The Lost Nigger Gold Mine is a legendary mine in American folklore. According to legend, in 1887, four brothers in Dryden, Texas - Frank, Jim, John, and Lee Reagan - hired an illiterate Seminole man named William Kelly to help with work on their farm. Kelly is known as "Nigger Bill" ( nigger being a designation for multiracial people in Big Bend slang) and has been identified as a chef and also a horse-drawer; at the time of his work by Reagan, he was only 14 years old. While working at the farm, Kelly announced that he had found a gold mine, and "just greeted with ridicule". The next day, he again tried to tell the Reagan people about the mine, even so far as to show them a lump of gold, but to receive "cursing" for his problem.
After this rejection, Kelly went to San Antonio, where she knew a white assayer, and asked her to analyze the ore. The story then conflicts: One account states that he returned to Dryden, where Reagan received a letter addressed to him confirming that the gold was precious, and then killing him and throwing his body in the Rio Grande. Other states state that, shortly after returning, he "borrowed" a horse and fled. Whatever the case, Reagan devotes their lives to trying to find a mine; one report from 1930 claimed that the three Reaganans at that time still had not given up on their search. As well as Reagan, many other expeditions set out to find mines; Legend has it that, while some explorers find it, they always die before they can make a profit or pass on information.
One more serious search was triggered by William Broderick Cloete, a British mine owner who trusted the story entirely so he offered Lock Campbell, a Texas man, to charge $ 10,000 if he would do an expedition to find him. On July 19, 1899, Campbell and four other men signed an agreement to look for him, and one man later claimed to find him in the Ladrones Mountains in New Mexico, but this was never verified. In 1909, an Oklahoman named Wattenberg traveled to Alpine, Texas, with a map he claimed indicated the mine was in Mexico itself; a pioneer named John Young went so far as to forge a partnership with Wattenberg and get mining permission from Porfirio Daz, only to spend years without results trying to find it. This failure has led to a debate about what happened to the mine. Young himself believed that it was deliberately hidden by prospectors following Kelly; Another theory is that gold is actually not gold ore, but the fine gold pieces left by Spain. The third theory is that gold was dropped by a group of Mexicans who fled from the countryside, who were forced to abandon it because it slowed them down. The other is that, because the gold mine is suspected to be in the valley, the gravel could just drift and hide it from view.
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References
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Bibliography
- Braddy, Haldeen (1945). "Legend of the Missing Nigger Gold Mine". California Folklore Quarterly . Society of the Western States. 4 (4). ISSN 1556-1283.
- Dobie, James Frank (1978). Children of Coronado: The Story of the Lost Mine and the Treasure of the Southwest . University of Texas Press. ISBN: 0-292-71052-6.
- "New Search for Lost Gold: Amateur Prospectors Follow Legend in Hunt for Millions in Buried Treasure". Ebony . 15 (6). April 1960. ISSNÃ, 0012-9011. Ã,
- Porter, Kenneth W. (1954). "Willie Kelley from the Lost Nigger Mine". Folklore . Society of the Western States. 13 (1). ISSNÃ, 0043-373X.
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