The Lost Treasures of the Spanish Peaks
All about the Breasts of the World, Aztec gold, and sinister Spanish priests…
Huajatolla. Wa-ha-to-ya. The Spanish Peaks.
These are just some of the names appended to two very prominent mountains that loom over the Great Plains of eastern Colorado; like two lonely sentinels, West Spanish Peak (elev. 13,631 feet) and East Spanish Peak (elev. 12,688 feet) guard the approaches to the looming, snow-capped wall of the Culebra Mountains—part of the extensive Sangre de Cristo Range.
The Spanish Peaks, apparently, have been known by many other names in their day: Twin Peaks, Dos Hermanos, Dos Hermanas, Las Tetas, Las Cumbres Españolas, Dream Mountain, the Breasts of the World. The names are evocative, and usually bear points of obvious comparison to female anatomy; I suppose that’s only natural, given that the explorers who first came upon them were so often lonely men with imaginations that inevitably ran to the coarse and lewd.
Standing all by themselves, quite apart from the ramparts of the Rocky Mountains, the Spanish Peaks are quite a sight. In reality, we are told that these mountains are immense “igneous stocks,” which is to say a kind of gigantic pool of magma that slowly cooled beneath the earth’s surface millions of year ago, crystallizing into a giant lens of rock, before being revealed through the action of natural weathering and erosion.
At least that’s what the eggheads say, and it’s plausible enough. But these explanations always seem to strip a place of the magic and mystery that is its due, and nowhere is this truer than with the majestic Spanish Peaks. Between them and the Culebras to the west is the beautiful Cucharas River Valley, which is like a green and wet paradise after coming from the sere plains in the east, or the high dry deserts of New Mexico to the south, or the parched San Luis Valley further west, beyond the mountain ramparts of the Sangres.
And, what’s more, there are strange legends that cling to these mountains.
For instance, we learn in Stephanie Waters’ Colorado Legends & Lore that the Spanish Peaks were even known to the Aztecs of far-off Mexico, who sent expeditions as far north as this lonely outlier of the Rocky Mountains to mine for the ubiquitous gold that sustained their empire.
Waters describes it thus:
“At first, the invaders were kind toward the natives by teaching them better ways to hunt, fish and plant crops. However, once the intruders discovered gold in the mountains, they lost all interest in philanthropy. The tourists immediately enslaved the natives to mine the peaks, and a bustling mining camp was established. Tons of gold [were] stolen in order to decorate elaborate Mexican shrines of Huitsilopochtli [sic], Tlacopan and Tezca. But mining eventually angered the gods, and they cursed those seeking Huajatolla’s gold. The peaks erupted in anger, spitting molten lava into the heavens and smothering the beautiful green valley in black soot. Rain ceased falling from the heavens, waters evaporated, animals perished and crops withered on the vine.”1
The Aztecs eventually fled, which is understandable; in after-centuries, the Spanish arrived, and resumed the exploitation of the presumably valuable gold veins originally worked by the ancient Mexicans. It is said, though with very sketchy attribution, that a priest2 arrived with the Spanish expedition, and that this unsavory individual lost no time in enslaving the local native population and compelling them to mine the gold of the mountains. Once they had laden their carts with as much of the precious stuff as they could carry, the Spanish collapsed the mines on the Indians—so it is said—and made off with their ill-gotten pelf.
The Spanish didn’t get very far, however, for they were shortly ambushed only about fifty miles into their journey; and this, some say, is how the Purgatoire River, which ultimately empties out of the Culebras, received its ominous name—Río de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio, or “The River of Souls Lost in Purgatory.” Of course, there are about a dozen other stories for how this river got its name, but this one seems especially fitting.
As to whatever became of the ill-gotten Spanish gold, that is a matter of great and continuing conjecture. The obvious answer is that it never existed, and therefore it will never be found; but then, that is an altogether too pat explanation, and it’s one that’s hardly productive of investing a region as beautiful as the Spanish Peaks country with the romance and allure of buried treasure.
