In the 1920s, two
prospectors hiked into the area of Pope Springs to search for gold.In the middle of the night, a huge beast
killed and carried off their four hundred and fifty pound burro.The prospectors described the beast as a,
“large smelly, strange animal with a matted, coarse and tangled hair
coat.”The creature walked on its hind
legs and stood at least eight to ten feet in height.The prospectors claimed that the creature
“smelled like feces and urine” and was agile on its hindquarters.They testified that the creature weighed four
to eight hundred pounds.
The creature
described by the two prospectors closely matches descriptions of the Mogollon
Monster, Arizona’s answer to Big Foot.The Mogollon Monster is described as being over seven feet
tall, with inhuman strength, and large, wild and red eyes. Its body is covered
with long black or reddish brown hair, and it emits a strong odor described as
that of “dead fish.”The creature is territorial,
and sometimes very violent. The creature is also
said to decapitate deer and other wildlife prior to consuming them.
The earliest known documented
sighting of the Mogollon Monster was reported in a 1903 edition of The
Arizona Republican, in which I.W. Stevens described a creature seen near
the Grand Canyon as having, “long white hair and matted beard that
reached to his knees. It wore no clothing, and upon his talon-like fingers were
claws at least two inches long.” Upon further inspection he noted, “a coat of
gray hair nearly covered his body, with here and there a spot of dirty skin
showing.” He later stated that after he discovered the creature drinking the
blood of two cougars, it threatened him with a club, and “screamed the wildest,
most unearthly screech”.
An account from the mid-1940s by Don
Davis says, “The creature was huge. Its eyes were
deep set and hard to see, but they seemed expressionless. His face seemed
pretty much devoid of hair, but there seemed to be hair along the sides of his
face. His chest, shoulders, and arms were massive, especially the upper arms;
easily upwards of 6 inches in diameter, perhaps much, much more. I could see he
was pretty hairy, but didn't observe really how thick the body hair was. The
face/head was very square; square sides and squared up chin, like a box.”
The creature was
spotted a number of times between 1982 and 2004 near the Fort Apache Indian
Reservation.
The Phoenix Gazette on Monday, May 11, 1981,
announced, “Explorer Plans Capture of Big Foot.” C. Thomas Biscardi was making
an exploratory trip to the Superstition Mountains of Arizona to search for Big
Foot.His search turned up nothing
conclusive.
In 2007, there was a
Big Foot sighting in the Superstition Wilderness Area.A large upright animal spooked a rider and
pack horse near the head waters of Rough Canyon along the northern edge of
White Mountain.
Another set of monsters supposedly roaming the
Superstitions are the lizard men or reptilians.Are these creatures coming from UFOs or are they homegrown?No one can quite decide.Indian
legends speak of reptilian beings inhabiting the earth when their ancestors
roamed the west. There are numerous Native American petroglyphs throughout the
region that depict what appear to be upright, bipedal lizards.
The earliest documented sighting occurred on October
28th, 1878.On that date, the Louisville Courier-Journal ran a story
about a scaly “Wild Man of the Woods” that had been killed and was on display
for public view. The creature was described as being about six feet tall, with
large eyes, and covered with scales. The strange being was viewed by hundreds
of the curious.
Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition
Mountains
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join us as we recount a fictional
story of the Superstitions and then look at the real history of the legends
that haunt these mountains in our new book:Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition
Mountains.
I vow to thee my country, all earthly things
above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best.
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
And there's another country I've heard of long
ago,
Most dear to them that
love her, most great to them that know.
We may not count her armies, we may not see her king,
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering.
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.
In
1846, Dr. William T.G. Morton, a dentist, introduced the first anesthetic
ether.Ether was first administered by
rubbing it on the inside of the patient’s mouth or putting it on a cloth and
having the patient breathe through it.Morton found that ether was more effective when it was inhaled and went on to develop an inhaler.
