A portion of Chapter 1

Copyright©2003 Jack Purcell

R.C. Patterson's Account

Clifton Copper Era, 1904

Reprinted from Socorro Chieftain, 1897

 

Probably no man living is better authority on the subject of the Lost Cabin Mine or Adams Diggings than is R.C. Patterson, an old and highly respected citizen of Socorro County (New Mexico). For the purpose of preserving the most authentic information on the subject, as well as for the purpose of giving the readers of this newspaper the benefit of the romantic and interesting story, Mr. Patterson was asked to tell what he knew about the diggings. Here it is as he tells it.:

 It was in 1875 that I came to my ranch 100 miles west of Socorro. The next year a party of four men came along and inquired for a certain locality, particularly an Ash spring. I knew they were prospectors. The leader finally told me that they were original members of the Adams party from California. He added that Adams was a southern man and as he couldn't cuss the government as he wanted to in California he went to Arizona.

 He camped at the Pima villages and there made up a party to go prospecting.  A Mexican in the village, who had been a captive among the Apaches, told Adams that if the party would give him six horses he would show where there was plenty of gold. This was in the winter of 1865-66. The party consisted of twenty-two men. The guide took them to a big mountain, going northeast through the country.  So much I learned from the leader of the four prospectors.

 In 1876 Adams himself came to my place.  We talked together all one Sunday.  I asked him what mountains he passed through after leaving the Pima villages.  He replied that they went into no mountains until they reached those in which they found the gold.  He added that their course was northeast, that all the streams they saw were small, and that there were small mountains to the right and a big open country to their left all the time.  The party finally camped at the mouth of a small canyon from which the water ran southwest.

It took the party nearly all day to go fourteen miles up the canyon, it was so rough. At the summit they could see two peaks like haystacks about a days travel from them toward the northeast.  The party now went down on the east side through timber into a valley six miles long in which the Indians had planted corn.  The water in this valley ran northwest and at the lower end fell over a precipice eighty feet high.  The guide told the party that they would find gold in this valley and they paid the Indians a horse for the privilege of working in the corn field.  

Adams said that a Dutchman in the party (Author note: probably Jacob Snively) seemed to scent trouble for he said he thought they would have some trouble with those Indians, and asked that he might take his grub to himself and what gold he wanted and go away. Adams said, further, that this Dutchman panned out forty pounds of gold in ten days without making a hole in the ground as big as a wagon box or reaching bedrock.

 According to Adam's story the rations now got short and ten men started for a fresh supply and for tools to work with. The Dutchman was among the number.  They were to go to the nearest point, Adams did not know where.  The party finally becoming overdue, Adams and another man went to the top of the mountain where they could see over the trail a day's travel.

 Not seeing the party, the two went to the head of the canyon, thinking to hear them if they were coming up  They soon came upon the bodies of the ten men who had been killed by the Indians as they were coming through the mouth of the canyon one at a time. Wrapping paper and tools on the ground showed that the party had succeeded in reaching some point for provisions.  Adams buried the bodies.  It was dark when he finished.  

Before Adams and his companion reached the camp they could hear the Indians yelling.  Seeing a fire, they crept through the brush and finally saw that their cabin was burning and the Indians dancing around it.  They thought that they could see the bodies of two men inside.  The two companions now made their way out off the country, traveling by night and hiding by day   Adams said the party panned out over $100,000 in gold.  All that he saved was a curious pocket specimen.

 In 1875 Adams started to find these diggings again.  New trails had been made and he couldn't find the main trail of 1865.  He came to the White Mountains in Arizona and then to the Mogollon Mountains, where his party broke up.  Adams and the four men who came to my place in '76 continued to prospect for three years, when Adams himself went back to California.

 I spent $7,000 myself, continues Patterson, trying to find the Adams diggings.  From talking with cattlemen, I find that the big trail that Adams sought is the old war trail of the White Mountain Apaches, from the White Mountains to the Dragoon Mountains.  The two peaks that Adams wanted to find are in the northwest corner of the White Mountain reservation.

It is not healthy for a prospector to go through that section.  As long as a man is in the saddle looking for stock he is not molested, but if he breaks a rock the bullets begin to fly.  If he goes to panning and does not leave when the Indians tell him to, soldiers will put him off the reservation.  Cattlemen say that they see as good signs of mineral there as they ever saw anywhere.  The delegate in congress from Arizona is now trying to secure passage of a law permitting prospecting and mining on the reservation.

