Arizona, Prehistoric, Aboriginal, Pioneer, Modern: The Nation's Youngest
by James H. McClintock - Arizona - 1916
Page 392
One variety of the "Lost Dutchman" story concerns the operations of a German who made his headquarters at Wickenburg, in the early seventies. He had a very irritating habit of disappearing from the camp once in a while, going by night, and taking with him several burros, whose feet would be so well wrapped that trailing was impossible. He would return at night, in equally as mysterious a manner, his burros loaded with gold ore of wonderful richness. Efforts at tracking him failed. The country for miles around was searched carefully to find the source of his wealth, which could not have been very far distant. The ore was not the same as that at Vulture. The location of the mine never became known to anyone, save its discoverer. He disappeared as usual one night, and never returned. The assumption that he was murdered by Apaches appears to have been sustained by a prospector's discovery near Vulture in the summer of 1895 of the barrel of an old muzzle-loading shotgun, and by it, a home-made mosquito gun stock. The gun had been there so long that even the hammer and trigger had rusted away. Near by was a human skeleton, bleached from long exposure. The next find was some small heaps of very rich gold rock, probably where sacks had decayed from around the ore, and then at a short distance was discovered a shallow prospect hole, sunk on a gold-bearing ledge. The ore in the heaps was about the same character as that which had been brought into Wickenburg in the early days by the "Lost Dutchman," but it didn't agree at all with the ore in the shallow prospect hole, which was not considered worthy of further development.
In the winter of '79 some trouble was stirred up among confiding tender- feet by the publication of a story in the Phoenix Herald, printed as a fake so plainly transparent that he who ran might have read. It told of the arrival of a prospector from the depths of the Superstitions, whence he had been driven by pigmy Indians, who had swarmed out of the cliff dwellings. His partner had been killed, and he had escaped only by a miracle. But the couple had discovered some wonderful gold diggings, from which an almost impossible quantity of dust had been accumulated by a couple of days work. The story was widely copied, and from eastern points so many inquiries came that the Herald editor had to have a little slip printed to be sent back in reply. On the slip was the word "fake." The editor feared to even remain silent, for most of the letters told of the organization in eastern villages of parties of heavily-armed men to get the gold dust or die in the attempt, and there might have.been dire consequences on the head of the imaginative journalist had Phoenix been reached by even one of the desperate rural eastern expeditious.
Linkback: You are not allowed to view links.
Please Register or Login
http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,3311.msg23589.html#msg23589
|
|
Logged
|
|
