BajaNomad

Another horno found at Real de Santa Ana

Jack Swords - 12-28-2007 at 08:11 AM

For history buffs, Manuel Ocio's Real de Santa Ana was an important part of very early Baja. In 1747 he had a full working silver processing facility on the site. A previous horno (smeltering silver ore) was found, but found a second yesterday. This guy (Ocio) ran extensive pearling, mining, cattle operations in S. Baja in opposition to the missions.
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Ocio

John M - 12-28-2007 at 08:40 AM

Jack, were you a part of the find? John

Manuel Ocio (Osio) chapter by Choral Pepper

David K - 12-28-2007 at 08:56 AM

THE PEARL KING'S BURIED TREASURE by Choral Pepper



(Posted originally some time ago, I am reposting this for the new Nomads to have something fun to read and history or legends to inspire some Baja exploring)

The incredibly blue sea we call the Gulf of California has laid claim to names far more romantic than its present one. Early Spanish explorers who sailed northward in 1538 as far as Cedros Island called it the 'Sea of Cortez' to honor the great Spanish explorer of Mexico. Later explorers, some of whom were jealous enemies of the great Cortez, changed its name to the 'Vermilion Sea' because of the red tint from Colorado River runoff. Ship wrecks, mutinies, a fabled island dominated by Amazons, political disputes, pearl fishermen, smugglers, piracy-- all are part of the Gulf's oft-told legendary history, with one important exception.

While I researched old records for my early Baja book, the name 'Osio' cropped up in so many instances that it piqued my curiosity. The man appeared to be an enormous power, and yet nothing of substance gave a concrete account of his activities. I couldn't decide whether he was one of the 'good guys' or one of the 'bad guys', so I began to fit bits and pieces of information together.

Manuel Osio was a master at delivering the shaft. He not only pulled off the biggest mine swindle in the history of Baja California, he also expedited, if not directly brought about, the expulsion of the Jesuit Order from the New World.

Osio arrived in Baja California as a mission soldier. Almost immediately he recognized that a future in pearl hunting would be more lucrative than one in soul saving. When a band of recently converted Indian divers arrived at San Ignacio Mission bearing a cache of pearls destined for the Holy Virgin, Osio managed to intercept their leader and for a trifling value, acquire the pearls. With this grubstake, he procured a discharge from the mission army and hastened to Sinaloa on the mainland to purchase boats, supplies and men.

By 1742, Osio had fished up more than 128 pounds of pearls. By 1744, his record exceeded 275 pounds per year. He then produced a coup that forever established him as the Pearl King of Mexico. Off the shore of Mulege, his Yaqui divers brought up the largest pearl ever found in peninsular waters -- a giant the size of a pigeon egg valued at 50,000 pesos. Osio offered to sell it to the Queen of Spain and she accepted his offer. This established him as Mexico's leading pearler and gained for him the fawning respect of Spain's governing body in the New World.

Conversely, it repulsed the Jesuit fathers. Five percent of all pearls acquired by legitimate pearl hunters went to the Crown, but only after the largest and most perfectly formed had been collected by the priests to be set aside for the Holy Virgin. That Osio had ignored this tradition did not endear him to the clergy. They showed their displeasure in 1750 by outlawing all pearl fisheries in peninsular waters because pearl hunters and corrupt mission soldiers were arousing discontent among the converts and causing uprisings.

The powerful Jesuits, in their agreement with the Crown, were empowered with full rights of administration in Baja California provided they operated there at their own expense. So there was little that Osio could do but carry on his fisheries surreptitiously. This he managed to do for good many years until a fateful encounter inspired him to take on the Jesuits in a new endeavor.

While on a business trip to Guadalajara, Osio met a priest, a Franciscan, with whom he could talk sense. This man resented the power that the Jesuit order held in Baja California almost as bitterly as did Osio. He pointed out that although the Jesuits were empowered with full rights of administration on the peninsula, possession of the land still remained in the name of his Majesty. Considering Osio's popularity with the king's advocates in the New World, would it not be possible for him to acquire from the Crown land capable of being developed for mining? Surely the Crown would prefer mining interests to be in the hands of a trusted citizen rather than controlled by the secretive Jesuits.

