Cave of gold bars

[Tom_in_CA]

Blackline,
Take a good hard look at your treasure marker clues, make sure they're real. I have mentioned this before, about an old treasure hunter that looked for the LDM and Jesuit treasure for many years. He got so angry when found out that other people made fake treasure signs, that he went back into the mountains and made his own fake clues. I'm not saying all clues are fake, I believe in markers but take a good look at them. I hope that you have something good.

nobodie: I distinctly recall from back when I was a kid, being intrigued with "treasure" and "caves" and so forth (probably my precursor to my md'ing addiction haha). So as a little kid, when doing graffiti (as all rambunctious kids are prone to do), I would do graffiti of the following nature:

"John Smith was here Jan 30th, 1864" (or some such nonsense as that)

Thinking to myself: "The next passerby will get his thrills thinking he's looking at pioneer graffiti ! "


So you're right: people can read too much into symbols, writings, rocks, etc.... They might just be silly fanciful nonsense. Normal recurring graffiti and art. Random coincidental shapes, etc.....

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

example #2 of of "telephone game gone awry" type silly-ness:

In the 1980s, when I was in my 20's, I used to get my hair cut by a particular barber in our city. And one day, the conversation arose of how my hobby was metal detecting and history. The Barber launched into a story of how, when he was a kid, he saw a carving on a tree of a date of "1753". And that the oak tree in question is so thick and giant and large, that it's easily 500+ yrs. old, blah blah.

I tried to explain to the guy that this was an impossibility, since the earliest European toe-hold (permanent settlements in our area) wasn't till 1770 (Monterey, CA). But he surmised that it was earlier explorations (that are recorded). Or fur trappers from the east that ventured this far west, yet are un-recorded to-history, etc.. After all: How can you argue with a carved date ??

So I begged and pleaded and cajoled, and ... he finally gave me some directions to this carving in this tree. I drove out, hiked around, and found the tree he spoke of. INSTANTLY I could figure out what was wrong:

He was looking at a date of 1953. Because of the stretching and skewing of the growing bark on the tree, the deeply engraved initials/carvings, began to get squinched, and the "9" started to look like a "7". Thus the fellow (very sincere) was 200 yrs. off.

Do you see how, stuff like this LEFT UN-QUESTIONED and without a "skeptical eye", would just pass through the annals of history as "such & such evidence of European settlement by such & such year" blah blah. ?

So too is the same for all the "spanish treasure" lores. ANYONE can compile an impressive list of supposed proofs, landscape clues, funny squiggles, etc... But upon further scrutiny, you will most likely find "more plausible explanations"

 

[BlackLine]

I agree with everything you said only in one thing. The Jesuit cross is real and perrine believes his grandmother Lydian. He spend a long time out there. The legend is reborn with him and why does he lie? He didn't write a book

 

[Tom_in_CA]

... and perrine believes his grandmother Lydian. He spend a long time out there. The legend is reborn with him and why does he lie? He didn't write a book

Well, the best I can answer this is: For the various parts & portions of any treasure-legend in question: The persons stating various things (things they saw, the conclusions they drew, etc...) can ALL be ... uh... VERY "sincere". You're right: There need-not-be some profit motive, or "reason to lie". They can utterly believe it, and be quite sincere in passing along the "juicy tidbit" in the telephone game.

Take for example the 1753 vs 1953 story I related above. You see how the barber was "quite sincere", right ? And I could ask the same questions you are asking. Eg.: "why would he lie?" and if he wrote a book about it, I would ask "if it isn't true, then why would he write a book?", etc.... And I could even bolster the notion by saying (as you said in your quote) : That he "spent a long time out there" (as a teenager hiking the hills by his house). And so on , and so forth. Each point will have strong rhetorical force, right ?

BUT AS YOU CAN SEE, they all prove nothing. The fact is : I would never have found out the 1753 vs 1953 if I hadn't gone to personally view it. And to have applied some understanding (of tree-bark-age-stretching).

Or put it this way: 99% OF THE FACTS OF A TREASURE LEGEND can be "true" (eg.: names of people, dates of occurances, accounts of missing money, people who claim to have seen such & such, etc....). But if there's no treasure (the 1% of the story that isn't true), then you can see that IT DOESN'T MATTER how much of the OTHER stuff is true. It becomes like rat poison: 99% good grain. But 1% poison. And it doesn't matter how much good grain is in there. If there's 1% poison, then the grain is not good to eat.

That's the problem with all these fanciful legends (oak island, yamashita, LDM, etc...), is that the believers can and will debate all the facts (and try to draw out speculations and theories, etc...) from those facts. Saying to themselves "it's just a matter of separating fact from fiction". But what this fails to realize, is that if there's no treasure (ie.: the 1% of the story that isn't true), then all the other stuff about how many pancakes it takes to shingle a dog-house, all become a moot point.

