LEGENDS OF THE LOST

Legends of the Lost Bah, Humbug! Say Historians of San Xavier's Lost Treasure

Even the name conjures up thoughts of something grand and alluring: La Esmerelda Mine. In English it means the emerald, and what on Earth could be prettier than that sparkling stone? Unless it's a rich lode of horn silver, glistening green, that has fascinated treasure seekers for almost 300 years.

The denials of historians have been almost as strong as the legend itself. They scoff at reports that there ever was such a thing as the Esmerelda Mine, and they question the belief that the now-lost mine also serves as a burial place for a treasure of sacred items once belonging to Mission San Xavier del Bac south of Tucson.

But no amount of scholarly doubt can chill the pursuit of those who believe, perhaps more in their hearts than their heads, that the old treasure is still there, awaiting discovery.

The tale exists in three parts, one for each century of its existence.

The Lost Treasure of San Xavier first came to wide public awareness in the writings of John D. Mitchell, whose work often appeared in Desert Magazine in the 1940s and '50s.

He contended that Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, the famed Jesuit missionary and explorer, supervised the start of construction on a "very spacious church" beginning on April 28, 1700, and that much of the work was done by Tohono O'odham laborers.

As construction proceeded, the Indian leader begged Father Kino to go with him to a point in the mountains just southwest of the mission site to inspect a vein of silver ore that had been unearthed a few years earlier. Mitchell writes that Father Kino was amazed at the discovery and made immediate arrangements to begin working the mine. He called it La Esmerelda, for the green tint of the ore.

As the story goes, the rich ore was mined and carried to the mission on the backs of Indians, then smelted in a small adobe furnace built for that purpose. Some of the silver was in bars, stamped with the mine code and the mission's symbol. The remainder was used to make church pieces.

Father Kino died in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, on March 15, 1711, and in the ensuing decades the mission was the scene of much hardship and violence.

Tohono O'odham and Pima Indians staged a bloody revolt, damaging two missions San Xavier and Guevavi in what is now southern Arizona. Faithful Tohono O'odham managed to spirit the valuable silver back to the Esmerelda, where it remained concealed for 31 years.

The silver was returned to the mission in 1754 at the conclusion of a second Indian revolt. But this frantic process of hide-and-seek wasn't over yet. It played out several more times over the next hundred years.

By most counts, the treasure was hauled across the desert to the Esmerelda during the Indian uprisings and again when the mission came under Franciscan control. Each move took more effort and manpower as the mine's production increased with time.

Mitchell wrote that many of the American miners who operated along the border after the war with Mexico actually saw the silver pieces adorning the mission's altar about 1860.

But with the withdrawal of American troops from Arizona during the Civil War, Apache raids started again, and this time the trove vanished. Indians around the old mission believe that it was returned to the deepest part of the Esmerelda, and a cave-in buried it.

Whether it was true or not, Mitchell wrote that every year just before the Fiesta of San Juan on June 24, there was a marked increase in the amount of rich silver ore brought to buyers in Tucson and Nogales.

Some believe the ore came from what Mitchell calls the shallow surface workings of the Lost Esmerelda, the location of which the Indians know, but refuse to tell white men.

The story took a bizarre twist in the hands of a West Virginian named James H. Tevis, who arrived in Tucson in 1857, claiming to have seen the silver San Xavier altar pieces.

In his book, Arizona in the '50s, Tevis described a trip to the mission during which an old Tohono O'odham displayed the rarely shown items to visitors. They included a crown of thorns made of silver, a silver image of Jesus, a golden replica of Noah's Ark, and some fine silver bowls and urns.

Two years later, according to Tevis, a priest identified only as Father Vicari left Santa Fe and traveled through Arizona collecting tithes from different churches. While at a trading post Tevis operated at Apache Pass, Vicari boasted of the success of his trip.

"Come to one of my coaches, and I will show you something nice," he told Tevis.

In a box, Vicari had San Xavier Mission's replica of Noah's Ark. Tevis recognized the item immediately and asked the priest how he came to possess it.

Vicari explained that he'd just delivered a sermon at the mission, stressing the importance of discarding old church items and replacing them with new ones. He promised the congregation that he would take away the San Xavier silver and gold items and return with even finer ones.

For some reason the Indians apparently trusted Vicari and took him up on his offer. But he never came back to the mission to fulfill his promise. After returning to Santa Fe, he quickly departed for France, and neither he nor the sacred items were ever found.

If Tevis told the truth, and some have written that he could stretch a fact until it sang a lullaby, then the relics are long gone, far from the depths of the fabled Esmerelda Mine.

Others have written that the Esmerelda wasn't actually near the mission at all, but high in the Santa Catalina Mountains that ring Tucson to the north, miles from San Xavier. But such confusions and contradictions have done little to dampen the enthusiasm of 20th-century treasure hunters. Far from it. Even Tevis' speculative account has been used by some as hard proof of the most important fact of all: the trove really existed.

As late as 1989, the Tucson Citizen published a story about a man named Quinn who claimed that years of research had led him to a dark-colored mesa about a mile southwest of the mission. According to his calculations, the lost Esmerelda had to be somewhere beneath that square-topped heap of earth.

"The only place a mine could be hidden in would be this big black mesa," Quinn told the Citizen, adding that Indians whispered about its exact loca-tion through the 1950s.

"They either passed the secret on or they died with it on their lips," said the steely-eyed treasure hunter. Nonetheless, even after years of searching the mesa, Quinn had not found the mysterious mine.

But the legend of the lost Esmerelda lingers. It has lived through Kino, Mitchell, Tevis, and Quinn. And it will likely live on forevermore.