Nevada Treasure Tale from Lost Treasure Magazine
BACKNCARDR
The Cursed Hoard Of Red Rock Canyon
The three days turned into four days before Sitterle made it back virtually
empty-handed, from springs that were only faint trickles. Horror crept over him
as he rode into the encampment and viewed the carnage that lay before him.
Vultures were enjoying a smorgasbord on the mutilated bodies of Wright, the
wagon drivers and the Danite guards.
By Bill G. Revis
Somewhere in scenic Red Rock Canyon, located in a desolate area of Nevada, lies
buried a hoard of gold coins, gold plate, silver and gold nuggets, stashed
there by a band of renegade Paiute Indians in April 1858 and worth about $5
million at today’s prices.
According to evidence and historical archives, this incredible fortune was
stashed by the Paiute Indians after they attacked and massacred a Mormon wagon
train enroute to San Bernardino, Calif.
Chief Swift Hawk and his party of renegades buried the plunder, then
consecrated the treasure to the tribe by staging a Ghost Dance and placing a
curse upon anyone attempting to recover this treasure.
Believing that the curse was sufficient to guard the treasure, Swift Hawk
arrogantly inscribed directions to the treasure in the form of a petroglyph on
a rock close to the treasure. Since this inscription could only be read by
Paiutes, and they wouldn’t dare to translate it for anyone else, Swift Hawk
was certain this treasure would remain hidden.
This rock carving has steadfastly defied nature, as well as a parade of
treasure hunters eager to unlock the code, and is still waiting to be
deciphered and lead some lucky treasure hunter to untold wealth. To delve into
the history of this treasure we go back to the days of the alleged Mormon War
when Brigham Young’s secret army, the Danites, was massacring all non-members
who unwittingly wandered into the Mormon territory of Utah.
This wanton slaughter of those called the Gentiles by the Danites reached its
peak on Sept. 7, 1857 when the Danites ambushed 120 Arkansas Gentiles headed
for California, in a spot called Mountain Meadows in southern Utah.
History is vague about who was responsible for this massacre that shocked the
country and aroused the ire of President Buchanan against the Mormons, and it
was not until 20 years later, in 1877, that John D. Lee, the government Indian
agent for southern Utah, and a Mormon, was executed for this slaughter.
Just before they strung Lee up, he related the details of the atrocity, stating
that he and a combined force of Danites and Indians had swooped down upon the
Arkansans, who managed to fend off the assault for four days until Lee suckered
them by offering them safe conduct to the next settlement, Cedar City. The
escort Lee had provided had orders to kill all the Arkansans, except the 17
small children.
There was never any evidence to tie Brigham Young directly to this massacre,
but it was thought that he condoned it, and he rewarded Lee with a trio of
pretty, young wives from his own stable of 70 wives. Young and Lee conspired to
lie their way out of this mess, and Young instructed Lee to write him a long
letter laying all the blame on the Indians, claiming it was a wanton Indian
massacre, and then Young would report to the government that this is what
happened, but it was to no avail. Brigham Young sent the letter to President
Buchanan, but the president didn’t buy it as he had already received many
reports implicating the Mormons.
Upon receiving copies of Lee’s letter, the eastern newspapers had a field day
with it and pushed to pounce on Brigham Young and hang him out to dry. Early in
March 1858 word came to Young that a large force of U.S. Cavalry, commanded by
Brig. Gen. Albert Sidney was on its way to invade Salt Lake City.
Young called all the elders of the church together on March 10 and informed
them that he would evacuate the city and take all its wealth with him. After a
long speech lambasting the U.S. Government and its alleged vindictiveness
against the Mormons, Young stated that he would lead the Mormons to a desert
area larger than any Eastern state. Young claimed that this new haven would
support 500,000 people and he ordered his followers to take their farm
implements, livestock, the doors and windows from their houses to use in
construction of new homes and all their personal gold and silver, and bring it
to a collecting point where it would be picked up and transported to their new
home by heavily armed Danites.
The combined wealth of the people, some $1.5 million, was loaded into 22 wagons
guarded by 40 Danites, commanded by Capt. Josiah Sitterle and led by Everett
Wright, an experienced wagon boss. They then proceeded in a southwesterly
direction, with Everett instructed to take the treasure train to the vicinity
of a large cave in eastern Nevada between Ely and Pioche, camp and wait for
further instructions from Brigham Young. Arriving at the cave unscathed, the
Mormons rested for two days, then word arrived from Young to proceed to San
Bernardino with the train where he and the elders would decide whether to
remain at the settlement already established there by some California Mormons,
or travel farther south to Sonoro, Mexico.
