JESUIT TREASURES - ARE THEY REAL?

[Oroblanco]

All right, let's go back to the 1800's then - makes 8-ounce silver slag worth $8/ton. Also makes recovery much more difficult, due to technology of the time? Does the written record make any mention of the slag piles' sizes - even a simple estimate of length, width, depth, etc? As I've stated numerous times, I don't deny the activity - I just haven't seen anything to match its scope to the exaggerated legends.

Ah those pesky "legends" with all the inflated imaginary riches; when the reality you propose is practically negligible, some candlesticks and saddle ornaments perhaps, some copper bells, made from donated jewelry? What makes you conclude that re-smelting old slag is all that difficult? Heck Beth and I have re-melted slag in a camp fire, using some saved charcoal and a little puffer bellows to get a slug of metal. More on the slag in a moment.

Springfield also wrote

Copper mines don't excite treasure magazine readers either. I guess the copper for those mission bells had to come from copper mines - maybe the ones that produced that slag containing 3% copper?

On September 19, 1948, Mr. C. W. Walker visited Tumacacori and showed the author a location about 100 yards southeast of the mission church, on a mound which is presumably part of the unexcavated east wall of the long-abandoned Indian town. Mr. Walker picked up a few small ore and slag specimens from the top of this mound, and showed them to the writer. He then explained that in 1918 he had shipped approximately 120 tons of slag from old slag dumps adjacent to three round adobe furnaces along this stretch of high ground. He says the slag contained about 8 per cent lead, 3 per cent copper, about 8 ounces in silver, and about 1/6 ounce of gold, per ton.

<Source - National Park Service online at: Tumacacori's Yesterdays (The Treasure of Tumacacori)

I would suggest you read the accounts of the old Salero mine ores, Wandering Jew and others "alleged" to be Jesuit in origins, many of these are silver mines which also carry some COPPER. In fact, several of these mines were noted to contain more copper at depth, than was encountered near the surface, which is normal. The logical conclusion to me, is that the ores from these silver mines were processed for both the silver AND the copper, the copper being used for the obvious bells. Silver helped make those impressive silver altar and ornaments seen by witnesses at San Xavier del Bac, which otherwise we have to wonder how these rich ornaments appeared there? Packed in from China, perhaps?

I would also point out, quote

The only known operating mine in the whole of Arizona and New Mexico during Spanish times was the copper mine at Santa Rita, New Mexico, developed after 1800.

<Ibid>

Now do you consider 120 tons of slag, circa 1918, to be a "small batch"? Or do we conclude that the author cited, published by the Park Service, was quoting Mr. C. W. Walker whom was being untruthful? Or can it be that the "legends" really ARE based on facts, not fiction made up to sell treasure books?

Also not sure why you seem to think that re-smelting old slag is SUCH a costly, difficult process. I suggest you look into the previously posted similar situation which occurred in Greece, where large, ancient slag piles dating to the Pelopponesian War were re-smelted at a profit.

Mexican Indians have been recorded as smelting metals in a simple bowl, using nothing but a blow-pipe, tossing some crushed ore in with burning charcoal; the metal is reduced to a liquid and immediately poured into a mould. Modern smelting techniques are FAR more advanced of course, but the simple process of charcoal fire with air blown into it, combined with non-refractory type metal ores, will do the trick even if somewhat less efficient than modern methods.

Oroblanco

 

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[Springfield]

Aha ... numbers. (120)(2000) / 100 = 2,400 cubic feet - that's a pile about 24 feet square, 4 feet deep (a good-sized living room, belly button deep - about 10 gravel truck loads - total from three sites), containing 960 ounces of silver and 20 ounces of gold. Worth (960)(1.019) + (20)(20.67) = $1,391 in 1918. That's about $45,000 in today's dollars. Cost and recovery rate? Hard to say. I'd guess in 1918, the cost would be relatively modest, the recovery rate fair - lead's usually a big problem. Today, the costs would be relatively much, much more and the recovery rate much better too. Got any more reports?

 

[Cubfan64]

Interested in selling that bucket?

