The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures (20 page)

In the years immediately after 1900, there was a spate of prospecting and mining activity in the Wichita Mountains. A number of entrepreneurs, geologists, engineers, and investors studied the prospects of Devil’s Canyon. One prospector claimed to have found an eighty-five-pound solid gold rock in one of the old Spanish mine shafts.

At the entrance to Devil’s Canyon, there is a grove of trees, some of them very old. On several of these trees can be found the barely discernable evidence of ancient markings, among them an outline of what appears to be a turtle. The image of a turtle has long been recognized by researchers as a symbol used by the Spanish to denote the existence of gold or silver nearby. Most often, the head of the turtle would be pointed in the direction of a mine or cache.

Farther up the canyon is another turtle symbol, this one far more mysterious. It consists of a giant outline of a turtle on the ground, one that was constructed using a total of one hundred and fifty-two stones. The head of the turtle was pointing to a portion of the northwest wall of the canyon. Some have claimed that the turtle was oriented toward the location of one of the old Spanish mines. Unfortunately, this image was subsequently destroyed during the construction of a stock pond in the canyon.

One old Indian legend claims that the canyon is haunted by the devil himself and that he guards the cache of gold the Indians concealed in one cliff. The legend also says that a layer of human skeletons covers the gold. In 1967, a youth was hunting rabbits in Devil’s Canyon when he discovered a newly exposed opening in one of the canyon walls. The area had been subjected to heavy rains the previous week and several hundred pounds of rock and debris had been washed away, exposing the cave beyond. Peering into the opening, the boy saw several skeletons. Believing he had come upon a long-forgotten burial chamber, the youth did not investigate any further. He told no one of his experience until several years later. On hearing the story, a group of men familiar with the tales and legends of the Spanish and Mexican gold mining activities in Devil’s Canyon traveled to the location in an attempt to locate the chamber and retrieve the gold. Though they spent several days searching for the old mines, they were unsuccessful.

Today, Devil’s Canyon is part of Quartz Mountain State Park. The area is regularly visited by hikers and rock collectors. Some come to the canyon to search for evidence of the old Spanish and Mexican mines. If anyone has found the large cache of gold, they have not revealed it.

24

The Incredible Journey of the Confederate Treasury

The end of the Confederate States of America occurred during the spring of 1865. The South had suffered staggering defeats, leadership was in disarray, and the treasury did not contain enough money to continue the support of the war effort. The last official meeting of the leaders of the would-be nation was held in April at Abbeville, South Carolina, as President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet fled approaching Union forces.

The Confederate treasury, though depleted, was still a significant store of gold and silver coinage. Among the items debated by the Southern leaders was the fate of what remained of this money. Some researchers believe the decision makers decided to move the store of wealth in order to protect it from the Northern invaders. Others of a more cynical nature express confidence in the notion that the leaders wanted the gold and silver transported someplace where they might more easily get their hands on it following the Yankee victory.

When General Robert E. Lee told President Davis that General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces had penetrated the Confederate lines at Petersburg and that Richmond was about to be taken, Davis ordered an evacuation of the region. In the process, he placed the responsibility of moving the treasury to a new location with Captain William H. Parker.

Parker was an officer in the Confederate Navy with a stellar record. He took his new assignment seriously. On the afternoon of April 2, 1865, Parker, enlisting the help of sixty midshipmen from a training vessel anchored on the James River, loaded the entire wealth of the Confederate treasury into a boxcar. This was to be the first of many transfers to take place over the next few days. Around midnight, the train departed Richmond bearing, according to most experts, an estimated one million dollars. Others have suggested the amount was as high as thirty million dollars, but there exists little evidence to support such a claim.

By the time the train reached Danville, Parker received additional orders to move the treasure on to Charlotte, North Carolina, and store it in the abandoned U.S. Mint located there. No sooner was this done than Parker learned General George Stoneman’s cavalry was headed in that direction and that the general might be interested in the treasure.

Parker ordered the treasure removed from the mint, packed into barrels with sacks of coffee, flour, and sugar, and reloaded onto the train. No sooner had this been accomplished than Parker was provided information that the railroad was out of service beyond Charlotte. He hurriedly transferred the containers from the train onto wagons.

While in the process of loading the treasure, Parker learned that Varina Davis, the wife of the Confederate president, was living in Charlotte with her children. Parker located her and persuaded her to travel south with him under military escort before the Union soldiers arrived.

On April 16, Parker’s detachment arrived at Newberry, South Carolina. The trains were running, so the captain had the treasure-filled barrels and sacks loaded into another boxcar and continued toward Abbeville.

