Old Bookaroo
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- Dec 4, 2008
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THE LOST PAPUAN PLACER DIGGINGS
from The Miner’s Guide; A Ready Handbook for the Prospector and Miner, by Horace J. West (Los Angeles: Second Edition – 1925)
Papuan, last chief of a small tribe of Papago Indians, who lived during the early part of the last [i.e., the 19th] century in the mountain fastnesses of western Arizona, discovered one of the richest placer diggings in existence. In the terrific struggle with the Apaches and other hostile tribes the Papagoes had been entirely wiped out; Papuan was the last man of the tribe to escape the hostile arrows, pitfalls and traps that were laid for him. Only one tribe had treated his people favorably: the Mohave Indians.
When all hope for his people was gone, he wandered into the tribal territory of the Mohaves, which was located in what at that time is Yuma County on the Colorado River. There he took up with an old squaw, who seemed almost friendless among her people, and the two were married with all the tribal ceremonial.
The squaw was not unappreciative. She wanted to show her devotion to her lord and master, and frequently the two Indians wandered away from the remainder of the tribe for days at a time. Whenever they returned they brought with them nuggets, all they could carry, and distributed them among the other Indians and bartered with the few white traders who happened that way.
One of them, Bill McCoy, after whom the McCoy Range of mountains in Riverside County, California, is named, was running a store at Ehrenberg, a Government post; in California during 1864 and for two years later. To him came Papuan with his hoard of gold, so much that McCoy could scarcely believe his eyes. The Indian bought lavishly, traded for anything and everything that his heart desired, and in less than two years had contributed to McCoy about seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of gold nuggets.
The trader tried every possible ingratiating method to learn the secret of his mine. He wheedled, coaxed, threatened, made big offers of beads, jewels and horses, but never could learn Papuan’s secret. He sent his men to follow him, but they were never successful in keeping the trail. The Indian eluded them.
In 1886 the Apaches carried their enmity to the Mohave Indians and by their indignities stirred them finally to battle. Papuan, a valiant warrior in his day, joined the people that had made him one of their own. He was killed, but in the rout of the Mohaves, his wife managed to escape.
The story of the gold had been wafted aboard, and about fifteen years ago [1906 – 1910] a middle-aged German of stalwart build, H.W. Hartman, arrived in Ehrenberg and began collecting the data pertaining to the placer diggings. He discovered that Papuan’s squaw was still living and his plan at once embraced her. He sought out the decimated tribe and found the squaw, now a withered old hag, and began to work upon her sympathy.
He cared for her like a son, looked after her every want and all the time tried to secure from her the location of the rich treasure-trove. For months she refused to divulge her secret, and Hartman had just about decided that all his work was vain, when one day she told him to prepare for a journey into the mountains after the treasure.
At the same time she was stricken with a severe cold. The cold became rapidly worse and finally evolved itself into pneumonia. Her death was only a matter of hours. Hartman did not lose all hope, however, for she informed him of one other who knew the secret hiding of the placer, one Chinkinnow, who to this day [1921 – 1925] is still alive.
On him Hartman lavished his attention. Chinkinnow was afraid of the spirits of those who had gone before. He demurred, refused, then half promised, and one fair day he started out with the German to show what he had seen as the adopted son of Papuan on two or three visits to the diggings. He struck out for the southwest end of the Papuan Range [misprint for Plomosa or Palen?] of mountains, came to within a few miles, then contrived to destroy the greater portion of the water-supply, and the trip had to be abandoned to hasten back to the Colorado, twenty miles away, to secure the needed fluid.
Then Chinkinnow refused absolutely to go again. Hartman went, but failed to find the diggings in the canyons and gulches that in late Summer are filled with torrents which tear through the range with perfect fury. In a few weeks they again are as dry as the desert itself. Many times the shriveled old Indian has accepted large fees to take prospectors to the place. His cunning old soul has always found a way to get out of accomplishing the feat. Always, however, as though by instinct, he has started in the same direction.
Yet prospectors have not failed entirely for their trouble. They have realized that because of the heavy wash each year the workings of old Papuan and his squaw might be entirely obliterated with the continual addition of rocks and boulders and granite to the surface of the gulch beds. With dry washers, which have just recently been invented, they have managed to make their trips pay dividends on account of the finding of other gold.
That the placer is in the mountains and not on the desert they feel certain, because of the natural concentration which occurs in a gulch or canyon. Chinkinnow has refused to give even this information, but at Ehrenberg and at Blythe, the two towns which he visits, he is always under surveillance with the hope that he may accidentally give away the secret he carries with him.
to be continued…Next: The Lost Dutch-Oven Mine.
Further Reading
This will probably be the shortest “Further Reading” section of these installments. At least it should be, because if you have gotten this far you’ve read what appears to be the primary, secondary, and tertiary source for this yarn.
Thomas Probert’s Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the West (Berkeley, California: 1977) includes some half dozen sources. However, they all directly lead back to the one you just finished reading. Eugene L. Conrotto’s Lost Desert Bonanzas (Palm Desert, California: 1963) - reprinted as Lost Gold and Silver Mines of the Southwest (New York: 1991) - includes a chapter on the Lost Papuan Diggings based on Dorothy Robertson’s Desert Magazine article “Papuan’s Lost Placer Mine” (March 1958).
She states her source was her husband, who picked up the story in Blythe, California, in 1926. The old timers in Blythe must have been faithful readers of The Miner’s Guide, because phrases in her article are word-for-word from Mr. West’s account.
Probert also cites “Shaw, V. ‘The Lost Papuan Diggings,’ in Miners Guide (publisher unknown) Los Angeles, 1924.” I believe this is a mistake, based on an article Shaw published in the Earth Science Digest (Vol. 2, No. 4, 1947). I have not seen a copy of this article in many years (it was reprinted in Johnnie Pound’s Treasure Hunter (Vol. 6, No. 4). However, we know who wrote The Miner’s Guide published in Los Angeles in the 1920’s.
Probert notes, “Some authors have placed these lost diggings in the Dome Rock Mountains of Yuma County, Arizona.” Most of the Dome Rock Mountains appear to be in La Paz County – the Castle Dome Mountains are primarily in Yuma (in either the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge or the Restricted Yuma Proving Ground). And in the Arizona chapter we find “The Lost Papago Indian Placer” near [the] old mining town of Ajo, in Western Pima County, Arizona.”
It is quite clear that Horace J. West is the source for this story, and he knew the area around Blythe and Ehrenberg (also on the Colorado River, just over the Arizona line) quite well. There are other tales of Papago Indian lost diggings, but Papuan’s gold nuggets lie in California’s McCoy Mountains. Or, perhaps, in another range considerably closer to Ehrenberg.
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This is Part IV of the Lost Mines of the Desert series. Part I was posted here on December 26, 2008. Part II – “The Lost Arch” Diggings was posted January 3, 2009. Part III – The Peg-Leg Mine; Or, the God of Fury’s Black Gold Nuggets, was posted January 11, 2009, and may be found under the Lost Peg Leg Mine topic.
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May have to find a few palm trees to plant, if I could make a crack in the frozen ground to put them in.... 
