Coronado's Children
Coronado's Children
Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest
Written in 1930, Coronado's Children was one of J. Frank Dobie's first books, and the one that helped gain him national prominence as a folklorist. In it, he recounts the tales and legends of those hardy souls who searched for buried treasure in the Southwest following in the footsteps of that earlier gold seeker, the Spaniard Coronado.
"These people," Dobie writes in his introduction, "no matter what language they speak, are truly Coronado's inheritors.... l have called them Coronado's children. They follow Spanish trails, buffalo trails, cow trails, they dig where there are no trails; but oftener than they dig or prospect they just sit and tell stories of lost mines, of buried bullion by the jack load... "
This is the tale-spinning Dobie at his best, dealing with subjects as irresistible as ghost stories and haunted houses.
As entrancing a volume as one is likely to pick up in a month of Sundays.
Dobie has discovered for us a native Arabian Night.
This is the best work ever written on hidden treasure, and one of the most fascinating books on any subject to come out of Texas.
- "The Precious Ability to Wonder"
- In the Beginning
- I. The Lost San Saba Mine
- Miranda's Report
- The Filibusters
- Bowie's Secret
- In the Burned Cedar Brake
- Yellow Wolf: "Three Suns West"
- Captive Witnesses
- Beasley's Cavern
- Pebbles of Gold
- The Magic Circle on Packsaddle
- Aurelio's Trunk
- The Relic
- The Pictured Copper Plates
- An Innocent Old Liar
- The Broken Metate
- II. Down The Nueces
- General Baylor's Assay
- Espantosa Lake
- Witching for Silver
- The Gold That Turned to Carbón
- Mysteries of the San Casimiro
- El Tigre
- The Rock Pens
- Where Parallel Lines Intersect
- Casa Blanca
- III. The Facts About Fort Ramõrez
- IV. The Circumstance Of War
- Relics of De Soto
- The Stuffed Cannon of the Neches
- Santa Anna's Chests
- Palo Alto and Resaca de La Palma
- Steinheimer's Millions
- V. Tales Of The Cow Camp
- The Rider of Loma Escondida
- Bumblebees and Skilitons
- The Measure of a Wagon Rod
- VI. Post Hole Banks
- VII. Midas On A Goatskin
- VIII. The Lost Nigger Mine
- IX. On West
- The Engineer's Ledge
- The Lost Padre Mine
- X. Los Muertos No Hablan
- XI. The Challenge of the Desert
- Nuggets in the Sand
- The Breyfogle Mine
- Yuma's Gold
- XII. In The Sunshine of the Pecos
- Bewitched Sand
- El Macho
- La Mina Perdida
- That Ole Man Devil
- The Montezuma of the Pecos
- José Vaca's Cave
- José's One Lucky Find
- XIII. The Pecos Barricade
- Maximilian's Gold
- Rattlesnake Cave on the Pecos
- The Fateful Opals
- XIV. The Secret of the Guadalupes
- XV. Not Only Gold and Silver
- The Foxes Have Holes
- Precious Lead
- Copper on the Brazos
- XVI. Sartin for Sure
- Moro's Gold
- The Mystery of the Palo Duro
- XVII. The Treasure of the Wichitas
- In a Chicken's Craw
- The James Boys' Loot
- Devil's Canyon
- The Pothole of Nuggets
- XVIII. Laffite and Pirate Booty
- The Man of Mystery
- The Legends
- XIX. Shadows And Symbols
- Notes
- Glossary of Mexican and Other Localisms of the Southwest
