Natives, Anglos and Gold: My account of the richest gold lode in the Southwest

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Natives, Anglos and Gold:  My account of the richest gold lode in the
Southwest

Note by Hunterbear:

This is a back-by-request -- with, as always, a little new stuff added.  One
of the most popular pages in our website, it's now visited by at least
fifteen people per day.  Often, people query me for additional data -- but I
provide absolutely Nothing in Clues.  I am struck by some of the very astute
questions -- but also by the frequently very eccentric theories.


LOST ADAMS DIGGINGS, NATIVE AMERICANS, AND DREAMS AND LEGENDS [HUNTER GRAY]

This is a story about something that's very, very real:  Gold.  Gold Found,
Gold Lost, and Gold That's Still There.  And, since Gold never exists in a
void by itself, this involves Natives and Anglos and Values.

And Dreams and Legends.

You can't grow up in the Real Southwest without hearing much about this
particular situation -- from the very Four Directions.

There is, as I mentioned the other day, a bona fide lost and massive lode of
gold in either Eastern Arizona or Western New Mexico:  "The Lost Adams
Diggings."

I know much about many things -- and little or nothing about many more --
but I do know much indeed about Native Americans and the Rugged West.  I
have a curious mind -- and I've always wondered just where, specifically,
the
Adams gold might be.  I've done a great deal of research -- and  even more
listening.  And I've done more than my share of looking.

But I make no sweeping claims.

 It was "found" by Anglos in 1864 who started from some point in what is now
Southern Arizona. They were led by Adams, originally of Rochester, N.Y.,
and guided by a Mexican Indian, a former captive of the Apaches who was
later killed by the Apaches for his treachery. It lies in a very deep
trough-like
box canyon, through which a small creek flows or at least once did.  There
are
some other landmarks of significance -- but most of these are not especially
unique to any one locale in this vast sweep of still-wilderness turf.
But some certainly are unusual.

Once down in the deep, steep canyon the gold-hunters immediately spotted
good-sized pure gold nuggets in and around the creek -- obviously washed
down from a "home lode" further up the canyon.

And, no sooner had the gold hunters arrived and begun to accumulate, than
they had very interesting -- and interested --  visitors.

A large band of Apaches led by the extremely shrewd and intrepid Nana
arrived within a day.   Nana was a man of the direct statement and came
immediately to the point:  The down-in-the-canyon gold hunters were told to
take what they wanted, gold-wise from the creek -- and make absolutely  no
effort to find the basic gold deposits further up  the canyon.  And leave
soon.  And never return.

The Apache leader explained patiently that the canyon was Sno-Tah-Hay -- a
very special religious place for his people.  [Like all Native Americans,
the Apaches had no special interest at all in the gold itself.]

A man of many great gifts, Nana was well versed in a number of languages
and had no problem clearly conveying  all of this, including his reasonable
ultimatum -- and its implications. There was no misunderstanding his
position.

One and all, the Anglos agreed with his conditions.

Some weeks after this, with Adams and the main body of gold-hunters
remaining in the canyon, a smaller group of Anglos left, with nuggets --
some as big as wild turkey eggs -- to buy supplies at the very far away
[Old] Fort Wingate, then at the present site of San Rafael, N.M. [at
Grants].

The trip took many days -- precisely how many is speculative. They purchased
those supplies from the post trader, paying with  the huge gold nuggets --
something carefully recorded by the storekeeper.  One man in Adams' party, a
German, worried about the Apaches, had taken his gold out and left with the
supply train -- and then returned to Germany where, years later, he verified
in detail the existence of the gold.

Meanwhile, Back at the Canyon, the astute and unseen Nana et al., watched
the gold operations continuing and expanding via the building of a cabin and
observed the surreptitious night-time Anglo trips up-canyon to the basic and
super-rich source of the gold.  The Christian doctrine of Original Sin is
not in the theology of the Apaches [or any other Native cultures, as far as
that goes] but Nana and his men certainly recognized the existence and the
great
endurance of on-going, burgeoning avarice.

With the exception of one man -- Brewer -- who escaped, the Apaches wiped
out the entire supply group as they approached the canyon from their
purchasing trip -- and then killed everyone in the canyon save two who were
a short distance from the main Anglo encampment. One of these was Adams
himself. [A significant and extremely unfortunate  personal shortcoming of
his, as it turned out over the decades to come, was his almost total lack of
any dependable sense-of-direction.]

No survivor -- including Adams who sought it for the rest of his life --
could ever  again find the canyon full of gold.  Asked years later about
Sno-Tah-Hay,  the normally friendly Nana would immediately grow cold and
withdrawn.  In the chaos and unpredictability of the Southwestern Native
world in the latter 19th Century [Geronimo did not "surrender" until 1886
and Indian resistance continued for years afterward], the Old Apaches
obviously did not pass the location of Sno-Tah-Hay on to any of the younger
people.

