Gonzales Letter

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ThomasG
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Gonzales Letter

Post by ThomasG »

Letter written to Gerald Hamrick from Señor Gonzales.

I have previously referred to Gerald (Jerry) Hamrick. For those who may not known of Jerry the follow thumbnail is proffered.

Jerry was a Dutch Hunter. He tracked down the Gonzales family of in Mexico. He visited with them. He followed that contact and trip into five years of living in Mexico.

The story goes Adolph’s son Erwin had met Señor Gonzales in Mexico. Here the story is a bit uncertain. We know that Erwin told his father about a lost mine that (possibly?) had belonged to the Gonzales family. The mine was now in the United States. Adolph caught treasure fever.

Unfortunately, the Gonzaleses considered they only had one reliable clue as to the mountain where the mine was located. The clue was on, or close to a “stand alone peak”. Just what was meant by a “stand alone peak” is not known? A spire? A stand alone mountain? Or ….?

Ruth and a member started searching the Big Bend country in Texas by airplane.

The Gonzales gave up the search. Apparently he simply thought there was not enough information. As we know, Ruth continued the search. The sequence of Ruth’s searching appears to have been: first, Texas (Big Bent country), then New Mexico, then California and finally Arizona. It would seem that Ruth had no information which could even place the mine in a state.

Jerry tracked the Gonzales family that had been involved with Ruth. How did he do it? Jerry once told me that while on ship (he was merchant seaman) two mailbags were brought aboard – one for the rest of the crew, and one for Jerry.

Jerry simply wrote postmasters one at a time offering a $100 reward to any postmaster could put him in contact with the Gonzales family. Now Gonzales was and is a common name. Jerry, however, had a profile of the Gonzales family he was trying to contact. He included the profile when contacting the postmasters. Eventually, a postmaster in Mexico contacted Jerry about a Gonzales family that fit Jerry’s profile. When his contract was up he headed to Mexico and the postmaster.

When he finally met the Gonzales family he found a rather well to do family. He stayed with them for some time. With a letter of introduction from the Gonzales family he researching in the Mexican archives, It seems that with the Gonzales letter of introduction doors opened.

An aside, it seems Ruth only searched for the mine in Arizona because his other possibilities had come to naught —following Texas (Big Bend country), he searched in New Mexico, then California and finally Arizona. He was not in Arizona because he had information about the mine being in Arizona -- he had simply run out of possibilities.
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cuzzinjack
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:33 pm

Re: Gonzales Letter

Post by cuzzinjack »

Hello Thomas,

It is fantastic that you have went to the ends of the earth to find anything and everything you could find about the Lost Dutchman/Peralta Mines. However, I believe there is one big stone that has been left unturned.

A couple of practice presentations were given to local SME chapters before I gave my final presentation at the SME convention last year regarding the Molly Marie Prospect. In the local meetings, my presentation was twice as long, and during the second half of these I presented the Alarcon expedition floating up the Gila river and the potential that the Aztecs boated up the Gila as well as the Peralta's and Chinese workers via the Manila Galleons.

Immediately after one of the local presentations, a handsome young native American gentleman approached me. He was very excited and said he was from Yuma. He asked me how I learned all of the community legends and stories. He asked without saying "native American", etc. I knew what he meant. I told him that I had just put all of the smaller stories together, and that is the way the big picture had to be.

The Yuma now call themselves the Quechan Tribe. The Aztecs, Alarcon, the Peralta's, possibly the Chinese.......... they know all of these things. It is common sensical that the Peralta's did not travel overland when they could lay back and have a relaxing, fairly safe trip. That is why there is little to no evidence of their passing through southern Arizona. None of the entities mentioned could pass through the Yuma area by water without the Quechan recording it in their stories to be passed down for generations.

cuzzinjack
cuzzinjack
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Re: Gonzales Letter

Post by cuzzinjack »

Hello,

In the mid-1700’s, boats called “Durham boats” were used for hauling supplies upriver on the smaller, more shallow rivers on the east coast of the U.S.. They were flat-bottomed, narrow, relatively long, with a sail, to use if wind was available. It was common to use poles when going upstream. When Alarcon floated up the Gila River in 1540, his two river boats also had sails. Alarcon wrote of the many sandbars on the Gila that they had to negotiate over. In the photo below, a Durham boat is going through a “wing dam” that was constructed to alleviate sandbars, and it is shown how the boats were poled upstream.

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Kino knew full well the importance of boats after his time sailing around the Sea of Cortez, and it is extremely interesting that Kino re-established boat building at Caborca, on the Magdalena/Conception river. Since Caborca is mid-way between Dolores and the Sea of Cortez, it is clear that the boats being constructed there were river boats. This is an excerpt about the Caborca boat building from http://padrekino.com:

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If river boats were used to reach the Salt River District of the north with supplies, how would they get the livestock up the river? It would be very difficult with the small narrow boats.

Kino learned how to negotiate the “Devil’s Highway” that extended from Sonoyta, Mexico to Yuma, but the first time almost killed him. Livestock could be brought from Sonoyta by this route, but it would be very difficult. Here is an excerpt of the first trip on the Devil’s Highway from http://padrekino.com :

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Kino found another direct route to the Gila River from Sonoyta to Gila Bend that was apparently much easier going than the original Devil’s Highway. With this route, livestock could be brought up the Gila much more easily than through Yuma, possibly meeting up with the boats coming upstream. Here is another excerpt of Kino’s discovery of a route directly to Gila bend from http://padrekino.com :

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Below is a map showing the items discussed. Kino had “poisoned the well” of using the Santa Cruz river for bringing livestock relatively unnoticed to the mines because of the string of missions he had established along the river. The Gila was keen though, because once the outlying Sonoyta was passed, there were no other missions.

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cuzzinjack
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