First Part of Chapter 14
Jesse James was One of His Names
(The Black Book)
When the bloody Civil War ground to a halt, the South was in ruins, its people were starving and there was complete chaos, but the Confederacy had $7 billion in well-hidden gold reserves, which were immediately made available to the Confederate Underground government headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.
How much gold was stolen, appropriated or hijacked from the hated damn yankees will probably never be known. It is even difficult to estimate. Union Army payrolls were looted, mule trains carrying the precious metal to the private mint, Clark, Gruber & Company (later the U.S. Denver Mint) were hijacked, gold from the Comstock Lode of Nevada and Mother Lode of California was heisted and daring agents in such Northern cities as New York, Washington and Cincinati raided Union gold stocks.
During the half century that tough, dedicated Colonel Jesse W. James was connected with the Knights of the Golden Circle he ran the value of gold in Confederate caches from $7 billion to $21 billion. This was when a troy fine ounce of gold was selling for $20.67 and placer gold at about $14 an ounce. In 1934 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the price to $35 per troy fine ounce, the value of the depository contents soared to
$36 billion. In January of 1973 the price of gold on the European markets topped $90 an ounce, making the Confederate treasure hoard worth about $100 billion.
This figure is particularly impressive considering foremost geologists estimate the world's known recoverable gold reserve at 1 billion ounces. No figures are available on Russia, but U.S. gold production has been averaging about 1.5 million ounces a year during the past decade.
During a meeting in Southern California on April 18, 1973, with sons and grandsons of Knights of the Golden Circle members, I was told that the confederate Underground infiltrated gold mines around the world and gave out false production figures. For half a century gold was smuggled into the U.S., including $32 million from Afrikaners during the Boer War. Everywhere Confederate agents encouraged miners and stamping mill employees to steal and served as "fences." Many former Confederate officers headed West after the war, prospered and tithed up to 50 per cent of their annual incomes.
A decade ago, a national magazine writer charged that at least $50 billion in U.S. gold had "just disappeared" since colonial times, At one time the U.S. Treasury listed $22 billion in gold reserves, but the vaults at Fort Knox, Kentucky, are bare by comparison today.
With the price of gold fluctuating almost daily, let's use the $35 an ounce figure which was with us for almost four decades. Despite its famous Gold Rush, California ranks well down the line in hidden Confederate gold. Montana-Idaho reportedly contains $4 billion, Texas $2.5 billion, New York $1 billion and California has $500 million.
The amount in the most populous state varies from $41 million in Sacramento to $1.6 million in San Gabiel Canyon and $250,000 in El Monte, which was a Golden Circle head-quarters prior to the Civil War. Nevada City, Grass Valley and Placerville each have about $16 million and Porterville, $3.3 million. There are lesser amounts in Fort Tejon, San Diego, San Pedro, San Jose, San Francisco and Paso Robles, according to the old timers.
New Mexico depositories contain treasure worth $630 million, while Canada has $2.5 billion, Georgia $413 million, the Carolinas $500 million, New England $333 million, Mexico $500 million, Panama $83 million, the Canary Islands $83 million, Illinois $33 million and Oregon, Arizona and Nevada each have $333 million. There is hidden gold in nearly every state in the Union and $83 million lies buried right under Castro's nose in Cuba.
The grandson of a Golden Circle member volunteered, "He told me the depositories or caches were located in the following areas: near state or territorial capitals, near railroad rights-of-way, along principal rivers, beside stage or wagon roads, around Confederate- owned livery stables, near Indian agency headquarters, near bridge or ferry crossings, near smelters or mills and along natural landmarks like the Continental Divide.
"Some of the caches might be safely opened by weekend treasure hunters, but don't trifle with the big depositories. They're booby-trapped from all directions and more than one snooper has been blown to bits by waterproofed explosives which are still deadly."
A number of daring coups which enriched Confederate caches will be described in this chapter. Under Colonel James' direction, Golden Circle agents were sent to Spain and Mexico to ferret out long-lost treasures buried in the United States. The agents promised a percentage of the take to informers. Treasures were dug up and the promises were kept. In addition, restless Golden Circle agents ran down Indian and old prospector legends of lost or buried gold. Many of these treasures were retrieved and placed in Confederate caches. Other gold was dug up in Mexico and Latin America.
