Legendary Spanish Forts Down the Nueces
Many people of pioneer stock in Southwest Texas speak of “a string of old Spanish forts” that extended from a fortification near Point Isabel in Cameron County to another near what is now “Old” Pleasanton in Atascosa. The names of these two extreme “forts” I cannot recall, but southward toward Laredo from the Pleasanton location was Fort Ewell, on the Nueces River, in La Salle County. Fifty miles to the east as the crow flies, but double that distance as the river runs, was El Fortin, otherwise known as Fort Merrill; next, not more than twelve miles to the south, and some five or six miles off the river, came Fort Ramirez, on the Ramireña Creek; sixteen miles southward, again on the Nueces, was Casa Blanca; near it on the Bluntzer Ranch was Fort Planticlan; next, due south, Petronita; then, Las Animas; last, the “fort” near Point Isabel. In such a string the first three so-called forts made a kind of crescent, and the remainder a long, almost straight, line, the whole figure resembling an old-fashioned wagon axle-wrench, or gancho. History, so far as I have read, has nothing to say about this fine “string of old Spanish forts,” but its existence is often a premise to legends connected with the several stations. Of the forts in the string Casa Blanca and Ramirez seem to be the most fertile in legend. As best I can gather from oral tradition, Fort Ewell and Fort Merrill were built about 1840 and used by the early settlers and rangers for protection against the Indians and Mexicans. Both places are mentioned by the historian Brown, though he has nothing definite on the origin of either.1 Other not well identified ruins in Southwest Texas are frequently pointed out as the sites of old Spanish missions or presidios.2
Fort Ramirez on the Ramireña
Fort Ramirez is in the southern part of Live Oak County on my father’s ranch. When I was a boy some of the old rock walls were ten or twelve feet high, though they were crumbling. As far back as I can remember or have heard men tell, there were holes that had been made by treasure seekers all along the walls, inside the room, and for hundreds of yards out from the place. When I revisited the location last summer, I found the walls all down, most of the rock lugged to one side, and indeed a large part of the foundation dug out. Some of the excavated stones weighed, I dare say, two hundred pounds. The ruins are on the point of a hill that overlooks the immense but dry bed of Ramireña Creek, which, nevertheless, back in the days of the open range was nearly always running, men of that time say. A deep but short gorge called Ramirez Hollow runs up near the hill.
I
There are two distinct legends about the old place: in one it is a fort; in the other, an old sheep ranch. Of later years, the fort idea seems to have gained ground. Mr. E. M. Dubose of Mathis says that he first got “the straight” of the matter from an old Mexican who was looking for the Casa Blanca site. According to this Mexican, a band of bandidos had in early days captured the fort from Spanish priests who were using it as a kind of ungarrisoned mission. The bandits pillaged the place of a cross of precious metal, golden candle-sticks, and other costly paraphernalia, and took up their headquarters in a secret cave a short distance east of the building. Later they were run out of the country by the Texans, leaving in the cave all their churchly plunder as well as much money that they had robbed from freighters and ranchmen. The problem with treasure seekers has been to locate the cave, of which there is now no sign.
In trying to make the location, Dubose and his party used at first a “gold monkey,” or mineral rod. This “monkey” was supposed to oscillate towards rich mineral until it got over it, then to halt. It oscillated all right, and under its guidance the treasure seekers dug two holes, both to the west of the fort.
Then Dubose went to Victoria to consult a famous mulatto fortune teller. The fortune teller described Fort Ramirez satisfactorily and said that he could and would locate a buried chest of money near the place for $500. The agreement was made, and one dark night Dubose drove the mulatto to the fort. The fortune teller led at once to the north corner and, walking thence east a few paces, planted his foot down and said: “Here it is. With this spot as the center, dig a round hole ten feet in diameter.” The two went back to Wade’s Switch that night, and when they got there the negro demanded his $500. Dubose told him that he would have to wait until the money was dug up, and offered to allow him to be present at the ceremony, but he refused to stay. He declared that unless he was paid his fee at once, “spirits would move the box” and that it would be useless for anyone to try to find it.