Osio laid his plans well, carefully and slowly. He acquired a powerful business partner in Guadalajara to negotiate on their behalf on the mainland, while Osio himself returned to Baja California to study the land. As a blacksmith in his youth in Andalusia, he had learned enough about metallurgy to convince himself that a weak silver lode lay in the Santa Ana district near the southern tip of the peninsula. This area also embraced plentiful grazing land for cattle and had a convenient access for shipments arriving by sea. Although it was situated between two missions, Santiago and Todos Santos, it was still isolated enough to minimize Jesuit interference with his Indian miners. That prospect, however was eliminated in one forceful blow when the Jesuits issued an order that no Baja California native would be permitted to work in Osio's mines.

This injunction deterred Osio only temporarily. He still maintained a fleet of ships that employed Yaqui divers who could be brought from Sonora to work the mines. They also could cause unrest with the Jesuit?s converts, he ultimately learned. Osio's miners were building up resentment among Baja Indians by telling them that natives on the mainland were given their own land to cultivate as they liked, keeping all profits to themselves. This caused the mission?s fickle-minded Pericues to make extravagant demands upon the missions, even though the claim was not true.
Jesuit missionaries further complained that Osio did nothing to provide for the spiritual needs of his laborers. When out of charity they felt compelled to visit the mines to celebrate mass, Osio refused to compensate by even providing meals or paying traveling expenses.

Then new problems arose. Santa Ana's miners ran short of supplies and took advantage of the priests? compassion by applying at Santiago and Todos Santa missions for help. The missionaries naturally did not wish to sell provisions, that they needed for their own converts, but with the poor miners so neglected by their employer, it seemed cruel to refuse them. To solve the dilemma, the priests took to charging a just price to those who could pay while others received necessary supplies for free.

As Osio had designed it, word soon reached Jesuit enemies in Mexico that corn and other produce sold to the miners at the mission instituted a great commercial enterprise in which the missionaries acted as agents. This accusation was accompanied with another claiming that the missionary at Santiago was also engaged in furnishing fresh provisions to the Manila Galleon that annually entered the harbor at San Bernabe.

Meanwhile, following the Jesuit ban on pearl fisheries in 1750, Osio subsidized the development of his Santa Ana property by making ninety-day voyages every few years to Europe in order to profitably unload his illegally obtained pearls. On one of these sojourns Don Jose de Galvez, an aristocrat whom King Carlos III was secretly planning to send to rule New Spain, sought him out. Osio discussed quite frankly his concern over Jesuit exploitation of the Baja California peninsula, emphasizing that their continual interference impeded the progress of his mining industry. Don Jose listened sympathetically.

A short time thereafter the superior of the Jesuits in Mexico found reason to fear that enemies of the Order, specifically one, prevented from enriching himself at the expense of peninsula natives, were attempting to falsely pin a crime on the priests who charitably visited his mines. To prevent this from occurring in the future, the Superior demanded that Osio obtain a secular priest to serve his mining settlement.

Paradoxically, Osio welcomed this idea. He had a son approaching marriageable age that had grown up under the tutelage of ignorant cowhands and miners. Osio himself had felt inadequate to certain social situations during his visits to the mainland and he was desirous that his son and heir make a worthy marriage and be equipped to cope with the new station in life to which the family had ascended. Possibly an educated priest familiar with the social amenities of the mainland would be an asset to Osio's establishment. So for once Osio agreed with a Jesuit command provided he selected the priest.

This was agreed to and Osio sailed to Guadalajara. He returned with a priest whose name was never known outside of Osio's household. Where the priest went when he departed two years later was never revealed. During the priest's stay, however, Osio accomplished his purpose. His son was wed to the daughter of a highly respected merchant and business associate of his father's after a dowry of 20,000 gilders from Osio's European pearl profits had persuaded the girl to come to Baja California.

Following the priest's unexplained departure, the little chapel at Santa Ana stood empty and the disagreeable task of saving uncouth miners? souls again fell upon the missionary at Santiago. With it also came the necessity of providing for their substance when supplies ran short at Osio's company store, an occurrence that grew alarmingly frequent. Increasing likewise in frequency were whispers on the mainland that the Jesuits were undermining Osio's control over his mine workers and retarding production that resulted in a loss of tax revenue for the Crown.

