Greetings Blindbowman and everyone,
First, thank you for explaining your reasoning. However I cannot agree with your conclusions. Let me try to explain, bear with me folks this will be another Oroblanco 'book' this time....
A first note is there seems to be some mixing and/or confabulating of myths, legends and history. Father Kino did not discover Tayopa, it was discovered in the late 1500s well before Kino was born and not in the area where Kino worked. The Tayopa mines were in "bonanza" production in 1632 but shut down by the time of the Indian uprising of 1646. (As was Vainopa, if memory serves) Kino was BORN in 1644! The recorded silver and gold output of Tayopa (group) was large, the recorded output of the Lost Dutchman mine was relatively small by comparison (around 15,000 ounces total) the recorded output of lost Peralta mines - zero. My friends Gollum and others here choose to accept the tales of the lost, incredibly rich Peralta mines in the Superstitions, however I do not believe they exist as they are un-substantiated. The Lost Dutchman mine does, however there is reason to believe that Waltz simply prospected and found the ledge himself, without having to resort to Mexican Dons or Jesuit maps etc when there is no record of any Jesuits in the Superstitions either. (Read the old "Pioneer interviews" done by WPA workers in the Depression years in Arizona, the folks who lived in Florence have a
very different and far
less 'exciting' version of Jacob Waltz and his lost mine.)
if kino made the maps for the spainish and the chruch
Father Kino did in fact make maps of northern Sonora/Pimeria Alta, however I fail to find any indication on his maps of the location of Tayopa. Actually I think you can find his map on line somewhere, can't recall at the moment but I think U of Texas?
kino says he found 7 or 8 more house as large as a 4 story building.now are we to beleave that kino and the spainard moved in to this area with out converting the house in the cave to a chruch ..
Hmm well most historians conclude that the ruins and four story "house" found by explorer Kino were in fact the ancient Anasazi ruins at Casa Grande, which you can visit today - it is still impressive. No four story houses exist in the Superstitions, I feel fairly confident in saying that! So there would NOT be any converting of a four-story house in a cave into a church. In fact the Jesuits (as well as the Franciscans) usually built new buildings for churches, in every settlement and town, even small ones by mining camps known as "visitas" as they were only used by the padres very much like the way circuit judges travel from court to court today. When new churches were built on old sites, they built right on top of old ruins, not convert old buildings.
no one found the mine in the sierra madre did they ?
Well, you might want to talk to one of our members here, friend Real de Tayopa (hint!).
240 pack mules of gold and chruch treasure troves in the dutchman tunnle are not the jesuit treasure troves in the tayopa tunnle
That would be quite
correct, because no one has reported any 240 pack mules of gold and church treasure in the Dutchman "tunnel" - in fact the Dutchman's mine is not even a tunnel but a shaft. Does it make logical sense to you, for the Jesuits to haul such a massive treasure several hundred miles NORTH from Tayopa to hide them in what is quite possibly the most dangerous, unexplored area on their frontier, with prowling Apaches waiting there to skin Mexicans alive and stake them down on ant hills? Why
would they, when they could have hidden such a massive load right in the mine workings of Tayopa? Are you sure there was a report of 240 pack mule loads in the Dutchman's tunnel, and this is not the same story as the Virgin de Guadeloupe mine near Tumacacori, or possibly the thirty tons of ore stacked in the Purisma Concepcion mine, also associated with Tumacacori? I realize that many lost mines and lost treasure stories seem to have similarities, which can lead one to conclude they are talking about one and the same, but there are far more differences, many of which are clear and important. For example, there is quite a lot of confusion about the actual ore of the Lost Dutchman mine! The actual ore found under the Dutchman's bed was gold in white quartz, but another ledge in the Superstitions is gold in ROSE quartz (found and mined by a man named Wagoner, in the same general area but quite different both in appearance and richness) and there is mysterious ore brought out of the Superstitions that was black, with the appearance of "stars" (shiny specks of rather white gold) that also came from the same GENERAL area, but they are clearly NOT from the same mine! This confusion has led to many wasted hours and days of effort by treasure hunters, and it gets worse!
