The third legend is connected with the famous “Bowie,” or Los Almagres,
Mine on the San Saba. Like many other legends, it came to me from West
Burton of Austin. He got it from an old man named White, now living out
in the Big Bend country, but formerly of Mason or thereabouts.
According to Burton, White got the account, written on a parchment,
from a grateful old Mexican whom he had befriended in a spell of
sickness. The Mexican claimed to have secured the parchment from his
grandfather, the date it bore being over one hundred and fifty years
old. When the aged Mexican took sick on Mr. White’s place in Mason
County, he was traveling through the country with a crude Mexican cart
and two burros, looking for two dugouts somewhere between the old San
Saba Mission or mines and the site of the Waco Indian village, which
was located at about the present site of Waco. As the parchment reads,
thirty-six (or it may be forty-six, Burton says) jack loads of silver
bullion were buried in these two dugouts.
It was a time of terrible drouth. The drouth had lasted two years and
the little colony of Spaniards at San Saba had gone on mining with
their captive Indians and their peons until the Indians had deserted,
the peons had died, and there was absolutely no water left in the river
or springs. Each month the band of Spaniards hoped that the next new
moon would bring rain, but no rain came, and they knew that in the
nearly always dry region towards Mexico, the drouth must be even worse.
So, instead of going south towards San Antonio as they would normally
have gone, the Spaniards set out eastward toward the village of the
Waco Indians. They had often heard of a great river flowing by the
Wacos’ camp, and there they hoped to find water. They left not a soul
or a hoof behind, but packed on the burros their little store of
provisions and what bullion they had accumulated, well knowing that
they could not return until the drouth was broken.
At Las Chanas (the Llano), they found a dry bed; the Colorado was as
dry as the top of a rock. Arrived at the Lampasas Springs, they found a
little water, a great deal of mud, and dead buffaloes covering the
ground. They pulled some of the dead buffaloes out of the bog, got a
little stinking water, and slowly moved on. But the burros were poor
from want of grass and starved from want of water. To carry the heavy
bullion much farther was impossible. The provisions had to be taken at
any price. So two small dugouts were made in the side of a hill, the
bullion was buried therein, and after the captain of the band had
called on all to witness the marks of the place, the cavalcade moved
on.
The trail on eastward was marked by dead beasts and dead men, but at
last, depleted in numbers and wasted in fortune, the travelers arrived
at the village of the Wacos. There they found a great river flowing
clear and fresh, and when they had drunk and had seen their beasts
drink, they knelt down to give God thanks, and the padre with them
blessed the stream and called it Los Brazos de Dios—the Arms of God.
The Spanish built a kind of rude fort and waited. The drouth kept on
for three more years. Los Brazos still flowed clear and sweet, and
memories of the rich mines and the rich bullion left behind began to
grow dim. But at last the drouth broke and the grass and weeds sprang
from the earth with a great rush. The grass grew so quickly that a
powerful and fierce tribe of Indians was down upon the Spaniards before
they could leave. Their little settlement was annihilated. Only one man
lived to get back to Mexico, and that years later when he was old and
feeble; he was so broken that he had no desire ever again to come into
the region of the terrible drouth. But a while before he died he wrote
out on a piece of parchment the history of that search across the
desert for water, the directions, as well as he could give them, to the
buried bullion, and this account of the settlement and disaster on the
river called Los Brazos de Dios. The hidden dugouts with their wealth
have never been found, and history has forgot to record that tragic
episode of the first Spanish settlement on the Brazos.