Cognitive biases and the persistence of lost mine folklore in the Southwestern US
Richard A. Leveille
Abstract
One of the most pervasive and enduring forms of folklore in the Southwestern US is the lost mine tale and its variants: hidden treasure and lost city tales. Why do these stories persist despite innumerable failed attempts to find the promised riches over the course of decades or even centuries? A case in point: 128 years of searching for the Lost Dutchman has produced no tangible results. In spite of this, as recently as 2010, three men died in the Superstition Mountains looking for it.
I will use the Lost Dutchman Mine tale to elucidate patterns of origin and survival of these stories, with supporting evidence from the Lost Adams Diggings, the Victorio Peak Treasure and the Seven Cities of Cibola/Aztlan. While several may have a kernel of truth at their core, others are highly formulaic and have many elements in common with related folklore from other parts of the US, but with twists that are peculiar to the region. Regardless of this, the survival of these tales can best be understood in the context of cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are systematic errors in thinking, often based on “hard-wired” mental shortcuts (heuristics), that probably evolved to help our ancestors make quick decisions when faced with crises on the savannahs, deserts and forests of Africa. Unfortunately, while they may have served us well in those circumstances, they may actually be a detriment to rational decision making in the modern world.
Leveraging these cognitive biases for economic benefit is widespread in the case of lost mine tales. Professional lost mine seekers of various stamps have long relied on investor financing to pursue them and public entities are by no means averse to using these tales for promotional and advertising campaigns.
Introduction
Lost mine tales are one of the most common folklore genres in the Southwestern US. In this article I will briefly address their origins but will focus most of my analysis on psychological, commercial and mass media/information technology reasons for their survival, in spite of the repeated failure of efforts to re-discover them over the course of decades and, in some cases, centuries.
Cognitive Biases and Fallacies
Cognitive biases have been recognized in various forms for millennia, however their study was formalized and integrated into models of human behavior by Israeli researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, among others, in the early 1970s (Lewis, 2017). The term describes people’s systematic but often flawed responses to judgment and decision problems. Those that I believe are relevant to lost mine folktales are briefly described below.
The Narrative Fallacy (Taleb, 2011): We are faced daily with masses of information on any particular subject we are interested in, that must be processed and remembered. To try and reduce the confusion and uncertainty inherent in this, humans tend to try an organize this information into a simple, linear story. Often this story is very deterministic, with the outcome made to seem inevitable based on the prior sequence of events when, in reality, much (most?) of life is stochastic, with a huge element of randomness and a wide range of outcomes possible, depending of the variances on the individual input variables. So, instead of increasing our understanding of the information, the narrative fallacy can actually result a high confidence, but false, explanation.
The narrative fallacy is related to patternicity (Shermer, 2008), the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise. Conspiracy theories often come out of this same bias. Patternicity is a common flaw in business school pedagogy (case studies) and biography (so-and-so was destined for greatness by his pedigree, upbringing, or education). Without knowing the number of cases that followed similar strategies but failed, or that had similar childhoods or pedigrees, but much different outcomes, how can any lessons or conclusions be drawn from these cases?
Confirmation Bias (Taleb, 2007; Nickerson, 1998): Once a narrative is constructed and conclusions have been reached, we tend to selectively filter through the data available to us for those that support them.
Wishful Thinking (Mayraz, 2011): Describes beliefs and decisions based on the intense desire for an outcome regardless of reality, objectivity or probability.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy (Kahneman, 2011): Causes us to rationalize the continued pursuit of an endeavor that has failed to produce positive results, simply because so much time, effort and money have already been invested in it.
Belief Perseverance (Anderson et al., 1980): Belief in something may persist despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Belief may even be strengthened in the face of evidence debunking it.
While not related to cognitive biases, I propose that another factor at work in the case of lost mine folklore is what I call Sanctification by Blood. This is the same phenomenon that reinforces adherence to a creed, cult or ideology due to martyrdom. The rationale is that If something is worth dying for, then it must be worth believing in.
Origin of Lost Mine, Hidden Treasure and Lost City Stories
Some lost mine (I will lump treasures and cities in with them, for the sake of brevity) stories start with a kernel of truth. Jacob Waltz, the eponymous Dutchman (“Deutsch”-man, or German) of Lost Dutchman Mine fame, died in Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, 1891 (Obituary of Jacob Waltz, 1891). The first newspaper article on the quest for his mine appeared in a Phoenix newspaper on August 27, 1892 (A Queer Quest, 1892). It has been argued from both geological and historical perspectives, that the Lost Dutchman Mine legend may have at its core a real deposit (Kollenborn, 2009), in the Goldfields District, at the western edge of the Superstition Mountains.
Fray Marcos de Niza’s progressively exaggerated description of Hawikku, a real Zuni pueblo in New Mexico, was the seed from which the Seven Cities of Cibola sprang (Flint and Flint, 2012) and the inspiration for Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s massive 1540 expedition into the Southwestern US.
On the other hand, the origin tales of the Victorio Peak treasure and the Lost Adams Diggings follow very formulaic patterns and are thus, in my opinion, much more suspect. The former is supposed to be hidden in a series of caverns in Central New Mexico stuffed with a potpourri of treasures guarded by skeletons bound to stakes, stumbled upon by a deer hunter in 1937 (Smith, 1991). The latter is described as a zig-zag canyon whose floor was peppered with gold dust and nuggets as big as turkey’s eggs (Dobie, 1985), either in New Mexico or Arizona, divulged by an Indian to a group of Anglo-Americans hanging out at a saloon in Arizona.
