DOC NOSS-Victorio Peak OR The Caballo Mountains

Not Peralta · Nov 7, 2014

AMIGO, good morn'n, :coffee2:

, I think with the Jesuits , its all about deal making with groups. every one makes deals and keep their words every thing is cool. also respect pays good to.thats why they covered a large area. np :cat:

Not Peralta · Nov 7, 2014

Not Peralta said:
AMIGO, good morn'n,, I think with the Jesuits , its all about deal making with groups. every one makes deals and keep their words every thing is cool. also respect pays good to.thats why they covered a large area. np

ps think about the emeralds and precious stones they accumulated .

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

There is a very good reason why Noss wasn't simply arrested: local agents were making too much money confiscating his gold!

Until you have lived in New Mexico, its hard to understand exactly what goes on in this state all the time! People here are more concerned with their personal agendas than enforcing or following any laws, or being ethical, or any other such idealistic stuff. Often I feel as though I live in an occupied territory. Once I was simply eating lunch in my car parked at a town park in Socorro, NM and was asked to leave by several locals simply because I "didn't belong there". One woman in Albuquerque got over a HUNDRED tickets for running red lights, but is still driving today on our streets! Same for repeated DUI offenders! Some rack up DOZENS of convictions before their license is taken away. If its like that today, imagine how much worse it was back in the 1930's! This is spoken of in the first book as well. Corruption was RAMPANT back then like you would not believe!

If you think you can apply your normal expectations to NM, think again!

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

Can anyone here post GPS for "sunrise ridge" or "squaw canyon" in Dona Ana County please? I'm noticing a lot of place names in the books are either not used today, or were simply names come up with by locals that were never official or noted on maps or documents.

sdcfia · Nov 7, 2014

UncleMatt said:
There is a very good reason why Noss wasn't simply arrested: local agents were making too much money confiscating his gold!

Until you have lived in New Mexico, its hard to understand exactly what goes on in this state all the time! People here are more concerned with their personal agendas than enforcing or following any laws, or being ethical, or any other such idealistic stuff. Often I feel as though I live in an occupied territory. Once I was simply eating lunch in my car parked at a town park in Socorro, NM and was asked to leave by several locals simply because I "didn't belong there". One woman in Albuquerque got over a HUNDRED tickets for running red lights, but is still driving today on our streets! Same for repeated DUI offenders! Some rack up DOZENS of convictions before their license is taken away. If its like that today, imagine how much worse it was back in the 1930's! This is spoken of in the first book as well. Corruption was RAMPANT back then like you would not believe!

If you think you can apply your normal expectations to NM, think again!

Ha ha - you don't know the half of it! Ever wonder why the "civilized folks" were aghast at statehood and seriously wanted to loan Mexico the money to buy New Mexico back from us?

Trouble with the Noss stuff is that it was feds, and they were pretty sharp detectives in those days.

sdcfia · Nov 7, 2014

Not Peralta said:
ps think about the emeralds and precious stones they accumulated .

Are you aware that in the 1980s the Mel Fisher treasure hunting gang was looking for an emerald mine in southern New Mexico? At that time, they were trying to acquire certain mining claims that they thought may have been the source of the stones recovered from the Atocha. Apparently they were not at all convinced those stones came from Columbia.

gollum · Nov 7, 2014

sdcfia said:
Are you aware that in the 1980s the Mel Fisher treasure hunting gang was looking for an emerald mine in southern New Mexico? At that time, they were trying to acquire certain mining claims that they thought may have been the source of the stones recovered from the Atocha. Apparently they were not at all convinced those stones came from Columbia.

..... and lets not forget about the ancient emerald mine in the Santa Rosa Mountains by Anza-Borrego Desert in SoCal:

California Emerald Mine

Legend has it that the mine was worked by the Aztecs

Mike

johnmark29020 · Nov 7, 2014

There are also similarities between the us south west and some of the claims in the thor legend.

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

Okay, here is another puzzler: In the second book there is a map showing the location of the Bloody Hands glyph site. Supposedly it was near a "secret entrance" to VP that Noss found. Just one little, itsy bitsy problemo with that - its more than a MILE away as the crow flies. So either the map is wrong, or the claim itself is wrong. Noss said a cavern was under VP that was 2,700 feet long. Not even close to a mile....

gollum · Nov 7, 2014

As far as the pictures go. I had an issue with that myself, but remember, Fiege and Berlette went to their cave several times and never took picture one.

Matt,

When you get further into Book#2, you will see the name Kathleen Shipp. She was dating a photographer that had pics from the inside of VP. He was too young to have taken the pics himself, but she swears he showed them to her. He is still alive, and when the author interviewed him, at first, he said he didn't know her, later, he said that he dated her, but never had any pictures like that.

Mike

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

I just read that part! He claims he took photos of the inside of the peak, but not of any gold! lol

What a fascinating read, I must say! What really KILLS me is they blew up the storage rooms with ALL the artifacts other than the gold STILL inside! I can't help but HOPE someday it comes to light they photographed everything before they started moving the gold out.