 That's the basic story.  

 The map on the following page shows the location of the Patterson Ranch near Old Horse Springs on the north side of the Plains of San Augustin.  At the time of the Adams visit, the Fort Tularosa Apache Reservation was in the process of closing.  The Mimbres Apaches were being moved back to the Ojo Caliente Reservation in the San Mateo Mountains in the lower right quadrant of the map.

 During the three years Adams and his associates prospected in the area they spent a great deal of time in the area of Pelona on the south edge of the Plains of San Augustin and southward to the headwater of that fork of the Gila River.  Rock overhangs and outcrops on Pelona still bear the weathered marks of picks and hammers possibly dating to that search.  A canyon on the eastern end of Pelona is named Shaw Canyon.  Another canyon a few miles further south is named Adams Canyon.

 The area covered by the map on the next page has been the focus of the historic search area for the Lost Adams Diggings.  All the residents of the region know the story and most have a pet theory about where the mine was located.  They’ve seen 130 years of legions of secretive men arrive to ask questions about local terrain features as those four came to ask Patterson.  Patterson says he knew they were prospectors and residents still know today.

The legend of The Lost Adams Diggings begins in Tucson or the Pima Villages in almost every account. Any attempt to separate truth from fiction requires the reader to understand what those two places were like during that time period. The best contemporary descriptions by visitors are from Daniel Ellis Conner, and Samuel Cozzens.

 Conner visited Tucson in 1863. In the spring of 1863 the town was depopulated from approximately 300 down to an estimated 150, only 3 of whom where white Americans. Although it was the largest town in that part of the country, between Yuma and Mesilla, it wouldn’t have satisfied the descriptions by Adams, Shaw, or the other story-tellers in 1863. No bars, saloons, or gatherings of miners were likely to be happening here. It was a desolate, dying place, suffering heavily from Apache depredations.

 The Brewer account of beginning in Tucson is not totally at variance with this description of the community at the time. Conner’s description, other than the size of the population, is almost identical to the following observation recorded by Samuel Cozzens in 1857. Evidently, Apache raids didn’t improve the town.

 The Marvelous Country. Three Years in Arizona and New Mexico, Samuel Cozzens

Tucson, 1857

 ". . . Tucson, at this time was the capital of the Territory, with a population of about six hundred inhabitants, nearly one-half of which were Mexicans, the balance consisting of a mixture of Apaches, Pimos, Papagoes, and cut-throats. Probably never before in the history of any country were gathered within the walls of a city of such a complete assortment of horse-thieves, gamblers, murderers, vagrants, and villains, as were to be found in the city of Tucson.  (2003 Note:  Jacob Snively and Jack Swilling were probably included in the assortment Cozzens describes.  Both were in the area at the time.)

 "The general appearance of the place gave one the impression that it had originally been a hill, which, owing to an unexpected but just visitation of Providence, had been struck with lightning; and the dilapidated mud walls, and dismantled jacals, that served as a shelter for the festering mass of corruption that breathed upon the site, were the risiduum left in the shape of mud deposits, for not a white wall nor a green tree was to be seen there.

 "The only objects which met the eye were dilapidated bake ovens, old sheds, broken pottery, dead horses, tumble-down corrals, live dogs, drunken Indians, mules, pigs, and naked children. The sight was such an (sic) one as I had never before witnessed within the limits of civilization, and completely filled me with disgust.

 "There was no fonda, or other house of entertainment’ and when one reached the apology that was called the plaza, he stopped, absolutely bewildered, not knowing where to go, or how to get there.

 "The miserable appearance of the city and its inhabitants determined us to get out of the town as soon as possible, and get out we did, early in the morning, Dr. Parker remarking that ‘there was little fear of our being salted for looking back, though if there ever was a place closely allied to old Sodom, it was Tucson."

 This was one of the two most often repeated places where the legend began. Adams, alone in the desert, was supposedly camped beside his freight wagon when he was attacked. Here is a description of the country he’d have been freighting for several years without previously having any difficulties:

 Cozzens:  Tubac, 1857

 "The population of Tubac consisted of about eight hundred souls, one-sixth of whom were Americans and Germans, the remainder being Sonoranians, with a few Yaqui Indians. This town, like Tucson, was originally an old Mexican fort, which, after the establishment of the boundary line, was deserted by the Mexicans, and the first settlement of Americans was made here in 1856. The only business transacted was that done by the mining company, if we except the trade in mescal, which was very extensive.

