinheimer in his researches.—Editor.
[84] For a history of his first expedition, see any Texas history, but
particularly “The Last Stage of Texan Military Operations Against
Mexico, 1843,” by William Campbell Binkley, in the Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXII, pp. 260–271. Perhaps a juster estimate
of the motives of Snively is to be found in J. W. Wilbarger’s Indian
Depredations in Texas, Austin, 1889, pp. 51–58.
An excellent account of the highly romantic second expedition is
“Reminiscences of the Schnively Expedition of 1867,” by A. Whitehurst,
Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. VIII, pp. 267–271.
[85] Smithwick, Noah, The Evolution of a State, p. 267.
[86] Brown, John Henry, History of Texas from 1685 to 1892, St. Louis,
Vol. II, p. 291.
[87] Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp.
140–141.
[88] Ibid., 260–261.
[89] Ibid., 138, 227.
[90] Ibid., 268–269.
[91] Ibid., 275–276.
[92] The legend may be compared with that of La Vaca de Lumbre (the
Fiery Cow) of the City of Mexico, fabled to come forth at midnight from
the Potrero de San Pablo and gallop through the streets like a blazing
whirlwind, breathing from her nostrils smoke and fire. Janvier connects
the story of La Vaca de Lumbre with that of the goblin, El Belludo de
Grenada, “who comes forth at midnight from the Siete Suelos Tower of
the Alhambra and scours the streets pursued by hell-hounds.” See
Janvier, Thomas A., Legends of the City of Mexico, “La Vaca de Lumbre,”
Harper Brothers, New York, 1910.—Editor.
[93] Skinner tells a tale of two young men who were digging for a
treasure chest supposed to have been lost by a Spanish galleon at New
London, Connecticut, in 1753. “They had dug down to water-level when
they reached an iron chest, and they stooped to lift it—but, to their
amazement, the iron was too hot to handle! Now they heard deep growls,
and a giant dog peered at them from the pit-mouth.”—Chas. M. Skinner,
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, II, 282–283.
See also Pete Staples’ story of the ghost-dog as a guardian of
treasure, page 54.—Editor.
[94] For a brief account of “Moro’s Gold,” see Rose, Victor M., Some
Historical Facts in Regard to the Settlement of Victoria, Texas, Laredo
[1883?], pp. 36–37.—Editor.
[95] Reprinted from The Coming Empire or Two Thousand Miles in Texas on
Horseback, by H. F. McDanield and N. A. Taylor, A. S. Barnes and
Company, New York, 1877, pp. 49–73.
[96] Benavides, Alonso de: The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides,
1630, translated by Mrs. Edward A. Ayer; annotated by F. W. Hodge and
Charles F. Lummis, R. R. Donnelley and Sons, Chicago, 1916, pp. 58–59.
[97] Casis, Lilia M.: “Letter of Fray Damian Manzanet to Don Carlos de
Sigüenza Relative to the Discovery of the Bay of Espíritu Santo,” Texas
State Historical Association Quarterly, II, pp. 282–283.
[98] Casis, ibid., pp. 311–312.
[99] A copy at St. John’s College, Fordham, New York.
[100] “Carta en que se da noticia de un viaje hecho a la bahía de
Espíritu Santo, y de la población que tenian ahi los franceses.” In
Buckingham Smith, Documentos para la historia de la Florida.
[101] Shea, John Gilmary: The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, New
York, 1886, p. 197. Vol. I of A History of the Catholic Church Within
the United States, 4 vols.
[102] Bolton, H. E., Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVI, No. 1,
July, 1912, pp. 8–9.
[103] Chapman, Charles E., The Founding of Spanish California, The
Macmillan Company, New York, 1916, p. 333, footnote.
[104] Hodge also recounts the legend in his “Bibliography of Fray
Alonso de Benavides,” Indian Notes and Monographs, Vol. III, No. 1, pp.
11–13.
[In addition to the references given by Mr. Heimsath, the following may
be added. The story is told in the History of San Antonio and Early
Days in Texas, compiled by Robert Sturmberg, and published by St.
Joseph’s Society, San Antonio, 1920, Chapter IV. The legend is
discussed in “Ven. Maria Jesus de Agreda: A Correction,” by Edmond J.
P. Schmitt, Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. I,
121–124; also in a note by M. M. Kenney, ibid., I, 226–227.—Editor.]
[105] Yoakum, History of Texas, I, 184.
