Hola amigos,
This is a very long reply, but will be my last on this topic so you will not have to continue to wade through them forever.
Deducer I included that reference to the discovery of a Jesuit treasure hidden in a cave, dates to the 1730s well before their expulsions and suppression, I have not researched it farther as it occurred in the kingdom of Sardinia and no amount of evidence seems to make the slightest difference.
Cactusjumper wrote
Roy,
Have you ever seen those fancy Mexican saddles Perhaps they need the silver for horse tack. You do realize there was a scarcity of silverware in Sonora, don't you? Would you expect the Jesuits to eat with their hands? They were trying to convert the natives to civilization, not join them in prehistorical manners. Seems obvious to me. On the other hand, I'm glad you asked the question.
I have seen quite a few Mexican saddles fitted with "silver" for decoration, often worked in the most beautiful way, only the thing is that most of these "Mexican silver saddles" are decorated with "German silver" which is NICKEL, not silver. Silver tarnishes very readily, nickel not so much.
Second point - making silverware is more complicated than casting rude dore bars, would you not agree? Would you expect the missions to send their tithes in the form of silverware? Even casting bells and crosses, is less complicated than silverware, which is generally not cast in the form of spoons and forks but in a rod or bar, then worked by a silversmith very much the same way a blacksmith makes hinges, hammering the heated metal and working it with tools to get the desired product.
Your third point, that the Jesuits were trying to impress the natives into adopting "civilized" ways, is partly true and partly not - the Jesuits became infamous for their penchant for adopting the ways, dress, foods, even to the point of pretending to worship in the "heathen" or "pagan" religious rites, as happened in India and China to great scandal at Rome. Father Kino was famous for traveling while carrying nothing but parched corn for his food, which hardly required any utensils at all as it is similar to popcorn.
Cactusjumper also wrote
They did a really good job of covering up their sins, not to mention hiding their ongoing work from all of the Spaniards and prospectors combing the country for said gold and silver. Can't help but wonder why the natives didn't spill the beans after the Jesuits were gone. Can't say they weren't interested in acquiring.....things, as they often went to work in the mines.
I agree they did a good job of covering their sins, and as to "hiding" their ongoing work from the Spaniards, very true that they WERE trying to keep all Europeans OUT of their Mission Areas. How is it that you have missed this? Have you not notice the complaints, and how all troubles are always laid by the Jesuits at the feet of the Spanish, or Portuguese or French etc where ever they were operating as missionaries? In only one place were they very successful in keeping ALL Europeans out for some time, Paraguay, which is another story, but absolutely they tried to keep the Spanish out of "their" areas and that includes Pimeria Alta, where they were less than 100% successful.
A further point here but you SEEM to always approach this from the all-or-nothing method, as for instance in this point, either the Jesuits were keeping it ALL top-secret and unknown to the Spanish or else it should be not only fully known but fully documented. SOME of the Jesuit mines WERE KNOWN TO THE SPANISH - and owned openly and yet VERY QUIETLY. Others were NOT known openly, but were learned of and later investigated when the Spanish authorities threw out the Jesuits, as in the example in Baja, where the mines turned out to be too poor to work by ordinary methods, and yet they HAD been worked during the period of total Jesuit control. The obvious answer there is that the mines could be worked thanks to having free <as in forced> labor.
A big point here is that the Spanish authorities were NOT very concerned about the mines - despite the royal edicts banning priests of all religious Orders to STOP mining, it was openly flaunted virtually everywhere in Mexico. The Spanish authorities WERE interested in the product of those mines, and failed to find it, even though they knew it must exist and had not been shipped nor recorded as required by law.
One further point you have raised but the Indians DID "spill the beans" despite the reports we have of the padres impressing upon the natives that they must not reveal the locations to any but their confessors, namely the padres, though often long after the Jesuits had gone, and we find that most of the "legends" of lost Jesuit mines and treasures which you view so dimly as coming from treasure hunters,
really came from the Indians themselves - "spilling the beans".
Not that ALL Indians failed to keep things secret, nor that ALL told about the mines. Do you view the Indians as a single entity, incapable of individual variation of behaviors? The Jesuits are a far better example of such a group being monolithic in behaviors and beliefs, and even in this group there are wild variations.
Cactusjumper also wrote
The Jesuits were only interested in mining, not preaching to the natives. They often wrote about becoming martyrs, and that became a fact for many of them.