In 1930, J. Frank Dobie wrote, "Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest." Old Jesse bought a copy and it was soon dog-eared and pages marked with strange symbols. Old Jesse chuckled, "Frank did a hell of a good job compiling all this stuff, but my agents long since checked out 90 per cent of the legends and in many cases The Organization made off with the treasure."
On his 100th birthday in 1944, old Jesse told his closest relatives, "There are no free and easy Confederate treasures, any that an amateur or tenderfoot could locate and dig out on a weekend. He'd need a hell of a lot of inside information. There is a 'key' to Confederate treasure troves. In 1916 we sealed our Golden Circle records for fifty years. So in 1966 - I will be long gone - it won't belong to anybody. I will leave the 'key' to my grandson Lee Howk (Jesse James III). There are no written records of the caches, just signs and symbols, but Lee will have the 'key' - that I assure you."
As an oldster, Jesse often lamented the "untimely deaths of two noble adversaries, detective Allan Pinkerton and financier Jay Gould." Pinkerton died in 1884, Gould in 1892. No, Jesse didn't kill them, but he admitted he had plenty of opportunities.
"Pinkerton and his men made one basic error," old Jesse said, "they were looking for Jesse James' Gang, and not the Confederate Underground Army and they thought the Golden Circle ceased when Lee surrendered. We weren't about to straighten 'em out.
"In the late 1970s, I heard about a law officers' convention in Chicago and decided to attend as a deaf preacher. I was heavily disguised with gold caps on my front teeth and carried an ear horn in one hand and a Bible in the other. I managed to get myself a seat at Allan Pinker-ton's table. If I was asked a question, I'd make heavy use of the ear horn and make an irrelevant, but always pious answer. I'm sure Allan thought I was stone deaf.
"I was delighted when Pinkerton began talking about the 'James Gang'. He had a tendency to brag and he told about elaborate plans to capture the James 'bandits'. Then he grew serious and said, 'Washington has called me in several times concerning thefts of rather appreciable amounts of gold, wondering if the 'James Gang' could be involved. But I told them that Jesse and Frank James are just penny-ante crooks concentrating on $10,000 to $20,000 bank holdups.
"After lunch, I found myself sharing a washroom with Pinkerton and I was tempted to kill him. It would have been so easy, but I reasoned that Pinkerton had the wrong conception of our real activities. Let him believe we were minor crooks and we would go right on filling Confederate caches. That night I told my experiences to Missouri Jesse (Dingus) James, my cousin, and he was blazing mad. He fairly shouted, 'I think you just got 'buck fever', cousin Jesse, and couldn't pull the trigger! You could have snuffed him out so easily - but didn't.' "
Financier Jay Gould enriched Confederate caches or coffers of Jesse's organization by
$30 million, most of it taken at pistol point, but some by shrewd manipulation. "I was in Chicago and read in the papers," Jesse recalled in later years, "that the great financier Jay Gould was going to attend a banquet that night. Pulling a few strings, I got myself invited. I went dressed as a miner. Of course, I was heavily disguised. I developed a bad limp, carried my left arm in a sling and an ear horn in the other. This was in the late 1880s.
"I went brazenly over to the table where Gould was and sat down. He jumped up and shook my hand and asked how I got hurt. I finally had him shouting right in my ear horn. So I nodded and mumbled, "Mining - explosives." I pulled out a chamois bag and rolled some pretty good-sized gold nuggets on the table and Gould's eyes grew big. 'Where?' he asked and I replied, 'I think it's Tuesday.' He kept on asking questions, but I was unable to hear and gave him the wrong answers. He finally gave up on me, considering me hopelessly deaf. That's what I wanted him to think.
"While I ate, I placed my ear horn on the floor so Jay Gould felt free to discuss his railroad plans with others at the table, who were all his associates. I learned plenty that night. Then Gould began complaining-about 'raids' on his payrolls. An associate said, 'Maybe Jesse James isn't dead after all, Mr. Gould.' My heart almost stopped pumping. Gould replied, Tm going to be candid with you gentlemen. I, too, have heard that Jesse wasn't really murdered back in '82. In a way, the pattern does resemble that used by Jesse James during the Civil War.
