Buried Treasure Legends of Cooke County
[In 1759 Parrilla marched from San Antonio with a force of about six hundred men and attacked the Taovayas villages on Red River somewhere in the vicinity of what is now Montague County, Dr. Herbert E. Bolton says near the present Ringgold. Parrilla found the Indians “intrenched behind a strong stockade with breastworks, flying a French flag, and skillfully using French weapons and tactics.” A sanguinary battle followed, resulting in heavy loss on both sides. The Spanish withdrew, leaving “two cannon and extra baggage behind.”1 Seventeen years later the cannon were recovered.2 In my mind there is no doubt that the long unexplained “Old Spanish Fort” of Miss Gunter’s legend was the fortification attacked by Parrilla.3 The source of the relics mentioned by Miss Gunter is accounted for also.
Thus is seen again how legend has preserved in a vague way what history long ignored but eventually established. Comparison should be made with “The San Gabriel Mission in Legend.”4 Again, “Old Spanish Fort” was the name given by Westerners to the ruins of the San Saba presidio before the history of the site became generally known.5 The deduction need not be made that legend is always correct in anticipating history!—Editor.]
I
The buried treasure legends of Cooke County, so far as I have been able to investigate, center around two localities. The first legend with its variants is current in the Cross Timbers and relates to that part of the county immediately northwest of Burns City, extending to within a few miles of Gainesville. An outcropping of the legend persists also in the Cross Timbers near Dexter. The descendants of the first settlers, some of whom still live in the country, tell of many hunts for buried treasure made by different people who were guided by maps or oral directions furnished by Mexicans.
Marks of fish, turtles, serpents, and other easily drawn animals were once found on trees and stones; but no master mind, such as reveals itself in Poe’s “Gold Bug,” came to deduce their true meaning. So the treasure has never been found, although an effort was made to locate it quite recently. Most of these marks have long since been removed or destroyed; however, it has been the writer’s fortune to see the outline of a crudely cut fish upon the side of a large boulder, probably the only mark of its kind left in the county.
It may interest Texas readers to know that in support of the claim that this part of what is now Cooke County was visited by Spanish explorers, there now repose in the Cooke County museum, which is a part of the county library, a one-pound brass cannon ball, picked up one mile northwest of Burns City, and a brass spear-head, found in a gravel drift near Dexter. Brass cannon balls went out of date long before Americans ever reached this part of Texas; and, as an old Texas ranger has pointed out, the only metal that the Indians used for their spear and arrow heads was iron—not brass.
II
By far the most widespread and generally known legend of Cooke County and vicinity deals with the Red River front; i.e., that part of it extending from Spanish Fort Bend on the west nearly to Preston Bend on the east, thus extending into both Montague and Grayson counties.
Mr. Pete Davidson, who came to Cooke County about 1856 to live with his two uncles, Captain Rowland of the Texas Rangers, and Doctor Davidson, proprietor of the first station west of Gainesville for the Overland Stage Route, his station having been located on Blocker Creek, relates that he made his first trip to Spanish Fort in 1857. “At that time,” he says, “the earthworks were still plainly discernible and would hide a cow or horse from observation from the outside. Good-sized trees were then growing from the top of the earthworks, showing that a long time had elapsed since they were thrown up. The country was still virgin prairie, and every once in a while you could see the bleached bones of a human skeleton, showing that some sort of battle had been fought there; but some of the skeletons were so small that they must have been of women or children who were among either the Indians or the soldiers of the fort.” Just before his death in 1922, Mr. Davidson told me that he had recently made a trip to Spanish Fort Bend, though not to the fort itself, with a man who was seeking to trace the locations on an old Mexican map that called for a tree on a bluff where the river touched and turned south. This tree, so the man claimed, was the location of the long sought buried treasure; and, indeed, the old Mexican map and the lone tree on a bluff skirted by the water are essentials of all the Red River legends of buried treasure.
For years an old fellow dug for treasure on the Oklahoma side, just across from Sivill’s Bend where the river turns south to make in a twenty-mile sweep the biggest bend in its whole course. West of Dexter, near Walnut Bend, tradition calls for another location of similar marks, but here the treasure is said to be buried on the Texas side.
III
It is noticeable that none of these legends refer to gold and silver but always to treasure. As I have been able to piece it together, the legend is this.
In a very early day a Spanish exploring party passed through this country, going in a northeasterly direction. As was the custom, the expedition included a large number of monks and priests with all the holy vessels and rich paraphernalia necessary to administer to the spiritual needs of the party itself and to convert the heathen Indians according to the ritual of the Catholic church. Unfortunately the aborigines proved unfriendly and disputed the way to such an extent that the ranks of the Spaniards were decimated, and the remnant saw that they were going to be hard put to it to make an escape. Rather than have their holy vessels, valuable in a material way, but more precious spiritually, desecrated by savage touch, they decided to bury them. In selecting a suitable place for this operation they bore in mind that it must be stable, above the reach of the mighty river or the changes made by the hand of man under ordinary conditions; so they selected a bold promontory on the river, as stated above.
When the treasure was buried, not one, but several rude maps of the location were undoubtedly made, probably each by a different person. These maps were in the nature of things ambiguous, and the legends touching them furnish much food for speculation.
Notes
1 See Bolton, H. E., Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp. 89–90, for an account of the Parrilla Expedition.
2 Ibid., 129, 414. See also Bolton’s De Mézières, II, 187–238.
3 After having written the above, I was informed by Mr. Joseph B. Thoburn, secretary of the Oklahoma Historical Society, that he had received a letter from Dr. Bolton identifying “Old Spanish Fort” with the fortification attacked by Parrilla.
4 See page 99.
5 See Roberts, Capt. Dan W., Rangers and Sovereignty, San Antonio, 1914, pp. 185–186.