The whole business climaxed in 1767 when the first party of Franciscan priests set sail from the mainland in a launch provided for them by Don Manuel Osio. They were enroute to Baja California to replace the Jesuits, who had been expelled by a secret mandate from Spain.

Two years prior to that, Don Jose de Galvez had arrived in New Spain, endowed by King Carlos III with almost absolute power. One year following the Jesuit expulsion, Don Jose himself arrived on the peninsula. He, too, sailed there in a ship owned by Osio and when he and his family arrived, they proceeded directly to Santa Ana where they lodged with Osio while Galvez set up headquarters from which to start colonization.

Galvez was intensely interested in colonizing Lower California with Spaniards. He was still convinced that great riches lay somewhere in the land and with so many missions losing converts to epidemics, he wanted to make sure that the Crown maintained its foothold there. At least, that appeared to be his motive when he separated government land from mission land and offered it to mainland Spaniards of good reputation on easy terms.

A district was organized called 'Real de Minas' with headquarters in Santa Ana. It was this district that was settled first, to the gratification of Osio, who owned the only store in the district. Supplied with meat from his own cattle that grazed on his own land and other goods that arrived on his ships from the company he owned in partnership with his new daughter-in-law's father in Guadalajara, the store's profits increased with each new arrival.

Even Osio's mines appeared to prosper with the exodus of the Jesuits. For the first time, the viceroy in Mexico began to receive bars of silver designated as the Royal Fifth. The viceroy also received tokens of pearls from Galvez, with a vague explanation that they were mined during his stay on the peninsula.

Things began to look so profitable on the peninsula that when Osio suggested one day that he might be talked into selling his mines to the Crown, Galvez offered to cooperate. Or perhaps Galvez had offered to cooperate long before. At any rate, toward the end of Galvez? yearlong residence with Osio, the sale was consummated. Houses were added for dependents in the royal service, the chapel was enlarged with intentions to raise it to the status of a mission, and Osio's mercantile operation was doing a thriving business supplying the new settlers. Galvez then sailed back to the mainland, leaving his secretary, Juan Manuel Viniegra, to oversee the completion of the project.

Viniegra did not have to remain very long.
By 1771 the proposed mission at Santa Ana had been abandoned. Indians brought over from Sonora to work the mines had been returned to their respective pueblos to relieve the Crown of their support. The mine was ordered sold, along with everything pertaining to it. If a purchaser could not be found, the mine was to be given to anyone who could work it. There had been no further receipts for the Royal Fifth from Santa Ana after the mines had been purchased from Osio by the Crown.

Father Francisco Palou, a Franciscan priest asked to report on the situation, wrote that a man versed in such matters had informed him that the mines were of so little value that they had never paid their way, even when Osio had them. Later, Galvez? secretary, Viniegra, confessed that no metal was ever refined from the Santa Ana mines, but that the bars of silver and the pearls sent to the viceroy in Mexico by Galvez had been taken from the missions after the Jesuits departed.

In a surprise move to discount these rumors, Manuel Osio leased back from the Crown a part of the abandoned mines, but the move was suspect as a ploy to disguise his profits from illegal pearl fisheries.

The small chapel still stands at Santa Ana, along with ruins of Osio's mansion. The settlement is a ghost town, haunted by a legend that lives on in distant Guadalajara.

According to this legend, Osio was killed by his Yaqui pearl divers while getting ready to take 500 pounds of pearls to Europe to sell. While he prepared for his voyage, the pearls were believed to be buried for safekeeping at the mine property he had recently leased from the Crown at a site called 'Tescalama'. His son had already moved from Baja California to carry on family interests in Guadalajara.
The pearls have never been found.

Juan de Iturbe, explorer for the King and pearler on his own account, was first to sail the entire length along the California Gulf Coast and into the Colorado River in 1615. After loading his fifty-ton ship with a great fortune in pearls, he sailed northward beyond San Felipe, but instead of finding the mouth of the Colorado River, he discovered himself grounded on a sandbar in a vast sea surrounded by mountains. Certain that he had discovered the long-sought Straits of Anian that gave entrance to the Pacific Ocean, even though it had already been determined that this was not so, Iturbe stayed there for a month waiting for a storm or enough wind to carry him off the bar. At last the gods favored him with a great cloudburst, but water gushed down from the high mountains with such fury that waves rendered his ship unmanageable.