Meanwhile, there is no dearth of lost, buried, forgotten, and otherwise misplaced treasure hoards in the vicinity of the lofty Huajatolla Mountains. Several years back a series by Nancy Christofferson ran in the venerable World Journal newspaper, in which the numerous treasure tales of the Spanish Peaks were recounted at length:
“One of the most famous legendary mines in the region was known as the Lost Mexican Mine…It was ‘found’ not only on the Spanish Peaks, but in the Culebra Range, on Greenhorn, on Silver Mountain, on the Blanca massif, Rough and Mestas mountains, in Huerfano, Las Animas and Costilla counties. The possibilities were as endless as the mountains themselves, and each new mineral strike could prove to be the elusive lost mine. One candidate for this legendary mine was also called variously the Mummy Mine, Broken Toe Cave and other names. It was discovered in 1892 when two prospectors of La Veta, working the Coyote claim on Silver Mountain, were en route from their mine to town in a snowstorm. They fell through the snowpack into a cave, which they explored. To their great amazement, they found evidence of underground mine workings, and then, in a niche, a golden ‘mummy.’ This item was child-sized and child-shaped, but weighed about 140 pounds. The figure was decorated with gold jewelry that included a filigreed bracelet and beads. They tried to wrestle it to the surface and in the process, broke a toe off the statuette. So, they pocketed the toe and left the mummy. The toe, it seems, was assayed and found to be nearly solid gold. The Denver Post reported all this in depth and, apparently, seriously. The story ends as all good lost treasure stories do, with the sudden loss of memory that prevented the prospectors from returning to the golden figure…
[…]
Although the date of occurrence is unrecorded, a story persists of the Arapahoe Princess Treasure. This one centers on 50-pound gold bars the Spanish ‘lost’ when they buried them while fleeing with some Arapahoe, including the ‘princess,’ from enemy warriors, possibly Apache or Comanche. Only two Spaniards survived to relate the story of their lost wealth. The gold bars, they said, were buried near a 30-foot tall rock shaped like a doll, or muñeca in Spanish. A shovel had been placed strategically to mark the site. Many years later, searchers failed to find the shovel but a farmer reported he’d found it, he just couldn’t remember where. La Muñeca has been located in several places, including near La Veta and near Aguilar…
Verdict: So what are we to believe? Is there a forgotten cache of golden loot somewhere in the majestic Spanish Peaks country?
Probably not, but that hasn’t stopped the believers from seeking lost treasures and buried mines in this beautiful corner of Colorado. The idea that the Aztecs, or any other Mesoamerican civilization, maintained goldmines this far north seems outlandish; but then, the far-flung trade networks of the ancient Southwest have never ceased to astonish.
After all, the discovery of the remains of scarlet macaws in such ancient sites as Wupatki in Arizona and Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, as well as marine shells and cacao throughout the region, attest to a widespread commercial enterprise as long ago as the ninth century. And in the Galisteo Basin of northern New Mexico, there are plenty of intriguing petroglyphs that plainly depict Central American parrots and what certainly appear to be figures with a distinctly Mesoamerican-style headdress and garb.
And all of this is not too far, comparatively speaking, from the Spanish Peaks region. So perhaps the notion of some kind of far-northern outpost of the Aztec Empire in southern Colorado isn’t as far-fetched as it seems to be at first blush. Even stranger discoveries have confounded archaeological notions and chronologies in recent years—some of which have been made in the American Southwest itself.
So why shouldn’t there be secret hoards of gold buried somewhere under the watchful gaze of the Spanish Peaks? The place is doubtless riddled with caves and unseen volcanic vents and tubes, any one of which might be the perfect repository for a cache of lost Spanish or Aztec gold.
Come to think of it, it’s high time I head on up there and try my luck at finding it…
Colorado Legends & Lore: The Phantom Fiddler, Snow Snakes, and Other Tales, Stephanie Waters (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014), pg. 60.
The sources of this story seem to agree that he was called Fray Juan de la Cruz, and that these events occurred in the 1540s. If so, Fray Juan de la Cruz is presumably to be identified with the priest of the same name who stayed in what is now Albuquerque, after Coronado’s expedition returned to Mexico. This is yet another reason to doubt this legend, for de la Cruz was an old man at the time, and died among the Tiguex in New Mexico in 1542; he was hardly in any position to lead ambitious expeditions up into the Spanish Peaks country in search of gold. Besides, the failure of Coronado’s expedition to locate the Seven Cities of Gold upon the plains of Kansas seems to have chastised the Spanish, and rather disabused them of any notions of replicating the spectacular conquests of Cortes and Pizarro in North America.