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In 130 plus years since the Dutchman has died Jacob Waltz thousands and thousands of people
have been searching for the Lost detriment mine hundreds have claimed to find it or
know exactly where it is but precious few have ever provided anything in the form of positive
proof what we've been trying to do for the last couple of years is separate fiction from fact
there's plenty of evidence that that Jacob Waltz was real two German brothers who were genealogists
and their father was a genealogist tracked him down in Germany and there's an amazing
amount of information about Jacob Waltz when he lived in Germany before he came to America
and you can find that on some of our stories because I can't go through the whole thing here
everything about Jacob Waltz is known his travels here in in America and again a story of the gold
under the Dutchman's bed or the story by Clay Worst of the Dutchman's last days will explain
uh how the goal was found under his beds and Tibetan ended up in the hands of Dick Holmes
and then into his son's hands brownie homes and brownie put out an affidavit that was notarized
showing the chain of custody of all this gold and how it went to a jewelry store and how it was
assayed by Joe Porteree and how Joe Porteree put to bed the rumors that it came from the Vulture
Mine because Joe Porteree Reed was the assayer for the Vulture Mine and the moment he looked
at the Dutchman's Gold he said no way is that from from the Vulture Mine then of course the affidavit
shows who the matchbox that was made from the gold under the bed ended up in the hands of a person
that's still alive today and we know him very well and we've tried to protect his identity because
he doesn't want a bunch of people coming around knocking on his door wanting to to talk to him
but um you know when you notarize an affidavit this is kind of like swearing in court to tell
the truth so you can you know it's like perjury if you if you're not telling the truth and an
order it can be held responsible for uh for uh knowing that a lie he passed alive
and he can be held financially responsible in some cases for for doing the wrong thing
there are so many stories about people who have found the lost Dutchman in mine
are claimed to have found it one of the most recent one was just last year last summer when
Hank and I did a story on identifying the clues the the names of the Canyons and stuff were these
Clues supposedly originated and I got a call from the museum saying that they had been contacted by
somebody from Pennsylvania who was going to come down and wanted to take them to the mine
and I sanctum and later decide in my mind but a short time later I got another call from the
museum and he was there and wanted me to come up and talk to him so I I went up and talked to him
I've had five people drop in on me this year three of them unannounced and two of them were gracious
enough to at least call me before they came over and I listened to all their stories but this young
man from Pennsylvania had seen our presentation he followed the canyons and the clues that we were
talking about on Google Earth and claims from Google Earth he located the lost Dutchman mine
well Woody and he wanted a museum to go with him out there to to the mine and verify it well what
he had actually found was the old Indian paint mine still had a ladder in it and all this kind of
stuff and uh it was called the Indian paint mine because that's where the Hohokam used the clay to
make their Pottery out in the Superstition Mountains when they lived at Garden Valley
but the story I want to tell you about today
is the supposed finding of the Lost Dutch from mine a Peralta mine by a man named Miguel Peralta
in um 1864 a gentleman by the name of George Willing who was a doctor who made his living cell
and patented medicine and he turned to prospecting and he purchased from this Miguel Peralta
some saddle mules some mining equipment prospecting equipment and a Spanish land grant
for twenty thousand dollars in gold dust willing contacted a man by the name of William Gitt
now get was a lawyer who was known to have a lot of expertise in Spanish land grants
now when he came to Arizona he had some dubious land deals in Missouri and
Illinois and he also had an outstanding bench warrant in Guadalajara Mexico
but he was well known for his knowledge of Spanish land grants and he he researched and investigated
the grant that willing got from Miguel Peralta and of course it turned out to be fake
Welling then contacted a man named James Addison Reaves I think everybody knows that name
but willing get and Reaves met numerous times pouring over these documents and this land grant
and something must have gelled in their mind because Willing went to Prescott and registered
the deed in 1867. and the next day Willing was found dead no investigation was done by
authorities about the cause of his death but after a period of time Rivas went to Willing's
wife and managed to get all the paperwork from her and a power of attorney to get from the
government up in Prescott where he had died the
the land grant and everything ended up in James Addison Reaves possession
well we all know the story of James Addison Reaves better known as the Baron of Arizona and I would
suggest to you that you go back and and find the story I told about James Addison Reaves.
I also want to conclude a little story here from an Arizona newspaper that happened in 1879.
the story was that two boys had found some gold laying on the ground a small amounts of gold
laying on the surface at the West End of the Superstition Mountains and they were attacked by
the Apaches but they only had one weapon between them they were brothers and one of them was killed
and this story was published in the papers no names were mentioned whatsoever and some
historians have told me that the the story was put in the paper was fake in order to sell newspapers
and I can believe that but generally when that happens there's follow-up stories why would
you just tell one to pique everybody's interest and not continue on with it
but in the late 1980s or early 1990s Tom Kullenburn came across old many old Mexican
Journal that surfaced in Phoenix and it told this very story with dates and names and everything
the two boys were Peralta Brothers one was named Ramon and the other one was named Miguel and it
was Miguel that was killed their his father's name was Juan Jose Marin m-a-r-i-n Marin Peralta
and many historians many people have dealt with the lost Dutchman Legend have to have said that
this story is they believe is what resulted in the story about the Peralta Massacre on
the on the slopes of the superstitions in 1847. well if you followed us and
how the newspaper people like Bicknell and and other authors of books and stuff have have
spread the story pretty thin you can believe that a story like this whether it was true or false
could be the basis for the Mexican Massacre of 1847. now we know that James Addison Rivas
manufactured the entire story about the Peraltas the Peraltas that were supposedly involved in
the lost Dutchman Legend the massacre grounds that Phoenix was all made up by James Addison
Reaves he even went so far to marry a young girl and who was not a Peralta and manufactured and
falsified information to make it appear that she was the hair to this to this tremendous Spanish
land grant that was originally sold by Miguel Peralta and Miguel Peralta has absolutely nothing
to do with the lost Dutchman Legend supposedly found by using the fake Stone Maps well you know
they say that uh there never was a mind so poor as the one you're working
and there never was one so rich as the one you lost
but as you look at all these little stories and side bars it's just absolutely amazing
how these things get distorted and so much myth is involved that creates all these Mysteries of the
Superstition Mountains thank you for watching this episode of mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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