Still dreaming that he and his crew would be ennobled by the King and endowed with measureless fame and fortune, Iturbe continued his exploration by land. When supplies ran low, they dried flesh from antelope and wild sheep. After several months of futile searching, they climbed to the top of the highest mountain and identified the Colorado River winding toward the northeast, but the mouth of it was as elusive as the supposed Straits running to the west.


With their ship finally seaworthy, they attempted again to sail around the landlocked sea in search of an exit, but somehow, as if controlled by a sorcerer, the water had receded. Iturbe once again found himself grounded, this time on soft, boggy ground from which the crew barely escaped alive. With little choice, they abandoned the ship with its vast treasure of pearls, leaving it poised upright with its keel buried in sand as if a-sail, and managed to straggle across the sandy waste back to the Gulf where they eventually were rescued.

Iturbe's aborted pearling adventure gave birth to one of Southern California's greatest lost treasure legends, as recounted in Desert Lore of Southern California by this author.

(Footnote see Osio's/ Ocio's ruins in Jack Sword's historic photos: http://vivabaja.com/swords )

Manuel Ocio chapter by Jimmy Smith (great stuff!)

David K - 12-28-2007 at 08:59 AM

Unpublished chapter from Jimmy Smith! 5-14-02



In cleaning out my email files, I came upon one of the great emails I received from the late Jimmy Smith ('The Grinning Gargoyle Spills the Beans and other yarns of Baja California').

This was a chapter that never made it into his book... It is not fully edited, but I think you will enjoy a look at some of Baja's great treasure stories.



From: Jim Smith <jimsmithmx...>
To: David <Boojum1...>
Subject: Re: Grinning Gargoyle Book Reviews
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 10:43 AM

Dear David,
Below, please find a chapter that the editor kicked out of my manuscript
when the book was published. I thought you might find this interesting.

==========================================================

Free Enterprise and The Society of Jesus

The goals of the Spanish crown and those of the Jesuits seem to have
been at cross purposes from the inception of the first mission in 1697. The
crown's primary interest lay in the expansion of the Spanish empire and the
royal fifth of any profit garnered within that empire. The Jesuits seem to
have wanted to create an absolute theocracy inhabited solely by the Padres,
their soldiers, their servants and the indigenous neophytes.
The original agreement between the crown and the Jesuits stipulated that all
expenses would be borne by the pious fund generated by the Padres and at no
expense to the crown. However, Salvatierra and Picolo had hardly established
a beachhead in Loreto before solicitations were made for funds to pay the
soldiers' salaries were instituted. A Royal Cedula granting 6000 pesos
annually for maintenance of the military was issued on 27 July 1701 This
Cedula, decreed by the newly inaugurated Burbon King, Filepe V, ordered that
the military commandante would make policy decisions pertaining to military
thus destroying the absolute authority of the priests. The Jesuits chose to
ignore this order and as a result the commandante, Capt. Antonio Garcia de
Mendoza along with 17 soldiers resigned and returned to the mainland.

Throughout New Spain the military had enjoyed the privilege of supplementing
their income in commercial ventures: mining, ranching, trading and pearling.
This was prohibited by the California Jesuits and was probably a major
factor leading to the soldiers' decision to resign.

Estaban
Rodriguez, a Portuguez corporal was considerably more sympathetic to the
Jesuit line of thinking. He was elevated to commander of California's
military garrison where he remained until his retirement in 1734. It is
interesting to note that when Capt. Rodriguez died in 1746 his estate was
valued at six times as much as his total earnings as a soldier.

Harry Crosby
relates in "Antigua California" that Rodriguez was permitted a herd of
cattle in 1730 and that these cattle were maintained by two soldiers on the
crown's payroll. Rank does have its privileges.

An indian uprising occured at Santiago and spread to the other
Southernmost missions in the summer of 1734 when the resident priests
decreed that the Pericues must limit themselves to a single wife. Pericue
shamans (many of them women) had lost quite a lot face in their conflits
with the priests and it is certain that these medicin men (persons?) stirred
the pot considerably. Padre Lorenzo Carranco S.J. was murdered at the
Santiago mission as was Padre Nicolas Tamaral S.J. at San Jose del Cabo. The
missions of Santiago, San Jose del Cabo, La Paz and Todos Santos were
abandoned by the priests, soldiers and neophytes. The neophytes retreated to
Espiritu Santo Island while the Spaniards went to Mission Dolores.

