I hope that I.O.U. is still good
Old wrote
Unfortunately I am not even sure where they are kept now. When we first read them I did not attach much credence to them for at the time I was still putting faith in the popular versions. There is not much to the interviews concerning Waltz, the story can be summed up in a couple of lines - that he was known in Florence in the 1870s, that he hired a carpenter to build a portable drywasher for tracing gold to a vein, that he had a rich gold mine somewhere in a side canyon off Pinto creek. The persons telling these few tidbits, seemed a little surprised at the widespread notoriety (and possibly the expanded stories) then attached to a man they knew as simply a successful prospector, when it was "no big secret" about his having a mine in the Superstitions. I am not keeping some part of that version secret, there simply is little detail on the location. One story that I can also recall reading (and had no mention of Pinto creek) did tell of Waltz having a partner also named Jacob but not his last name. At the time my wife and I were researching this aspect (the interviews) I had no idea that I would ever have need to show what I was reading on the internet, and simply wrote down any relevant info
for our own use - I should have made photocopies. I think Cubfan did track down the location where they are kept today? Perhaps one of our members here, who lives in Phoenix or near by, can spend a day tracking them down and making copies for everyone to see.
Sdcfia wrote
Perhaps - however
against putting too much reliance in the manuscript, judging
actions versus words, Dick Holmes did not follow those directions in his very first trip into the mountains after Waltz died, and later did a systematic search through much (if not the entire) range. These actions are in keeping with someone that did not get a set of directions from Waltz but was following the same route he had once trailed him, and possibly had known of the older Peralta/Ludy story which he presumed had to be the same mine. I did phrase that sentence IF we judge by actions is a FORM of support for truth in the manuscript, rather than
absolute proof it is genuine.
Some researchers like to sort the evidence/statements etc from our sources as all true, or all false. Unfortunately it looks like we have a mix of true and false in
many of our sources. This continues to our own day, with true facts being mixed with false, making it that much more difficult to sort them out. I am not calling anyone a liar, for we do not know who originally introduced the false information nor when. Waltz himself may have been responsible, for he may have known of the Peralta/Ludy story and simply swapped out the Ludy men for himself and Weisner. We can't even separate Julia/Reiney from Dick Holmes version very well for Dick went to Julia and met with her, after she had given up in her own search but long before we read anything from them. They may have altered their versions (which we read many years later) to fit each other's.
Considering the points about the Pit mine which will line up with the Peralta/Ludy story AND with the Joe Deering story, I think it
may be fair to conclude that it is the same mine. Sorting out the different stories from the LDM is difficult but not impossible, an example - Joe Deering found his mine open to the sky, pieces of ore laying around the entrance. The Mitchell story of Pima Indians finding a mine open to the sky, had two skeletal human remains right near it. Deering certainly would have noticed that. The Mitchell story is placed in the Mazatzals, north of the Salt, Deering was south of the river. This is one of the easier comparisons to separate but you see what I mean. Oh and Deering has the now famous "trick in the trail" tidbit - which is today attached to the LDM,
perhaps wrongly. Some have mixed the Wagoner ledge story with the LDM too, based on the Whitlow ranch coincidence, ignoring the descriptions of the ores being quite different, and that Wagoner found his gold as a virgin deposit, no sign that anyone had ever struck a pick to it much less a mine shaft dug into it.
More SOCK coffee anyone?