He was not paid at once, but in spite of the threatened futility of digging, a few days later two white men, aided by two or three Mexican laborers, were digging a great hole circumscribing the point marked by the fortune teller. When they had got down six or seven feet, they came upon a loose soil that was different in color from the contiguous earth. It appeared to be “the filling” in some old hole. Hopes became feverish, but after about a barrel of the extraneous earth had been removed, the foreign matter petered out, and at the depth of twelve feet the men quit digging.
II
The legend that I grew up knowing was that the “fort” had been the ranch of a Mexican or Spaniard named Ramirez who became immensely wealthy raising sheep. He is supposed to have lived there more than a hundred years ago. Ramirez had a tunnel connecting his house with the creek. One time the Indians surrounded him. After withstanding the siege for days until he saw that he must leave or starve, he buried his money somewhere within the rock walls, and left by the tunnel. He was cautious and left in the night, but the next day he was captured, together with his small household, and all were put to death, leaving the place of his hidden thousands a secret.
Some people will tell you that it is useless to hunt for the treasure any longer. They say that fifty years ago Tol McNeill, who owns a fair-sized ranch adjoining the pasture in which the fort is situated, found $40,000 there and with the money bought and stocked his land. But I am sure that hunters for riches around the place are increasing in number.
Years ago I remember that a white man with a Mexican beside him drove up to our house in a buckboard. He had come from Runge, seventy miles northeast. He told my father what he was after and asked permission to dig at the fort, which was readily granted. His Mexican claimed to have been digging at the south wall some ten years before when all of a sudden, just as he was sure that his telache had struck the lid of a chest, he heard an unearthly yell behind him. He did have enough presence of mind to kick a few clods back into the hole, which was a small one; but he had been too much frightened ever to return to the scene or even to tell anyone of his experience before he found the patrón that was with him now. I guided the buckboard through the prickly pear to the fort; when the Mexican got there he appeared never to have seen it before.
A field was put in near the place and a Mexican jacal built about half a mile down the creek. The Mexicans living there tell of seeing lights play around the hill at night, and to them, as to folk of other races, the lights are a sign of precious metal under the ground.
Last summer a Mexican, named Genardo del Bosque, who has been on the ranch for a quarter of a century, gave me considerable information about “la casa de Ramirez.” Antonio de la Fuente, now dead, came to the country years and years ago as a child with his parents. They had a little money and as land was then very cheap and as the old fort was yet in tolerable condition, the walls all standing, and all that it needed to make it habitable being a roof of thatched beargrass, they considered buying it. One day while they were approaching it, a white lion, or perhaps it was a white panther, leaped out, and when they came within Antonio saw many and various coins on the walls and on the floor. But he was afraid and so were his parents to touch the coins, and of course they would no longer consider a purchase. The white animal was the soul of the dead owner of the treasure there to watch over it.
However, it is rather strange that Antonio and his parents took none of the money, for a white object (un bulto blanco) is a good spirit, and a white cat, a white calf, a white dog, or a white mule, or a woman dressed all in white may appear to people to lead them to buried treasure. But if un bulto negro appears, let them look out! The established Spanish custom in old times was to bury the treasure first and then over it a dead man. If this dead guardian was not the owner, then often the spirits of the two are in conflict. Hence, if a man digs close to the treasure, he is usually frightened away by outlandish noises heard behind him. The noises are generally as of many chains (cadenas) rattling and clanking. Since Antonio saw the white panther so long ago, no strange animals have been observed near the fort, only lights, lights, always between the fort and the creek, never at the fort itself.
The Legend of Casa Blanca
Old Casa Blanca, which is several miles from the railroad switch by that name, is on the Nueces River in what is now Jim Wells, but was a part of Nueces, County. “Of the history of this old ruin,” says Mrs. Sutherland,3 “no one knows a word.” The record of it is preserved in legend alone, and of legends there are many. Mrs. Sutherland links the place with a certain purported silver mine and recalls a tale of “a find” made there in 1868.