An appeal for troops to quell rebellion was dispatched to the viceroy,
Archbishop Juan Antonio Vizarron (apparently of some order other than Jesuit
as he was notorious for his hatred of the Society of Jesus) went unheeded
for a time.

The Bark SAN CRISTOBAL, under the command of Captain Mateo Zumalde,
bound for Acapulco from Manilla put into San Jose del Cabo in January 1735.
A longboat manned by 13 crewman was sent ashore to procure fresh water and
supplies. The crewmen were killed by the insurgents. The indians attempted
to capture the ship but were repelled and four of their number fell captives
to the Spanards. Powerful business and political forces were brought into
play by the attack on the Manila galleon forcing the Viceroy to act.

The Jesuits pleaded that Juan Bautista de Anza, their military ally in
Sonora, be sent to their rescue. Instead the viceroy named the governer of
Sinaloa, Manuel Bernardo Huidobro, another noted Jesuit hater, to head the
expeditionary forces.

The Sonora missions sent 100 armed Yaqui and Mayo soldiers along with
some 30 Gente de Razon under the command of Francisco Cortes who had been an
officer at the precidio at Loreto. Several dozen trusted Cochimi were sent
from the Northern Baja California missions.

These forces were marshalled at the Mission Dolores anticipating a
maximum effort military campaign but seem to have been ingored by Huidobro
who brought some 40 of his own troops from Sinaloa. Capt. Estaben Rodrigues
and the Jesuits advocated that the leaders of the rebellion be located and
castigated (probably executed) but Huidobro chose to set off to the South
with his own troops on a pacification program, leaving the rest of the
troops in garrison at Dolores. The Sonora indians asked permission to return
to their homeland and were released as they were creating an economic burden
as garrison soldiers.

Huidobro and his command arrived at Santiago in March 1736 and sat up
his shop of appeasement. His gifts and offers of pardon achieved the reverse
of the desired effect making the insurgent Pericue more insolent than
before. By October Huidobro was forced to employ the tactics advocated by
Rodriguez and the Jesuits. After several brutal skirmishes the rebellion was
quelled. Several of the leaders were killed in combat while others were
captured and executed thus ending the rebellion.

Huidobro's defiance to the absolute Jesuit authority probably was
unthinkable amoung the gente de razon as this was the first such act since
Garcia de Mendoza in 1701. It is very possible that this defiance inspired
Baja California's first entrepreneur. Manuel
Ocio, a soldier in Rodriguez's command, adheared to the well known rules of
achieving financial success. He married the boss's (Rodriguez's) daughter in
1733, served with merit in the 1735 indian rebellion and while on post at
San Ignacio pulled a sham on the Cochimia akin to the $24 purchase of
Manhattan Island. Storms in the Sea of Cortez in 1741 washed a vast quantity
of pearl oysters onto the beaches. Wandering Cochimia Indians gathered
pearls to be delivered to the priest in San Ignacio. These indians were
intercepted by Ocio. One account states he traded for 128 pounds of pearls
at the rate of one iron knife for a double handfull of pearls. (Rush
Limbaugh would have loved this guy).

Details of Ocio's severance from the Jesuit army are conjecture. While the
padres were probably somewhat miffed at the loss of the pearls, conversely
Mr.Ocio would have been eager for discharge to engage in more lucrative
endeavors. One fact is known: his military service was terminated. Ocio
traveled to Guadalajara where he marketed the pearls and presumably paid
the quinta real (royal fifth) in taxes as evidenced by his possesion of a
concession for pearling from the viceroy when he returned to the penninsula.
He allegedly shipped 275 pounds of pearls in 1744.
Ocio's pearling operations in California expanded rapidly as did his
business and political relationships in Guadalajara. Rumors of Jesuit silver
mines in California had been rampant for a number of years prompting these
business and political associates to encourage Osio to enter the mining
game.