When the detachment reached Abbeville, Mrs. Davis decided to leave the train and remain with some friends who lived nearby. While Mrs. Davis seemed unconcerned, Parker was ill at ease with the arrangement. Convinced, however, that the Union cavalry was in pursuit of him and the treasure, he felt it necessary to abandon the area immediately. He decided to travel on to Washington, Georgia, a few miles across the Savannah River to the southwest. Since the train did not go in that direction, Parker once again had the treasure removed from the boxcar and loaded onto wagons. After bidding farewell to Mrs. Davis, he crossed the river into Georgia.

This part of Georgia had not suffered as much from Union raiding as had the rest of the state. Parker was confident he could locate a sizeable military unit here that could take over the responsibility for the gold and silver he was transporting. The captain was growing anxious to be rid of the burden of the entire wealth of the Confederate nation.

On arriving at Washington, Parker learned that a command of two hundred Confederate soldiers was holding Augusta fifty miles to the southeast. Running low on certain provisions, Parker traded flour and coffee to Washington residents for eggs, milk, and chickens. He then had his men load the treasure once more in a railroad car. Then he ordered the train to Augusta.

At Augusta, the frustrated Parker discovered that it was not as easy to reassign the treasure as he had hoped. The officers there informed him that the war was over and that they were merely awaiting the arrival of the Union troops to arrange for an orderly surrender of the town, receive their pay, and go home. Possession of the Confederate treasury, they explained to him, would complicate matters and they wanted nothing to do with it. One of the leaders even advised Parker to return the treasure to the now civilian leaders of the Confederate government who, at that very moment, were fleeing from Union soldiers across the Savannah River into Georgia. Among those in flight was Jefferson Davis himself.

Mistakenly, Parker decided Abbeville would be the likeliest place to locate Davis so he could ask him what to do with the treasure. He was convinced that Davis knew his wife was there and would try to find her. The fastest route to Abbeville was back through Washington, so Parker ordered the train to return. There, the now monotonous task of transferring the gold and silver back into wagons was once again completed and the journey to Abbeville was under way.

Less than one hour out of Washington, Parker, much to his surprise and chagrin, encountered Mrs. Davis and her children fleeing Abbeville with a small cavalry escort. She informed Parker she had not seen her husband and had no idea where he might be.

On April 28, Parker and his command finally arrived at Abbeville, unloaded the wealth from the wagons, stored it in an empty warehouse just outside of town and placed a heavy guard around it. That evening as he was dining, Parker received word from one of his scouts that a large contingent of Union forces was a few miles north of the town and would arrive soon. Panicked, Parker ordered his men to reload the treasure onto a railroad car. He then ordered the engineer to prepare to depart, but before the train could be started, several hundred soldiers appeared at the north end of the town, all riding straight toward the train.

Fortunately for the harried Parker, the soldiers turned out to be a Confederate company escorting President Davis and what was left of his cabinet. Parker met with Davis and related his misadventures with the treasury. To his great relief, Davis ordered the responsibility for the gold and silver transferred to the acting Secretary of the Treasury, John H. Reagan. Almost as quickly, Reagan shifted the responsibility to John C. Breckenridge, the Secretary of War. Breckenridge, not thrilled with this new and heavy burden, passed it on to General Basil Duke. Duke did not care for the responsibility either, but he had no one to pass it on to. Duke assumed the assignment with his customary dignity and rigid military bearing.

Duke was one of the few remaining Confederate generals and his command was a motley assortment of nearly one thousand poorly armed and equipped volunteers who wanted nothing more than to go home. They were deserting in droves. Once the soldiers learned the war was over, several at a time would slip away and return to their farms and homes throughout the now devastated South.

Close to midnight on May 2nd, General Duke urgently ordered the gold and silver transferred once again from the boxcar to wagons. Duke had learned earlier in the evening that Union patrols were thick in the area, and he felt he would be lucky to be able to transport the treasury farther south and away from the advancing Yankees. Duke believed that Union officials were now aware that the treasure was in the area and would attempt to seize it. With his remaining force of troops, Duke moved the treasure out of Abbeville during the dark of night. Jefferson Davis and his remaining cabinet, grateful for the escort, rode along. Several of the troops stayed far to the rear of the column keeping an eye out for pursuit, and a dozen more rode along the flanks, prepared to ward off an attack by Yankees.

During a rest stop around midmorning of the following day, Duke promised his soldiers that when they reached Washington they would be paid in gold coins from the treasury they were escorting. Knowing the war was over and anxious to be on their way, the troops clamored for payment on the spot. The soldiers were also concerned that Union troops might suddenly appear and seize the money before they could get what they were due. For the rest of the day, Duke and a paymaster counted out thirty-two dollars to each soldier in the command.