[106] Lubbock, Francis Richard, Six Decades in Texas (edited by
Raines), Austin, 1900, p. 32.
[107] British Diplomatic Correspondence Concerning the Republic of
Texas, edited by Ephraim Douglass Adams, Austin, “Crawford to
Pakenham,” p. 13.
[108] Hudgins, Charles D., The Maid of San Jacinto, New York, 1900, pp.
12–13, footnotes.
[109] An old corruption of bore.—Editor.
[110] Cf. Southey’s “The Inchcape Rock.”—Editor.
[111] An adequate treatment, in a brief space, of the marriage customs
of the Plains Indians is to be found in Chapter II of North American
Indians of the Plains, by Clark Wissler, published by the American
Museum of Natural History. The volume includes a good bibliography of
works on Indian life.
[112] Author of Die Tochter Tehuans.—Editor.
[113] Originally there were two Spanish sites in the Menardville
vicinity, both founded in 1757: the presidio, San Luis de Las
Amarillas, on the north bank of the San Saba River, and the mission,
San Sabá, three miles south. In 1758 the Comanches destroyed the
mission; then the presidio was strengthened and maintained until 1769.
The remains of it are yet to be seen at Menard. The mission was
established for the benefit of the Apaches; their hereditary enemies,
the Comanches, from the north, regarded the Spanish policy of trying to
Christianize the Apaches as an act of war. In the middle of the
eighteenth century, it is hardly necessary to say, the Comanches and
Apaches were not yet “remnants.” The Cheyennes and Arapahoes never got
as far south as the San Saba. The whole story of the San Saba
settlement is to be found in two monographs by William Edward Dunn:
“Missionary Activities among the Eastern Apaches Previous to the
Founding of the San Sabá Mission,” Texas State Historical Association
Quarterly, XV, 186–200; and “The Apache Mission on the San Sabá River;
its Founding and its Failure,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVI,
379–414. Dr. Bolton in his Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp.
78–101, gives a succinct account of “The Apache Missions and the War
with the Northern Tribes.”—Editor.
[114] Through the courtesy of Miss Nell Andrew, librarian of Texas
Christian University, I have seen a poem by A. Clark, Jr., that relates
a similar tale. A phantom lover on the Rio Grande diurnally meets his
love. The poem is called “Legend of the Great River” and was published
in Add-Rann (T. C. U.), Vol. IV, No. 8, 1898.—Editor.
[115] This legend is reprinted from a small pamphlet called Santa Anna
Beautiful, published by Clay P. Morgan, Santa Anna, Texas, 1907. It is
the only signed article in the pamphlet, which was designed for
commercial purposes.
[116] Morphis, J. M., History of Texas, New York, 1874, pp. 510–513.
[117] Theodosia Burr Allston, daughter of Aaron Burr and wife of Joseph
Allston, Governor of South Carolina, 1812–1814, set sail from
Charleston in December of 1813 on the Patriot bound for New York. The
vessel was never heard of again, and it is supposed to have been
wrecked off the coast of Hatteras. “Some forty years afterward,
however,” according to Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary of the United
States, Vol. I, pp. 76–77, “a romantic story found credence and went
the rounds of the press, to the effect that a dying sailor in Detroit
had confessed that he had been one of a crew of mutineers who, in
January, 1813, took possession of the ‘Patriot’ ... and compelled the
crew and passengers to walk the plank.” The New International
Encyclopedia says that “a tradition of uncertain origin” has the
Patriot to have been taken by pirates.—Editor.
[118] Reprinted from The American Sketch Book (Texas Pioneer Magazine),
Vol. I (Vol. IV), 1879, p. 146; “republished by request” in Vol. II
(Vol. V), 1880, pp. 91–92.
[119] Wright, Mrs. S. J., San Antonio de Béxar, Austin, 1916, pp.
121–122.
[120] De Zavala, Adina, History and Legends of the Alamo and Other
Missions, page 150.
[121] Note the striking resemblance in plot to Lanier’s ballad “The
Revenge of Hamish.”—Editor.
[122] In a note to “The Aguayo Expedition into Texas and Louisiana,
1719–1722,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. XV, p.
39.
[123] Thrall, H. S., A History of Texas, New York, 1876, p. 37.