A soldier,
Ignacio Rojas discovered silver at Santa Ana in 1720. Padre Ignacio Maria
Napoli was in the process of establishing a mission in Santa Ana in 1723
when one of the new structures collapsed in a storm killing a number of
neophytes. The indians construed this to be a plot and forced Padre Napoli
to abandon the project. If Padre Napoli's objective was saving souls rather
than mining silver, Santa Ana seems to be a rather curious site to found a
mission.

Ocio inaugurated his silver mining operations in Santa Ana in late 1748. Since
the Jesuits refused to let him use indigenous labor, he was forced to import
labor from the Mexico mainland. The Padres had previously carefully screened
the character of all people coming onto the penninsula. Osio was hiring
miners and historically few miners have been candidates for sainthood. There
was a constant conflict between the Santa Ana mining operation and the
Society of Jesus. Ocio's company store brought in merchandise much coveted
by the neophytes. Ocio grazed his herds on land claimed by the Jesuits. The
S.J. filed complaints while old Manuel paid taxes.
Diaries kept by Serra indicate that many objects of silver were taken from
the missions by he and Partolo and carried North to be used in the
Franciscan missions after the Jesuites were expelled in 1767. It would be
most fascinating to know the source of these silver objects.

While no
silversmiths were carried on the Jesuit missionary payrolls, it seems
reasonable to believe that they would have been concealed since the Jesuits
denied any activity in silver mining. Baegart' Observations page 150
"Traiding with the miners was on a different basis. They paid for their
purchases in plain, uncoined silver, for they had nothing else. When short
of silver , they bought on credit until they were rich again. Most of the
silver vessels in the churches were made from such silver." Baegert also
bemoans on page 127 "Where did these treasures come from, such as silver
vessels, alters and paintings, since there are no painters, goldsmiths or
sculptors and is not even a skillful taylor in California? Answer:
Everything is imported from the city of Mexico." It must also be
considered that some of the Mexican mainland contributors to the pious fund
were in the silver game and could have been the source of those silver
objects.

Pearls are not mentioned in Serra's inventory in either free form
or inlaid. This is most curious as indians frequently found pearl bearing
oysters on the beach after summer storms. Indian children were noted playing
a game (marbles?) with pearls. It seems reasonable to believe the padres
would accumulate a few.

Father Francisco Paolu, a Francisan who came at the time of the
expulsion, wrote that a man versed in such matters had informed him that
Ocio's Santa Ana mines were of little value and that they had never paid
their way. Viniegra (secretary left in charge of the mines after Galvez
purchased them from Ocio) confessed that no metal was ever refined from the
Santa Ana mines, but that the bars of silver and pearls sent to the viceroy
(in taxes?) in Mexico City by Galvez had been taken from missions after the
Jesuits left.(excerpted from C. Pepper PP 123)

In 1759, the year Carlos III ascended to the throne, an anti-Jesuit chief
minister of Portugal had successfully uprooted the entire Jusuit
organization in that country and confiscated the order's wealth for the
crown. France was involved in a long court proceeding that was leading
toward an end to Jesuit influence in that country (Crosby PP 373) An
expulsion order was excercised in New Spain and arrests were made on 25 June
1767 but the envoy did not arrive at San Bernabe until 30 Nov 1767 (5 months
and 5 days later)

Crosby relates that when Gaspar de Partolo brought the
news to padre Ignacio Tirsch it was received with calm and resignation,
leading one to believe the Jesuits might have had some forewarning of the
impending expulsion.

Lost
Jesuit mission treasure ledgends abound in Baja California. Nights around
campfires with local people are incomplete without some tale concerning a
misplaced fortune in silver, pearls and gold. The most often told goes
something like this: The Jesuits in Spain learned of Charles III's impending
expulsion order shortly after it was formulated. Jesuit thumping had become
a pastime in the royal houses of Europe and Mexican Jesuits had rightly
anticipated an expulsion and confiscation of their treasure. A secret
mission was constructed in a remote place and the Baja California Jesuit
wealth was concealed therein.

Local theory has it that news of the expulsion
was received calmly by the resident fathers since they had been anticipating
this news for some time. Names of these lost missions vary with the
individual yarn spinner. The most popular are Santa Isabel, Santa Clara and
Santa Magdelena.
While modern scholars either deny these stories or ignore them, popular
writers have a ball with them.