This done, the wagons were escorted across the Savannah River toward Washington, Georgia. Every few minutes, Duke received word from scouts that the Yankee soldiers were only minutes away from attacking his column. At the first opportunity, the general ordered his command to leave the trail and take refuge in a large farmhouse belonging to a man named Moss. The barrels and sacks of gold and silver were unloaded from the wagons and stacked in the farmhouse kitchen. Duke then stationed his men at strategic points around the farmhouse and told them to prepare for a Yankee attack on the traveling treasury. The attack never materialized.

The Confederates spent the night at the farm. Very few of them were able to sleep since they were anticipating trouble at any moment. When scouts reported the next morning that no Yankees were in sight, Duke ordered the gold and silver loaded back onto the wagons. It was carried into Washington without incident.

At Washington, Duke turned the treasury over to Captain Micajah Clark. Earlier that day Jefferson, in his last official duty as President of the Confederacy, appointed Clark as the official treasurer of the Confederate States of America. Following this, Davis, along with his wife and children, fled deeper into the South. They were captured six days later.

Treasurer Clark decided that his first obligation in his new position was to count the money. According to the Treasury record, the exact amount was $288,000.90. It was, in truth, considerably less that what Parker had left Richmond with. Through the succeeding years, there had been a great deal of speculation as to what happened to the rest of the money. Thirty years later, Parker wrote an account of his adventures with the treasury and suggested that Captain Clark may have submitted a false accounting of what was turned over to him and kept the difference.

A significant number of researchers are convinced that Jefferson Davis himself appropriated much of the wealth before turning it over to Clark and then fled with it. They further speculated that Davis had buried portions of it at several different locations along the road before being apprehended. In any event, Clark paid off a few more of the soldiers out of the remaining funds and had the rest packed into kegs and wooden boxes.

On May 14, two officials representing a Virginia bank arrived in Washington with a federal order for the total amount of the treasury. The bank apparently held a claim on the wealth, and the two men were commissioned to secure it and return it to Richmond.

Following the military order to the letter, Clark turned what remained of the treasury over to the two bank representatives who, in turn, loaded it onto wagons and, under the protection of a military escort of some forty soldiers, departed for Richmond.

Most of the soldiers in the escort were young. And very few of them had seen any action during the war. For that reason, the two bank representatives were nervous throughout the trip. Soon after the column left Washington, a scout reported that it was being followed by a gang of outlaws made up of discharged Confederate soldiers and local toughs. The soldiers comprising the escort were ordered to take extra precautions as the small wagon train lumbered toward the Savannah River.

Travel was slow, and on the afternoon of May 22nd the party arrived at the front yard of the home of the Reverend Dionysius Chennault, only twelve miles out of Washington. The wagons were pulled into a large horse corral and drawn into a tight defensive circle. The guard was doubled and posted about the corral that night while the rest of the command tried to sleep.

At midnight the outlaws struck. Firing only a few shots, they surprised the inexperienced federal guards who quickly surrendered. The guards were tied up, and the remaining soldiers, who awakened at the first sound of shooting, were held at gunpoint by a handful of the outlaws. The leaders of the gang smashed open the boxes and kegs containing the gold and silver coins and stuffed their saddlebags full of the booty. Thousands of dollars’ worth of coins were spilled onto the ground as the rest of the greedy outlaws surged forward and filled their pockets. Finally, carrying all they could hold, the outlaws mounted up and rode away on horses barely able to carry the combined weight of riders and loot. One of Reverend Chennault’s daughters estimated that well over one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold and silver coin was recovered from the ground the following morning.

The outlaws rode northwest to the bank of the Savannah River. On learning that they were being pursued by both Confederate soldiers as well as local law enforcement personnel, they hastily dug a pit and buried all of the wealth in a common cache. They intended to escape pursuit and return for it another time. They set up camp for the night, intending to depart in the morning. A company of soldiers encountered the bandits at dawn and killed every one of them.

What today is estimated to be worth well over one million dollars in Confederate gold and silver coins is still buried in the ground somewhere on the south bank of the Savannah River and just off the trail.

Members of the Chennault family gathered up the fortune in coins that had spilled onto the ground during the robbery. Placing the gold and silver into kitchen pots and wooden crates, they buried it in a shallow hole adjacent to a nearby tributary of the Savannah River. Though they waited for a significant amount of time, no representatives of either the Union or Confederate governments ever returned to the Chennault farm to claim any of the treasure.