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hi welcome to another edition of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
and this guy ought to be pretty familiar to all of you Larry Hedrick and just you
you're out here by happenstance today at the Superstition Mountain Museum so we
can't pass that up and we I thought what we would do is come up here and actually
have the Superstition Mountain proper that way I grew up knowing the
Superstition Mountain never thought about anything behind it that there's a
mountain range back there a whole whole a whole other place back there to hold
of the world so to speak but we're in front of the Superstition Mountain and I
just want to point over in this direction in the front of the mountain
there's a cave that has a prospect in it and there's a old what's left of a
miners Shack which is basically just the grounding for it up here and that's
where I was shot at and we'll take a hike up there someday and and fulfill
that but but while I've got you here I want to talk about some of the things
that you've been told about these mountains here and and we've got the
praying hands right there we've got the witch which I think is the witch that
are on the Peralta stones and those hands from here I mean they do look like
they're praying and then the witch which has.... or priests some people call it the
priests but the thing that caught my ear when you were talking about the here up
by siphon draw there's these two spires they're the two spires and in there in
between them you've been told not Larry it's not Larry but you've been told that
that's where guaranteed
[laughter]
the gold is
Well
well of course according the legend this is where the massacre took place.
now were the praying hands were they see it Peralta party was leaving the superstitions they were
driven up into these rocks and massacred by the Apache Indians and several years
ago probably 15 20 years ago a person who I won't name
took us up there yeah it's several of my friends including the Attorney General
and a policeman from England it was visiting over here and in that notch
that square on the right of the praying hands is a slab of stone and it's broken
off and fell over against the other pillar and this is where this gentleman
was absolutely certain that the Lost Dutchman gold mine was now I mean not be
looking at the right place I'm talking about these two right here that look
like rabbit ears you're talking about further over there for over to the left
to the left and okay so it's over in that where the
shadow is right okay but according to a gentleman who who has spent 50 years
more or less seeking the Lost Dutchman gold mine he told me a story of a troop
of Calvary button and that camped over here where weeks wash was what she just
got across this road from the museum and he sent out some Scouts and they had
scouted up in this area and much further to the right towards those two rabbit
ears you're talking about huh they found some bones and there was absolutely no
clothing or anything left it was been there plenty long ago so that was almost
20 years after the massacre happened and was much further away from where
everybody says it had happened now so you're saying it was more this way more
to the right more to the right here in front of the
Mountain. in front of the mountain all right right behind this tree you can't
see it but that's where Palmer mine is yeah it was developed many years later
but it would be like those stones to the left of the tree that that this word
that bones would have been found Wow that's now that's fascinating because is
that the area where supposedly the two gentlemen found the sacks of gold or
they found pieces of like the saddles and stuff like that you know that story
well I'll have to get the names on those a sack of gold was found it was referred
to as coacheera gold but it wasn't at the massacre ground it was more around
the around the hill or the praying hands isn't down closer to first water road
just to stumbled on them by accident and the belief was of course all the Mules
were driven off during the fight and that's who the hora was attached to and
one of them fell off and was found there it's quite by accident yeah
well that's part of the legend about the crosses which we're going to be talking
to Liz Nicklus about and we've talked to you about the stone
crosses is that there a lot of people's feeling is that the they broke off
once they saw the Indians over here that we're attacking them because they're in
sacred mountains here and so they they took off this way not knowing there was
a group of them over here and according to that legend which makes the Peralta
stones and the crosses come into play here is that some of them went off
towards what is Florence Junction now and the others went off this way they
say the Peralta's went off that way and the Gonzalez's went off this way
that's what they that's what I read ok again everything that we talked about is
conjecture here and we've got to specify that it's just fun but so they went off
this way and then they ran across the others over here and that's where the
the crosses dropped off the burros as they are going this way which would go
along with what you're saying about the gold that they would have gone off here
and of course that stuff would have been buried with the rain and things over
time of course they wouldn't be out there in the open going today ok Hey
look there's a couple crosses there you know it wouldn't happen which is what it
took to find these things was it took them digging them up to find these
things so you know where there is a legend or a myth there's there's a spark
of truth there somewhere always the thing about the massacre is I know that
there was a massacre that was put in the newspapers of the time that happened
either 10 or 20 years before the one they're talking about here but I haven't
been able to find any information about the massacre that took the Peralta's out
have you ever had any information on any news articles well only according to the
legend no I hadn't I haven't read news stories other than stories that
were in the newspaper but I will say that there is there are news stories
still available to talk about and ask her out there but it took place several
years before the time period that we're talking right so you know again are we
meshing legends together here you just don't know no I can't answer that you
know the Indians really didn't have any use for a gold that was in ore if it was
gold they knew what to do with it. wouldn't just leave it there? They would have just leaf it there. They were after burro, weapons or what ever they could get.