"'He stole a lot of money from me and I had him outlawed by pulling a few strings in Washington. In a way, I hated to because did I ever tell you I knew the entire James family when they had the plantation down in Kentucky? Well, that's another story. I've done a lot of thinking about our financial drain and it smacks of Jesse's guerrilla tactics. Hell, if Jesse James walked into this room right now I wouldn't be one bit surprised. He's a wily one, slippery as a goddam eel and durable as an elephant. But I'll tell you one thing, Jesse James never lacked in guts or daring.'
"Needless to say, that was quite an accolade coming from old Gould. I had a hard time going to sleep that night. It was amazing how close he had come to figuring me out. They say every crook has a modus operandi. If mine was following a pattern in Gould's mind, it was time we altered our methods. So we did. I didn't want to read such a headline: JESSE JAMES ALIVE - LEADER OF CONFEDERATE UNDERGROUND ARMY."
The Golden Circle spared no expense in burying its gold. It employed the best engineers and the most modern equipment available. Jesse said, "I always insisted on using either Negroes or Indians as laborers. Seldom employed a white man. I understood Indians and Negroes and on the whole they were more trustworthy."
Many of the caches were located near railroad lines, although some were situated in remote regions. Jesse James employed a large number of railroad detectives or agents, who rode his own line and those belonging to the competition. Sometimes engineers, along with detectives, were paid by the Golden Circle to "keep their eyes open" along certain stretches and to report anything suspicious. Of course, these paid employees were not told what they were protecting, but an extra $50 a month kept them vigilant.
Mining companies also employed a network of agents to report "unusual activities." The Confederate Underground was busy sinking shafts for caches, many of them booby trapped, and this could pass for "mining." Golden Circle agents were merciless and many a "snooper" was tracked down and killed before he could file a report. "Shoot - and ask questions later," was Colonel James' standing order to his secret operatives. Another order was, "Better to kill a man than be sorry." On rare occasions a Golden Circle agent would violate his blood oath and attempt to slip back and recover some of the buried loot. The man was invariably shot because Jesse kept a concealed guard around a new cache for generally a month. After that, it was periodically inspected to see if it had been tampered with.
One peace officer in Oklahoma spent twenty years working to open a Confederate trove. How he learned about it is unknown, but old Jesse did some checking and found out the officer's father had been a member of the Golden Circle. Jesse reasoned his father had revealed the secret on his death bed.
Trusting no one, the peace officer did the digging himself. Apparently his father had told him where the booby-trap was because the digger tunneled around this area. The officer never told his wife what he was doing on weekends but said, "If I ever disappear, get hold of the Texas Rangers and have them get in touch with Colonel J. Frank Dalton."
A month later, Jesse sat in the widow's kitchen and it suddenly came to him what had happened to her husband. A trusted crony drove Jesse to the spot. The cache was concealed by heavy undergrowth. Jesse told his friend to wait while he climbed the hill. The old Golden Circle chief saw at a glance what had happened. Engineers had damned up a spring and this small body of water had broken through the digger's tunnel, drowning him. For a moment, Jesse stood and paid a tribute to the oldtimers' precautions. Then he went back into town and told the anxious widow, "Well, I thought I might know where your husband was, but he ain't. I'm sorry."
Did old Jesse ever open any of the Confederate caches? Yes, he did during the depression. He opened a cache in Texas and took out $10 million to help prop up three Texas banks, which had been founded by old time Confederate families. He reasoned, "The oath stated they'd never be touched unless the 'nation' was in dire straits. Well, these three banks were fighting to keep their doors open. There were breadlines and people were desperate and angry. I'd have opened every damn Confederate cache in the country to keep the United States from going Bolshevik and would not have violated my oath in any way."
Even with his vast financial empire, the old man was pressed for cash during the depression. Accompanied by his grandson, Jesse III, he retrieved three of his "personal caches." He took $125,000 from a cave near Gad's Hill, Missouri; about $75,000 from a cemetery in northeastern Arkansas and $100,000 from the east side of an ancient Indian burial mound on the Bayou Macon north of Delhi, Louisiana.
