Original
February 21, 2023
and others.
Taken
from copies of the original documents
The year was 1777, another 44 years yet
before
No doubt
these Mexican Indian banditos and heroic Captains suffered at times with turmoil from within as
their enemy was of the same faith which they adhered to; apparently forgotten
and not realizing it had been forced upon their ancestor’s centuries before.
Why they still adhered to it I will never understand…
Like the Confederate soldier of our Civil war,
the many robberies were not for personal gain but to weaken the enemy and in
the case of
In 1727 Just 50 years prior to Valentin
becoming Captain of the Durango band of Banditos, Nicholas Castillo was passed
the torch making captain by Captain Jose Ramirez, a Zacatecas Indian “a very
brave man indeed” who was seriously injured in a recent assault. After
Captain Ramirez had passed, word came from the spies placed in each of the
Taverns that a mule train was about to leave
It took many days to make the transfer from
the kill site to the cavern of Majoma, and to erase all evidence. The silver
and the gold was placed in separate caverns. By January of the next year most
if not all of Castillo and his men were hunted down and killed or captured, shot or hung.
How many robberies took place over the years
is not know, the documents I have been blessed to receive specifically speak of
3 accounts over a period of about 60 years involving Majoma and one not far
north of it, however there must be many more as there is no less than 14 other
cache sites mentioned... and two more fantastic documents, one in Nayrit and
the other beginning in Jalisco and ending in Nayarit, written by none other
than the notorious Lauriono Brothers, the most revered by the people and famous
band of banditos this area of Mexico.
Another more fantastic robbery took place in
1777 under the command of Captain Valentin Castrillon, told in the
following.
Captain Valentin Castrillon was now Captain
since the Brave Indian and former Captain Mursia had died and left him Valentin
in command.
One day word came through spies, that a rather
large shipment was headed their way which consisted of 12 mule trains of 40
mules each, 10 trains of pack mules carrying silver and 2 trains of Red Dune
mules carrying Gold and shod with silver shoes.
Later they would
discover the shipment was sent by General Barron de Vilpamaro, lord and master
of the large mines of Sonora and Tamazula, he was sending it as tithing to his
queen Isabel de España and that is why he sent them like this and the 10 trains
of silver were from a convoy that came from Guarisona (Arizona), el Pilar,
Gavilanes, San Dimas, Tlayoltita, El Naranjal, Metalito, Palualto, El Alto, from Topia and other areas.
Captain Valentin
gathered in his men and prepared them for the ambush at the location they knew
as Lajita. When the Spanish mule trains entered the brena Valentin attacked,
the battle was brutal and by the time the dust settled, 72 Spaniards were dead
and 23 of Valentin’s banditos. Immediately the men gathered in the mules and
began the short journey of 1 ½ leagues away but it was through some of the
nastiest terrain God ever created. It took days to dispose of the dead many bodies of
which some were used to create a bridge across a deep desert wash to shorten the
distance to the Cavern.
After the spoils were
off loaded and filling even more of the cavern which they at one time vowed
more than a hundred years before, to fill this cavern with Gold only, it seemed
they had finally reached that goal as the could not get this stone lid back on
and to fit tight. Valentin instructed his men to dig shallow trenches around the coral which held the cavern and dispose of the remainder of the vast
cache. The trenches were filled with silver and gold and it is said it was done
hap hazard and that even to this day, some of it remains uncovered. They had the same problem with the silver cache cavern, with not enough room to place it
Valentin ordered the men to dig a pit in which they threw in the over burden of
silver and mixing a sort of concrete to cover the hole.
It wasn’t long after
that the Spanish authorities had had enough of the constant robberies of the
last 300 years or so and an all out effort was organized to hunt down the
native banditos. Over the next few short months many of the banditos had been
captured and executed and only a few short years after that,
The Gold Caverns of the B reña
Now before continuing on, let me say... I would not expect one soul to
believe the following...
The Map of Captain Valentin
Minus a few details…
Recap…
It was in the late 1500's, a small group of Banditos banded together for the purpose of cutting off the supplies of Gold and Silver to Spain, in hopes that it would cause these unwelcome strangers of their land to leave for good. Over the next two hundred years the number of banditos grew, many Captains of the Gangs came and went, each leaving behind their written charted course of their experiences and handed down to their posterity. These Mexican Indians of this area set a goal, to fill their chosen cache site being a cavern, and with gold only… I am sure it was a joke at the time, However they put only Gold into the cavern and the silver in another location near by. There is also the overflow locations where shallow trenches and a pit were dug when they finally reached their goal in the late 1700’s.