Morton's first
successful public demonstration of ether as an anesthetic was such a
historic and widely publicized event that many consider him to be the
"inventor and revealer" of anesthesia. However, Morton's work was preceded by that of Georgia
surgeon Crawford Williamson Long,
who employed ether as an anesthetic on March 30, 1842. Long demonstrated its
use to physicians in Georgia, but did not publish his findings until 1849.
Between
1849 and the start of the Civil War, thirty different types of inhalers had
been developed for ether and chloroform, another form of anesthesia. One of the
thirty inhalers being the one Morton developed and the one he used during his
1846 demonstration.
Anesthesia
had to quickly adapt to the demands of the Civil War.The most common
battlefield operation was the amputation of arms and legs.Amputation was a quick and reliable answer to
the severe wounds created by the .58 caliber Minie ball used during the
war.This heavy bullet of soft lead
caused large gaping wounds that filled with dirt and pieces of clothing.It shattered bone.Surgeons usually chose amputation over trying
to save the limb.Heavy doses of
chloroform were administered and some seventy five percent of all soldiers
survived the operation.The poet Walt
Whitman, who served as a nurse in the Union army at the Battle of
Fredericksburg in 1862, recounted seeing, “a heap of amputated feet, legs,
arms, hands, etc, a full load for a one-horse cart.”
Anesthesia
was administered using cloth instead of inhalers because of the lack of
resources and the need for speedy operations. However, fortunately for the
wounded soldiers, 95% of the time anesthesia was used in Civil War surgeries
although in small quantities, just enough to get the job done. It was quite
rare when anesthesia was not used. Morton himself became a military
anesthesiologist at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, attending many
patients and sharing his knowledge with other surgeons. A Civil War surgeon remembered many years
later, “How much have the horrors of the battlefield and the hospital been
diminished by the use of ether and chloroform!”
A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the
Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was
the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle
Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to
help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as
doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women
from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by
their male colleagues at every turn.
In 1860, disgruntled secessionists in the deep North
rebel against the central government and plunge America into Civil War. Will
the Kingdom survive? The land will run red with blood before peace comes again.
Tableaux vivants were
popular forms of entertainment on the American frontier.In a tableau, participants make still images with their bodies to
represent a scene. Because there is no movement, or speaking, a tableau is
easier to produce than a play, yet can easily lead into extended drama
activities with one tableau succeeding another to tell a story.Tableaux continue today in the form of “living statues”,
where street performers often appear in costume as historical characters.
In the summer of 1875,
George Armstrong Custer appeared in a series of tableaux with Miss Agnes Bates
of Monroe Michigan depicting a Sioux Chief and his bride.Miss Bates was a guest of Mrs. Elizabeth
Custer at Fort Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota in 1874-1875.
In 1873, the 7th
Cavalry had moved into the fort to ensure the expansion of the Northern
Pacific Railway.The first post
commander of the expanded fort was Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, who held
the position until his death in 1876.
Since his death along the bluffs
overlooking the Little Bighorn River, in Montana, on June 25, 1876, over five
hundred books have been written about the life and career of George Armstrong
Custer. Views of Custer have changed over succeeding generations. Custer has
been portrayed as a callous egotist, a bungling egomaniac, a genocidal war
criminal, and the puppet of faceless forces. For almost one hundred and fifty
years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values.
Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the
twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history.
This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as
they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process
demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.
“Mr. Custer” was a
chart busting song in 1960.Written by
Al De Lory, Fred Darian, and Joseph Van Winkle, and sung by Larry Verne this
historical novelty song became the number one song in America on October 10,
1960.It stayed at the top of the charts
for an impressive one week.This soldier’s
song about the Battle of the Little Bighorn also reached the top spot on the
Canadian charts on September 12, 1960.
