Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1895 — A ROMANTIC MINE. [ARTICLE]

A ROMANTIC MINE.

The Owner Got It Through the Gratitude of an Indian. A bit of romance will often help the sale of mining property. And it is a poor hole in which some legend or tradition does not attach. “I think,” said Col. J. J. Vroom, “that the most ingenious story to account for the discovery of a mine was told by Col. J. W. Craig.” “Craig,” interrupted a listener, “was the man who sent out from Fort Union, when he was in the army, a train of four-mule wagons which were never heard from afterward.” “Craig,” continued Col. Vroom, “is dead. He was burled with all of the honors. I am not telling his history, but dealing with a picturesque Incident in his career. After he left the army he went into grants and mining. He told me that he won the confidence of a Taos Indian by some favors that he had done him. The first full moon of August, the anniversary of the revolt against the Spaniards in 1680, was approaching. This Indian had said to Craig that in return for his kindness he was going to reveal to him what had never been made known to any white man. On the night of the anniversary the Indian came to Craig and asked him to go with him. They went out of Taos to a hill and ascended it. The Indian pointed to fires burning in various directions, some near and some far, but without apparent significance. “ *Those fires celebrate the revolt against the Spaniards in 1680,’ said the Indian. ‘They are lighted every year. To the white men they mean little or nothing. To us they mean a great deal. You have heard that when the Pueblo Indians arose, drove out the Spaniards, destroyed the churches and restored freedom, they filled up and destroyed all traces of the gold mines which were worked under Spanish dominion. That is true, but our ancestors desired to preserve for us the knowledge of the locations of those mines. So they adopted the plan of lighting fires every year when the first full moon of August comes around. This has been done for 200 years. The anniversary fires are built on the exact locations of the old gold mines. Every fire which you see burning is over what was once a gold mine. You are the only white man to whom this has been revealed.’ “Col. Craig told me that he noted in his mind as carefully as he could the location of one of these fires and then went back to Taos. Some time afterward he set out on a prospecting tour in the direction where he had seen the signal fire. He discovered what he believed was the place, although most of the ashes had been blown away. On that spot Craig opened a prospect hole. He sold the mine for sls,ooo.”—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.