In its past, Casa Blanca was both Spanish fort and mission. So runs the legend told by Mr. E. M. Dubose. After the priests left it, it was occupied by a Mexican sheepman who prospered mightily. Finally he sold out his sheep and land for cash, but stayed on a while at Casa Blanca to wind up his affairs. Now the fact that he had thousands and that he kept them within the walls of the building was corroborated to Mr. Dubose by a man named Reems, who once lived in Pearsall. Reems stayed with the old sheepman three or four days just before the latter was killed and got a hint as to the location of the money. After the murder, he returned to Casa Blanca and found a worn hole in the very spot that he had “figured out” to be the hiding place.
Not long after it became known that the sheepman had acquired his cash, some Mexicans captured him and tortured him until he told where the money was, whereupon they put an end to his life. At this juncture, they found that they were being spied on by a second set of robbers. Under the concealment of night they hid their booty in a kind of rock pen near the fort, throwing the body of the murdered sheepman on top of it. They spent the night under protection of the walls, hoping to fight their way out the next morning.
The battle began at daybreak. The besiegers far outnumbered the besieged, and in desperation the latter scattered into the brush. There one of them named Carbal was cut off, and as he fell from a deadly shot he saw his own younger brother bend over him. It was the brother whom years ago he had taught the first lessons of outlaw life, and now that brother in ironic ignorance had paid for the lesson. Carbal understood the ignorance and with his dying words told where the loot was hid. Even as he told, the last of his companions was killed.
But the victorious desperadoes were never to reap the golden harvest of their victory. In the fight they had suffered losses, and now upon their heels came the terrible Texas Rangers. Retreating towards the Rio Grande, they were all “naturalized”4 on Texas soil but one or two who managed to reach the security of Mexico. From that one or two has come down to us, in confused form, the story of the rich sheepman, his lost money, and the blood spilled over it. Ed Dubose got the story, together with a chart, from an old Mexican whom he made drunk on tequilla. Later he tried to find the “kind of rock pen” near Casa Blanca, but could locate no trace of it.
Lutzer’s Find at Fort Planticlan
About fifteen miles below Casa Blanca, in Nueces County, not very far from the Nueces River, and near a huisache lake, are the remains of what is known as the Planticlan Fort. In a great Indian uprising the Spanish were forced to evacuate it, and when they did, they left everything but their guns, including three jack loads of silver bullion. The retreating Spanish were taken by the Indians and butchered, with the exception of one man who survived long enough to reach his people and tell them about the abandoned treasure on the Nueces.
More than half a century ago three Mexicans came with a chart to seek that hidden silver. After digging an immense hole, they found it, and there on the brink of the excavation they were polishing some of the blackened silver bars when Nick Lutzer happened upon them. (Lutzer is not the real name.) He was riding after cattle and, hearing low voices in the brush, he at once suspected cow thieves. He dismounted and, rifle in hand, crept through the bushes. He had often heard of the riches supposed to lie in the neighborhood, and so he was not surprised at the sight that greeted his eyes. The Mexicans were too intent on their business to sense his presence. Lutzer was a true and quick shot. He killed two of the Mexicans with his rifle and then drew his six-shooter in deadly fire on the other. In a minute he rolled all three of the dead men into the freshly dug pit and covered them.
Later he went to New Orleans, sold the silver ore, and came back and bought and stocked an immense ranch, which still goes by the name of the Lutzer Ranch.
Notes
1 “The company, being six months’ men, were discharged at Fort Merrill on the Nueces, on the 4th day of May, 1851, but reorganized as a new company for another six months the next day.”—Brown, John Henry, History of Texas, Vol. II, p. 356. See a report to the Secretary of War: Sen. Ex. Doc. 1, 32d Cong., 1st Session, Serial 611.
2 See, for instance, “The Mission de Los Olmos, near Falfurrias,” by Marshall Monroe, reprinted from the Houston Chronicle, in Frontier Times, January, 1924, pp. 44–45.
3 Sutherland, Mary A., The Story of Corpus Christi, Houston, 1916, pp. 2–3.
4 A euphemism of the Texas Rangers.