Legends of the Lost

egends of the Lost Here's a Tale of Mass Murder, Buried Gold, and a Lost Mission, Set in the 18th Century

Old-timers in Yuma remember stories of an era when gold was so plentiful along the banks of the lower Colorado River that people kept buckets full of nuggets under their kitchen tables. This was in the 1850s, when the California gold rush was in full swing, and the Pothole and Laguna placers north of Yuma were producing millions.

Seventy-five years earlier, while the Founding Fathers were drafting the Declaration of Independence, the Franciscan explorer-priest Francisco Garces came to the lower Colorado valley hoping to befriend and Christianize the Yuman Indians (who called themselves Quechans). He appeared to be perfectly suited for the task: "Padre Garces is so well-fitted to get along with the Indians," wrote his fellow Franciscan Father Pedro Font, "that he appears to be but an Indian himself. He sits with them in the circle, or at night around the fire, with his legs crossed, and there he will sit musing two or three hours or more, oblivious to everything else. And although the foods of the Indians are as nasty and dirty as these outlandish people themselves, the father eats them with great gusto and says that they are good for the stomach and very fine. In short, God has created him, as I see it, solely for the purpose of seeking out these unhappy, ignorant, and rustic people."

These "outlandish people" seemed open to the idea of having a mission in their territory. One of their leaders, Salvador Palma, was eager enough that he traveled all the way to Mexico City with Juan Bautista de Anza to request that the mission be built. While there he was baptized in the cathedral, and then he met with Viceroy Antonio Bucareli, who presented him with various gifts.

But in July of 1781, only eight months after the Franciscans established two missions north of Yuma, the Quechans killed Garces and 50 other Spaniards in what came to be known as the Yuma Massacre. The Indians also burned the two missions, San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner and Puerto de la Purisima Concepcion. It was a tragic event in the history of the Franciscan Order (four missionaries died) and marked the end of Spain's efforts to settle the lower Colorado valley.

The accepted and well-documented version of the events leading to the massacre involves political blundering on the part of the Spaniards and a severe misreading of the Quechans' attitude about being "civilized." There is another story, however, unlikely yet persistent, that attributes the uprising to the Spaniards' hunger for gold.

A hundred years after the massacre, the Franciscan histo-rian Father Zephyrin Engelhardt came to Yuma to find the remains of Bicuner Mission. On horseback he and an old Indian guide rode north from Yuma, crossing the Colorado onto the California side of the border. The guide led him to some crumbling adobe ruins (later demolished during the construction of the All-American Canal). This was where the mission had been, the old Indian told Engelhardt. This was where Mexicans had later come in search of the Franciscans' buried gold. Engelhardt had never heard anything about gold in the area, and he quickly dismissed the notion that the missionaries were in the mining business. Later historians also have scoffed at the legend, but it has lasted nonetheless for 200 years, fueled by the fact that Bicuner Mission was built on ground that later proved to be rich in gold.

According to the legend, the Spaniards living at Bicuner used the Indians as cheap labor in their placer mining operations, providing a plate of beans for a plate of gold, according to one source. The Indians eventually rebelled, and after the massacre they took the gold from the mission and carried it across the river into Arizona, where they held a powwow near the base of Sugarloaf Peak in the Laguna Mountains. According to one version of the legend, they then buried the gold in the desert and left no clues as to its location; another tale asserts that they threw it in the river. A third version, recounted in 1955 by a prospector named Shorty Mills, holds that the Indians sewed up the gold in a cowhide and buried it under the mission. Over the years, a number of people have searched for the lost gold of Bicuner. In 1836, Thomas Russell, a slope-shouldered, one-eyed prospector from San Diego tried to find it without luck. For his trouble, he was thrown into jail by Mexican officials who thought he knew more than he was saying about the gold they claimed for the national treasury. There are stories of various other searchers, including three priests from Italy who arrived in Yuma in 1898 with a map of the region made in Paris. By this time the remains of the church had disintegrated to the point of being unrecognizable, and its exact location was in dispute (for years, historians believed the mission had been downstream from Yuma near Pilot Knob; but it is now generally accepted that it was upstream, near the present location of Laguna Dam). Did the Franciscans find gold at Bicuner Mission? In 1746, after a foray to the same region where Bicuner was later built, the Jesuit priest Jacobo Sedelmayr wrote, "Although there are no known mines on the Gila and Colorado rivers, there is no lack of hopes and possibilities of their existence." And in 1775, Garces mentioned in his diary that his interpreter believed the land to be rich in gold. It seems possible that the Franciscans were at least aware of the existence of gold, whether or not they actively mined it. Still, most accounts of the Yuma Massacre attribute the uprising to less alluring causes. The Spanish settlers appropriated the best land for their homes and then allowed their livestock to graze in the Quechans' crops. Gifts promised to the Indians failed to materialize. Unruly Quechans were locked up or whipped, and since punishment was the province of the military, the Franciscans had little say in the matter. The decision to establish a mission-pueblo at Yuma was made far away, but those familiar with the Quechans could foresee trouble. Before the missions were built, Gen. Juan Bautista de Anza warned Viceroy Bucareli in a letter that if the Quechans were treated severely they might revolt. The bad news for would-be treasure hunters is that even if the Franciscans had amassed a trove of gold, there is no telling where it might be now. There are no treasure maps, no clues left by the Indians, no markers guiding the way. The Colorado River once ran high enough through Yuma that steamships could come up from the Sea of Cortes; now it won't float much more than a canoe. Bicuner Mission has eroded into hard ground. Likewise, the legend of the Bicuner Gold, once large in the mind of prospectors, has faded into the past.