The gold is gone, some of us would just like to understand the historical facts surrounding VP and the treasure.

gollum · Nov 7, 2014

UncleMatt said:
I just read that part! He claims he took photos of the inside of the peak, but not of any gold! lol

What a fascinating read, I must say! What really KILLS me is they blew up the storage rooms with ALL the artifacts other than the gold STILL inside! I can't help but HOPE someday it comes to light they photographed everything before they started moving the gold out.

The gold is gone, some of us would just like to understand the historical facts surrounding VP and the treasure.

I don't think they would have been stupid enough to have left anything in there that could come back to bite them later. A guy that worked at the refinery where they brought all that said it came in 55 gal drums. The drums had either gold bars or jewelry in them.

Mike

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

One of the workmen testified later that there was writing on the walls they were told not to look at. Its things like that I hope are recorded somewhere and sitting in a box in a warehouse or in someone's safe, and someday they will come to light.

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

Something else that I've been working on it trying to figure out why there were chained skeletons in the vaults. As many as 29 were mentioned. If it were LaRue and his community working there, would chained workers or prisoners left to die make sense? He was supposedly the kind of guy who wouldn't engage in such things. So who was working this site? There was a large wooden cross on the wall of one of the rooms, so that says Spanish activity, does it not?. Or it may mean that LaRue might not have been quite the man of God he was reputed to be. The doomed were either left there to die on purpose when someone abandoned the site, or the people in charge were killed, and no one was left alive to release any of the chained. I doubt the Spanish would ever willingly abandon such a hoard of gold and valuables, so that means they were most likely killed. By whom? I can't help but wonder if the date the Spanish lost the site at VP was 1680...

gollum · Nov 7, 2014

UncleMatt said:
Something else that I've been working on it trying to figure out why there were chained skeletons in the vaults. As many as 29 were mentioned. If it were LaRue and his community working there, would chained workers or prisoners left to die make sense? He was supposedly the kind of guy who wouldn't engage in such things. So who was working this site? There was a large wooden cross on the wall of one of the rooms, so that says Spanish activity, does it not?. Or it may mean that LaRue might not have been quite the man of God he was reputed to be. The doomed were either left there to die on purpose when someone abandoned the site, or the people in charge were killed, and no one was left alive to release any of the chained. I doubt the Spanish would ever willingly abandon such a hoard of gold and valuables, so that means they were most likely killed. By whom? I can't help but wonder if the date the Spanish lost the site at VP was 1680...

More than likely, the people staked down were put there by Apache and left to die. The Apache had access to all those caves in the Caballos, Fra Cristobals, and San Andres. They didn't want or need the gold that was there.

johnmark29020 · Nov 7, 2014

gollum said:
More than likely, the people staked down were put there by Apache and left to die. The Apache had access to all those caves in the Caballos, Fra Cristobals, and San Andres. They didn't want or need the gold that was there.

I thought they were staked down in the prayer position. Would that be a apache technique.

gollum · Nov 7, 2014

Staking people to the ground seems like more of an Apache thing than a Catholic Thing, but I'm no expert. While I have read reports that described Apache staking people out in the sun. I haven't read about 18th Century Catholics doing that. A couple of hundred years before, when the Inquisitions were going full steam, I might say those darn Dominicans staked out some heathen idolators, but most of that was over and done with by the 1700s.

Mike

UncleMatt · Nov 7, 2014

That's a possibility, but did Apaches use chains and shackles?

gollum · Nov 7, 2014

UncleMatt said:
That's a possibility, but did Apaches use chains and shackles?

I'm sure if they had access to them they would use them. I haven't read book 1 in a while. Did it specify that chains and shackles were used?

sdcfia · Nov 7, 2014

gollum said:
More than likely, the people staked down were put there by Apache and left to die. The Apache had access to all those caves in the Caballos, Fra Cristobals, and San Andres. They didn't want or need the gold that was there.

The Apaches learned early that gold could be traded for guns and ammunition. They might not have had a love for the metal like white folks do ("tears of Ussen", and all that), but these guys did what they had to do to survive in a constant state of war. They likely stole gold when they could and mined it too. Cozzens talks at length about Mangas Coloradas's secret gold mine near the headwaters of the Gila in the 1850s, and rumors attributed another mine to Juh's people in the Sierra Madre. They didn't have much of a trade network, but Roberts describes strong trade contacts in Janos.

It seems reasonable that small stashes of placer and coins in the shallow caves around VP could be attributed to the Apaches. The place was a good hidden campsite with water and lots of hidey-holes - and on one of their trails down to Janos. There have been no reports to my knowledge that link Apaches with gold bars. If there were large quantities of gold bars deep in VP (if), there's no reason to assume the Apaches knew about them or tried to exploit them. Same goes for the Caballos.

Apaches either killed their captives outright, or tortured them to death in plain view in order to make an impression on those who found the bodies, hopefully other enemies. The skeleton thing deep in the caverns doesn't seem to fit their style - seems more like a Catholic idea.