 

[H-2 CHARLIE]

Nice work there you have some time invested , keep it up you seem close .

 

[Real of Tayopa]

Tom, I have never found a treasure by any signs. The sole exception was at Tayopa But it wasn't enough to find it, it merely alerted one to the fact that it was there, but where ?? A single+ peso, 8 reales, was very hard to come by. A minor official often worked fr months for one. The mission treasures were far different from the mines.

I have posted a picture of one mule load of 8 reales, one of 8, my share, one burried in savd, no marks, ]ust a story.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

... The mission treasures were far different from the mines....

Real-of-Tayopa , we all love your posts and inputs on T'net !

If your missions in Mexico were packed with star-studded treasure lore, then yours are a far cry from our missions up here.

As you know, the indians up here had no refined metals. That is: That unlike the indians of south America (eg.: the mexico city fabled gold the incoming Europeans gathered and gobbled up), it was not the same here. They did not gather or refine the gold that is in the hills here. So perhaps some of your missions/churches near the 'ground zero' of that gold history, is different than up here.

Any manufactured goods or refined metals had to come up north from the Mother country of Mexico. If we're talking about the Spanish frontier of Arizona, Texas, New Mexico (which, yes, had spanish outposts as early as the 1600s), then figure that ANYTHING coming up that far, had to come across the Chihuahua desert by land. Thus notice those old surviving churches (the few that remain to be seen) are rather modest poor simple concerns. Not at all "lavish". Perhaps the churches of ground zero earlier gold-era Mexico and gold bearing regions down there, had churches that were lavish (and you could try to justify a "treasure legend" story). But by the time they got this far north, no, they were not that well provisioned. And no, there was never enough historic gold mining on-site here to amount to anything more than some trinkets they could make. And in CA for instance, gold (of any significance) was not even discovered till AFTER the Spanish and Mexican era.

Any "gold" that could have come up to the American SW churches, would either have to come up by foot, or by ship to the west coast. And it was VERY difficult for ships to ply northward , up past Baja, up past San Diego, going north. Because the currents went COUNTER to that direction. It was easy to sail south back to Mexico, but very difficult to go north. So a lot of Spanish times ships that came past our section of the coast, were galleons returning from the Philippine manila trade . And they were said not to have stopped . Once they sighted the coast of CA (following the pacific currents) they immediately went south to Mexico. BUT EVEN IF IT COULD BE SAID THAT THEY STOPPED (and yes, a few did), they were laden with goods. Not gold and silver. So they'd be carrying porcelin, silk, wax, spices, etc.... Any gold and silver they'd brought, would have been to pay for the goods in the Philippines.

Thus no: Our west coast Spanish era missions, and I would venture to guess NM, AZ, TX, and baja CA are all going to be the same: Frontier outposts that were doing good to get trinkets and some silver coins.

I won't argue with the notion of those churches deeper in Mexico , as to whether or not THEY necessarily contain "treasure". Except to say that .... you've admitted before, that ... uh .... superstition is hard to put to rest. So I would be very skeptical of "caves of gold bars hidden by the jesuits" EVEN DOWN AT GROUND ZERO of gold bearing Mexico/spaniard era stuff. Simply because such stories tend to be a dime-a-dozen down there.

 

[Loke]

@Blackline,
I might not always agree with your findings, but ... you have come from afar and put boots on the ground! Kudos to you!! I am impressed!

 

[audigger53]

Real-of-Tayopa , we all love your posts and inputs on T'net !

If your missions in Mexico were packed with star-studded treasure lore, then yours are a far cry from our missions up here.

As you know, the indians up here had no refined metals. That is: That unlike the indians of south America (eg.: the mexico city fabled gold the incoming Europeans gathered and gobbled up), it was not the same here. They did not gather or refine the gold that is in the hills here. So perhaps some of your missions/churches near the 'ground zero' of that gold history, is different than up here.

Any manufactured goods or refined metals had to come up north from the Mother country of Mexico. If we're talking about the Spanish frontier of Arizona, Texas, New Mexico (which, yes, had spanish outposts as early as the 1600s), then figure that ANYTHING coming up that far, had to come across the Chihuahua desert by land. Thus notice those old surviving churches (the few that remain to be seen) are rather modest poor simple concerns. Not at all "lavish". Perhaps the churches of ground zero earlier gold-era Mexico and gold bearing regions down there, had churches that were lavish (and you could try to justify a "treasure legend" story). But by the time they got this far north, no, they were not that well provisioned. And no, there was never enough historic gold mining on-site here to amount to anything more than some trinkets they could make. And in CA for instance, gold (of any significance) was not even discovered till AFTER the Spanish and Mexican era.