The year 1931 saw one of the best known, best
publicized and most investigated deaths in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains,
the death of Adolph Ruth.Adolph Ruth was
a sixty-seven year old retired government employee and amateur treasure hunter. Adolph
Ruth’s story began not in the Superstition Mountains but in Mexico.His son Erwin, a veterinarian, who was a
cattle inspector in Mexico, helped eradicate the cattle tick problem plaguing
Mexican ranchers.He helped the Gonzales
family who were so grateful that they gave Erwin Ruth some old mining
maps.These maps had been in the
Gonzales family for many generations, and showed the exact location of a number
of gold mines in the United States.Erwin who had no interest in the maps passed them along to his father
Adolph.One of these maps showed the
location of an old mine in the Superstition Mountains.
Adolph
Ruth was familiar with the hardships of prospecting in the desert.He had previously looked for the Lost Peg Leg
Mine in California.In 1931, he came to
the Superstition Mountains to look for what he believed to be the Lost
Dutchman’s Mine.It should be noted that
Ruth was talkative.He showed his map to
any and all who were interested, and talked authoritatively about how HE was
about to find the Dutchman’s Mine.Ruth
hired guides and horses and was packed into the mountains around June 14 by two
cowboys.He set up camp at Willow
Springs in West Boulder Canyon.This was
the last time anyone saw Adolph Ruth alive.
After six days, the cowboys’ boss, Tex Barkley, went
looking for Ruth. Upon arriving at Ruth’s camp, Tex Barkley could tell that no
one had been there for at least a day and reported Ruth missing. A reward
was posted and search parties combed the mountain fruitlessly for the next
month.
In December, a skull with two holes in it was
discovered near the three Red Hills by an archaeological expedition. It was the
skull of Adolph Ruth.The story of Ruth’s death was
headlined by the Arizona Republic and
went national.Sensational
stories alleged that Ruth had been killed for his map.Ruth’s son, Erwin,
was convinced that his father had been murdered.
The rest of Ruth’s body
was found the next month, in a small tributary on the east slope of Black Top
Mesa. Ruth’s treasure notebook was also found at his original campsite.In this notebook, were written these cryptic
words, “Veni, Vedi, Vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”).Did Adolph Ruth discover the Dutchman’s mine?
There is a huge body of circumstantial evidence of
battlefield hauntings stretching back to ancient times, when ghosts were seen
and heard to engage on the plains of Marathon after the battle (the Battle of
Marathon was fought in 490 BC).In the
1930s visitors to this region of Greece were still claiming to have heard the
sound of metal clashes and screams coming from the battlefield. In Vita Isiclori, Damascius tells us that
after a battle outside the walls of Rome against the Huns in 452AD, ghosts were
reported to still be fighting for three days and nights after the battle, the
clash of their weapons being heard all over the city.The first major battle of the English Civil
War (1662) produced a well-documented case of ghost armies fighting as reliable
witnesses reported the phantom soldiers engaged in battle.King Charles I was so intrigued by the
stories that he sent a Royal Commission to investigate.The trusted officers of the Commission
reported back that they too had seen the ghastly spectacle and even recognized
the ghosts of some of their fallen friends.The phenomenon continued for some time, gradually lessening over time,
until now there are only occasional reports of people hearing the sounds of
battle at Edgehill.
How do we account for such stories?The two most often reported types of
hauntings are categorized as residual hauntings and intelligent hauntings.Residual hauntings are the most common form
of hauntings and may eventually be found to be natural phenomena.A residual haunting is similar to a DVD that
is played over and over again.In a
residual American Civil War battlefield haunting, for example, the sights,
sounds, and even smells of battle are continually replayed and are always the
same. Apparitions may be seen, but they will not notice living people around
them.The theory here is that energy
created by the strong emotions created in battle imprints itself on a physical
place and that an individual sensitive enough to pick up this embedded energy sees
and hears ghostly events while those who lack such sensitivity do not. Since
current science has no instruments to measure such embedded energy or test for
individual psychic sensitivity to that energy, such hauntings are dismissed out
of hand, even though they may actually exist. Paula Ann Kirby, author of A Yankee Roams at Dusk, describes two types of hauntings that may be occurring at
Manassas, (1) residual hauntings, which are a manifestation of stored up energy
replaying endlessly like an old movie, and (2) intelligent hauntings, which are
rare instances in which ghosts try to interact with the living.