 ". . .nor can there be any doubt that the Santa Cruz Valley was once the home of a vast population, though now, owing to the constant raids of Apaches, ‘tis but a barren waste.

"Gravestones, or rather head-boards, stand by the road-side like sentinels, bearing the invariable inscription,--‘Killed by the Apaches’.

 Ruined ranches, deserted haciendas, and untilled fields stare you in the face whichever way you turn, and tell a story that cannot fail to awaken in the mind of the beholder the most melancholy reflections."

 Similar descriptions by other travelers echo the words of Conners and Cozzens. Whatever else this tells us about the Adams legend, it almost certainly establishes that Adams did not begin his experience freighting alone through Arizona during this time period. The fact that he would make such a claim is sufficient cause to wonder if he ever even visited the area at a time when he wasn’t in the company of a larger party to dilute the impact of the desolation.

 These observations bring the question of where Adams actually got the horses into sharper focus, assuming we still accept the legend as fundamentally true. Brewer asserted he met Adams along the road driving the horses. They were plow animals, Brewer said.

 Judging from the words of Cozzens and Conners, combined with the knowledge that two armies moved through the area in 1862, it’s safe to assume Adams didn’t buy the horses locally. Horses were at a premium in that time and place. If Adams was traveling through with horses, he either stole them, or bought them on the Rio Grande or west of Yuma.

The other favored location for the beginning of the legend is the Pima Villages, the next stop to the northwest on the trail between Yuma and the Rio Grande. Descriptions of them are also remarkably similar from travelers of the time. Emory, Cozzens, Cremony, and Conners don’t vary a lot in their observations. I’ll provide the one by Cozzens:

 Cozzens:  The Pima Villages, 1857

 "About daylight on the following morning, we arrived at the villages; and, after resting a little, and refreshing ourselves with a very comfortable sort of a breakfast, we started out sight-seeing.

 "The Pimos have lived upon and cultivated this spot for more than three hundred years. Marco de Niza found them here as far back as 1539. Father Kino also mentions them in his travels; . . .

". . .at the time we visited them the United States government had just finished the surveys of a reservation embracing one hundred square leagues of land, nearly all of which was easily irrigated, consequently susceptible of cultivation. This reservation is about twenty five miles long and seven miles wide, and is situated on both sides of the Gila.

 "Nearly the whole of the land thus set apart, has been cultivated by these Indians for more than three hundred years, and still, without dressing of any kind, yields full thirty-fold in crops. Colonel Grey, whom we met here, and who had surveyed the reservation, assured us that they had at least four hundred miles of acequias already constructed upon the reservation, and for many years had raised fine crops of wheat, corn, tobacco, and cotton. Wheat is sown in January, and harvested in May and June. Cotton and tobacco in February. Two crops are always raised on the same ground in a year.

 "There ten of these villages composed of about seventy-five or a hundred wigwams each. These wigwams are built of small poles, inserted in the ground, and bent at the top to a common center, interwoven with corn-husks, straw, and rushes, so as to shed the rain, and protect the inmates from the intense heat of the sun. Many of them are also plastered over with mud. The doors are just large enough to enable a person to creep in on hands and knees. The cooking is all done in the open air, beneath a shed or roof.

 "Every family has a granary, or store-house, which is much larger and better constructed than their huts, and which, in fact, they use for sleeping purposes, as well as for shelter from inclement weather.

 "There are about six-thousand of these Indians, and they have nearly a thousand separate enclosures, which are divided by very excellent fences, made of crooked sticks and mesquit. They have but few animals, and never use the plough, the hoe being the only agricultural implement they possess, except a few carts, which they have obtained from the emigrant trains passing through their villages; and yet, during the year of our visit, they had sold the mail company more than four hundred thousand pounds of wheat, besides large quantities of corn, beans, pumpkins, and melons.

 "When we reflect that this soil has been cultivated for nearly four hundred years that we have knowledge of, with only the hoe, and without dressing, we can form some idea of its fertility and productiveness.

