Lost Nigger Gold Mine
As lost nigger gold mine a legendary, never found gold deposits in is folklore of the United States designated.
William Kelly
According to legend, the four brothers Frank, Jim, John and Lee Reagan presented in 1887 in Dryden , Texas an illiterate young people named William Kelly from the tribe of Seminoles in to help them on their ranch. Kelly was called Nigger Bill ; Nigger was a common slang expression for mestizos in the Big Bend region . Kelly is said to have worked as a cook and horse wrangler . When he was employed by the Reagans, he is said to have been only 14 years old.
Kelly is said to have reported one day at the ranch that he had discovered a gold gang , but was not taken seriously and mocked. When he tried to tell the Reagans about it again the following day, he even showed them a lump of gold ore, but was cursed for it.
After this evacuation, Kelly allegedly went to San Antonio to see a metallurgist to analyze the ore. The reports afterwards are contradictory: One version says he returned to Dryden, where the Reagans intercepted a letter addressed to him, according to which the gold was immensely valuable. They allegedly killed Kelly and disposed of his body in the Rio Grande. The other version says that shortly after his return he “borrowed” a horse and fled. Whatever the case, the Reagans are said to have spent their lives trying to find the gold vein. In 1930 three of the brothers are said to have been alive and still looking for the gold.
More prospectors
In addition to the Reagans, many other prospectors sought the fabulous passage. Legend has it that some prospectors found it but died before they could make a profit or divulge any information about it.
One of the most serious searches was undertaken by William Broderick Cloete , a British mine owner, who believed the story so fully that he offered Texan Lock Campbell $ 10,000 for an expedition to the deposit. On July 19, 1899, Campbell and four other men signed an agreement to prospect the gold, and one of the men later claimed to have discovered it in the Sierra Ladrones , New Mexico , but this was never confirmed.
In 1909, a man named Wattenberg from traveling Oklahoma with a map of Alpine , according to the gold deposits in Mexico should find, and a pioneer named John Young went so far as to partner with Wattenberg and a mining permit of Porfirio Díaz admit to look for it in vain for years.
These failures led to debates about what happened to the gold deposit. John Young believed it was intentionally hidden from prospectors after Kelly died. Another theory is that the gold was not actually gold ore but was made up of pieces of fine gold left behind by the Spaniards. A third theory is that the gold was left behind by a group of Mexicans fleeing from the Mexican Guardia Rural because it slowed their escape. Since the gold vein was allegedly located in a canyon, another theory assumes that gravel washed out by the river was deposited over it, making the gold deposit naturally undetectable.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Haldeen Braddy: A Legend of the Lost Nigger Gold Mine . In: Western States Folklore Society (Ed.): California Folklore Quarterly . tape 4 , no. 4 , 1945, ISSN 1556-1283 , p. 360 ff .
- ^ New Search for Lost Gold . Amateur Prospectors Follow Legends in Hunt for Millions in Buried Treasure. In: Ebony . tape 6 , no. April 15 , 1960, ISSN 0012-9011 .
- ↑ a b c d Kenneth W. Porter: Willie Kelley of the Lost Nigger Mine . In: Western States Folklore Society (Ed.): Western Folklore . tape 1 , no. 13 , 1954, ISSN 0043-373X , p. 13, 14 u. 19 .
- ^ A b James Frank Dobie: Coronado's Children . Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest. Ed .: University of Texas Press. 1978, ISBN 0-292-71052-6 , pp. 155 f .