25% gold of 5 gallons is over 200 pounds of gold. Add in the host rock and that must be one super strong bucket, not to mention being worth over $4Million (@$1300/troy), or is my calculator broken?

With this kind of worth you can smelt it yourself, take the cream and still sell off the slag. What is the hang up

I was wondering the same thing after I did the math. That's a 5 gallon bucket that can hold ~800-1000 lbs. (you'd have to move that by forklift) and you're right that spending $5000 for an assay would be a drop in the bucket (no pun intended) to the gold value of the whole thing. Something doesn't sound right to me

 

[gollum]

I was wondering the same thing after I did the math. That's a 5 gallon bucket that can hold ~800-1000 lbs. (you'd have to move that by forklift) and you're right that spending $5000 for an assay would be a drop in the bucket (no pun intended) to the gold value of the whole thing. Something doesn't sound right to me

Once again, just like I said...... arguing about minutiae that have no rlevance to the REAL subject, meanwhile, page after page rolls by without answers to my questions. HAHAHA

How does anybody know how many chunks of rock were in the bucket? I have had buckets with odd size rocks that I can fit ten or fifteen in. Maybe forty pounds of rocks. If 25% of that was gold, then you'd have about 10 pounds of gold. Still nothing to sneeze at, but all of y'alls extrications having to use a forklift on the bucket, without knowing the most important thing................ wait fooooooor it .......................... what was the weight of the bucket of slag? Get that and THEN figure 25%, and you have an answer. Did he say the bucket was full? How much airspace was between the chunks? BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH NO RELEVANCE TO THE SUBJECT:

WHY DID FATHER OCH (KNOWING THAT IN SO DOING COMMITTED THE SIN OF BREAKING HIS VOW OF OBEDIENCE TO THE ORDER) BREAK AN ECCLESIASTICAL PRECEPT THAT SAID "NO JESUIT WILL PARTICIPATE IN, OR HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF (EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY) MINING, BY AMALGAMATING THE GOLD FROM THE DINNER PLATES? NOT ONLY DID HE DO IT, BUT THEN WROTE ABOUT IT LATER. JUST BY DISPLAYING THAT KNOWLEDGE, HE COULD HAVE CONCEIVABLY BEEN EXCOMMUNICATED!

MIKE

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

springfield, you generally add lead as a collection for the precious metals, then if a amall amt, eliminate the lead b cuppeling, other methods for larger amts''

Jose

 

[Oroblanco]

springfield, you generally add lead as a collection for the precious metals, then if a amall amt, eliminate the lead b cuppeling, other methods for larger amts''

Jose

Wiki has a decent article on cupellation:
Cupellation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An easy and economical way to remove silver from lead was developed in the 1880s called the Parkes process:
Parkes process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mike - the obvious answer is that father Och knew he was perfectly safe talking about his illicit activity; for all the laws, rules, precepts against mining or even having knowledge or appearance of it, we know that the Order openly owned and operated silver mines, which BTW are not mentioned in the Jesuit accounts, nor we might note, in the defenses put up by them. Several popes tried to rein in the Jesuits "unfortunate tendency to acquisitiveness" with but little effect.

It occurred to me that one legendary lost Jesuit gold mine, was a legend started by the Jesuit padre himself; father DeSmet. DeSmet publicly talked about his gold discoveries in the Black Hills (this after the "Reformation" of the Order) and led to a number of searches for his mine, which was not yet a mine of course. So in at least one instance, the legend of a lost Jesuit mine came from the Jesuit himself. So how do we pin that one on those crafty fictional treasure writers?

Oroblanco

 

[Oroblanco]

PS almost forgot,

Springfield had also posted:

Got any more reports?

On the slag, only one other, besides several witnesses whom reported seeing it. On the mines, many. Somewhere here I have an archaeological study of Guevavi which describes the two slag piles recently found by the archaeologists there, whom unfortunately did not bother to examine them much less test the slag or even attempt to explain what it is doing so close to the old mission.

I would submit that it is possible that the Molina document may actually describe what treasures and mines pertaining to the Tumacacori mission, however there are reasons to think it is encoded so the directions, distances etc are all 'not what they seem'. Sometimes things really are what they seem, simple as that.