Concerned that the treasure train could be attacked taking the usual route via
the Old Spanish Trail, Young instructed them to go southwest through the Mormon
Mountains, pass west of Las Vegas and then head across the Mojave Desert.
This was rough terrain and Wright and Sitterle were alien to this country.
Foreboding crept over them as they blindly followed Young’s orders. Trouble
soon visited them when the grassy ground turned into mesquite and spiny cactus.
The forbidding terrain became rougher as the flat mesa chameleoned into
rock-littered hills and dangerous arroyos that slowed their pace to a crawl.
After a few days, the water supply faded due to a long drought that had dried
up the streams, forcing them to fill water casks from shallow, muddy springs
that grew farther and farther apart until they became just trickles in the
ground. They hit the last water hole just before struggling over a pass near
7,411-foot Mormon Peak.
Wright called a halt and apprised Sitterle that without water they could go no
farther as the mules were about to drop in their tracks. Sitterle, with parched
throat and cracked lips, reluctantly agreed, knowing that it would be
disastrous to continue and decided to leave the train where it was, guarded by
eight Danites, and go in search of water. Since no Indians had been sighted and
the Paiutes were alleged to be friendly to white men, Sitterle felt no danger
for the train and set out with his men, packing every empty water bag
available, promising to be back in three days.
The three days turned into four days before Sitterle made it back virtually
empty-handed from springs that were only faint trickles. Horror crept over him
as he rode into the encampment and viewed the carnage that lay before him.
Vultures were enjoying a smorgasbord on the mutilated bodies of Wright, the
wagon drivers and the Danite guards. Swift Hawk and his band of renegades had
attacked the wagon train. Although taken by surprise, evidence indicated that
the Mormons had fought hard. Several of the slain had axes, knives or spades
still clutched in their hands.
Sitterle swore swift reprisal as he gazed out across the grisly scene. Adding
to the shock of this carnage, Sitterle feared the wrath of Brigham Young over
the loss of the fortune entrusted to him. Without bothering to bury the dead,
he ordered the weary Danites back into the saddle, and they trailed the Indians
southward toward Muddy Peak. Coming upon the carcass of a mule that had died of
thirst and exhaustion, Sitterle found this to be a sign of encouragement and
informed his men that this was only the first and they would find others and
soon the Indians would have to abandon the wagons, transfer the treasure to
their own mounts, slowing them down considerably. After discovering two more
dead mules within a mile of each other, Sitterle was sure they would overtake
the Indians soon, so he ordered the men to make camp and rest. They would
surely catch the Indians the next day.
Later that night Sitterle was awakened by a sentry and told to look to the
south. About 10 miles away, the sky glowed red from the flames that blazed on
the horizon. The Indians had torched the wagons. Arriving at the scene of the
fires the next morning, charred, still smoldering wreckage and the stench of
burning flesh greeted Sitterle and his men. The Paiutes had turned one wagon
into a funeral pyre for their dead. Seven Indians too badly wounded to travel
had been left behind, and the Danites made quick work of them by slitting their
throats. Sitterle and his men continued to trail the Indians, whose tracks now
veered west bypassing the settlement at Las Vegas toward Red Rock Canyon. Upon
approaching the canyon Sitterle stopped and scanned the red sandstone hills
cobwebbed with treacherous arroyos and narrow gulches and quickly surmised that
this was the old stomping grounds for Swift Hawk and his band, and knowing they
were being pursued would set up an ambush for the Mormons.
Swift Hawk was in no hurry to jump the Mormons and craftily lured the Danites
deeper and deeper into the canyon. Then he sprung his trap, despite
Sitterle’s constant vigilance. Swift Hawk and his men had tethered their
horses in a deep arroyo and then back-tracked on foot, climbed the steep slopes
of two hills flanking the gulch that the Mormons would ride through. As the
Mormons rode into the trap, huge boulders began to careen down the sides of the
hills. Arriving on target in clouds of red dust, the bouncing boulders caught
the Danites by surprise, wiping out several of them in a heartbeat. Looking for
escape, the other Danites raced forward, only to be stopped by an avalanche of
rock and debris pouring down in front of them, sealing off any escape route.