A brief but fascinating look at humor in the
Civil War including: (1) Stories Around the Campfire, (2) Parody, (3) the
Irish, (4) Humorous Incidents, (5) Civil War Humorists, and (6) Lincoln.
Legend
tells of a fabulous mine in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains. So alluring is
the prospect of unlimited wealth that it said that hundreds have died searching
for the lost mine.
The
entire story began in 1748 when the Peralta family began mining silver and
gold. According to family records this wealthy family operated eighteen silver
and gold mines in the Superstition Mountains. With the Mexican War of 1848, law
and order disintegrated in the area and the Apache Indians grew increasingly
hostile, attacking the miners almost continuously. Disaster finally overtook
the Peraltas in September 1848 with a general massacre by the Apaches.
Following this massacre the Apaches controlled the Superstition Mountains until
1865.
Jacob Walz (or Waltz),
the “Dutchman” enters the picture in 1871 with his partner Jacob Weiser.
The two immigrants purchased a map drawn by the original Peralta family and
located the mine “within an imaginary circle whose diameter is not more than
five miles and whose center is marked by the Weaver’s Needle.”
Weaver’s Needle was
known early on as “the finger of God”.Woven into the fabric of the Superstition Mountains, this prominent peak
was named in the 1850s for Pauline Weaver, a famous pioneer scout.
Join us as we recount a fictional story of the
Superstitions and then look at the real history of the legends that haunt these
mountains in our new book:Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition
Mountains
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join us as we explore the history
of the:Legends of the Superstition Mountains.
Sorting out fact from fiction is the great challenge for
anyone interested in searching for the Lost Dutchman’s Mine.
There was a
Jacob Waltz, “the Dutchman.”Waltz
(sometimes spelled Walz) was born in Germany around 1810, and immigrated to
America in 1839.Waltz arrived in New
York City, but quickly made his way to goldfields in North Carolina and Georgia.
Waltz did not strike it rich in either North Carolina or Georgia, but he
learned a valuable lesson, that he had to be a citizen of the United States in
order to stake a claim.Waltz filed a
letter of intent to become a citizen on November 12, 1848, at the Adams County
Courthouse in Natchez, Mississippi.
Gold was discovered in the newly annexed territory of
California in 1849. The California fields eclipsed the gold fields of the East,
and Waltz, like every other prospector, headed west.
Waltz arrived in California in 1850. His name appears in
California census records. Waltz worked as a miner in California for eleven
years. On July 19, 1861, in the Los Angeles County Courthouse, Jacob Waltz
became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Waltz left California in 1863, with a group of prospectors
bound for the Bradshaw Mountains of Arizona Territory. Waltz’s name appears on
a mining claim filed in Prescott, Arizona Territory, on September 21, 1863. His
name also appears on a special territorial census in 1864.Waltz mined in the Bradshaw Mountain area
between 1863 -1867.
Waltz moved to the Salt River Valley (an area near Phoenix
and the Superstition Mountains) in 1868.He filed a homestead claim on one hundred and sixty acres of land on the
north bank of the Salt River. It was now that Waltz began his trips into the
mountains surrounding the Salt River Valley.Did Waltz discover a rich gold mine or cache on one of these prospecting
trips? Witnesses who knew Waltz, say Waltz prospected every winter between 1868
-1886. Waltz died in Phoenix, Arizona Territory, on October 25, 1891, in the
home of Julia Thomas. Waltz gave Julia Thomas clues to the location of a mine
on his deathbed.Waltz is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery, in
downtown Phoenix.
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join us as we explore the history
of the:Legends of the Superstition Mountains.
