Legends of the Lost

Legends of the Lost_

Some folks just can't be satisfied. Take Maj. Abraham Harlow Peeples, for example. Although he discovered the fabulous placer mines of Rich Hill in 1863, a strike that eventually yielded millions of dollars in gold and made him wealthy, Peeples still felt cheated by fortune.

Sure he could use the gold, and of course he was grateful for the dumb accident that led him to it, but the aggravating fact remained: when he uncovered Rich Hill, Abraham Peeples found the wrong treasure.

He was supposed to find a secret crevice of gold, hidden deep in remote caverns, jealously guarded by savages. Instead he stumbled on Rich Hill, where nuggets paved the open ground, and the main danger was sunstroke induced by lugging bags of loose gold across the burning hillside. The other gold, the Indian gold concealed, Peeples believed, beneath scrubby hills near the Hassayampa River, north of present-day Wickenburg remains locked away in stone.

An Apache guided Peeples' 1863 expedition to the drainage of the Hassayampa. The man had come to La Paz, an outpost on the Colorado River, to exchange a pouch of gold for frying pans and similar valuables. He had not meant to create a sensation (his people had traded nuggets with Mexicans to the south for generations), however his sack of gold inflamed the hopes of the small community of prospectors and explorers assembled by the river.

In 1863 the interior of Arizona was an unknown country. On the western frontier, few dared ride more than a day from the Colorado. The parched land beyond was infested with plants, animals, and humans that punished the inexperienced or unwary. Yet every frontier optimist believed Indians knew secret ways that led across the uncharted desert to seams ofgold they did not need. To claim that gold, a man needed only guts and a guide.

Now, miraculously, an Apache Indian carrying raw gold had appeared in La Paz. Since the local prospectors had guts to spare, their fortunes were made if

MURDER, APACHE THREATS FAIL TO DETER THE HUNT FOR INDIAN GOLD

they could only enlist the newcomer in their cause. At this, Peeples, who had a ready wit, a sympathetic manner, and a free hand with money, excelled. Within days the Indian (his pony laden with skillets, Dutch ovens, butcher knives, and other frontier appliances all gifts of the generous Peeples) led a company of latter-day conquistadors out of La Paz.

Where they were going Peeples and his men could not know, and soon they lost all but the coarsest bearings. Yet, if their route was a mystery to the prospectors, its dangers were only too well known to their increasingly anxious guide. Soon the Apache completely lost his nerve and begged for release from his obligation. His tribe would slaughter the whites and roast him, he pleaded, if he revealed the ancient secret of their gold.

But they had sworn oaths to one another, Peeples solemnly reminded the reluctant guide. Promises had been made, gifts exchanged. If it were probable death to go ahead, it was certain death to stop here; Peeples nodded ominously in the direction of his hard-bitten men. Dire necessity and a dozeneagle eyes kept the guide with the party for a few more days; nevertheless a morning came when he had slipped his night bonds and disappeared into the wasteland that rose like a wall outside the circle of the prospectors' camp.

Peeples then faced a dilemma. Caution dictated immediate return to La Paz. There he could gather a larger party and then return to search the range of hills east of the Harcuvar Mountains that the Indian had hinted was the treasure site. In the end, the hills were too near to leave without scouting. Peeples' men, and Peeples himself, weighed the chances of a scalping against the odds of striking it rich and bet their hair.

One evening they camped at the foot of a hill where Peeples had killed five antelope. Antelope Hill they called it, and the creek at its foot they named Antelope Creek. During the night, the party's horses broke their hobbles and strayed across the top of Antelope Hill. At first light, two Mexicans set off after the strays. That afternoon they galloped back, firing their pistols into the air, hallowing at the top of their lungs, oblivious to the threat of Apache Indians, leading the herd to be sure, but gripped by a frenzy that driving horses couldn't explain. They had found Rich Hill.

Eventually Peeples, his partners, and those who followed them washed $20 million in placer gold out of Rich Hill. On the surface alone, they found $780,000 in large nuggets. Peeples, using a wooden stick, flipped 100 pounds of nuggets out of the ground in a single afternoon. Within a year, Rich Hill had staked him to a ranch in his own valley, Peeples Valley, later a bar in Wickenburg, and finally, a very well-conducted saloon in Phoenix.

Yet even on the first day, as he idly pocketed a few of the choicest nuggets, Peeples knew he had discovered the wrong gold. While there had been some confusion whether the gold was hidden in an arroyo, a ravine, or a cleft in the rock the guide's Spanish was paltry, his English meager, hence his meaning was often suspect on one point there could be no doubt: the gold wasn't supposed to lie scattered across a broad peak where men chasing horses could trip over it.

Peeples vowed to find the Indian mine. For a while he searched for it himself. It was no hardship, even for a rich man. The Prescott Courier later called him "a born plainsman, a dead shot, a great hunter, and a man who disdained to live in a house when he could avoid it." But eventually the responsibilities of his ranch and businesses overwhelmed him, leaving him anchored to home, then to town.

When he could hunt no more, Peeples sent surrogates. First a black man named Ben who had crossed the Colorado River with Peeples in 1863 and stayed with him. When an Apache confided to Ben that he knew the secret of the Indian gold, the result was predictable. As they neared the hills, the Apache, crippled by religious scruples, would go no farther.

On their return, Ben told Peeples of the goose chase, and, not at all discouraged, Peeples urged Ben to persuade the Apache to return, this time with both of them. At first the Apache refused, then sullenly agreed to take Ben alone. Peeples promised to wait. However, a day after the two men rode off, he followed with a small party of cowboys. Bargain or no, Peeples had a grave foreboding about his friend.

He was too late despite his haste. Peeples found Ben's body at Sycamore Springs. The Apache was never seen again. As Peeples and the others prepared to bury Ben, fat nuggets of purest yellow gold spilled out of the dead man's pockets. In his sorrow Peeples was uplifted. The lost gold had been found. Now the question was where.

With Ben duly disposed, Peeples financed an army of prospectors to comb the district between Wickenburg and Congress Junction. They sank so many shafts that a man had to watch his step when walking the hills at night. Yet none found the gold, and at last an exhausted Peeples retired to Phoenix where he husbanded the remainder of his fortune and his strength.

In 1890 The Phoenix Herald reported that two prospectors, Hank Williams and John Packer, had set out for the Santa Maria Mountains in Mohave County to search for Peeples' lost gold. If they ever returned, it was not to Phoenix. Then a man named Nevins claimed to have found the mine in 1894. According to him, it was no more than 10 feet from a tunnel Peeples had dug, back in the 1860s, in low hills about 40 miles west of Congress Junction, but the strike failed to prove out.

By then Peeples had passed on. He died in 1892 at the age of 69, worn out by his lifelong search for a treasure even greater than the one he had found.