Trapped like rats, a barrage of bullets and arrows hit them from above.
Sitterle’s horse was blown out from under him. He made a mad dash for safety,
and just short of reaching the protection of a boulder, a Paiute bullet erased
the back of his head.
Eleven of the Danites made it to cover and began to return fire but were
hopelessly pinned down and were picked off one by one until only three remained
alive. David Mullen of Provo, Utah, was the first of the survivors to make a
dash for freedom, only to be struck down by a fusillade of arrows. He was
followed, and joined in death, by Thomas Brabant and Elihu Hausner, both of
Salt Lake City.
Four days later, sheep rancher Transito Fernandez was in the area stalking
mountain lions and tracked one of the cats into the deadly gulch and came upon
the scene of carnage littered with bloated bodies. Crossing himself, he
continued on with the business at hand, tracking the cats that were raiding his
ranch, explaining later to his priest that the dead were already dead and
nothing more could be done for them.
Further on through the gulch, Fernandez stumbled upon the bodies of Brabant and
Hausner. Still tracking the cat, he heard moans coming from a pile of rocks. He
discovered Mullen dying from blood poisoning from an arrow wound in his thigh.
Somewhat incoherent and wracked with fever, Mullen weakly described the ambush
and the killing of Brabant and Hausner which he witnessed from his hiding
place. The Paiutes, their horses burdened with pouches of treasure, moved on
through the gulch. Later he heard chanting and yelling in the distance and
figured the Indians had set up camp and were performing some victory ceremonial
rite.
Mullen begged Fernandez to get word to Brigham Young and inform him that the
wagon train had been wiped out and the Paiutes had made off with the treasure.
Fernandez had never been farther than Las Vegas and knew nothing of Brigham
Young and little of the Mormons, but he promised to pass this message on to his
priest. Mullen, the sole survivor of the 62-man treasure train, breathed his
last breath in Red Rock Canyon that day. Fernandez returned to Las Vegas and
informed his priest of the ambush. He then notified the authorities and guided
the posse back to the grisly scene. The area was searched for Indians, but they
had long since left, and it was later learned that Swift Hawk and his men had
slipped into the desolate Castle Mountains some 70 miles southeast of Las Vegas
to escape reprisal.
The posse did find a freshly carved petroglyph on a rock several hundred yards
from Mullen’s body. The trampled ground around it was mute evidence of the
ceremonial Ghost Dance performed there. Local rock-writing experts attempted to
decipher the inscription but failed, due mainly to the fact that there are two
kinds of rock writing: pictographic, which can usually be deciphered, and
petroglyphs, some as old as 3,000 years, which are much more complicated and
can only be deciphered by those who know the code. The codes usually vary from
tribe to tribe and even within branches of the same tribe.
Today probably only members of the old Chemeheuvi-Paiutes can translate the
sprawling petroglyph found in Red Rock Canyon, carved by Swift Hawk, and they
won’t do it for fear of bringing down upon them the wrath of Wavoka, messiah
of the Ghost Dance religion.
There have been many deaths attributed to this cursed treasure, so the curse is
not to be taken lightly.
Gustave Wilhelms, a 38-year-old German emigrant traveling across the Mojave
desert with his wife in a prairie schooner, part of a group of Illinois farmers
migrating to California, found several gold coins, minted in 1851, in the
vicinity of the petroglyph while rounding up his stray animals.
He dropped out of the train and remained for several weeks to hunt for more. He
found a few more and wound up with a total of $75, more money than he had ever
possessed before. After finding no more coins, he and his wife decided to move
on. Without waiting to join a train, they started out across the Mojave. Days
later, somewhere beyond Bagdad, Ariz., they lost their way and wandered into
the “Devil’s Playground,” encountered a terrible sandstorm, cut their
horses loose and holed up in their wagon. A prospector stumbled upon their
bodies weeks afterward. Back in Las Vegas, Gerry Fitzgerald, the owner of the
trading post where the Wilhelms stopped and bought supplies with some of the
Mormon coins before setting out on their ill-fated journey, showed the gold
pieces to his friend, Wilcox Stephens.
