[The treasure rammed cannon is more or less common to Texas legends.
The early Spanish in Texas sometimes buried cannon on account of
military expediency, [76] and it may be that the modern tradition
connects back with such disposition of artillery, although the
tradition is doubtless widespread. [77] A Spanish cannon stuffed with
treasure is supposed to lie deep buried in a lake near Carrizo Springs,
Dimmit County. [78] On the banks of the Big Sandy (or “Sandies”) of
Lavaca County, legend has buried a third cannon. Mr. Whitley of
McMullen County told me the story connected with it. He heard it half a
century ago from a veteran of the “Mexican War” (War of Texas
Independence) in the Refugio country. The veteran was named White, as I
remember.
When the Mexicans were retreating from San Jacinto towards Goliad,
White was in the pursuing party of Texans. The Texans camped for the
night on the eastern bank of the Big Sandies, and the next morning when
White walked out to gather some firewood, he discovered that the
Mexicans had been at the same site twenty-four hours before. Besides
the usual camp signs, there was the trail of something that had been
dragged to a motte of trees and buried. The marks of the digging were
as plain as daylight. White supposed that one of the wounded Mexicans
had died and been buried.
Years later he fell in with an old Mexican who turned out to have been
in the retreat from San Jacinto. Naturally the two veterans reviewed
their march.
“There is one thing I have often thought about, though it seemed simple
to me at the time,” said White one day to the Mexican. “That is the
drag-trail I saw at you-all’s camp east of the Big Sandies. What made
it, anyhow?”
Then the Mexican told how he had helped to drag a small cannon plugged
full of rings, jewels, and money, and had seen it buried. The Mexicans
intended to come back for it very soon, he said; they were bent at the
time on getting away with their bare lives. But when it was known that
Texas had won her independence and that the country was settling up
with men bitter towards Mexico, the scattered men who buried the cannon
were afraid to come back.
The upshot of the Mexican’s explanation was that he and White went to
the Big Sandies in search of the precious cannon. They found the
country cut up by fences and fields and grown up in timber so that they
could not locate a single landmark.
It will not harm Mr. Martin’s vivid narrative to remark that after the
battle of San Jacinto, Burleson with a detachment of troops followed
the Mexicans westward across the Brazos and San Bernard, instead of
going northward. At the time of the battle, General Ganoa, with a small
number of Mexican troops, was at Fort Bend on the Brazos with orders to
proceed to Nacogdoches; but immediately after the battle he received
orders to retreat to Mexico and he joined in the general retirement.
[79]—Editor.]
In the fall of 1920 I was one of a hunting party that camped for about
two weeks in Tyler County on the Neches River. Our guide for the trip
was “Uncle Jimmy” Clanton, a typical old hunter and pioneer, whose head
was full of stories of Indians and buried treasure. Some of these
stories were obviously concoctions of his own mind, but others were
based on historical facts, with, of course, touches of glamour and
romance which had grown into the story gradually through constant
telling and retelling. His best-loved story, one which I took great
delight in listening to more than once during those two weeks and which
was common chatter among the backwoodsmen of the locality, is related
below. It was, I think, on the second night of our camp that he lighted
his pipe, settled down with his back to a tree, and told us the
following tale.
“My father was in the Texas Revolution of 1836. He was in all the
earlier fights and skirmishes of the war, and was one of the men who
helped capture Santa Anna at San Jacinto. After the treaty of peace was
signed, or maybe it was just before the war ended, he was sent to
Nacogdoches in a company under Burleson to drive out the Mexicans that
held the fort there. This is really where my story begins. You-all have
likely read some of this in history, but I’ll tell you some things that
never got in history at all.
“Burleson’s bunch got to Nacogdoches late one evening and decided to
wait till morning to storm the fort. They camped for the night a mile
or so away, and bright and early next morning they marched on the fort.
They were some surprised at not getting fired at, and still more
surprised when they got up close enough to see that there wasn’t a soul
stirring in or about the fort. Burleson ordered a grand charge, and his
army of about fifty men charged, only to find nobody there to receive
them. The men nosed around a little, found the Mexicans’ trail leading
due south, and determined to follow them. The trail was fresh and the
Mexes were traveling with wagons; so they figgered they could come up
on them before dark. You see, the men had been hearing stories about
the bunches of gold the Mexicans had; so they were pretty keen to catch
up with them wagons.
“Well, they pulled out down the trail, traveling full speed ahead and
making good time. They rode all that day without seeing the enemy, but
they knew they were getting close because the trail was getting
fresher. They camped that night about fifty miles from Nacogdoches, and
hit the trail agin early next morning. About ten o’clock they come upon
a couple of wagons, and figgered that the dagoes were getting scared
and leaving all unnecessary junk behind. They pushed on without
stopping for dinner, and about three o’clock sighted the Mexicans
trying to cross the river at Boone’s Ferry. That ferry is about two
mile up the river. I can show it to you in the morning.
