The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures

by W. C. Jameson

  The largest business in the area was named the James Fork Trading Post. It was owned by the business firm of Menard and Valle, who had headquarters in St. Genevieve, Missouri, and managed by a man named William Gillis. Even though the Yoachums had one of the most productive farms in the area and a fine market for their produce, they continued to hunt and trap. They traded their furs at the James Fork enterprises for coffee, sugar, flour, and other staples.

  Trading Post co-owner Colonel Pierre Menard was a longtime friend of the Indians in the area and dealt with them fairly. Being a Frenchman, he was also very protective of the French trappers in the region and considered the Yoachums outsiders. As a result, the Yoachums were denied credit at the trading post and were made to pay cash—federally issued gold or silver coins—for their purchases. The Yoachums, though rich in silver, had no money.

  To remedy the situation, the brothers, led by James, decided to make their own money. Employing simple blacksmith tools, they made dies, melted down the ingots, rolled the silver out into sheets, and stamped out their own coins. On one side, the coins bore the inscription “Yoachum” and the date “1822.” The other side was stamped “United States of America” and “1 Dollar.”

  Over a period of several months, the Yoachums produced thousands of these coins and placed a number of them into circulation. Before long, most of the residents of that part of the Ozark Mountains were using the Yoachum dollars for all of their business transactions. At the trading post, Gillis, after examining the coins and judging them to be made from almost pure silver, accepted them as a legitimate medium of exchange. In a short time, the Yoachum dollars became more common in the remote Ozarks than government-issued money.

  This worked well for several years. Outside of this remote and relatively inaccessible region, no one heard of the Yoachum dollars. Residents in the area, however, were content with the way things were going.

  In 1845, the Yoachum dollars were brought to the notice of the federal government. When the former Indian lands in the region of the James and White Rivers were opened for purchase by non-Indians, the feds sent a surveying crew to establish section lines and county boundaries. Around this time, the settlers in the area were notified that they would now be required to abide by certain laws relative to securing proper titles to the property on which they lived. Part of the requirement was to pay a filing fee at the government office in Springfield.

  Intent on paying their filing fee, dozens of James River residents, along with others in the region, arrived at the government office in Springfield and tried to pay with Yoachum silver dollars.

  The agent on duty refused to accept the coins, citing an 1833 regulation that required federally issued coin. He informed the settlers that unless they paid in legitimate United States money, they would not be granted official titles to their land.

  Enraged, as well as weary from the long journey into Springfield, several of the men pointed loaded rifles at the agent and told him that the Yoachum coins meant more to the residents in the area than government money and that he had better accept it or suffer the consequences. In fear for his life, the agent accepted the Yoachum dollars and presented each person a valid certificate for his land.

  The agent lost no time in informing authorities in Washington, D.C. He also sent along the Yoachum dollars he had collected. When the coins arrived, they were examined and found to contain more silver than the government-issued silver dollar.

  The federal authorities did not classify the Yoachum dollars counterfeit because there was no attempt to duplicate government-minted coins. They were more concerned about the proliferation of nonfederal money in the region. The nation’s coin and currency decision makers wired the Springfield office and ordered the agent to confiscate Yoachum dollars and determine the location of the silver mine.

  A few weeks after receiving his orders, the agent arrived at James Yoachum’s house and informed him that he was there to take a look at the silver mine. James pointed a rifle at the agent and ordered him off of his property. Intimidated, the agent hurried away, but returned one week later with a contingent of eight other federal agents, all armed and trying their best to look menacing. On this occasion, the agent explained to James the official position of the U.S. government relative to the renegade silver dollars and informed Yoachum that he was officially discouraged from manufacturing and distributing any more of the coins.

  James Yoachum was generally considered a law-abiding and patriotic citizen. He told the agents that he never willfully intended to break any laws. He agreed to cease making the dollars but refused to reveal the location of the silver mine. Discussions continued into the evening with both parties refusing to budge from their positions. The stalemate was finally broken when the agent agreed to not prosecute the Yoachum brothers if they agreed to halt manufacture of the coins. The location of the old Spanish mine was to remain a secret.

  A few more years passed, and in 1848 James Yoachum died. One version of his demise states that he was taken down with fever and died in his sleep. Another version is that he and his wife, Winona, were killed in a cave-in at the mine during a trip to retrieve some the silver.

  Following James’s death, the two brothers decided to abandon the Ozarks and travel to California. The gold fields were just opening up and the brothers wanted to try their luck at prospecting for gold. Just before leaving, according to local legend, they gave the dies for casting the silver dollars to one of the family members who owned a gristmill in the vicinity. A search of historical records reveals that a nephew of James Yoachum owned and operated the largest gristmill in the Ozarks at the time.

  The brothers loaded their wagons and with their families left the Ozarks for California and were never seen in the area again. While their fate may never be known, for many years it was told around the James River Valley that the brothers, along with their families, died crossing the Rocky Mountains on their way to California. With their death went knowledge of the secret location of the silver mine in the Ozarks.