Oroblanco

 

[Springfield]

PS almost forgot,

On the slag, only one other, besides several witnesses whom reported seeing it. On the mines, many. Somewhere here I have an archaeological study of Guevavi which describes the two slag piles recently found by the archaeologists there, whom unfortunately did not bother to examine them much less test the slag or even attempt to explain what it is doing so close to the old mission.

I would submit that it is possible that the Molina document may actually describe what treasures and mines pertaining to the Tumacacori mission, however there are reasons to think it is encoded so the directions, distances etc are all 'not what they seem'. Sometimes things really are what they seem, simple as that.

Oroblanco

Pretty sharp archie's, no?

As you know, I believe a large number of the fabulous treasure tales that came to public notice ca 1920-1940 (primarily 1930's) are coded. The Molina Document might be considered a classic.

Thank you for de-adumbrating.

 

[Springfield]

... It occurred to me that one legendary lost Jesuit gold mine, was a legend started by the Jesuit padre himself; father DeSmet. DeSmet publicly talked about his gold discoveries in the Black Hills (this after the "Reformation" of the Order) and led to a number of searches for his mine, which was not yet a mine of course. So in at least one instance, the legend of a lost Jesuit mine came from the Jesuit himself. So how do we pin that one on those crafty fictional treasure writers?

Oroblanco

Yeah, apparently DeSmet had a conscience and seemingly some respect for the Sioux, knowing their lives would go further to hell when the gold was known about. Reminds me in some ways of the 16th century Franciscan Marcos de Niza.

 

[gollum]

So Roy,

Forgive me if I am mistaken, but in SD, they would have been French Jesuits? I don't know that any other country had the embargo on Priests participating in mining. I haven't studied the English, French, or Portuguese that closely. I can guarantee that if there were no embargo on it, they (The Jesuits) would have been on mining like stink on s......... well, you know. HAHAHA

I still want to know why Father Och would break his vow of Obedience to the Order by doing something (showing knowledge of mining) expressly forbidden by virtue of Ecclesiastical Precept AND ROYAL CEDULA? In amalgamating those gold flecks from those dinner plates, he broke both Canonical and Royal Laws. Remember, that it generally takes a person about 26 years to go from Initiate to taking the Fourth Vow and becoming a Priest. Why would a Priest risk throwing away half of his life (in those days), by doing something like that? Unless those Precepts were interpreted as being more of a wink and an elbow than a REAL Precept? I don't know. NO JESUIT APOLOGIST has ever been able to sufficiently answer that question for me! While I use the term "Jesuit Apologist", I don't mean it to sound like I have any issues with the Jesuits in general. I really don't. As individuals in the Order, they have put their asses on the line as much as anybody in this world ever has. I don't think any SeAL would be angry being compared to a Jesuit Missionary. Although their missions are totally different, every one of them (both SeAL and Jesuit) is highly intelligent, superbly well trained for their missions, willing to go places and put themselves in tremendous danger to achieve their missions, even possibly at the cost of their own lives. The common thread between them is that they see themselves as part of something much bigger than any individual. Like Spock said "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.....or the one." HAHAHA

Mike

 

[cactusjumper]

Once again, just like I said...... arguing about minutiae that have no rlevance to the REAL subject, meanwhile, page after page rolls by without answers to my questions. HAHAHA

How does anybody know how many chunks of rock were in the bucket? I have had buckets with odd size rocks that I can fit ten or fifteen in. Maybe forty pounds of rocks. If 25% of that was gold, then you'd have about 10 pounds of gold. Still nothing to sneeze at, but all of y'alls extrications having to use a forklift on the bucket, without knowing the most important thing................ wait fooooooor it .......................... what was the weight of the bucket of slag? Get that and THEN figure 25%, and you have an answer. Did he say the bucket was full? How much airspace was between the chunks? BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH NO RELEVANCE TO THE SUBJECT:

WHY DID FATHER OCH (KNOWING THAT IN SO DOING COMMITTED THE SIN OF BREAKING HIS VOW OF OBEDIENCE TO THE ORDER) BREAK AN ECCLESIASTICAL PRECEPT THAT SAID "NO JESUIT WILL PARTICIPATE IN, OR HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF (EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY) MINING, BY AMALGAMATING THE GOLD FROM THE DINNER PLATES? NOT ONLY DID HE DO IT, BUT THEN WROTE ABOUT IT LATER. JUST BY DISPLAYING THAT KNOWLEDGE, HE COULD HAVE CONCEIVABLY BEEN EXCOMMUNICATED!

