Montezuma's treasure is a legendary
buried treasure said to be located in the
Casa Grande ruins or elsewhere in the
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...
and
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
.
[Penfield, Thomas, 2004. "Dig Here!: Lost Mines & Buried Treasure of the Southwest". pp 68-70.] The legend is one of many treasure stories in
American folklore
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...
. Thomas Penfield wrote, "There is not the slimmest thread of reality in this story which is common throughout Mexico and the southwestern United States. There are some puzzling aspects but the story, nevertheless, adds up to pure legend."
The legends
One story tells of the 1520 imprisonment of Moctezuma II
Moctezuma Xocoyotzin . ( – 29 June 1520), retroactively referred to in European sources as Moctezuma II, and often simply called Montezuma,Other variant spellings include Moctezuma, Motewksomah, Motecuhzomatzin, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma, Motē ...
by Spanish conquistador
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (; ; ) were Spanish Empire, Spanish and Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colonizers who explored, traded with and colonized parts of the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia during the Age of Discovery. Sailing ...
s. With the conquistadors demanding a ransom in gold, runners were dispatched to warn tribes to hide their treasures. However, none of the histories of the conquest, such as The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo
Bernal Díaz del Castillo ( 1492 – 3 February 1584) was a Spanish conquistador who participated as a soldier in the conquest of the Aztec Empire under Hernán Cortés and late in his life wrote an account of the events. As an experienced ...
, say that Montezuma was ever held for ransom by the conquistadors or that any people of the area were told to hide their treasure from the Spanish. A labyrinth found in modern times at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument ( or ''Sivan Vahki'') is a United States national monument preserving a group of Classic Period () Hohokam structures in Coolidge, Arizona, northeast of Casa Grande.
History of the area
The national mon ...
led to speculation that it might be home to some of the fabled treasure. Extensive excavation of the area, however, has turned up nothing to support the claim.[
According to John Mitchell, in 1847, during the ]Mexican American War
Mexican may refer to:
Mexico and its culture
*Being related to, from, or connected to the country of Mexico, in North America
** People
*** Mexicans, inhabitants of the country Mexico and their descendants
*** Mexica, ancient indigenous people ...
, a Mexican aristocrat
The aristocracy (''from Greek'' ''ἀριστοκρατία'' ''aristokratía'', "rule of the best"; ''Latin: aristocratia'') is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the ...
named Don Joaquin enslaved the local Apache
The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...
s to dig for gold in the Sierra Estrella
The Estrella Mountains or The Sierra Estrella (, , ) is a mountain range located southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. Much of the range falls within the Gila River Indian Reservation, but of BLM land is protected as the Sierra Estrella Wilderness, ...
s. But later, as the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...
entered the mountains, the Apache rose up against the Mexicans who had to hide their gold in a canyon near Montezuma's Head. Most of the Mexicans were killed but at least one man survived and later went back to the mountains in the 1880s with a treasure map
A treasure map is a map that marks the location of buried treasure, a lost mine, a valuable secret or a hidden locale. More common in fiction than in reality, "pirate treasure maps" are often depicted in works of fiction as hand drawn and cont ...
to find the gold. However, the Apache still controlled the area and the Mexican man never found the lost treasure.
Newspapers as far back as 1895 have published accounts of people who have claimed to have found this lost treasure.
Television
The myth and superstitions about a curse on the treasure are sensationalized in a 2014 television program ''Raiders of the Lost Past'' which includes interviews of many family members of treasure hunters.
The treasure is the basis for an episode of ''Wagon Train
''Wagon Train'' is an American Western television series that aired for eight seasons, first on the NBC television network (1957–1962) and then on ABC (1962–1965). ''Wagon Train'' debuted on September 18, 1957, and reached the top of the ...
'' entitled "The Alexander Portlass Story".
See also
*Apache Wars
The Apache Wars were a series of armed conflicts between the United States Army and various Apache tribal confederations fought in the Southwestern United States, southwest between 1849 and 1886, though minor hostilities continued until as l ...
* Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Montezuma's Treasure
Treasure of the United States
American frontier
Arizona folklore
Treasure in Arizona
Buried treasure