To give you an example, a Mexican woman who claimed to have been at the Dutchman mine with her Mexican husband, remembered they ran the ore through a sieve, then "winnowed" it in a basket, letting the wind carry away the lighter dirt. Is this important, and does it prove that she was at the Dutchman's mine, as well as lending credence to the Peralta legends? It is important, because the method of mining she is describing is a very old method of mining
dry placer gravels - for the reader who is unaware of the difference here, placer gold is gold that is loose, having been eroded out of the host rock by nature; the methods of mining it are quite different from those used to mine
lode gold (gold still in the host matrix rock, generally quartz) which is the type of ore brought out and sold by Jacob Waltz! So this Mexican woman's report may lend credence to Mexican placer mining in the area, but does not help the case of the Peralta legends and almost certainly doesn't prove she was at the Dutchman's mine.
ask your self this if the mules were over loaded and some of the maps fell out of the packs they would have come from the tunnle at the LDM and where was those other stone maps found i ask you ! you get the idea by now i hope .
There is no reason to suppose there would be a huge pack train of over-loaded mules coming out of the Superstitions - if there truly were gold mining going on there on the scale that many folks seem to believe, there would not be any LOST mines today, they would have been found because the disturbance of such a mass of workers and animals would have been impossible to miss. The Dutchman (Waltz) never made any maps to his mine, not in his lifetime - Julia Thomas made up maps and sold them, and there have been at least sixty maps to the mine out in circulation today - however none are correct for they have not led anyone to the lost mine. There is no reason to believe that Adolph Ruth found the mine, other than his last curious message in his journal (Veni, Vedi...but no Vici!) which does not exactly prove he found the mine. As for the Peralta stone maps, I am convinced they are frauds, and not older than the 1930s; created for the purpose of fooling treasure hunters and attracting visitors to the area, in which they are highly successful.
aand look at the mule shoe found by Clay worst ... it showed wear from long distances and was not locate at all . in good chance it was in fact mexican or spainish . it is just dum to think that out of a hand full of mule bones found in the back of a cave that just the only shoe found was from the dutchmans mule ,that is so far of a reach i would need a lot of drinking first to beleave that one ,,.
Yes the mysterious mule shoe found by Clay Worst. Why should we assume it is Mexican or Spanish? Could it not have come from an American mule, or even one captured by Apaches from some distance away? Apaches would take mules some distance from where they were captured before sitting down to eat them. How much do we wish to hang on a mule shoe? Unless the shoe had some way of being identified as Spanish or Mexican or with Waltz's initials on them, it is circumstantial evidence, the mule shoe could have been lost by any old mule traveling through that rocky country that was luckless enough to be captured by Apaches. Don't we have the report of Jacob Waltz that the Apaches got his mules on once occasion? Where do we suppose those mules ended up, but in the bellies of Apache braves? I would need a lot of drinking to make the leaps of logic to presume that the mule shoe and mule bones MUST be from the Peraltas or the Jesuits, much less that it is from a pack train full of gold from Tayopa....when it is just as easy to conclude this was likely the mule of Waltz or his partner Weiser. I have a bit of experience with mules and more experience with horses and how their shoes wear out, over rocky ground it is almost amazing how quickly they will wear down (one reason why most Indians removed all shoes from their horses) and they will wear down from short trips as well as long trips. The amount of wear on a single mule shoe just doesn't carry that much weight with me as evidence of Jesuits, Peraltas or anyone else for that matter. But that is just my view of this bit of evidence.
if the spanish took montezuma to the superstition that they took the treasures as well
Hmm well okay
if the Spanish took emperor Montezuma (also spelled Moctezuma) to the Superstitions, they might as well have taken along the treasures as well - however there is no record of the Spanish taking Montezuma anywhere outside of the Aztec capital, and in fact Montezuma died there. The Spaniards then had to beat a hasty retreat suffering heavy losses, it took them months to build a fleet of boats and make another assault on the capital Tenochtitlan. What happened to the Aztec gold, which filled two rooms? No one knows today, however it seems doubtful that the Waltz mine was even a shaft at that time so certainly could not hold such a vast amount of gold. Remember that the total production from Waltz's mine is only a bit more than 1200 pounds, the ore itself being incredibly rich so he did not need to create a gigantic mine to extract a fortune in gold.
this makes me think they working this mine alot more than we think they did ... they were still working it when it was lost , so thats a good sign it is not played out ! it may be far bigger than anyone knows or was lead to beleave ...