MIKE

OK Mike,

Father Och was a miner. He probably had a shovel and a miner's pick hidden in his robes. I suppose if he had scrapped off that gold with a knife, or melted it off in a kiln, that would also have been knowledge of mining. The Jesuits were the most well educated people in the New World. Many, many were trained in mining and mineralogy before ever setting sail for this side of the world. How, exactly, would they erase that knowledge.

Since one of their jobs was to oversee some of the kings mines, how could they be expected to do their job without knowledge of mining? It was a stupid rule and, like all Spaniards, they tended to ignore some of the king's rules, as he was far away. Like the others, they did what they had to do to survive. Those who didn't, were soon dead.

Could you show me a single definition of mining that might hint at what Father Och did?

After writing about his "mining knowledge", why do you suppose he wasn't ..... EXCOMMUNICATED!

Father Och was quite ill for many years. He considered himself a "doctor". A popular cure for many ailments, in that time, was mercury. In disabling pain and desperation, do you think he might have tried anything to get relief? He was not unknown to use what might be considered unusual remedies. Well, unusual if you don't consider mouse droppings as......
good medicine.

You guys have been showing your disdain for my knowledge and conclusions for quite a while now. For my part, I feel I have simply disagreed with your "evidence".

I have read that miners and treasure hunters stayed at some of the mission ruins for quite awhile. Is it possible they were the source for your piles of slag (volume and value unknown)?

Good luck,

Joe

 

[sailaway]

The bucket I have has been mostly crushed and ran through a sluice. What I have is the heavies. I have a 34 ft yacht and when I took the bucket off it came up almost two inches (Came off in more that one trip) you tell me how heavy it is? I have a potato salad container filled with the ore and it weighed 27 pounds.The ore (from Georgia) is being processed now, valued over 1 million. Customs took a picture of it. This gold is why my Cherokee Nation was removed to IT., it was located above the Capitol of the Cherokees.
this is the wrong forum for all this

 

[Oroblanco]

Gollum wrote

So Roy,

Forgive me if I am mistaken, but in SD, they would have been French Jesuits? I don't know that any other country had the embargo on Priests participating in mining. I haven't studied the English, French, or Portuguese that closely. I can guarantee that if there were no embargo on it, they (The Jesuits) would have been on mining like stink on s......... well, you know. HAHAHA

Father Pierre De Smet was of Belgian birth, his expeditions were in the 1840s so under US govt for the territories; he kept the gold (and silver) semi-secret for twenty years but then told US General Pleasonton of it in a letter, and spoke openly at a large dinner around the same time (shortly after the Civil War). It is not certain whether he was even talking about the Black Hills in the letters, though he definitely did at the dinner; but at any rate the "legends" originate with him, not any treasure writer nor drunken prospector seeking a free drink. Rather a strange period for Jesuits.

Cactusjumper wrote

You guys have been showing your disdain for my knowledge and conclusions for quite a while now. For my part, I feel I have simply disagreed with your "evidence".

Ah, all that "EVIDENCE" in quotes again; this is the sort of thing that convinces me this entire debate has been a complete waste of time as far as ever changing some peoples views. As to that "complete disdain" you refer to, it certainly appears that you have put all of your trust and confidence in sources which are Jesuits or Jesuit apologists, which in the case of the former, have a motive for keeping their activities in the colonial period secret. Protectionists, like the US Park Service, likewise have a solid motive for keeping those activities at least doubtful, perhaps even ridiculed (a practice used by other US govt agencies to help cover uncomfortable topics like UFOs). You ignore and dismiss every source that does not agree with your views, including the Director of the Mint, governor of Arizona, US Geological Survey among others.

