I heard the story of Moro’s gold first, when a very small child, from
my mother, who herself remembered it from her tenth year, and from my
grandmother, who, except for its tragic outcome, would have forgotten
the whole incident in her busy life as mistress of a large plantation.
I heard it when several years older from my father, who knew it merely
as a family and neighborhood legend, and I heard it again a few years
ago from my mother’s cousin, Judge W. P. McLean of Fort Worth, who as a
young man was living in my grandfather’s home at the time the incident
occurred. The story as I give it here contains elements of all four
slightly varying accounts.
Before the Civil War, my grandfather, Preston R. Rose, lived on a large
plantation, called Buena Vista, lying along the Guadalupe River, seven
miles from Victoria, near the Indianola road. Late one afternoon, two
years before the Civil War began, he was sitting on the porch reading,
when my mother, who was playing near, called his attention to the
unusual sight of a stranger coming across the field from the direction
of the river. The stranger was of small stature and dark complexion,
evidently a Spaniard. When he had reached the porch, he addressed my
grandfather in the easy, courteous manner of a gentleman and an equal,
and requested hospitality for the night, explaining that his pack mule
had gotten away from him and that he had exhausted himself in a
fruitless search.
His request was granted without question, and Moro took up his
residence at Buena Vista, which on one pretext or another lasted for
several months, in spite of the suspicious and disquieting
circumstances that soon arose. The first of these was the report
brought in by the negroes the next morning after Moro’s arrival, that a
mule with a pistol shot through his head had been found partially
buried in the river bottom. Another was the fact that Moro was never
seen without a glove on his right hand, not even at meal time. The
negro boy who waited on him in his room reported that he once saw him
without the glove when he was washing his hand, and described a strange
device on his wrist that was probably a tattooed figure. But the most
disturbing circumstance connected with Moro was his eagerness to get
rid of money. He distributed gold coins (of what coinage, I never
heard) among the household servants like copper pennies, until
Grandfather rather sharply requested him to stop.
Though there was not much to be bought in the little town of Victoria,
Moro never came back from a trip to town without the most expensive
presents that could be bought for all the family in spite of the fact
that they were invariably refused. My mother seems to have been
particularly impressed by a large oil painting which he once bought
from a local artist at an impossible price, as a present for my
grandmother. When she refused to accept it, he asked permission to hang
it in the library, and there it hung as long as the house was in
possession of the family.
Frequently Moro proposed the most extravagant things. Once he urged
Grandfather to allow him to build a great stone house of feudal
magnificence to replace the colonial frame house in which he lived.
Again he proposed that he take the entire family to Europe at his
expense, leaving the girls there to receive an elaborate education in
the best schools to be found on the continent.
One day as Moro was walking about the plantation with Grandfather, the
question of plantation debts came up, and Moro remarked in a
significant tone that Grandfather was at that minute standing within
fifty feet of enough gold to enable him to pay all the debts of the
plantation and still be a rich man, even if he did not own an acre of
land or a negro slave. Grandfather’s anger prevented his continuing the
disclosure that he was evidently eager to make. The only landmark of
any kind near was a large fig tree about fifty feet away.
In the meantime the negroes had caught the idea of buried treasures,
and many were the tales they told of seeing Moro digging about the
place at night.
A guest staying in the house one night reported that he had been drawn
to the door of his room by an unusual noise, and had seen Moro
painfully heaving a small chest up the stairway, step at a time.
My grandfather was a man in whom the spirit of adventure was strong. He
had left his plantation to the direction of his wife while he went
adventuring into the California gold fields in ’49. Consequently Moro
was able to catch his interest by the story of buried treasures down on
the Rio Grande, and Grandfather consented to go if he were allowed to
make up his own party. The party as finally organized consisted of
friends and neighbors, most of whom were well-to-do planters, but there
was one man included somewhat out of the social class of the others,
though well known and trusted throughout the neighborhood. To this man
Moro objected strenuously, saying that he would either prevent their
finding the treasure, or if it were found, would murder them all to get
the whole for himself. Grandfather insisted, and the man went.
Moro was nervous and sulky from the start, and so aroused the
suspicions of the party that by the time they reached the Rio Grande,
he was not allowed out of sight. But despite the close watch kept upon
him, he finally made his escape by diving from one of the boats in
which the party was crossing the Rio Grande to the point where he said
the treasure was to be found. The man whom Moro feared would have shot
him as he appeared above the surface of the water if Grandfather had
not prevented.
There was nothing left for the party to do but return home, for Moro
had given them no map or directions that would enable them to make an
independent search. But before setting out on the return, Grandfather
foolishly accepted a dare to swim the river in a very wide place, and
in doing so caught a severe cold that developed into “galloping
consumption,” from which he died a few months later.
The rest of the story, so far as there is any, is confused and
contradictory. A few weeks before Grandfather’s death, some of the
negroes on the place came to the house, begging for relief from Moro’s
ghost, which was seen almost nightly digging at various spots on the
plantation, but most often near the big fig tree in the field.
Grandfather was too ill to make any investigation for himself, but he
questioned the negroes closely, and came to the conclusion that all the
stories had grown out of one real incident—that Moro had probably come
back to recover money that he had buried on the place.
The man whom Moro feared went to Mexico to escape service in the
Confederate Army, and his sudden rise to fortune, coupled with a wild
story he told on his return of having met with Moro in Mexico,
convinced my grandmother that he had in some way come into possession
of the treasure.
Judge McLean, who was a member of the original party, believed the
story of buried money on the Rio Grande to be nothing more than a ruse
on the part of Moro, representing a band of border outlaws, to kidnap
Grandfather and hold him for a ransom. He was very positive that he saw
Moro hanged as a Yankee spy during the Civil War, while he was
stationed on the border near Rio Grande City.
The legend of buried money still lingers around the old plantation of
Buena Vista. [94] About ten years after the Civil War, my father bought
the part of the plantation on which the home was situated, and during
the years that he lived there was much annoyed by treasure seekers who
begged permission to dig for “Moro’s gold,” or who came at night and
dug without permission. In telling me the story, as he had heard it
from various members of my mother’s family and from the negroes on the
place, he expressed his belief that Moro had at one time buried money
there. He told me that one day as he was showing a “free negro” how to
run a straight furrow in the field not far from the old fig tree, the
horse stumbled and his right foreleg sank in the ground up to the
shoulder. The thought of Moro’s gold seems not to have entered my
father’s mind at the time, but later he remembered it, and said that he
was convinced that if there had ever been any money buried on the
plantation it was in that spot.