Well you are sure welcome to hold your own opinion as to how large the mine workings must be in the Superstitions, however consider this - if it were in fact such a huge operation, why is it still lost? Does it not make more sense, logically, that it was in fact a VERY SMALL mine, one that a man
working alone would be able to conceal in a matter of a day or two work? If it were HUGE, with all the thousands and thousands of prospectors and treasure hunters who have combed over those hills over the years since Waltz died (there was precious little prospecting done in the Superstitions prior to his day) and that NO ONE has managed to find it? I extremely doubt that there were any large mining operations anywhere in the Superstitions, though there were several SMALL ones. (NOT however eighteen, seven, eight or any other large number but a literal handful that could be counted on ONE hand.) When ore is extremely rich, a large operation is not necessary, and would invite attack by hostile Apaches or Yavapais, a small operation might be able to work and not be so likely to be caught by the Apaches - though Weiser was caught by them and suffered the consequences.
As for the bells ringing and dogs barking being heard miles away, hmm well that I cannot say
for certain; however here in our area you can hear dogs barking several miles away on clear days and nights, and when we lived in PA we could hear church bells ringing in three towns from our home (on a mountaintop) that were three, five and seven miles away respectively as the crow flies. So I have reason to believe they could hear the bells ring and dogs bark, if conditions were right - however I don't believe they would hear bells ringing in the Superstitions in Nacori.
RP McMurphy wrote:
For instance, the ancient Greeks have a proven history in fossilized dinosaur bones (huge) discoverd on islands from which they created their Gods
Hello RP - have to disagree with you there, the dino bones found by the Greeks were not thought to be those of gods but of monsters; their "gods" can virtually all be traced back to Bronze age princes and princesses, ordinary human beings who were "deified" (granted the honors of a god) AFTER their deaths. In fact even the Greeks themselves found the 'antics' of their 'gods' to be a bit hard to believe as 'gods' - some even commented how ridiculous it seemed for their 'gods' to be cavorting about, raping, fighting, etc. The dino bones were perplexing to the Greeks, so they imagined them as 'monsters' with some not being SO far off from the truth (the Hippogriff for example was the bones of a Tricerotops-type animal, the shoulder bones being mistaken for wings). Such monster and giant bones were usually given to local temples where they were venerated, but not taken as being "gods".
Blindbowman wrote:
how about the oak island
Again, I cannot agree that Oak Island has anything to do with Blackbeard, Captain Kidd or any other pirate including Captain Morgan himself. The amount of labor and engineering involved in creating this tremendous set of traps is beyond the abilities AND time available to pirates
in my opinion. Not to insult the good old pirates, they were pretty good at their craft - but this Oak Island trap involved building a dam across the whole bay, draining out the sea water, etc this amount of effort took a great deal of time and manpower as well as skilled engineers. Skilled engineers and massive manpower equals some sort of government effort (as in a king or baron or earl) with plenty of men, money and those skilled engineers, as well as plenty of time with no worries about a Royal Navy frigate coming across them at work.
so now you know how it was designed and what is down there and why ...
Well I have an idea what might be buried under Oak Island, but doubt that it has anything to do with pirates, and the "why" is a very different reason!
No offense intended Blindbowman or anyone else, I think we can agree to disagree - heck you might be right and could prove me utterly wrong some day. If so I hope you won't rub it in TOO much!
I hope you all have a great day, and thank you for your patience for this very long post.
Oroblanco
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