Gordonsville Virginia’s Exchange Hotel opened in 1860 and provided an
elegant stopping place for passengers on the Virginia Central Railway.In March, 1862 the Confederate army
transformed the hotel into the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital.Dr. B.M Lebby of
South Carolina was the director of the hospital and its operations continued
under his leadership until October 1865.
The wounded and dying from nearby
battlefields such as Cedar Mountain, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, and the
Wilderness were brought to Gordonsville by the trainloads. Although this was
primarily a Confederate facility, the hospital treated the wounded from both
sides. By the end of the war, more than 70,000 men had been treated at the
Gordonsville Receiving Hospital and over 700 were buried on its surrounding
grounds and later interred at Maplewood Cemetery in Gordonsville.
By the end of the Civil War, Virginia had
fifty three Receiving Hospitals similar to this one.All were burned to the ground by the Union
army except the Gordonsville Receiving hospital.
A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book
covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and
the impact of the war on social customs.
A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the
Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was
the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle
Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to
help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as
doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women
from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by
their male colleagues at every turn.
Although the story of the Lost
Dutchman’s Mine is the best known of the treasure legends in the Superstitions,
there are others.One of these legends
involves the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), a
Roman Catholic order of priests founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis
Xavier, and others in 1534, to do missionary work (and to act as the “shock
troops” of the Pope during the Counter-Reformation).
When the Spanish arrived in Arizona they set about
building missions.Most of these
missions were built near highly mineralized regions.When gold and silver were discovered, the
priests set converted Indians, both Pima and Papago, to working the rich
deposits.The precious metals were
stored in the missions in the form of gold and silver ingots (so the legend
says).The great Pima Revolt of 1751
temporarily drove the Jesuits out of the area.Missions were burned, and priests were killed.Fleeing priests decided to hide their gold
and silver in mines located deep in the surrounding mountains.The mines were then carefully concealed.Other treasures hoards were deposited in
caves.It is said that Jesuit missionaries
led two hundred and forty gold-laden mules across southern Arizona into the
barren mountains, stashing their riches somewhere among the bluffs, caves and
canyons of the Superstition Mountains.
A variation of this story says that the Jesuits did
not hide their treasure because of Indian revolts but because of the expulsion
of the Jesuits by the Spanish crown in 1767.The Jesuits were a rich order, accumulating wealth not only by mining
but by raising enormous herds of
cattle, horses, mules, burros, sheep and by raising crops.These commodities were sold to the miners and
settlers.The wealth of the Jesuits was
used for display to overawe Indian converts.Churches, so the thinking went, needed the allure and shining examples
of gold and silver to give testament to the magnificence and power of God.
The Jesuits were often as concerned with power and
politics as they were with piety, which lead to their expulsion in country
after county in Europe.Due to Jesuit involvement in rebellions in
Portugal, they were expelled from all of Portugal's lands around the world on July
6, 1758.Due to their political
intriguing, the Jesuits were expelled from France and its holding in November
1763.The Jesuits had reason to think
that they were likely to be expelled from Spain and the Spanish empire, so the
legend says, and took steps to hide their wealth.The Jesuit treasures were safely tucked away
somewhere near Weaver’s Needle in the Superstitions just in the nick of
time.The Jesuits were expelled from
Spain in 1767, and all of their property seized. Unfortunately, no one seems to
know exactly where the Jesuit treasures were tucked away.
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join Josh, a skeptical journalist,
as he explores the mysteries of the Superstition Mountains in our new fiction book
Death and Delusion in the Superstition
Mountains.
The ukulele is one of the world's most popular instruments. The ukulele evolved from several small guitar-like instruments of Portuguese origin. In the early 1880s, Portuguese immigrants began making small guitar like instruments in Hawaii. The instruments became locally popular and were given the Hawaiian name "ukulele", which means "jumping flea".
The standard size ukulele is known as "soprano", but the larger "concert" and "tenor" sizes are also popular. Today the ukulele is a respected solo instrument and is popular for playing many styles of music.
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