Don't you think that there should not be any such evidence, if the claims that there were no Jesuit mines, no enslavement of the Indians, no masses of treasure as was so visibly reported at San Xavier del Bac?

Cactusjumper also wrote

I have read that miners and treasure hunters stayed at some of the mission ruins for quite awhile. Is it possible they were the source for your piles of slag (volume and value unknown)?

Who or whom might these mysterious, itinerant miners have been, to have been smelting ores at the old missions? Did this mystery treasure hunters then break up the resulting slag, and mix it into the mortar to decorate the very walls of the missions? Think about what you are saying here. Why would there be any Indians telling any of these mystery miners about having been forced to work by the padres, of hidden mines up in the hills? To attract tourists?

Why then do we not have this "phenomenon" of complete BS made up by local Indians to attract tourists, in EVERY mission? Instead we find that only some missions have these legends, a majority for sure, that the stories told to prospectors are not widely circulated until years have passed and the prospectors either failed to find the mines and treasures or found them as with the Salero, Wandering Jew et al, and that at every mission the stories of mines are quite different. San Xavier has La Esmeralda, Tumacacori has a whole group, Guevavi has only a couple of mines, Arivaca only a handful and not silver but gold, and so on. Great imaginations on the part of those Indians, to know to create differing and separate legends?

One last point about this un-supported speculation as to the origins of the slag piles; how many prospectors went so far as to smelt their ores? How would these miners have managed to get the needed charcoal? How would they have broken up the ore on the spot, leaving no trace of any arrastra? Why do we not have some kind of record of early miners smelting at the old missions, when by that time, there were enough visitors passing through whom left us written records of what they saw?

Perhaps we should address the slag one more time; do you separate the slag built into the mission walls, from the slag piles? If so, on what grounds? If not, then you must agree that the slag was present, when the mission churches were being built by the Franciscans and we can dismiss the speculation about unknown miners running a smelter at the old missions. If you hold that the slag built into the mission walls is not from the same slag piles, where do you say it came from? Thank you in advance.

Oroblanco

 

[deducer]

Father Och was quite ill for many years. He considered himself a "doctor". A popular cure for many ailments, in that time, was mercury. In disabling pain and desperation, do you think he might have tried anything to get relief? He was not unknown to use what might be considered unusual remedies. Well, unusual if you don't consider mouse droppings as......
good medicine.

The manifestation of Fr. Och's illness is consistent with that of someone who continually handles mercury. So it is not surprising that someone who carries around a flask of mercury is also persistently ill.

You guys have been showing your disdain for my knowledge and conclusions for quite a while now. For my part, I feel I have simply disagreed with your "evidence".

The disdain you perceived as being expressed towards you, IMHO, is not because of your considerable knowledge of this subject matter, but is the byproduct of your facetious responses to many of the carefully formulated posts presented to you, by Mike, Roy, and many others.

You alone chose to be smug or derisive in response to difficult questions directed to you, and rather than evolve in position or understanding, you become facetious and very dismissive, and perhaps this is why you have "parted company with too many good folks." Disrespect, however well-intended, always redounds upon you.

Your tactic of evading questions by asking further unrelated questions is transparent, and very repetitive. Your history of doing this dates back to the early days of the LDM forum where you still have yet to answer the cursum perficio question asked of you.

 

[cactusjumper]

deducer,

Your opinion of me is no more important to me now, than when you were first involved in The LDM Forum. The cursum perficio topic is long dead over there, and I believe it will have the same kind of lifespan here. If it's that important to you, by all means see if you can dredge it up again.

Joe Ribaudo

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

ok one for Joe.

a repetition of suggested Jesuit activities of the 1700 's

'Fr Joel Tabora leads fight to close mining down in Mindanoa, Ph


More calls for mining moratorium aired amid ?the most dangerous mines in the world? | MindaNews

 

[gollum]

BRAVISSIMO! BRAVO! BRAVO!