  Jacob Levi Yoachum, the son of James, related a story to his son, Tom, that his father told him following the last visit from the federal agents. He said that after the agents departed, all three of the brothers went to the cave and sealed it so no one could ever find it. Jacob often heard James describe the country in the area of the silver mine. He searched for it on several occasions but was never able to find it. He passed his knowledge on to his son, Tom, who lived for many years in Galena, Missouri. Though Tom made several forays deep into the Ozarks, he was never able to find the silver mine either.

  The tale of the Yoachum silver dollars and the lost silver mine has been told and retold many times during the past century and a half. As with most legends, each telling has embellished the story. There are, in fact, several versions related to how the brothers originally discovered the mine. In addition to the one presented here, another claims the Yoachum brothers clandestinely watched Indians carrying silver out of the cave. The brothers allegedly killed the Indians, concealed the entrance of the cave against discovery by others, and altered the trail so that it no longer led to the cave.

  Another version claims that the brothers had no silver mine at all and that the silver used in the manufacture of the coins was simply recast federal-issued coin. Before the arrival of the Yoachum brothers in the James River Valley, the federal government program of relocating Indians was already in place. In addition to assigning lands to the Indians, each family was provided an annuity of four thousand dollars in silver currency. The Yoachums, greedy for the silver, according to this legend, began making and selling liquor to the Delaware. Not wishing to be caught with Indian money, the Yoachums melted the coins down and recast the silver using their own homemade dies. To cover their illegal activities, the brothers claimed the silver came from a secret Spanish mine they discovered back in the mountains. The reason the Yoachums were so reluctant to reveal the location of the mine to the federal agents and others was, according to this story, bec
ause the mine never existed.

  This version suggests that the Yoachum brothers possessed certain outlaw tendencies. Some documents found at the Missouri Historical Society tend to confirm this. A man named Joseph Campbell, who was at one time the Indian agent for the James River region, had the responsibility of reporting on unscrupulous white settlers who were taking advantage of the Delawares. In 1822, Campbell prepared a list of such suspects and it included the names James and Solomon Yoachum, both of them involved with selling liquor to the Indians. The third brother was run out of the region for not paying a filing fee on his land.

  Yet another story has the Yoachum brothers resettling just outside the border of the Indian lands near the mouth of the Finley River, where they set up whiskey and brandy stills. An attached note stated that the Yoachums manufactured the finest peach brandy in the area.

  According to a researcher named Lynn Morrow, the Yoachums knew that their silver coin scheme was to be short-lived. When the Delaware Indians were moved out of the Ozark Mountains and relocated in Indian Territory as a result of the James Fork Treaty of 1829, the Yoachum’s source of silver left with them. Morrow noted that after the Indians left, the Yoachum dollars became scarce.

  Whichever version of the legend one chooses to accept, the truth remains that the Yoachum dollars did exist and that thousands of them were in circulation at the time.

  A man named Homer Johnson, a longtime resident of the southwestern Missouri Ozarks near Bread Tray Mountain, related a story that concerned his grandfather, Jefferson Johnson. Jefferson’s boyhood friend was Robert Yoachum, a son of Jacob Levi Yoachum, and as children the two often played together. One afternoon as the two boys were saddling horses in the Yoachum barn, Jefferson spied a barrel nearly filled to the top with Yoachum silver dollars. He estimated there were several thousand of them. What became of that barrel full of Yoachum dollars remains a mystery to this day.

  A number of the Yoachum dollars have been found and are in the hands of collectors. Thousands more remain to be discovered. In 1974, a St. Louis man reported that while he was metal detecting near Branson, Missouri, he encountered a cache of 236 large silver coins. He described them as being two inches in diameter and each bearing the inscription “Yoachum” on one side.

  Researchers have long wondered what became of the original dies used in casting the Yoachum dollars. They were presumed lost until a remarkable discovery was made on March 11, 1983. A man named J. R. Bunk of Galena was digging near a riverbank on some property not far from the site of the original Yoachum settlement on the James River. Bunk unearthed a large mass of wax. He broke open the ball of wax and inside found two short sections of iron rod. Scraping the wax from the end of one of the rods, Bunk spotted the reverse lettering of the name “Yoachum.” On the other rod he found the reverse of “1 Dollar.”

  Thrilled by this discovery, Bunk spent the next several months researching the Yoachum silver dollar legend and mystery. In the process, he encountered the names of several collectors who owned some of the original coins. Through one of the collectors, Bunk obtained a Yoachum dollar and, on close examination, discovered that it had been stamped by one of the dies he had found. The dies were further examined by a professional numismatist named Fred Wineberg, who opined that the Yoachum coins were formed with the dies in Bunk’s possession.

  The mystery remains. What happened to the thousands of other Yoachum dollars that were stored in a barrel in the old Yoachum barn? How many of the coins in circulation were hidden or cached when the federal government forbade their circulation? How many of the Yoachum dollars lie in some old trunk stored in a dusty attic?

  And what of the mine shaft in which the original silver mine existed? Did the Yoachums conceal it so well that it can never be found, as was their plan?