[124] Captain Rafael Martínez Pacheco, 1763, escaped unseen and
unscorched from the presidio in which he was besieged. According to
Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Archivist in History at the University of
Texas, the legend is to be pieced out from the Bexar archives. For some
facts of the case, see Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century,
pp. 111–112.
[125] For a copy of the song, I am indebted to Mrs. V. M. Taylor of
Angleton.
[126] “The Arms of God” by Claude M. Girardeau of Galveston, in The
Texas Magazine, Houston, May, 1897, II, 431–434. About this time Mrs.
Davis’ books seem to have been popular with readers of The Texas
Magazine, two reviews of her work having appeared in it during the
preceding twelve months.
[127] Davis (Mrs.), M. E. M., Under the Man-Fig, Houghton, Mifflin and
Co., Boston, 1895, pp. 1–3. Reprinted by permission.
[128] Aimard, Gustave, The Freebooters, A Story of the Texan War,
Chapter XXIII, Philadelphia [date not given]. The novel came out in
France around 1858 or 1860.
[129] Kennedy, William, Esq., Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects
of the Republic of Texas, R. Hastings, London, 1841, Vol. I, pp.
167–168.
[130] Thrall, H. S., A History of Texas, p. 37. Thrall goes on to say
that “in old maps the San Antonio is marked as the Medina and the
Guadalupe as the San Marcos.” For additional evidence as to the
confusion of the Brazos and the Colorado in nomenclature, Mr.
Littlejohn cites Bolton’s Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, pp.
376, 413.
[131] A History of Texas, p. 37.
[132] George Wilkins Kendall gave this account in his Narrative of the
Texan Santa Fe Expedition, New York, 1844, pp. 89–90. Prior to this
Kendall had written some sketches for the New Orleans Picayune, one of
which was about the Pacing White Stallion. It was this account that he
incorporated in the book. Doubtless many of the later written accounts
are based upon Kendall’s.
[133] The reason some of the mustangs were alone was due to the fact
that the stallion leader had driven the younger and weaker horses from
the herd. Since these horses were young, they would naturally often
have good form. The color is hard to account for. Many of the mustangs
were vari-colored, but it is doubtful if there was ever a solid white
horse.
[134] The poem appeared in The Democratic Review, XII, 367f.,
accompanied by a condensation of Kendall’s story taken from the
Picayune.
[135] Destined to be preserved for generations yet in his offspring in
Emerson Hough’s North of 36. Zane Grey has also introduced him into
fiction, in The Last of the Plainsmen.—Editor.
[136] Spence, Lewis, Myths and Legends, Vol. VII (“Mexico and Peru”),
p. 123.
[137] It should be remembered that some of the ancient peoples grouped
with the Cliff Dwellers inhabited natural caves. See Goddard, Pliny
Earle, Indians of the Southwest, Handbook Series No. 2, American Museum
of Natural History, p. 38.
[138] History has disproved this once common tale of the Lively’s never
having been heard of. See Garrison, George P., Texas (American
Commonwealths), pp. 144–145.—Editor.
[139] Says Carl Raht in his The Romance of Davis Mountains, El Paso,
Texas, 1919, p. 25: “According to these authorities [“Bandelier and
other writers who have examined the records of the early Spanish
explorers”]—and present-day research has failed to refute their
statements—the buffalo never frequented the Rio Grande in the Big Bend
region.” “I never saw a buffalo west of the Pecos”: quoted from an old
buffalo hunter in Frontier Times, March, 1924, p. 1.
[140] Stevens, Walter B., Through Texas, St. Louis, 1892, pp. 28–29.
[141] Although not a legend, this letter illustrates the popular
speculation and tradition concerning La Salle—his followers, his fort,
his death, even his treasure—that once flourished, first among the
Spanish and then among the Anglo-Saxon Texans, but that now seem to be
subsiding. As many places as claimed “Homer dead” have claimed the last
resting place of La Salle. One informant writes that some Henderson
County folk imagine that La Salle’s grave is on the west bank of the
Neches in their precincts and that they have made recent excavations in
search of treasure supposed to lie in the grave. De León made more than
one expedition in search of the French; he did find an old man who had
been with La Salle. See A School History of Texas, by Barker, Potts and
Ramsdell, Chapter II.—Editor.
[142] Rose, Victor M., Some Historical Facts in Regard to the
Settlement of Victoria, Texas, Laredo [1883?], pp. 71–72.
[143] Marryat, Captain, Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of
Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas, Leipzig,
1843, p. 278.
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