Where and whom
EVER said or took that position you stated in your first sentence here? YOU seem to view things on that level, which is very far from accurate. I know that I have repeatedly stated that the Jesuits "temporal" interests covered virtually
every brand of commerce available, NOT "only mining" by any stretch of the imagination - in the north where furs were the common money,
they traded in furs, where sugar plantations were the main means of support, they ran sugar refineries and plantations, but you seem to allow that the Jesuits were involved in agricultural pursuits ONLY, even though their own records do not specify that, and I hate to keep repeating this one source the Catholic study of the Jesuit wealth in Mexico, documented evidence of the Jesuit Order owning MINES plural. Did father Polzer mention the mines owned by Jesuit colleges by the way? You already know the answer. Oh and to back up that statement about the Jesuits being involved in ALL kinds of commerce, which includes mining, quote
....Cardinal Saldanha, after investigation, made a report in which "the fathers of the society in Portugal and her dominions at the end of the earth are declared on the fullest information guilty of every crime of worldly traffic which could disgrace the ecclesiastical state. "
<from The Footprints of the Jesuits, pp 189,
citing The Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese Dominions By the Rev Alfred Weld of the Society of Jesus London,pp 131-132, Weld was a stout Jesuit apologist BTW>
Cactusjumper also wrote
Sorry Roy, you and deducer can denigrate my position as much as you like. What you call evidence has not moved me.....so far.
My "denigrating" post was stated
IN JEST hence the smilies, just pointing out that you keep repeating how you formerly believed in Jesuit treasures in the same way that people say they used to believe in Santa Claus, which could be taken as very condescending or even sarcastic. We have posted evidence of some impressive Jesuit treasures like the seven TONS of gold in a Jesuit church for one example, which I am positive that the Jesuits would refer to as "ornaments of the Church" and yet this does not seem to you like it could be classed as a treasure? From the Jesuits own writings we have descriptions of the rich "ornaments" of the frontier missions, even in the little Visitas as Tumacacori certainly was, yet after the Jesuits departed, a year later almost none of it was to be seen by the Franciscan padres arriving. From the example of San Xavier del Bac, it was not the padres whom hid these "ornaments"
but the Indians themselves, as it was they whom brought the treasures out for the returning Jesuits to see in 1860. From father Kino and another (I think possibly Keller) we have in their own words that they hid such "ornaments of the church" during periods of danger, and a report of the discovery of a "massive" Jesuit treasure hidden in a cave just as these padres wrote of having done, I think it is very unfair to keep implying that there never were such things and could not be today worthy of "believing" in.
To add to this point - you know that the so-called "roundup" of the Jesuits in Pimeria Alta was NOT run like a modern sting operation, they simply sent out word for the padres to come in and they came in. Considering that they must have known what was in the wind, having seen their Order thrown out of Portuguese dominions, French dominions, do you suppose that the padres might not have told their "helpers" and trusted Indians to protect the "ornaments" of the Church until their return? Would that not make sense? Or is it not possible that the Indians, on realizing that the padres were NOT returning, might not have taken these goods and concealed them, themselves? These Indians would have had nearly a year to fully conceal any and all mines and treasures.
Cactusjumper also wrote
By the way, do you think John Poynder might have been just a touch anti-Jesuit?
Absolutely -
does that make his words false? If so, you could provide some proof that his statements which have been posted here are false, but having seen the multiple cases of Jesuits lying about their activities, including and especially the mining, I do not feel we can trust the Jesuits version of their history. By the way, why do you suppose so many of these "anti-Jesuits" published books warning of the excesses, and even dangerous political intrigues of the Jesuits, and thus became tagged as "anti-Jesuit"?
As we keep getting nowhere in this, as you seem to be willing to write off the production of multiple silver and gold mines of the Jesuits as possibly used for decorating saddles and similar trifles, despite the fact that one Catholic bishop (Palafox) was so alarmed at the massing wealth of the Jesuits he wrote to the Pope about it, I am going to let it go, and simply
agree to disagree.
Thank you Joe and everyone for the long and very interesting debate, and to all whom have participated, my apologies for any and all statements which were offensive in any way. Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek. I will answer if someone directs a comment to me, but have bored my friends and tested patiences long enough.
Oroblanco
Perhaps they need the silver for horse tack.
