Hey, smokey, I am a docent tour leader at Carmel Mission here in CA. That was one of the Spanish missions, and dates to 1770. Hence a full 50+ yrs. as Spanish colonial frontier outpost, before independent Mexico took over in the 1820's. And mind you, this was the capital headquarters of the other 21 missions, and one of the most elaborately built.
And of all the "dug" artifacts the museum there houses, none are "treasures" (ie.: caches). They are just individual coins, buttons, medallions, etc... Ie.: fumble fingers losses to-be-expected. And mind you the grounds were dug EXTENSIVELY from the 1920s to early 1950s during reconstruction preservation of the various adobe wings. There's photographs I've looked at where the disturbed dirt was sifted carefully for artifacts.
I suppose you could just say "they missed the treasures that were buried deeper", etc.. blah blah. But bear in mind that so too do all the other 21 missions (where extensive archie work has occurred at each one) failed to produce anything like "caches" or "treasures". In fact, the reality was quite the opposite: We were at the remotest ends of the world here at the time, so manufactured goods were in short supply. Hence far from a picture of the Hollywood notion of riches spilling out of treasure chests, these Spanish outposts were not necessarily "rich". The same thing could be said of any church today: Are they necessarily "rich" ? No. Aside from a few charlatans, or ones with benefactors galore. But the average sincere church is just making their budget, and re-investing their resources into the mission purpose they came for in the first place: To be missionaries.
And if you look at the Spanish missions of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, etc... (which can date to 100+ yrs. older than CA's missions), you likewise do not see impressions of "fabulous wealth". On the contrary, it was as if those were poor missions (when compared to the great architecture of some of the CA missions). And any manufactured goods had to come overland all the way up from Mexico through the Sonoran Desert, Chihuahua desert, etc... to make it up here.
Yes I know there will be those that say the churches were filthy rich, buried treasure (complete with death traps, etc...). To which I would say: This person has watched one too many re-runs of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sorry.
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