 "The Pimos are not wanting in courage, and many a sound whipping have the Apaches received at their hands. Their only weapon is the bow and arrow, in the use of which they are very expert. They have always been very friendly to the whites, and have frequently aided them in recovering stolen property from the Apaches, and have also protected emigrant trains through the villages to Fort Yuma, when our government was powerless to do so.

 "These Indians manufacture certain kinds of pottery-ware, also beautiful baskets, blankets, and cotton-cloth. The work is nearly all done by women. The men, as a general thing, go naked, excepting the breech-clout; the women wear about their loins a piece of cotton-cloth, falling to the knees, and fastened at the waist by a girdle, or belt; and usually possess fine, well-developed forms."

 This certainly sounds a friendlier spot than Tucson for the beginnings of the legend. However, it should be noted that Cozzens specifically observes there are few animals among the Indians and that they don’t use plows.

 In this country, in one of these two locations, the legend begins, whether or not Adams ever visited there.

 (a portion of)  Chapter 2

Footprints of the Legend

 The threads of the Adams legend come down to us through several different sources:

 

Thread 1 - Adams

  Thread 1 - Adams evidently gave conflicting facts to each of the sources originating through him.  The other survivors weren’t so prolific in their stories. Of Adams, the man, however, we know far less than we do of the other survivors. 

 

Adams was the source of most of the tales and confusion.  We know he was a persuasive story-teller, and we know Adams was a liar.  He was a horse-thief by his own admission.  There’s cause to believe his horse thieving went beyond what he admitted, and he wasn’t forthright about the one he did confess. 

            Adams :→ Captain C.A. Shaw  We know Adams’ best friend, advocate, confidant, and disciple was also a persuasive liar:  Captain C.A. Shaw.   

            Adams :→ Captain C.A. Shaw  → 1) Allen, who accompanied Shaw  2) Byerts, who grubstaked Shaw. 3) Williams, who came away a believer after spending months on the trail with Shaw and Adams.  Each of these three men wrote accounts of their conversations and the accounts have survived. 

Adams :→ Captain C.A. Shaw →Langford Johnston Sr.→Langford Johnston Jr.  (Dobie used Johnston as a primary source in Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver.  Later Johnston Jr. published memoirs recounting tales he heard as a child about the diggings.  The portions of the book relating the Adams story differ from Allen and Byerts mainly as a result of having been dredged from the memories and interests of a child.  The account is full of anachronisms and reads more like a shoot’em up western pulp than a serious attempt to relay information.  I don’t include the tale in this book) 

            Adams:→ R.C. Patterson.  Patterson’s Account directly from Adams is addressed in two separate chapters. 

            Adams: →Washie Jones→Ben Kemp.  Adams stayed at the Jones and Cox ranches a number of times during the return searches.  The Jones-Cox clan stories of the Adams conversations are treated as a single source here. 

            Adams: →Rose, who joined the first return party in Tucson in 1874, left when Rose became convinced Adams was an idiot, though he always believed the basic story was true, and spent a good deal of the rest of his life looking for it.   The stories he told his young kinsman, Milton Rose, were convincing enough to make the search a passion for Milton, throughout his own life.  Milton created a manuscript before his death in which he relates numerous stories and impressions of the elder Rose.  However, he also discovers military freight contract records, census records, and other materials confirming an Adams and a helper named Davidson working out of Fort Union.  Those records might exist somewhere.  I hope someday to learn they do.  They don’t exist in the official records.  I haven’t used any of the Rose material in this book.

 

 Thread 3 John Brewer

 Thread 3 John Brewer→A.M. Tenney →El Paso Herald, The story is supported by his military service records, and later observations of him by Niño Cochise expand and fatten the Tenney version with only minor internal conflicts.  John Brewer wraps up nicely and has a bow on the package.  Until Niño the John Brewer story was a Johnny-come-lately hangnail.  The account didn’t surface until the El Paso Herald coverage of the legend in 1928.  Brewer’s descriptions of the events differed from those of Adams in several crucial respects, yet were so similar in other aspects they were difficult to ignore.  Most importantly, if John Brewer is to be believed, the incident happened within a five-day walking distance west of the Rio Grande River.  Brewer made no mention of the German, but his location coincides exactly with the Lost Snively Diggings.  Partisans in love with Arizona locations preferred to ignore Brewer.  Niño took the comfort out of doing so.