After 2 centuries
There was at one point in the early 1900’s a cache found of 4 million (Value in that day and much to small) naming the items that was found, and it was imagined to be one of the many caches of these banditos and no doubt was, but the describe items did not match the contents described at Majoma, however although there are still some who seek these sites today and looking to far south for reasons I cannot give, the information they seek in order to find the right place, and they have not known of… is here in my hands.
It was some time in the mid-1970s
that a somewhat well-known treasure hunter from
Now the old
man had traveled far from his inland village for whatever reasons, yet Jim
arranged to travel to the old village asking the old man if he would like to
accompany him. It was necessary to travel to the village of the old man’s birth
as this is where the documents were kept and were never taken from.
Arrangements were made to view the old documents which Jim studied intently
having a fair understanding of Spanish. It was quite clear that Jim’s
suspicions were correct; he had never read anything quite this fascinating. It
was as compelling as such stories as the alleged lost Aztec Gold of Arizona or
After reviewing the documents in the company of family members and descendants of the document’s author (who was a Captain of the Banditos in about 1770); Jim, trying very hard to keep his composure, asked if he could make a copy of the document. To his surprise, they said that he could. The problem Jim had was that the nearest Zerox machine was nearly 20 miles away and to take the document away from the home of the family was unheard of, but it was agreed that two of the people from the village would accompany Jim to the town with the Zerox machine to make copies.
After this part of the story, I only have bits and pieces of what Jim did in the years to come. A few years later in about 1980 Jim befriended another man whom we will call John. John and Jim shared many adventures over the next ten years, but as it often happens there was a bit of a falling out where the two separated as partners and kept in touch but no longer shared in their adventures. While John and Jim were working together, Jim showed John all the details of the story including the copied hand-written document which John also studied from time to time as they wanted the best English translation they could get. Jim never gave John a copy of the hand written document but he did share with him copies of the English translation, John did not know of the hand drawn map which came with the original hand-written document and Jim’s maps that he used to try to locate the many cache sites mentioned in the documents, but more so the main location, coral de Majoma, the small one and the large one. Judging from Jims research it became clear he had never made the connection and did not located the two corals.
The biggest problem Jim had
according to John is that the place names were only
known by a few locals in the vicinity of the main site area. It would be
another 6 years (about 1986) or so before the equivalency of the
As a result of my personal research pertaining to similar topics and those research topics which are somewhat unrelated to Spanish Treasure Hunting, I met John in about the year 2001. John, although one of the nicest guys in the Spanish lore game that I had ever met, was not a very trusting soul and was very slow to share information and he was also very cautious as to whom he shared it with. It would be another 3 years before John would share the information with me.
Shortly after meeting John, another friend whom I will call Steve approached me with a document which would later prove to be Jim’s English copy which (unknown to Jim) was copied when Jim took it to Steve in the 70s to ask for help in unraveling the mystery of it. Apparently Jim took his eyes off the document 10 minutes longer than he should have. When Steve brought the story to me, it was clear that he knew he could not unravel the mystery of the location; if he had thought for a moment that he could, I am certain he would have never brought it to me. He asked me to take it home and read it and see what I thought, hoping to get my insight on the details, it was accompanied with a copy of the origninal map drawn by Valantin himself, John never knew of it.
As I read the story I was absolutely amazed at what I was reading, often envisioning what this massive hoard must look like. Never at this time did I ever think, expect or imagine that in a few short weeks that I would actually find it. I was so taken in by the story and being a real sucker for a mystery, I just couldn't leave it alone. I almost immediately began the research process in order to discover the end results. I knew it was unlikely but I knew it was possible and I thrive on the challenge. Within just a few short weeks I had ordered the topographical maps mentioned earlier and I was well on my way to unraveling this mystery.
In about
late 2002 or 2003, I met John as a result of part of my research. I
was taken in by John; yes he was
secretive but he was different than many others that I had met. There was a
real genuineness about him; it was a hit and John has been my good friend ever since. I
believe it was sometime in about 2004 that John brought to me a story he wanted me to
review. By this time, John and Jim were no longer working together and Jim had
almost forgotten the enormous cache site precisely 1066 miles south of his home
which he had never found. Jim passed away in October of 2012, may he rest in
peace.
Now going
back a few years, I had received the 1:50,000 scale Topographic maps
of the area in question that were created in 1986 and before opening them
I decided to take them with me to work to study them hoping to find the place
names. While at work, I was waiting for the sub-contractors to show up so that
I could pay them. The sub-contractor who was coming to get paid that day I had
not yet gotten to know very well and so when he came in I asked him where he
was from to strike up a conversation. He told me that he was from a city near to the area of the cache sites.