Any "gold" that could have come up to the American SW churches, would either have to come up by foot, or by ship to the west coast. And it was VERY difficult for ships to ply northward , up past Baja, up past San Diego, going north. Because the currents went COUNTER to that direction. It was easy to sail south back to Mexico, but very difficult to go north. So a lot of Spanish times ships that came past our section of the coast, were galleons returning from the Philippine manila trade . And they were said not to have stopped . Once they sighted the coast of CA (following the pacific currents) they immediately went south to Mexico. BUT EVEN IF IT COULD BE SAID THAT THEY STOPPED (and yes, a few did), they were laden with goods. Not gold and silver. So they'd be carrying porcelin, silk, wax, spices, etc.... Any gold and silver they'd brought, would have been to pay for the goods in the Philippines.

Thus no: Our west coast Spanish era missions, and I would venture to guess NM, AZ, TX, and baja CA are all going to be the same: Frontier outposts that were doing good to get trinkets and some silver coins.

I won't argue with the notion of those churches deeper in Mexico , as to whether or not THEY necessarily contain "treasure". Except to say that .... you've admitted before, that ... uh .... superstition is hard to put to rest. So I would be very skeptical of "caves of gold bars hidden by the jesuits" EVEN DOWN AT GROUND ZERO of gold bearing Mexico/spaniard era stuff. Simply because such stories tend to be a dime-a-dozen down there.

Actually the Spanish did mine silver in the Philippines. It was a volcanic bore that was mined into WWII. When the Japan troops pulled out the blew the shaft from top to bottom. It was mined for over 200 years and still not played out.

 

[BlackLine]

Here are some videos i made from the head and the hole. The first shows the "marker" in the mouth (lol - that was a reason why I am flown to Arizona). The white on the stone ... is it an old painting or just lime? It f***ed me up. Sorry for my choice of words. The second shows the small cave (probably a prospect hole?). The third shows the backside of the head. There is a small painting/lime and a hole. the head looked to the opposite canyon and if i looked from behind the head thru the hole (eyes of the head) i could see a boulder. sorry for the sound it was the first day and i used a case does somebody hear anything untypical there over the past years?

 

[BlackLine]

Beautiful - the fat spot on the camera and the quality from youtube. Normally it looks from 3-6 feet away so

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Actually the Spanish did mine silver in the Philippines. It was a volcanic bore that was mined into WWII. When the Japan troops pulled out the blew the shaft from top to bottom. It was mined for over 200 years and still not played out.

Perhaps. Sure. I'm sure there's locations that can produce gold all around the world for that matter. But in-so-far as it pertains to "hidden gold at Spanish frontier missions", that would not have a bearing. In the post of mine you quote (in-so-far as it relates to the Spanish trade with the Philippines @ 250 yrs. @ ~2 ships per year), the gold & silver would have been going TO the philippines (to buy the goods). Thus the fact of any locale gold production there, would be moot for this. They were not returning to Mexico with that. They were returning with trade goods.

 

[H-2 CHARLIE]

Did you guys have a Metal Detector ?
If not what a waste of time but keep keeping on . Good luck

 

[BlackLine]

Things

Did you guys have a Metal Detector ?
If not what a waste of time but keep keeping on . Good luck

Don't forget we were just tourists. So no. We didn't have any Metall detector.

 

[BlackLine]

We had a theory nothing more

 

[audigger53]

Perhaps. Sure. I'm sure there's locations that can produce gold all around the world for that matter. But in-so-far as it pertains to "hidden gold at Spanish frontier missions", that would not have a bearing. In the post of mine you quote (in-so-far as it relates to the Spanish trade with the Philippines @ 250 yrs. @ ~2 ships per year), the gold & silver would have been going TO the philippines (to buy the goods). Thus the fact of any locale gold production there, would be moot for this. They were not returning to Mexico with that. They were returning with trade goods.

Here we agree to disagree. IMO They were shipping silver from the Philippines that they mined back to Spain. Why ship gold or silver to the Philippines when they were taking silver out of there? No gold just silver. This had nothing to do with the missions in California or Mexico. I fully agree that it was hard or almost impossible for the missions in California the be "Rich". No mining by the missions that I know of there.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Here we agree to disagree. IMO They were shipping silver from the Philippines that they mined back to Spain. Why ship gold or silver to the Philippines when they were taking silver out of there?....

Well ask yourself a few questions then:

1) why would ANY gold producing region "accept more gold". After all, they mine it themselves, eh ? Yet I can tell you for a fact, that if you show up at EVEN THE MOST ABUNDANT gold and silver producing regions of the world, and walk in to ANY store to buy something, guess what ? They will hold out their hand waiting for you to pay for your goods with money.