  Most treasure hunters don’t believe the shaft was completely hidden such that it could not be found unless it was covered by a landslide. The evidence suggests that the mine exists, and the tendency of most who have studied this amazing Ozark tale is to believe that a significant number of Spanish smelted silver ingots still lie within, waiting to be rediscovered.

  15

  The Beale Treasure

  One of the most famous lost treasures in America is the so-called Beale Treasure. This compelling tale of a mysterious and elusive cache of what may amount to three thousand pounds of gold, over five thousand pounds of silver, and thirteen thousand dollars’ worth of jewels in early-nineteenth-century values has fascinated and tempted treasure hunters for two hundred years. Over time, this treasure has been the subject of books, magazine articles, and television programs. A network news broadcast once stated that the search for the Beale Treasure was one of the longest and costliest in the history of the United States.

  In spite of the fact that this treasure has never been found, there exist specific directions to the cache. They are manifested in three separate codes that were devised by the man himself, Thomas Jefferson Beale. One of the codes has been deciphered. The other two, each more complex than the first, have been examined for decades by cryptoanalysts and by computer and decoding experts. They remain unbroken. As a result, the location of this amazing treasure has baffled experts for generations and remains as much of a mystery today as it was when it was buried by Beale in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1819 and 1821.

  Little is known of Beale or where he came from. What is known is that early in the year 1817, he and twenty-nine other Virginians traveled westward into New Mexico and Colorado. There are two conflicting stories regarding Beale’s reason for leaving Virginia. One has him shooting a neighbor in the town of Fincastle during a fight over a woman. Believing the man dead and fearing that he would be hung for the deed if caught, Beale fled west. The other story has Beale organizing a group of friends to go on a buffalo-hunting and fur-trapping expedition to the western plains and mountains. Neither of these explanations has been verified.

  Regardless of what motivated Beale to head west, he and his companions eventually found themselves in south-central Colorado searching for a pass into the higher reaches of the Rocky Mountains where they hoped to find abundant beaver to trap. As the party climbed the foothills of the great range, one of the men discovered a thick vein of gold ore in some exposed rock. They decided on the spot that mining the gold would provide more profit than trapping and selling furs. A few of the men had mining experience, and over the next year and a half they systematically excavated the precious metal from the granite rock matrix of the mountainside. Within a few weeks and a short distance away, they also encountered a vein of silver. Large quantities of both ores were mined.

  After eighteen months, the men had accumulated an impressive stockpile of gold and silver. All good friends, they agreed to split the fortune evenly and decided to send Beale, along with eight others, back to Virginia to bury the hoard in a safe place. The others would keep digging the ore from the mountain while awaiting the return of the nine men.

  On one bitterly cold afternoon in late November, Beale and his eight companions, along with two wagonloads of gold and silver nuggets, arrived at Goose Creek in Bedford County, Virginia. They followed a narrow and seldom-used trail that paralleled the creek and led into a gap in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the Peak of the Otters. Once in the pass, Beale searched around until he found what he wanted—a suitable place to bury the treasure.

  As the men worked at excavating a square pit six feet deep, snow began to fall and the wind picked up. As the storm swirled around them, the miners lined the walls and the floor of the pit with flat stones they found nearby. Into this crude earthen vault they placed the gold and silver from all of the months of hard work in the Colorado mines. The gold and silver nuggets were packed into iron cooking pots, the covers tightly secured with wire. The men then filled the hole to the top and covered it over with rocks and forest debris.

  Their task accomplished, Beale and his party rested for several days before undertaking the journey back to Colorado.
They purchased supplies and fresh horses and departed during the first week of December. They made good time and rejoined their fellow miners at the end of winter.

  The mining of the gold and silver ore continued, and after two more years another shipment was readied for the trip back to Virginia to be buried with the earlier cache. Beale was once again selected to lead the expedition. All of the men agreed to keep mining the ore until they had enough gold and silver for a third and final trip to Virginia. On arriving with the last wagonload of ore, they intended to unearth the rich cache, divide the ore, and return to their normal lives as wealthy men.

  During a morning in the third week of November 1821, the wagons were loaded to capacity and readied for the second long trip. Bidding farewell to the men who remained to dig more ore, Beale and his friends set out for the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  After arriving at the cache site, Beale and his companions added the second load of gold and silver. When the hole was refilled and camouflaged, the men decided to write a description of the secret location and its contents and leave it in the area for the others to find should something happen to them. During the next several days, Beale and his friends devised a series of complex codes. They filled three sheets of paper, each page covered with a series of numerals. These three papers have since been given the name “The Beale Code.” They have mystified researchers for almost two centuries.

  Cipher Number One allegedly tells how to find the treasure cache. It remains unbroken to this day. Cipher Number Two describes the complete contents of the treasure vault. Cipher Number Three allegedly lists the names of the thirty men who were to divide the treasure.

  When the ciphers were completed they were placed in a metal strongbox that was fastened with a stout lock. By agreement, the nine men who developed the code gave the box to an acquaintance named Robert Morris. Morris was a quiet man, often described as a gentleman, who operated a respectable inn at the city of Lynchburg. He often kept valuables for travelers. He was well known to all of the miners and it was agreed he could be trusted to assume charge of the strongbox.