Legends of the Lost

egends of the Lost Tantalizing Myths Hold that Montezuma's Treasure Lies Buried Somewhere in the Ajo Mountains

In the Ajo Mountains of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, down in Arizona's southwest corner, an eroded butte looms 3,634 feet above the desert floor. The pinnacle is visible from miles away and from certain vantage points resembles the upper torso and head of a colossal human figure. Called Montezuma Head, it is one of two places on the grounds of national monuments in Arizona named after the 16th-century Aztec emperor. The other is the Sinagua Indian cliff dwelling at Montezuma Castle National Monument north of Camp Verde.

If you look closely at historical atlases of Arizona, you will find Montezuma's name all over the place. Will C. Barnes' Arizona Place Names lists a dozen, in five different counties. There are three Montezuma Heads. There's a Montezuma Peak, Montezuma Chair, Montezuma Cave, and Montezuma Well. There's an old stage stop labeled Montezuma Store, a place in the Estrella Mountains that's described as Montezuma Sleeping, and two other places named just plain Montezuma.

The question is, quite naturally, why so many? That is a tough one. True, Montezuma II (1502-20), the grandson of Montezuma I (1440-69), was ruler of the Aztec Empire at the time the Spaniards conquered Mexico, but that in itself doesn't explain the ubiquity of his name. Besides, Montezuma's reputation as a ruler is somewhat less than esteemed. The answer, I think, lies in a fabulous lost-treasure legend associated with Montezuma and the collapse of the Aztec Empire.

Until Montezuma II, Aztec emperors had been great warriors, and their armies had subjugated many other Indian tribes of central Mexico. This Montezuma, however, was weak, more interested in magic and sorcery than battle strategy. When word was brought to Montezuma in 1519 that the Spaniards under Hernan Cortés had landed, his first reaction was to treat them as the emissaries of Quetzalcoatl, the mythological sun god who had once ruled the Aztecs but abandoned them centuries before.

Quetzalcoatl, who had arrived from the direction of the rising sun, introduced the arts to the Aztec people. In time, though, this god of the sun became offended by the Aztecs and sailed away on a raft made of serpents, departing to the east, the direction whence he had come. But as he left he vowed to return.

Now here were these Spaniards sailing in from the east in white-winged ships. But, legend has it, the Spaniards were not so easily seduced by gifts and entertainments, and, in any case, it was clear they wanted more. Their greed was less than godlike. Deciding to play it safe, Montezuma ordered that half of his vast fortune be spirited away and hidden.One legend has it that the man put in charge of removing this vast hoard of wealth to safety was Tlahuicole, a famous general of the unconquerable Tlaxcaltecan nation whom the Aztecs captured in a battle. At first, Montezuma planned to offer the rival leader as a blood sacrifice to the Aztec war god, Huitzilopochtli. But then he came to admire Tlahuicole's courage and strength, and so the captive general gradually became a confidant of the emperor.Tlahuicole's instructions, legend declares, were to carry load after load of gold and precious jewels as far north as he could possibly go and then to bury it so that it would be out of reach of everyone, friend or foe.

Back home, meanwhile, the Aztec emperor made a fatal error: he invited Cortés into his court. The Spaniard immediately took Montezuma hostage and through him held sway over the Aztec people. Aroused to anger by the Spaniard's brutal regime, the Aztecs rebelled and were briefly successful. Eventually, however, Cortés vanquished them and went on to conquer most of Mexico and northern Central America. During the uprising, Montezuma himself was killed; at whose hand remains a mystery. Many believe that his own people, weary of his impotence, killed him. But it's just as likely that the Spaniards executed him as punishment for the rebellion.

And what about the treasure entrusted to Tlahuicole? Well that's where Montezuma Head in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument comes in.

Tlahuicole, according to legend, made his way to what is now northern Sonora, Mexico, maybe even farther, where he buried the treasure. Some say it's cached in the vicinity of the Tinajas Altas. Others say in a secret cave near Montezuma Head in the Ajo Mountains. But there are dozens of other rugged mountain ranges in this remote, inhospitable terrain. Any one of them would have provided hundreds of hiding spots.

It is said that ancients among the Tohono O'odham tribe, the indigenous people of southwest Arizona, once knew where the treasure was buried. For them, by some accounts, Montezuma Head, was a standing symbol of Montezuma himself, whose spirit still haunts the border, keeping watch over his fortune.

But somehow stories about lost treasure won't stay put. They travel around. Now about every place in Arizona with Montezuma in its name has a tale about buried treasure or about other-world visitations by the troubled spirit of someone Montezuma, Tlahuicole supposedly proving the existence of such treasures.

As farfetched as the story of Montezuma's lost treasure may seem, believing in it and that someday you may be the one to come upon it, is no more incredible than the conviction that you'll someday strike it rich in the state lottery.

So on the longshot chance that Montezuma's treasure really exists, I'm betting on the rugged terrain surrounding Montezuma Head in the Ajo Mountains. One day, perhaps, I'll be the lucky one to come upon the isolated cave where hoards of gold bars and silver jewelry studded with rare gems are stashed.

There was a treasure Cortés received from Montezuma, but it had nothing to do with gold or silver. The treasure was cartographic, detailed maps drawn by Aztec chart makers, and none of them pointed to secret caches of lost treasure.

Cortés mentioned these maps in letters to Emperor Charles V of Spain; in fact, Cortés sent two of them as gifts to Charles in 1522. Beautifully hand-painted on cotton fabric and described as 30 feet long, one of the maps shows the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, mountain ranges and plains, temples, bridges, bodies of water, and the locations of peoples friendly or hostile to the Aztecs. Some of the maps showed entire regions, complete with the towns, forests, roads, and rivers. Others, as Cortés said in his letters, were route maps provided to him before he set out on his expedition to Honduras, the first step in the Spanish conquest of the Americas. These maps, not phantom cargoes of an emperor's fortune, were the real treasure of Montezuma. Who knows where Hernan Cortés might have ended up without them?