After some discussion, the two men arrived at the conclusion that the coins had
come from the ambushed Mormon treasure train. They began to search the canyon
day in and day out. Stephens picked up a few silver dollars, dated 1849, at the
entrance to a cave. Peering into the cave, he eagerly entered to check it out,
only to emerge minutes later screaming bloody murder. He had walked into a nest
of snakes in the cave and was bitten several times. Fitzgerald lanced the
wounds, poured gunpowder into the wounds and lit them to cauterize the bites,
to no avail. Stephens died an agonizing death a few hours later. Fitzgerald
stopped looking for the treasure but found a way to profit from it by showing
the Mormon coins to everyone who came to his trading post and claiming the
coins came from Brigham Young’s wagon train, and that there were probably
thousands more out there.
The story spread and gold seekers poured into the area to hunt for the
treasure, resulting in a booming business for Fitzgerald. His sales of shovels,
picks, blasting powder, fuses and provisions rocketed. At the same time
fatalities took a big jump in the canyon as amateur treasure hunters unfamiliar
with blasting powder perished in premature explosions. Many were killed by
boulders rolling down the slopes. Others died in gunfights over searching
rights, and some died from snake bites.
Fitzgerald was convinced the Ghost Dance curse was responsible for all the
deaths and so stated when interviewed by a reporter from the New York World.
The Virginia City Territorial Enterprise published an article detailing the
removal of the treasure from Salt Lake City, and this was followed by other
newspaper accounts of Swift Hawk’s attack on the Mormons. Since there were no
surviving white witnesses to the massacre, Swift Hawk and his band were never
captured and the other Indians aren’t talking, some of this is a little hazy,
but there is sufficient evidence to lend credence to this treasure.
It is a historical fact, and there is a geographical landmark denoting the
location of the treasure, if it can be deciphered. These are two factors that
separate a legitimate treasure from a treasure tale. As far as is known, this
treasure still rests somewhere in Red Rock Canyon. This treasure has a long
trail of death, the original massacre, the treasure seekers who have met their
demise in the desert, by snake bite, gunfights, falling rocks and explosions
— all giving some credence to the curse set down by Swift Hawk.
The Cursed Hoard Of Red Rock Canyon
The treasure:
A hoard of Mormon gold coins, gold plate, silver and gold nuggets, stashed
there by a band of renegade Paiute Indians in April 1858 and worth about $5
million at today’s prices.
How to find it:
Everyone knows where Las Vegas, Nev., is, so there’s no need to direct you
there. Red Rock Canyon is a few miles west of Las Vegas in some pretty desolate
country, so go prepared for desert hunting. A topographical map of this area
would be mighty handy. If you are a puzzle solver, then you might take a crack
at deciphering the petroglyph left by Swift Hawk. A diligent search with a good
detector of the area for a good distance around the inscribed rock might turn
up some of the coins lost from the pouches that Swift Hawk and his band were
carrying, coins such as those found by earlier seekers. With luck you might
even stumble upon the main treasure, but cracking the code on the petroglyph
should lead you right to it. Carry protection for snakes. This is rattler
heaven.
Sources:
Clark County Library.
Las Vegas & Virginia City newspaper archives.
Nevada Historical Preservation Society.
Nevada State Archives.
Saga Treasure Special, 1975.
Utah and Mormon Church archives.
Leonard
didn't lose my pictures, I'll be able to post a picture of you and it some
day.
Leonard
"BACKNCARDR" <backn...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20011002122031...@mb-mi.aol.com...
> - all giving some credence to the curse set down by Swift Hawk.
BACKNCARDR
>From: "Leonard" dre...@golddredger.com
>Date: 10/3/01 3:25 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <9pg39n$b...@dispatch.concentric.net>
>
>Hey Loren! You type pretty good. Still have the 6" monster? If the mail
>didn't lose my pictures, I'll be able to post a picture of you and it some
>day.
>Leonard
Leonard,
Yep still have it. Dredge season here runs out the 15th of this month East of
Hiway 49. Was wanting to give it a last hurrah for the season on the Mokelumne
just up from the 49 bridge but too doggone busy with other things. Carolyn has
a Keene highbanker so eventually we may dink with that later this year. Was 105
degrees here yesterday I kid you not!!!!
Loren
Woodland, CA.
Gr...@127.0.0.1
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BACKNCARDR
>Dang Loren 105 ??? really ???
Grivy,
Yes and Monday was 101 degrees!!!
Both temps registered in Sacramento-I live 20 miles due North on I-5. Crazy
weather.
COArgonaut
Gonna be dinking around with the high banker around Christmas time?
I will be in Wonderful Woodland then. Going to pick up my neew dredge, visit
with the family, etc. At least we can get together for a cold one.
Ed