gold meant nothing to them the ore, ore because they didn't know how
to get gold out of the ore
well if the Indians didn't know how to get gold out
of the ore why were they protecting these mines well I did that it might be
just because you were here. basically you should not be here. according to one of the
legends it were it was their mines that they were mining but you're saying they
couldn't get the gold or didn't know how to get the gold out of the ore so that
doesn't hold water either if they were the Indians the Native Americans if it
was their mines they wouldn't care about that stuff well I never heard that it
was their mine at that time well see I'm going back to some of the
other stories it's like when you "lust for Gold" the movie with Glenn Ford
Berry Storms which he sued them over that film talks about how the Indians
were up there and they were mining and and so forth and then the Mexicans came
in and they were mining that's when they killed the Mexicans and they hide
all the mines or I can't remember him and he said in the movie like seven
mines or something but that goes anywhere from seven to a hundred and
seven you know I'd do anything on the legend well Ida wrote that story I might
have sued him too because I don't think... he's in the movie they have a guy
William Prince played him in the movie and it's it's a whole totally bogus
movie of course Jay Silverheels is in it but it was good it was a good movie for
the time but it's totally bogus watch the movie and know that everything in it
is totally bogus imagine making Julia Thomas the
villainous when she actually was his Savior, Saviorous I do not know.
but ok so
you do believe that the massacre happened more in front of the mountain they weren't
hiding in the rocks which seemed like the more likely place instead of out in
the open but there's rocks to the right of all that you come see them there all
right and that's supposedly where the bones were actually found well from
looking at it from here it looks like there's just little up croppings of
rocks and then most of its you know just hill and so forth but once you get there
there's much more yes now one other thing I was reading about a Cathedral
Jesuit Cathedral that people swear was over off of well I read off the Peralta
trailhead and you say that you've heard the stories that it was closer to Queen
Valley or Florence Junction well two places if you saw one of our previous
episodes I worked at Queen Valley and that's when I heard from Hart Mullins
that there was a Spanish missionary on top of one of the hills where the
whitlow dam was built I've never lied about a Spanish mission or a missionary
lived there a mission a mission a mission okay and then there was another
and if you look at the stone maps that has the trail with all the dots in it
coming up to the heart or it crosses the Gila River more to the east of Florence
Junction about ten miles with another Spanish mission and it's marked on the
stone maps you can you can see them there well it's interesting because in
the their records the Jesuits they didn't build anything any buildings
or anything north of a Gila River so if there was something there that's
an interesting think about they also say the church itself proper had no interest
in gold whatsoever that they were just interested in proselyting at the time so
if there's any history of Jesuits up there mining or down rather down south
here at the time that they weren't doing it on behalf of the church now the story
I had they have King Carlos Spain drove them out of there because he wasn't
getting what they had promised him as far as the amount they're tithing so to
speak there's proper amount of the gold and so
he drove the mountain that's when he brought the franciscans in and that's
when the legend during story is that the Jesuits came up this way and you've got
the cross in the Batcave and and no Batman there but you know you got the
cross up there and you got all this other stuff
the legends up here there's gotta be some spark some bit of no pun intended
but the best word to use is nugget of truth to these stories
well you know I'm not
gonna set myself up there's some kind of an expert no, no I can only tell you what
I have heard from other that's all we want because like I tell people like
being the official film is western film historian of Arizona I'm not the expert
I'm an expert amateur I love to hear people talk and I'm always going to
learn things and so nobody's setting anything up we just you know these are
we're talking about things that have been said about their because every page
that we open up opens up another volume of history that we hadn't heard or we
hadn't talked about different things up here so it's just it's like light it's
like an onion peeling it away layer upon layer and I could do all sorts of what
do you call those or whatever metaphors thank you Dave that's why Dave is here
metaphors for all sorts of things you know apples and oranges looking for a
needle in a haystack I could go on all day but anyway so we're just talking
about we're just talking person-to-person
everything I've ever heard every time you get into it something else crops up
that's totally different for example only one or two people were supposed to
survive the massacre but they stopped to bury the stone maps on the way out
[laughter]
I don't know well you know if the stone Maps dropped off the burro then it seems
likely that in the stories I read they didn't bury them but again over time
with the the erosion and the weather and so forth that you know the rain would
wet and dampen the ground and I would sink and so forth so that made more
sense to me then someone stopping to bury him because if they're on the run
Oh hold on everybody yeah I see them over there they're coming towards us we got
to stop and bury these. No! that's not going to happen
right
there is always different ways to look at it
but if it did happen and I always say if it did then it seems
more likely that the crosses and the Peralta stones Maps over time were
buried in there because like he said if the Native Americans back there the
Indians had no interest in gold then they'd have no interested in those
crosses that's right and stone maps so you know always things to think
about every Larry every time we get together we just open up another novel. another can of worms.
[laughter]
well basically yeah. I am sure we are going to hear from somebody out there that knows the whole story.
but anyway so we'll get show the praying hands over here fascinating
view from here and of course the witch and or the priests which is interesting
because it's got the arm up there just like you know like it would be holding a
cross and I find that very fascinating so could the cross maybe symbolizes the
shadow comes down it hits the praying hands and that's you know where the
cross see we're coming up with all sorts of well there you have another
interesting interview with Larry Hedrick with the Superstition Mountain behind us
and everything that lies behind it see you next time right here as we talk
about more mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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