“As soon as the Texans saw the Mexicans, they made a dash, hoping to
get a fight before they had time to cross the river. Just as they got
up within shooting distance, the ferry-boat landed on the opposite side
of the river with a wagon and three Mexicans. The wagon drove off, but
the Texans were too busy at the time to notice any details. The Mexes
took to the timber and there was a right lively little scrap. Paw was
lying behind a log firing away, when he looked up in time to see three
men on the other side rolling a cannon along toward the river. They
rolled it up to a high bluff and dumped it right off into the deepest
hole in ten miles. He said he wondered at the time what the idea was,
but was more interested in number one than in cannons; so he didn’t
take time to investigate.
“To make a long story short, about fifteen of the Mexicans were killed
and the rest captured. That is, they were all captured except the three
men that got across the river. A detachment was sent after them, but
they got away. The wagon, empty as a last year’s bird’s nest, and one
dead Mexican, were found about a mile and a half away from the river,
but the other two had disappeared completely. Burleson rounded up his
bunch and his prisoners, and found that he had lost only one man, who
had drowned when he got chased off the bluff into the river. He
reported to Houston with his prisoners, and that was the end of the
expedition.
“As soon as Paw got out of the army, he come back up into this country
and settled. His old homestead is about eight mile from here. He used
to take me up the river often and show me where the battle took place,
where the ferry-boat used to land, and where the cannon was pushed into
the river. He used to talk a whole lot about that cannon, and to wonder
what the idea was in dumping it into the river. He also wondered a good
bit about what was in that wagon that the Mexicans had been so anxious
to get across the river with. We never could quite decide why they were
so bent on crossing the river with an empty wagon.
“Well, the things that happened in the next few years won’t interest
you any. Paw died when I was ten years old, but I remembered all he had
ever told me about the fight. When the Civil War broke out, I joined
the Confederate Army, fought through the war, then come back to my
folks here. About 1875 things begin to happen that made me remember
everything I had ever heard about the fight at Boone’s Ferry.
“In or about that year, a slick-haired young Mexican come into the
neighborhood and begin nosing around. He didn’t appear to have any
particular business here, but seemed to be just looking around for
somebody or something. After he’d been here for a month or two he come
to me one day and says that, as I was the oldest man in these parts,
he’d like to make me a proposition. I didn’t get the connection between
my age and his proposition, but agreed to listen; so we got down to
what he wanted. He had a map that he claimed he got in an old monastery
in Mexico, and that map proved to be right interesting. It outlined a
piece of country beginning at Nacogdoches and coming due south. The end
of the trail marked off was just about a mile and a half across the
river, and the crossing was marked ‘Boone’s Ferry.’ I become all eyes
and ears at once, specially when he started his story. He asked me if I
knew where Boone’s Ferry was, and I says, ‘Sure.’ Then he opened up:
“‘My grandfather was with the Mexican band that was defeated by
Burleson at this ferry. He was one of the two men that got away. Are
you by any chance acquainted with the details of the battle?’
“And I says, ‘Some. My paw was in the fight, and has told me about it
many a time.’
“‘Did he ever tell you about seeing a cannon shoved off in the river?’
“‘Many a time,’ says I.
“‘Mr. Clanton, did it ever occur to you to wonder just why that cannon
was thrown into the river?’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve wondered about it lots of times.’
“‘I’ll tell you why,’ he says, getting kinder excited, but lowering his
voice. ‘It was filled from end to end with gold!’
“‘Gold!’ I whistled. ‘So that’s it.’
“‘Yes, that’s it,’ he says. ‘Not only that, but I have in my pocket
another map giving the exact location of more gold, beginning with the
ferry as a center. You see, the wagon that crossed the river carried a
chest of money. The three men that were with it went on till they
became afraid of being overtaken; then they buried it. They had a
quarrel over it, and one of them shot another to shut him up. Then he
and my grandfather took down some landmarks on a crude map, and pulled
for Mexico. On the way the other Mexican died, leaving my grandfather
with the map. He died before he could come back and get the money. My
father was killed by bandits; so I was left with the one and original
map of the buried treasure. With your help, your knowledge of the
country around here, and so forth, we should be able to locate that
chest and the cannon easy. Now, I propose to give you half of whatever
we find. If we don’t find anything, you don’t get anything. What do you
say?’
“You-all can easily guess that I jumped right on his offer. He showed
me the other map, and I located the landmarks as near as I could on the
map; we got our tools together, and started our treasure hunt. We
looked for the cannon first, because I knew exactly where it should be.
We dredged and dredged and fished and fished for that thing, but never
could locate it. You see, it took about a forty-foot jump off into the
river and it had had about forty years to settle; so I guess it must
have been several feet deep in river mud when we were hunting it. We
finally gave up hopes of finding it and went to hunting the chest. The
map called for three landmarks all an equal distance apart. The chest
was supposed to be buried in the center of the triangle made by these
points. We found the first one, a big rock in a funny shape, without
any trouble at all. The others were big pine trees, but all the trees
in that country had been cut down and rafted down the river since the
map was made; so we couldn’t ever find the other two marks. We sighted
off places by every tree-stump in that neighborhood and dug down at the
points we found, but must not ever have sighted by the right stumps.
Anyhow, we hunted gold for about two months and never found a cent of
anything. The Mexican finally got discouraged and went home, but I got
a copy of his map and have been looking for that money off and on ever
since.
“And I guess that’s about all there is to it. If any of you-all want to
see where the ferry was and where the cannon was rolled off into the
river, we’ll go up there in the morning and look around.”