Of course that information raised an eyebrow and so I asked him if he knew one
of the place names in the old document, he responded telling me that it is
where he grew up. Ok now things were getting… coincidental? as I call it but I
do not believe in coincidences. I asked him if he knew some of the other place
names which he did. So then I asked if he wouldn't mind
looking at some maps, and he responded in kind and said he would be glad
to. I went out to my truck and brought the map tube in and pulled out the maps.
Upon unrolling the main map which I suspected of having the majority of the
place names from the old document, the sub-contractor said in surprise, “Hey,
Where you get these? From a mapping company in
Discovery of the Banditos Cache
One day after spending much time with the maps and place names and reading very carefully the main descriptive clues, I was following what I felt was a correct path either on Google earth or on the Topo maps. As I was taking the path north as described, I came to what were very obviously the two described unique features. One of these features is rare enough to find in this god forsaken area, but to find two of them side by side as shown on the old map is indeed an extreme rarity, and to find them according to all the other details at the very place described it was clear I had found it. I could not believe my eyes; I had to go over it several times before I could believe it myself and finally the reality set in... You did it! I thought... I could not wait to call John to show and tell him, but my need to be certain would put this off for many months in order to find additional evidences.
After discovering the main cache
location, I was trying to learn more about the whole story thinking there must
be others who may know something about this, the main cache site has an unusual
name and doing an internet search only one hit came up which took me to a web
site wherein someone had posted a similar story, yet with much fewer details.
As it turned out, the individual who posted the story was also trying to learn
what he could and after talking with him for some time, he agreed to send me
his four stories that he had found in very old journals, one of which had been
published in a turn of the century treasure book. These four other stories were
written by four other captains of the same gang of banditos but at different
time frames spanning nearly 150 years. Each told their own stories but all
talked of the same famous cache site of which their goal was explained to
permanently cut off the supplies of Gold to
I found a Captains name in the
document that I had first received that I knew did not exist in the other four
documents and made mention of it to one individual. He responded and was very
curious as to how I could have possibly known that name because he knew it was
on his document which he was certain he knew no one else had. After talking
with him for some time we finally decided we had the same story and we
exchanged documents, but I never told him that I knew where the cache was. I
told him the story of how I had received it and he reciprocated with his story
of how he got his copy. He explained to me that he was in the very same village
in which he had relatives who knew the family who shared the document with Jim.
It would seem that at nearly the same time Jim got his copy, my new contact in
A year after Jim’s passing, my friend John called Jim’s wife to offer his condolences, he asked about the copy of the Spanish document and it was discovered that she so much despised his hobby and was sick of people calling her, that she burned all of his research.
The Old Document of 1770
Of the 5 documents telling of this main cache location, the Old Spanish Document of 1770 is the most descriptive one. This document is centered on a particular robbery which resulted in the death of many banditos and 60 plus Spanish soldiers. The shipment (by the way they talked about it) was considered to be one of the largest of the shipments stolen over a period of nearly 200 years by the banditos. It is said that within that the shipment were 400 Mules carrying silver of about 150-200 lbs (Carga) and per Red Dun mule (Carga being closer to 300 lbs) of 80 mules carrying gold. This robbery and the two loads of gold accomplished their goal set about 130 years previous, to fill the cavern in this 1770 occurrence. Another cavern nearby was being used to cache the silver.
In 1728 another account of a robbery is given by an earlier Captain of the Banditos that is about the same magnitude as the 1770 robbery. Just these two robberies, conducted nearly 40 years apart, represent in today’s value in the hundreds of millions. Imagine if the 10 other cache sites mentioned in the 5 documents were found, and you were to include all the gold and silver which had been used to fill the main cavern for nearly 200 years, the main cache site could reach well into the Billions. Explicit instructions are given in at least two of the documents, but the 1770 document is without a doubt the most descriptive, but this is only beneficial if you can discover the locations of the place names and the likelihood up until about 1986 was very slim... unless you happened to be the friend who was one of my sub-contractors and just happened to be looking for the vast lost treasure of the Brena.
Like Mel Fisher who sought after a finacial partner, I too am looking for that one trustworthy man to help bring this discovery to light and hopefully without the difficulties Mel Fisher faced. Although details will be witheld for now, I will say it is located in the best possible loaction... two trips have been made to the location so far.
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