2) If we both agree that trade good were the objective of those manila galleon trips (spices, porcelin, silk, wax, etc....) then ... how do you think they were paid for ? Obviously they were paid for with $$ that was coming OVER there. And returning with the trade goods.

There is a local nautical maritime historian expert/author/speaker here in Monterey, CA . I've rubbed shoulders with him several times. And I'm getting my info. from him (as well as the common sense buy/sell/trade ramifications he pointed out). He said that *at best* there would be a single pay-box lunch-box sized "purse" that the captain might have in his particular quarters. But no, it was not at all like the "Mel Fisher" type stuff, where the SOLE PURPOSE of the ship's travel was solely and distinctly the transfer of riches from one country to another.

And have you heard of the story of one of the Manila galleon ship wrecks that was actually found ? It was on a remote deserted stretch of Baja CA beach in, I believe, the 1950s. All that was ever found, was broken plate wares / porcelin shards, and wax globs.

 

[deducer]

I'd watched it more than once. With all the respect, did you really read my first post? My area of interest is the terrapin pass.

I did.

You talk about shadow signs. Not sure Walter ever did that, unless I missed something.

To be clear, I am not dismissing the story or the details. There are too many stories of Apaches burying shafts or entrances for there not to be any truth to it. Also the "gold bars stacked in cave" is a recurring theme in many stories originating in the Supes. There is a reason for that kind of story to exist in the Supes.

But as with all treasure tales, there's so much chaff and very little wheat. That's why it's critical to do very good research.

As Al Reser was fond of saying, the difference between a good and bad treasure hunter is knowing the difference between what you think and what you know.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

... too many stories of Apaches burying shafts or entrances for there not to be any truth to it. Also the "gold bars stacked in cave" is a recurring theme in many stories originating in the Supes. There is a reason for that kind of story to exist in the Supes.

But as with all treasure tales, there's so much chaff and very little wheat. That's why it's critical to do very good research.....

good post. Treasure stories (that sound SSEEEOOOoooo good) are a dime-a-dozen. And you can never put them to rest.

Remember all the treasure magazines of the 1960s and '70s ? They were PACKED FULL of stories of "lost mine" and "stagecoach robbery" and "missing military payroll" blah blah . And ... after awhile, they all sort of started to sound the same:

"The dying miner drags himself into the wild west saloon. The lone survivor of an indian attack. As curious onlookers gather around him, he spills the story of fabulous riches back at his mine. The saloon patrons take him to the doctor. But ... alas, he dies of his injuries before being able to reclaim his fortune. Here's the 5 clues he left on his deathbed: ....."

They were all so fun to read. And you couldn't help but get treasure fever. In fact, a buddy of mine even submitted one of those stories. To get the $50 or whatever article acceptance pay. All fancifully made up. But ... heck, throw in a sketch of a miner posed next to his burro. And add in a few faded newspaper clippings (real names and events). Then ... by golly ... it MUST be true. We got a good laugh out of that wondering how many people would actually go looking for it .

 

[azdave35]

good post. Treasure stories (that sound SSEEEOOOoooo good) are a dime-a-dozen. And you can never put them to rest.

Remember all the treasure magazines of the 1960s and '70s ? They were PACKED FULL of stories of "lost mine" and "stagecoach robbery" and "missing military payroll" blah blah . And ... after awhile, they all sort of started to sound the same:

"The dying miner drags himself into the wild west saloon. The lone survivor of an indian attack. As curious onlookers gather around him, he spills the story of fabulous riches back at his mine. The saloon patrons take him to the doctor. But ... alas, he dies of his injuries before being able to reclaim his fortune. Here's the 5 clues he left on his deathbed: ....."

They were all so fun to read. And you couldn't help but get treasure fever. In fact, a buddy of mine even submitted one of those stories. To get the $50 or whatever article acceptance pay. All fancifully made up. But ... heck, throw in a sketch of a miner posed next to his burro. And add in a few faded newspaper clippings (real names and events). Then ... by golly ... it MUST be true. We got a good laugh out of that wondering how many people would actually go looking for it .

i first started reading treasure mags in the late 70's and of course i concentrated on the ones in arizona...i wasted alot of time driving around arizona looking for these treasures...in the early 80's i met an old timer that had been treasure hunting and prospecting for 50 years..i told him about all the places i had been to looking for treasure that i read about in magazines...i happened to mention the name of one of the more prolific writers of az treasure stories ...he busted up laughing and told me that person was his brother in law and he was completely full of doo-doo...he asked me to name off a few of the other treasure writers i followed....he once again busted up laughing....it seems that his brother in law had about 10 or 12 alias's that he wrote under ...he made a decent living making up stories and selling them to the magazines and he did so under different alias's so they wouldn't catch on....he also sent in stories to all the western mags ...i learned at an early age not to believe everything you see in print