Jesse III recalls, "That was quite a sight. We checked into the Washington Urey Hotel in downtown Shreveport. The year was 1939. The tires on my car were almost flat from the heavy load. Old Jesse looked over the hotel's help and selected two husky young Negroes. He asked, 'Can you boys keep your mouths shut?' Then he gave each of them a
$100 bill and they hauled the treasure, mostly in gold coins, up to our room. Then Jesse called a banker friend, told him to bring $100,000 in 'big bills', an armored car and a couple of husky men.
"The old banker's eyes bulged out when he saw the grain sacks full of coins. He'd known Jesse for years so couldn't have been too surprised. Jesse said, 'Now I counted this stuff some fifty years ago when I buried it. It amounted to $100,000 then and we got all of it. I'll settle for $100,000 in green stuff - it's handier to carry around. Some of these coins are quite old and are probably collector's items, but my loss is your gain. You can count it down at the bank to make sure I didn't cheat you. You know I'm Jesse James so you can't be too damn careful.' Well, the old banker almost apologized when he handed Jesse
$100,000 in $100 bills. His men took the coins and departed. When we got ready to retire, old Jesse stuck his fat wallet under the mattress and made sure his .38 calibre Smith & Wesson was loaded. In a minute he was snoring."
If Jesse III has the "key" to the string of Confederate depositories, why doesn't he just go ahead and dig them up?
He replies, "The answer to this is quite complex. First, you have the federal and state governments and federal judges to consider. If my grandfather and The Knights of the Golden Circle stole this gold from the federal government would it be considered 'treasure trove' or 'contraband'? Various states have worked out 'treasure trove' laws which in most cases are quite fair.
"But what if it is 'contraband'? That is another matter and the federal government would confiscate it, legally saying it was merely recovering property stolen from it. What if I went to Washington and worked out an arrangement with the President of the United States and the Congress -say a 50-50 split? I would use the argument, 'Do you want the stuff to remain hidden in the ground or would you rather have $30 billion unexpected funds to play with?' Maybe I'd settle for 10 per cent, or 5 per cent or 1 per cent. The deal was all set so I'd borrow money and go ahead and dig out the rich Curious Mule Treasure. While I was wiping the sweat off my brow and waiting for federal auditors to weigh in the treasure, some screwball federal judge might rule my agreement was 'illegal' and it would all go to the federal coffers. I'd be up the proverbial creek without a paddle!"
Jesse III found himself in such a position in 1962 when he and an Indian guide from the old Santa Clara Indian Reservation at Espanola, New Mexico, found a $700,000 gold cache stashed away by Grandpa Jesse in the mid 1880s. Old Jesse had grub staked an old prospector who had a mine in the James Mountains near Coyote, New Mexico. The prospector hit and Jesse came down with mules to claim his one-third share. There were 14Va 100-pound ingots of 87 per cent gold. Taking a shortcut to Santa Fe, old Jesse's mule train was bombarded by a violent storm and half of his mules drowned. He and his men buried the gold under a ledge. Before he died, old Jesse said, "I'll give you the directions. It was not Confederate gold, but belonged to me so it's yours when you find it."
After Jesse III and his Indian guide uncovered the gold, an unexpected heavy snow blanketed the area. When he went back in the spring, Jesse III found the Indian had moved the gold, which was located on the Santa Clara Reservation. The guide had "blabbed" and three or four Indians were killed over the gold discovery incident. So Jesse III, who had originally promised the chief that the reservation could have half of the gold, tried to get his former guide to disclose the new hiding place. When all efforts failed, Jesse III went into U.S. Federal District Court in Albuquerque and the judge ruled the gold belonged to Jesse III.
"Despite the decision, the Indian still refused to disclose its new hiding place. In the meantime, a newspaper publisher applied a little heat in Washington and legal blocks were strewn in my path. I didn't have the funds to fight any more so I went back to Colorado.
