The Treasure of Tayopa
About the time Jose and Bertha Curry discovered the gates to the treasure, cancer found a purchase in him. It is why he could not open the doors himself.
His Christian name is Joseph, shortened to Joe, a born and bred Yankee Gringo who now prefers to be called Jose. Bertha is patient, silent and from first glance, a woman who kept her promises. Either way, you would not expect this odd couple to hold the secret of Tayopa. On a hot spring day in a loud Denny’s restaurant, Jose has neither the time, nor the voice for social pleasantries.
He recalls, “I was a week short of excavating the site when I had the medico’s check a lump in my neck.”
Over the lunch crowd volume, the ring of plates and silverware, you catch enough to realize that Jose has been to hell and back. One day he was planning how to blow the doors, the next he was fighting for his life. The battle against the malignant cells cost him five years, most of his retirement and all of his and Bertha’s savings. In exchange the cancer took most of his shoulder, some of his hip and half his throat.
The young waitress’s obligatory, “you folks doin’ ok?” interrupts him and he glances up. “How does it look like I’m ‘doin’?” his expression wonders with the innocence of one who suddenly finds himself in late life, fighting a disease that will eventually win.
“This all started when a friend of mine found an ancient steel bell with the name “Tayopa” cast on the rim,” Jose whispers through the paralysis that now taints his right jaw line. “I saw it once and later tried to buy it but by then he’d sold it to someone in San Diego. I searched for that bell for years but the trail just disappeared.” The restaurant’s noise closes in upon us. When the din ebbs, he says, “Tayopa cast bells for all of Mexico’s Missions and most of those in California. We know Tayopa existed and we know of the treasure….” The clamor swells cutting off what comes next. “…I just couldn’t forget that bell and we returned to Mexico and started to search for any ruins.”
Studying Jose in Denny’s sallow light, it’s hard to picture the World War II B-29 navigator who survived 28 missions over Japan. You cannot see the hard rock miner, or the smiling groom who married Bertha, the black haired, dark eyed, Mexican beauty. That was half a century ago, and time has reduced them both. Sitting at the table he is bent, desperately thin and contemplating the five year anniversary that will mark either a continued reprieve, or the return of the lumps that nearly killed him.
Beautiful still with dark skin and the tracery of her youth on her jaw and eyes, Bertha’s once thick dark hair has thinned, leaving her scalp exposed to the sun. You briefly note the Indian ancestry in her nose, the sun spots and freckles, then focus on her story. The truth is, Jose never saw the doors. It was Bertha’s Indian maid who whispered, “Senora, I hear that you and the Senor seek Tayopa?”
“That is true,” Bertha cautiously replied.
“Marion, (the senior housekeeper) forbid us to speak of Tayopa with the gringo Senor Curry.”
Bertha nodded silently.
“You have been kind to me and because you are one of us, I will tell you what I know. My mother told me that when the Spanish Fathers were driven out they buried their gold and silver in the cave. Before they left, they warned us, “What is Gods must remain in the earth. These gates lead to hell and if you violate them you will fall into the burning pit.” She paused, and then continued more quietly than before. “My family believes this is true. You know too that it is dangerous to enter caves.”
Bertha offered silence to the legend before inquiring. “Do you believe that is true?”
“I do Senora.”
“……is it possible to take me to Tayopa?” Bertha inquired.
“No Senora,” I have never seen Tayopa...”
Jose Curry had ample reason to be interested in Tayopa. Ancient records detail how following the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards, forced the local Indians to work the hundreds of gold and silver mines. Many of the ancient mines were little more than a crack in the earth where the Indians crawled after the rich ore veins on their backs and stomachs. Two of the richest were the Guaynopa and Tayopa. The Guaynopa mine is located in the deep Guaynopa canyon that flows into the Rio Aros.
The Tayopa mine was reputed to the richest of all. So rich, in fact, that the Spanish built a mill and foundry to smelt the gold and silver into bars. No on knows how many artifacts were melted down to facilitate the resulting gold ingots transportation back to Spain. A Catholic Priest built a church for the conversion of the Indian slaves. The church presided over the collection of the tithes that would then be sent back to the Vatican in Rome. Over time transportation developed into a major problem. Many of the mule trains of gold and silver bars were attacked by Apaches and never arrived at the waiting ships. The Priests halted the shipments creating a backlog of gold and silver bars which were stacked inside of the mine. The Priest also built a special cellar under the church where they stored tons of ingots, gold crucifixes and statues of silver and gold. The Priest sent a manifest back to Rome that detailed the Tithes he collected for the Church. In it he noted more than 13,000 pounds of fine silver bars, gold ingots weighing a third that amount as well as coffers of gems and jewelry.
In roughly 1680, the Apaches recruited local Indian miners to help kill the Spaniards. The Apaches armed the slaves who, after slaughtering the Spaniards dumped their bodies in the mine. They then buried the entrance and destroyed the mission buildings.
A general revolt rapidly swept across the Sierra Madre that the Spaniards brutally suppressed. When the silver shipments from Tayopa stopped, the Spaniards sent a party to the mine and mission. The problem was that none of the relief party had ever seen Tayopa and though they spent weeks searching, found no evidence of the mine, mission or priests.
Here is where stories differ. One version claims the Tayopa Mission was rebuilt by the Jesuits, only to witness a second revolt. This time the Jesuits were able to escape. Due to the gold and silver’s enormous weight, the priests were forced to leave the treasure behind. They planned to return to reclaim it in a few years but a purge by the Catholic Church killed the Tayopa priests, obliterating any memory, or map of the site.
In the years that followed, the Catholic Church printed an inventory to entice adventurers to find and recover the treasure for the church. Despite their efforts and thousands of prospectors, the mine has remained lost for 300 years.
Some believe that fortune is a practical joker, a demi god who loves irony, puzzles, riddles and contradictions. If that is true, using an Indian maid to guide a balding woman and a cancerous navigator to the Gates of Tayopa would make even God laugh.
Bertha’s maid had never seen the doors, but she had an image of where they were. Two weeks later Bertha and Jose were standing on a cliff above a deep arroyo in the Sierra Madres. In the damaged, soft voice he inherited from the surgery, he tells us that he had never seen the doors. Not himself. Before his cancer had a name, it left him too weak to down climb the canyon walls. Bertha, however, was strong enough to negotiate the goat trail that switch backed to the arroyo’s floor and he sent her on ahead.
Framed between the blistering sun and black rock it was a dangerous eight hundred foot descent before the grade decreased and she found herself standing on a dry river’s polished stone bed. It took her hours to follow the simple directions past a lone date palm to a steep talus slope. There, in a crack between a cliff edge and the rocks, she found the doors.
She could only see the top foot of rusted iron, and a single ancient hinge. She did not have a camera, or flashlight and after taking mental notes on the location, she realized the light was fading and started the long thirsty climb back to where Jose was waiting.
Jose was in no shape to climb down and cut the ancient iron. “I’m not saying there is anything behind those doors,” he admitted in the oddly accented whisper. “All I’m saying is they exist and they are close to where the ancient Tayopa Mission once stood. ”
“Why hasn’t someone discovered them before now?” you ask.
“If you did not know they were there, you would have no reason to look.” He whispers.
Turning to Bertha you asked, “Do you believe these doors date from the 17th century?”
“I do,” she replies with quiet conviction.
“And do you believe the treasure is behind them?”
Without hesitation she nods. “Yes.”