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When
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna came to Texas in 1836 he left
behind death and destruction -- and possibly gold.
Napoleon said an army travels on its stomach, but soldiers have to
be paid. Santa Anna was a dictator, to be sure, but even conscripts
received coins for their service. Officers netted more.
Beyond having to meet a payroll, Santa
Anna was a man of refined tastes. Then, as now, the better things
of life did not come inexpensively. No one questions that Santa
Anna would have come to Texas with an ample supply of coin.
After Santa Anna's defeat
at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the remnants of his army fled
south. In their haste to leave Texas, they may have opted to lighten
their load by burying silver and gold. Or perhaps they lost it crossing
some stream swollen by spring rains.
"How many chests of 'pay money' designed for Spanish and Mexican troops
were dropped into Texas streams and left there," wrote J. Frank Dobie
in his classic book, "Coronado's Children," "it would be impossible
to say."
One
of several places in Texas with a story of Santa Anna's gold is Sutherland
Springs, a ghost town in Wilson
County about 20 miles from San
Antonio. The place was named for Dr. John Sutherland, who operated
a post office and stage coach stop there beginning in 1851. For a
time, Sutherland
Springs was county seat, but it lost that distinction to Floresville.
"There has long been a tradition in the Sutherland
Springs neighborhood that Gen. Santa Anna's army buried their
treasure there on their retreat after defeat at the battle
of San Jacinto," the Austin Daily Statesman reported on
Aug. 10, 1891. "Various parties have hunted for it."
No matter the rumors of lost gold, the most tangible thing of value
coming from the ground was the water bubbling from an estimated 100
sulphur springs in the area. That gave Sutherland
Springs a measure of economic vitality as a health resort, especially
after the railroad came through in 1877.
Though some residents made money off people looking for a water cure,
a young man named Edwards earned his living in a more traditional
manner as a farmer. In the summer of 1891, however, he may have realized
a different kind of return from the good earth.
According
to the article in the Austin newspaper, "a few days since a young
farmer named Edwards, while plowing near Sutherland
Springs, struck an iron pot, whose top projected a half-inch above
the surface."
The farmer thought at first it was nothing but an old cooking utensil,
but when he pulled it out of the ground, he realized it was inordinately
heavy.
"Under an inch of dust," the story continued, "were many rouleaux
of gold. The leather in which they were wrapped was rotten, but save
for a greenish mold the coins were uninjured."
Edwards, confronted with the most bounteous possible gift from the
soil, loaded the coins into his two-horse wagon and took his find
to San Antonio. He
made the trip at night, then quickly deposited the coins in the bank.
The find was reported as $17,000. To put the significance of that
purported amount into perspective, a Web site run by an academically-supported
entity called Economic History Services calculated that $17,000 in
1891 would be worth $335,571.21 in 2002 dollars.
Who knows whether Edwards really found a fortune in his field? Maybe
a bored country correspondent for the Austin daily manufactured the
story on a slow news day, or perhaps the piece was a plant to bring
more guests to the 52-room Hotel Sutherland, a resort that stayed
in business until 1923. Or just maybe a young man named Edwards suddenly
gave up farming.
© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" March
2, 2004 Column
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