"The New Mexico case, which I won, opened up quite a can of worms. Sweet old Aunt Cora, the daughter of Jesse Woodson James and Maggie Matuska, a Sioux Indian woman, was living in Nashville, Tennessee, and when she heard about the decision she immediately began an action to attach the cache, charging she was a closer relative to old Jesse Woodson James than I was.
"And other James relatives living throughout the country under assumed names began to make noises. Now, I don't mean all of old Jesse's kin. Some of them stood by me through thick and thin. They had kept their names during the many years old Jesse was an exile in his own land. But I suddenly realized that 32nd cousins would hire shysters and have their hands out once any of old Jesse's assets were uncovered. It was a very sobering thought.
"Now the same thing could happen if the old Confederate depositories were opened. There would be a flurry of lawsuits of every description, judges would hand down some complicated and strange decisions, the country might be in chaos - it seems to be an old American custom to fight over inheritances or recovered treasure."
Jesse III and his attorney, John Gately, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1967 located "The Master Compass Treasure" site in New Mexico by following old symbols, which professors of natural history term ancient Indian pictographs. "A treasure," Jesse III says, "just doesn't leap out at you and yell, 'Here I am. I am a buried treasure!' "
After taking a false trail or two by misreading the "compass feathers," the hikers located the hidden springs and suddenly stood in awe. Jesse III said, "There carved on a wall in all its majesty was a great historical panel which told the strange story of the Confederate 'lost cause'. I had left my camera in the car and neither John nor I were prepared to dig that day so we made plans to return with a pickup truck in two weeks. Then John made a grievous error. He took off his scarf and tied it to a bush at the edge of the great panel, arguing that we'd be able to spot the scarf from the road below. I compounded the error by not removing the scarf."
Apparently the two hikers had been spotted by a couple of young Mexican-American boys, who were prepared to dig as soon as the pair left. The lads found a chest containing
$55,000 in rare, century-old coins, but the bank paid them only face value. "But," says Jesse III, "the main treasure taken from Grandpa's wagon train still lies buried somewhere near the great panel. John Gately died, I got involved in the Santa Clara Reservation mess, then family illnesses and I've never been back."
Because Jesse III was raised at his old Confederate grandfather's knee, I've detected that Jesse III has a great sentimentality about the old caches. A few years ago, Jesse III gathered two trusted friends in Dallas and formalized plans to open a Confederate depository containing $8 million in Oklahoma. Jesse III said he had been studying the symbols and believed he had pinpointed the cache.
"I don't remember why, but one of my friends brought along a tenderfoot, a real ringer. It was February, cold and damp and I caught a severe cold. Then it began to rain and I was unable to spot an important clue, two large boulders, side by side. I suggested we return to town and try at a later date. The greenhorn jumped up, yelling, 'You're trying to gyp me out of my $2 million share! I never trusted Texans anyway!' On the way back into town, facing pneumonia, I asked myself, 'Why am I doing this? Who is this damn fool I just met two days ago who is demanding his share and accusing me of dishonesty?' Back in town, I told my friends I was calling off the hunt and returning to Dallas. I thought of all the blood that had been shed by those old Southerners to steal the gold and the sweat they'd expended to cache it away. This greenhorn had killed any desire I had to retrieve the trove."
Jesse III says the treasure symbols appear to be everywhere. "I've observed them in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and even Florida." The symbols are not always arrows, turkey tracks, snakes and birds, but sometimes they are the old Confederate Army Code. Every venture old Jesse's organization did was in multiples of 3s, 5s and 7s. On rare occasions they switched to 4s, 7s and 11s."
If the booby traps, sudden floods and hidden spears don't get the treasure hunter, "black damp" will. Colorado City, now Colorado Springs, along with Canton, Texas, became a Confederate Underground center after the capital closed down in Nashville in about 1884. Old Jesse ordered a network of deep tunnels and rooms built underground. Work went on so quietly that residents never dreamed they even existed. At one time, precious metal and guns were stored in the secret rooms and tunnels, but they have been sealed up to keep out children. Without being ventilated, poking into the labyrinth of tunnels would be suicide. Two sniffs of "black damp" will kill you.
Following is a list of approximately a hundred Confederate depositories (in some cases the amounts are given):....
Continued at Page 250 in the Black Book...
