Legends of the Lost

After three days of hand-to-hand fighting, the Quechan Indians destroyed the Spanish settlement, killing almost the entire community of soldiers, civilians, and priests. It was midsummer, 1781, in a place that one day would be called Fort Yuma and later the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. And some believe that in their panic during the fray, the Spaniards may have tried to save a fortune in silver coins by throwing them into a well and covering it over.

The Spanish first made contact with the Quechan in the late 18th century. By 1779, Spanish soldiers and their families began settling on Quechan land. Padres established a mission program and constructed La Purisima Concepcion on a hilltop overlooking the Colorado River.

Troubles started early on, as the Spaniards, in disregard of the Quechan culture, forced their religion, life-style, language, and culture on the Indians. They took possession of the best farmland and let their livestock destroy Quechan crops. Those Indians who resisted were publicly whipped. On July 17, 1781, the Quechan rebelled.

When the fighting ended, more than 100 Spaniards, including four priests, had been killed.

Some 60 years later, the Quechan land would be invaded once again when gold was discovered in California, and a non-stop flood of people crossed the Colorado River at Yuma Crossing on their way to riches. In 1850 Army Maj. Samuel Heintzelman constructed Fort Yuma on Indian Hill, where, some historians believe, the Spaniards established their mission and settlement decades before.

Major Heintzelman kept a daily journal, its pages filled with sketches of life at the fort and Yuma Crossing as well as notes related to the 1781 massacre and the hidden trove of silver coins.

On Thursday, May 5, 1853, Heintzelman wrote "Mr. Jaeger and Joaquin Ortega rode into camp this morning. His [Ortega's] father established the presidio [settlement] at this place and his brother was three years old when the Indians massacred all the men . . . . There were 30 soldiers & 80 persons in the mission when attacked."

Heintzelman noted on Saturday, May 7, "Don Joaquin Ortega called this evening . . . He says during the siege here $18,000 to pay for the troops was buried in a well and the well closed. This was near the guard house. A large amount to pay 30 men."

The post served the military until 1884, when it was transferred to the Department of the Interior and the Quechan Nation. Several original buildings remain, serving now as tribal offices and a museum. The old parade ground is a paved parking lot.

Saint Thomas Indian Mission, a white stucco church with a red-tiled roof, was built in 1922 on the south side of Indian Hill. Still an active Catholic Church, Saint Thomas reportedly sits near where La Purisima Concepcion was built in 1780.

And the treasure? One local historian, Frank Love, doubts that any money ever was hidden.

"I think it's a myth," Love says, standing on Indian Hill and looking out at the city that has been his home for nearly 25 years. "Like Heintzelman said, that's a lot of money for paying those troops. As far as I know, no one's ever looked for it."

Love, who has taught state history at Arizona Western College in Yuma since 1969 and has written numerous articles and books on local history, knows the area as well as anyone.

"I'm unclear where the guardhouse and the well might have been," he says. "We don't know exactly where the presidio and mission were either."

Heintzelman did say in his journal that he and his men found ruins of the old mission and homes when they established Fort Yuma.

"When we occupied this point the rough stone foundations of the houses with their earthen ruins could be traced," he wrote in March, 1851. "The buildings appear to have been of mud upright poles or forks supported the roof. The charred ends we dug up with the remains of a copper urn-shaped vessel. There were eight or 10 buildings covering about an acre."

Dan Bellamy, a retired University of Oklahoma senior systems analyst who has lived in Yuma for 15 years, thinks there could be a treasure.

"It's logical that there would have been money there to pay the troops," says Bellamy, who works as a volunteer at Century House Museum in downtown Yuma. "It was probably silver pieces of eight. There's no telling what it would be worth now, but it would be a minimum of 50 times."

Actually, no one knows for certain if there is a lost treasure at the Fort Yuma site. If there is, no one has any idea where it might be. And if money is buried on Quechan land, it is illegal to dig for it.