Ladies and gentlemen,

Please refer to the bottom section of this post:

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/t...suit-treasures-they-real-127.html#post4007001

There you will find this statement I made:

Jesuit apologists come and go, and when presented with a preponderance of evidence they fade into the sunset, or they pretend that someone has insulted them or the Order, or carry on nebulous arguments about minutiae so as to let several pages go by in hopes that everybody will forget about the questions they couldn't answer without basically agreeing with their opponents. Over the ten years I have been on this and other forums, I have seen the exact same actions and reactions from several different people (and sometimes several aliases of the same person).

Joe,

Two out of three! Bravo! I like you man, but you have done exactly as I stated previously. You feign being slighted as an excuse to either not answer, or give a smarta$$ed answer (as you did to me regarding Father Och). When you act as if you have been slighted, you are the only person that makes that leap. Last time in reference to iron smelting, you said that since your knowledge was so little on the subject, that you should bow out. Roy came right back and complimented you on your knowledge and asked you NOT to bow out. Is that one of the slights you feel?

Sorry folks, when some people get backed into a corner, there are some very obvious ways to either not answer or play hurt. I have seen different people use the EXACT same excuses over the years.

Sorry Joe, nobody here has slighted you or your knowledge. If ANYONE had insulted you, you should already know that I would be the first one in your corner (like I did to Deducer a while back). You are genuinely a wealth of knowledge. It is just a shame that since you decided to jump the fence on this subject, you dig your heels in like an old mule, and refuse to accept any evidence contrary to your current views. You have reached at straws with implausible explanations for very specific statements Jesuit Fathers have made.

To answer your question, the reason Father Och was not excommunicated for what he did and then wrote about was because he wrote that in his journals. They were not published until after his death in "Der Glaubenspredigers der S.J in Neumexico".

Mike

PS

.........and to answer your smarta$$ed question: NO. If he would have tried scratching the gold flecks off with a knife, that would be what ANYBODY might try. ONLY a person with KNOWLEDGE of mining practices would know to rub some liquid mercury to check if it was really gold........and yes Joe. Under the heading of MINING PRACTICES fall several subjects. Namely: Prospecting, Smelting, Refining, Amalgamating, Use of a Retort, etc. REMEMBER: "MINING OR ANY KNOWLEDGE OF MINING (EITHER DIRECT OR INDIRECT) WAS FORBIDDEN!" I would say that in anybody's but Joe's book, the knowledge of gold amalgamation would constitute showing a "knowledge of mining".

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

One of things I don't get about this yet is why would any wealth - if it had existed - still be around hiding somewhere today?

 

[Springfield]

One of things I don't get about this yet is why would any wealth - if it had existed - still be around hiding somewhere today?

Yeah, I've asked that question about a dozen times. Mike said once that, essentially, the Jesuits forgot where the loot was hidden. When that didn't fly, he quite recently claimed that the church didn't need the money. Go figure.

My take is that if there were significent caches, they were recovered long ago. Of course, another possibility is that the treasure magazine 'monster ' caches never existed.

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

springfield, ah but they did, a million dollar treasure doesn't ;take up much room.and we are speaking of a vast country, and being off one shovel full off can miss it,.

need I remind you of the two young Jesuits that were looking for a lost mine then finally gave up and turned it over to me, or of the Jesuit that was always looking around at Tayopa in the late 1800's until he fell to his death for which the area is still called the "cerro del Cura"

the people that live there still don't know that they live at Tayopa. ''''''''''they just wave out over the barrancas and say "somewhere out there is the lost Jesuit mine of Tayopa," yet they live in the area of 3 large treasures that I know of.


heck unless you knew there was a building there you would pass it by, they are blended in with the terrain, the only differece is a difference of color of the area.

Not all of the structrures were built of stone, in fact most were of plain old 'Adobe.

If a mine can be hidden for centuries a treasure is a snap

Knowing of a Treasure and actually retrieving it are two different birds

The one that I am working on, I know the access trail, the various rooms, but not the levels or 'how' to access it, that will require expensive equipment some day I will post the story of it.

So yes, even a large treasure can be hidden, or at least be made unavailable.