[In 1759 Parrilla marched from San Antonio with a force of about six
hundred men and attacked the Taovayas villages on Red River somewhere
in the vicinity of what is now Montague County, Dr. Herbert E. Bolton
says near the present Ringgold. Parrilla found the Indians “intrenched
behind a strong stockade with breastworks, flying a French flag, and
skillfully using French weapons and tactics.” A sanguinary battle
followed, resulting in heavy loss on both sides. The Spanish withdrew,
leaving “two cannon and extra baggage behind.” [71] Seventeen years
later the cannon were recovered. [72] In my mind there is no doubt that
the long unexplained “Old Spanish Fort” of Miss Gunter’s legend was the
fortification attacked by Parrilla. [73] The source of the relics
mentioned by Miss Gunter is accounted for also.
Thus is seen again how legend has preserved in a vague way what history
long ignored but eventually established. Comparison should be made with
“The San Gabriel Mission in Legend.” [74] Again, “Old Spanish Fort” was
the name given by Westerners to the ruins of the San Saba presidio
before the history of the site became generally known. [75] The
deduction need not be made that legend is always correct in
anticipating history!—Editor.]
I
The buried treasure legends of Cooke County, so far as I have been able
to investigate, center around two localities. The first legend with its
variants is current in the Cross Timbers and relates to that part of
the county immediately northwest of Burns City, extending to within a
few miles of Gainesville. An outcropping of the legend persists also in
the Cross Timbers near Dexter. The descendants of the first settlers,
some of whom still live in the country, tell of many hunts for buried
treasure made by different people who were guided by maps or oral
directions furnished by Mexicans.
Marks of fish, turtles, serpents, and other easily drawn animals were
once found on trees and stones; but no master mind, such as reveals
itself in Poe’s “Gold Bug,” came to deduce their true meaning. So the
treasure has never been found, although an effort was made to locate it
quite recently. Most of these marks have long since been removed or
destroyed; however, it has been the writer’s fortune to see the outline
of a crudely cut fish upon the side of a large boulder, probably the
only mark of its kind left in the county.
It may interest Texas readers to know that in support of the claim that
this part of what is now Cooke County was visited by Spanish explorers,
there now repose in the Cooke County museum, which is a part of the
county library, a one-pound brass cannon ball, picked up one mile
northwest of Burns City, and a brass spear-head, found in a gravel
drift near Dexter. Brass cannon balls went out of date long before
Americans ever reached this part of Texas; and, as an old Texas ranger
has pointed out, the only metal that the Indians used for their spear
and arrow heads was iron—not brass.