Amoung these accounts is the legend of a bar of gold bearing a Maltese
cross that was claimed for the church by a Dominican priest at the San Borja
Mission. This bar of gold was in posession of an indian who reported that he
had found it on the beach at Bahia de Los Angeles several years previously.
Locals conclude this object was overlooked or dropped in the surf while
being loaded onto a boat for shipment to the mainland by the Jesuits shortly
before they were expelled. (Aschmann PP25 When, in 1774 , an Indian found a
good-sized ingot of minted gold on the beach at Bahia de los Angeles, the
missionary promptly reported it to the royal officals. It was decided that
the bar had been lost by someone engaged in illegal operations and was
therefore forfeit to the crown. The Dominicals accepted this judgement
withour argument. (Ms. AGn-kP1 211:1-9) They appear to have been glad to
lose the gold rather than arouse suspicion that they posessed a secret
mine.)

Another campfire tale relates that Manuel Ocio had burried some 500
pounds of pearls around the Santa Ana mine. These pearls were to be shipped
to Spain. Tragically, Manuel was murdered by two Yaqui miners who he
intercepted burgling his warehouse. These pearls have not been found.

========================================================

Jack Swords - 12-28-2007 at 09:10 AM

Thanks David for your additions...good to get some Baja history back on this forum!

John...don't really "find" anything. "Refind" maybe. Original trip to Real was years ago with local rancher, second was to take Jimmy Smith and Ed Vernon out there. This year is so green, streams are flowing, folks on the ranchos are happy. Harder to find stuff due to the extensive growth. Just like to be "out" there hiking etc. Had 20+ mph winds constantly here in La Paz, sailing/diving crappy. Verry nice in the mountains.

David K - 12-28-2007 at 09:25 AM

You bet Jack... el gusto es mio!

Keep up the field work... Your photos from previous discoveries: http://vivabaja.com/swords

There is a good collection of posts here: BajaNomad » Baja Historic Interests & Literature

http://forums.bajanomad.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=24

[Edited on 12-29-2007 by David K]

vacaenbaja - 12-28-2007 at 03:50 PM

A very short time before Jimmys death we exchanged e-mails about the area surrounding the Real de Santa Ana. He was particularly intersted inivestigating the area in a ranch that is owned by some people that I know. I am familiar with this area through a long time friend of the family who has for generations owned ranch property in the Real de Santa Ana.
He was looking for the grave of some long ago spanish soldier who he believed was burried on this ranches property.
He really wanted to root around the area but the old rancher would have none of it as he was afraid that the govenment would step in start escavating if anything was found and before you know it no ranch.
I believe that he felt that the soldier in question would have been burried with his armour on and thus be easier to find. I think back then most soldiers would take the armour of the deceased for immediate use in such a hostile environment. But then again it is rather hot to be wearing metal breastplates in Baja.
Does anyone know/remember whose grave it was that Jimmy was looing for?

bajalera - 12-28-2007 at 05:32 PM

The stuff on Ocio is really interesting, but what are the original sources?

Jack Swords - 12-28-2007 at 06:06 PM

Try Harry W. Crosby's "Antigua California". He has pretty well documented his sources.

David K - 12-28-2007 at 06:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by vacaenbaja
A very short time before Jimmys death we exchanged e-mails about the area surrounding the Real de Santa Ana. He was particularly intersted inivestigating the area in a ranch that is owned by some people that I know. I am familiar with this area through a long time friend of the family who has for generations owned ranch property in the Real de Santa Ana.
He was looking for the grave of some long ago spanish soldier who he believed was burried on this ranches property.
He really wanted to root around the area but the old rancher would have none of it as he was afraid that the govenment would step in start escavating if anything was found and before you know it no ranch.
I believe that he felt that the soldier in question would have been burried with his armour on and thus be easier to find. I think back then most soldiers would take the armour of the deceased for immediate use in such a hostile environment. But then again it is rather hot to be wearing metal breastplates in Baja.
Does anyone know/remember whose grave it was that Jimmy was looing for?


This was one of Jimmy's favorite areas to explore... and I was fortunate he shared Real de Santa Ana with me, 6 years ago!














[Edited on 12-29-2007 by David K]