In any event, many have sought The Wonder -- and continue to do so. And no
one has found.  A reasonable question to me might be, "What's your guess?"

And I say, first, that "If the Adams Gold isn't where it's supposed to be,
than it has to be somewhere else."

And, Yes Indeed -- I have an idea where it might well be:  A very remote and
obscure and geographically wonderful area where everything, with one very
minor directional exception, fits the information provided by Adams and
the other two survivors -- especially the very carefully compiled account by
the extremely astute Brewer. I've been on and into the interesting edges of
that very, very rugged sprawl.  And it took me a very good while to get even
there.

I had access to some very rare, special insights -- given some years before
to me by
a very old Indian [a lone, traditional hunter] who knew me extremely well.
And he knew I was passionately interested in Mystery but never in Gold.

And, in an interesting situation later, I was once able to be flown quite
near the setting -- the special significance unknown to anyone else, even
the pilot -- and it all looks very possible indeed.

But there are, all over the Golden Southwest, many places which
certainly seem to fit the Lost Adams Diggings.  Many.

Again, I make no grand claims.

Still, every single landmark -- unique and otherwise -- indicated in detail
by Adams and Brewer especially was in that very special local region to
whose borders I traveled and into which I gazed: a signal mountain with
unique peaks; a far off snow-topped range in a certain specific direction; a
stream bed with sycamore and cottonwood trees; and, immediately up and far
above that, high country with some big girding belts of bright red
sandstone. And then pines -- and finally an incredibly deep canyon.  And
more.

And roughly speaking, the geographical distances mesh with the Legend.

There was a feel of ghosts -- friendly -- in the soft winds that stirred the
wild grass and the cedars and sang in the pines and in my soul as well.

I suspect that Its gold reality, while truly stupendous, falls somewhat
short of Its still-growing-nicely Tree of Legend.  But It's still -- judging
from the survivors and the "nuggets as big as wild turkey eggs" --
a very, very rich deposit.

Personally, I do indeed have great cultural inhibitions about digging for
gold -- in
such a beautiful area as the one I suspect houses it -- or even seeing the
gold. And I also profoundly respect Nana's concerns.  I do know, definitely,
the
very specific location of moderately rich gold-laden rose quartz from the
lower
half of the very remote and vasty Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area southwest
of my home town of Flagstaff, Arizona. I found that quite by accident and
brought out ore samples in 1955.  Although I've been back there a number of
times, almost half a century has passed and, at no point, have I had any
interest whatsoever in pursuing that.

I should add that, every single person -- bar none -- who has spent any time
thinking about the Lost Adams Diggings has his or her pet theories, and even
special information -- with locations that stretch from not far north of the
Mexican border clear up to the Utah and Colorado lines.  Some even have
extraordinarily detailed maps whose origins are unknown.

So I'm probably not that unusual.  Not a bit.  Lots of theories and all --
for
the last almost 150 years.

But down, 'way down in the Canyon of my very Inner Being, I do think I Know.

But, wherever It is, It's real -- Sno-Tah-Hay, the Lost Adams Diggings --
very real indeed. For my part, I hope It slumbers -- forever unfound --  in
the shadowy mists of legendry where It will always continue to grow and
glitter.

We need Dreams.  All of us.  And we need many kinds of Dreams.  Good Dreams.

One of the great human beings of the Southwest  who certainly understood
this was the late Texas-born [old ranching family] writer and historian, J.
Frank Dobie -- who wrote extensively about Western New Mexico and Eastern
Arizona and the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico. He deeply appreciated all
of the people and their respective cultures -- Native and Anglo and Mexican
and Whoever -- and the wildlife and the geography.  And all of them and all
the land itself certainly appreciated Frank Dobie.

He was also, I should add, a very strong supporter of civil rights and civil
liberties and union labor throughout his entire  and very long life.  Frank
Dobie fought a number of significant academic freedom battles at the
University of Texas, strongly supported the Southern Conference for Human
Welfare [predecessor of the Southern Conference Educational Fund], and I
have an extremely strong pro-union address "Divided We Stand" -- that he
made in the very early 1940s which was published and widely circulated by
UAW-CIO.

Furthermore, Frank Dobie knew how to write -- lucidly, and with grand
simplicity -- in such a way that your soul is gripped and your mind can't
let it go.  I strongly recommend one of his several very great Southwestern
classics which covers the Adams gold in considerable detail, and much more
stuff as well:  great sagas from the American Southwest and Old Mexico.  It
is Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver [Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1950.]
[That's the date for my personal edition.  However, Apache Gold  initially
appeared in 1928 and it's been coming out in various other printings ever
since.]

Nana and the Old Indians were very wise indeed.  So was my Native father who
told me emphatically, many times: "Go after bears, leave gold alone."


Yours,  Hunterbear

Hunter Gray  [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org
[social justice website]
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunterbear]