Old Bookaroo
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THE TAIOPA MINE
The Taiopa mine was located, supposedly, somewhere in southeastern Arizona or northwestern Sonora. It is said to have been unbelievably rich and was in territory possessed by the Pima Indians. It is claimed that this mine was near the mission of San Bernardino, which lies just across the Arizona boundary in Sonora, and that it was worked under the supervision of the padres of that mission.
The tradition persists among the Pima Indians today that the Taiopa mine was worked under the supervision of the jesuits [sic] of San Bernardino and that, when in 1767 came the royal order for all jesuits to leave Spanish territory, the padres of this mission told the Indians that some day they would return and, while it might be many years, the Indians were to keep a fire always burning at the mine, to guide the returning padres to it.
The jesuit fathers never came back. But the Indians, generation after generation, faithfully kept the fire burning and with the passage of time it became a tradition that some day those same “black robes” would return. And so the fire never has been allowed to die.
Somewhere, say the Pimas, in the bewildering maze of the mountain fastnesses of that region the fire burns still.
No record of any such mine has yet been found in the archives of Mexico. If there was such a mine, and it was worked by the jesuits, it is not probable that any record of it ever will be found in secular archives.
But some of the Pima Indians today claim to know its approximate location. It is a fact that for many years after the first Anglo-americans came into south-eastern Arizona the Pimas frequently sold them quantities of ore that was very rich, but these natives could be neither persuaded nor coerced into revealing the source of this ore. They declared that the curse of the “black robes” would fall upon whoever revealed the location of the mine.
None of this ore has been brought in for many years, and it is conjectured that the Indians who knew the exact location of the mine are now all dead and that their confinement upon a reservation has prevented their showing the mine to any of their children. This supposition, however, does not harmonize very well with the tradition that the fire still is kept burning.
The story still is current through southern Arizona of how a Mexican woman once was permitted to visit the Taiopa mine. She had taken care of a Pima chief through a long illness, and upon his recovery he gave her some pieces of ore containing a high percentage of free gold. This roused a good deal of excitement in her village, and she was urged to prevail upon the chief to show her the source of the ore. At length he yielded to her importunities and consented.
But she was disappointed in her hopes. She was conducted by two Indian [sic] women who adopted the precaution of traveling only at night and in addition blindfolding the Mexican woman while traveling. On the morning after the fourth night the mine was reached, and the woman was permitted to gather up some of the ore to take back to her village as proof that she had visited the mine. That evening she again was blindfolded and conducted from the scene.
Only two nights' travel was required to reach home; she, therefore, was evidently led back over a different route and a much shorter one. The woman retained no idea of the direction in which she had traveled, and the distance could have been anything up to two nights' travel.
There are several traditions as to what the padres of the San Bernardino did with the bullion obtained from the Taiopa mine, but the most persistent is that they buried it somewhere on the mission grounds. The Mexicans of southeastern Arizona tell many tales of the attempts to find this wealth, and it appears that the grounds of the San Bernardino, like those of the Tumacacori, have been pretty well burrowed.
~ Legends of the Spanish Southwest by Cleve Hallenbeck and Juanita H. Williams (1938)
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Editor’s Notes – Researching the Lost Tayopa, it is important to remember the various spellings of the name. These authors used “Taiopa.” Others have used “Tyopa.”
Good luck to all,
The Old Bookaroo