The Narrative is Built
Storytellers, writers and/or promoters get ahold of the kernel of truth, add some unrelated or invented elements and package (or re-package) them all, together with an air of mystery, into a much better story. Writer Pierpont Bicknell (1894, 1895) was the initiator of this process with Lost Dutchman Mine. He began with the bare-bones facts about Jacob Waltz, probably well known around Arizona in the 1890s and found in the newspaper articles published near the time of his death (table 1). Bicknell added the Spanish/Mexican connection, probably lifted from James Addison Reavis’ concurrent “Peralta” land grant scam (Cookridge, 1972), to Waltz’ rumored mine, plus a string of murders, to establish the framework of the most popular version of the legend. Barry Storm conflated eleven other lost mine tales with the Waltz mine and added a remarkable level of detail to the story, especially considering that he wrote 46 years after the death of the protagonist (Storm, 1945). As seen in table 1, over the 148 years since the death of Waltz, the Lost Dutchman tale has blossomed into an exuberant garden of exotic fables that keeps growing and getting stranger (e.g. Zajac, 2009).
Table I. Evolution of the Lost Dutchman tale, 1891-1945
Bicknell and Storm’s retellings of the Lost Dutchman established many of the features of Southwestern lost mine tales that have been integrated into a common template. Recurring elements are listed in table 2.
Table 2. Common elements in lost mine tales. LDM1-5 = Lost Dutchman Mine (see Table 1, above); VPT = Victorio Peak Treasure, LAD = Lost Adams Diggings, AZT/SCC = Aztlan/Seven Cities of Cibola.
1) The Spanish or Mexicans and, especially, the Jesuits, have been implicated in the “history” of many lost mines in SW North America. In the case of the latter, they were prohibited from mining (Officer, 1991) but, according to the tales, they press-ganged whole tribes of Indians to work their fabulously wealthy deposits. When they were expelled from the Americas in 1767, they filled in the shafts, buried their treasures and erased all visible traces of their work, except for a few cryptic petroglyphs only legible to the initiated (History Channel, 2015) before embarking for Europe. There is no record of any of this in the Spanish archives nor evidence of it in archeology of the region (LDM2-5, VPT).
2) Native Americans are the guardians or discoverers of many other lost mines (AZT/SCC, LAD, LDM3,4).
3) The mine is often disclosed by a Native American informant to a Euro-American in gratitude for a past favor (AZT/SCC, LAD). Or, by a Spanish or Mexican informant to an Anglo-American (LDM3,4).
4) A massacre of miners or prospectors takes place, usually by hostile Indians (LAD, VPT), but sometimes by homicidal Euro-Americans (LDM2-4).
5) There are one or more survivors, who wander out of the hills injured, starving and disoriented (LAD, LDM3,4).
6) The survivor(s) are found and nursed back to health by a good Samaritan or, alternatively, die in latter’s care. One way or the other, the Samaritan’s kindness is repaid with the tale of the mine, possibly with a map, a piece of rich ore or a Spanish gold coin thrown in for good measure (LDM2-4, LAD).
7) The survivor and/or the good Samaritan spend a good part, or the rest of their lives searching fruitlessly for the gold (LAD, VPT, LDM1-4). Failing memories or landmarks changed by natural disasters (earthquakes and flash floods) are usually blamed (LDM3-4, LAD) failure.
8) Confusing maps and/or descriptions of landmarks left behind from these tales multiply over the years (LDM2-5, LAD).
While the original version of the Lost Dutchman (LDM1) has only two of these factors (6,7), many more were added in the Bicknell (1894, 1895), Storm (1945) and later versions of it (LDM2-5). Bicknell and Storm, with their inventive additions, were participants in, and playing directly into, the Narrative Fallacy, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Many variants of the Victorio Peak Treasure (Smith, 1991) and the Lost Adams Diggings (Dobie, 1985) follow this template very closely, making them rather suspect, in my opinion.
In 1539, Fray Marcos de Niza was sent north by Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, the Spanish Viceroy of New Spain, charged with investigating reports of wealthy multi-storied cities in that direction (Flint and Flint, 2012). He was to accompany Esteban, a Moorish slave, one of the members of the famous Cabeza de Vaca trek; survivors of the disastrous Narvaez expedition who walked from the coast of Texas to the Pacific Ocean and heard these reports from native informants. Esteban went ahead of Marcos, arrived at the Zuni village of Hawikku, and sent reports of its large relative size and wealth back to Marcos. He was then murdered by the inhabitants. Word of this reached Marcos, who says that he saw Cibola (Hawikku) from a distance, which is disputed by many, then turned back in fear of his life. His written chronicle is fairly sober and never mentions gold, only turquoise (Flint and Flint, 2012). However, in subsequent retellings of his adventure, Cibola grew larger and richer. This exaggerated version appears to have struck a sympathetic chord with not only the Spanish, but their Nahua allies, as they may have interpreted it in the light of the story of the Aztec’s northern origin in Aztlan (or the related Chicomoztoc, which had seven caves), carefully recorded from numerous indigenous sources by the Spanish (Levin Rojo, 2014). Wishful Thinking is a possible explanation for why Marcos would accompany Vazquez de Coronado back to Hawikku and suffer the consequences to his reputation when his exaggerations were revealed. Perhaps he convinced himself that Hawikku was only a frontier outlier, and that the six other Cities of Cibola would, in fact, be much larger and richer.
Hurley (1951) analyzed 250 American treasure stories and concluded that, while Western treasure stories have elements common to New England and Southern folktales, in the former, the treasure is never found and the supernatural elements common in the latter are rare in the Western versions. In New England and the South, spirits of the dead often guard the treasure and mysterious (often blue) nocturnal lights mark its location, whereas in the West, though many may have died looking for the treasure, it is more often nature and the elements that prevent its discovery.
The Failed Searches and their Consequences
Viceroy Mendoza and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado continued the massive 1540 quest for Cibola despite very accurate eye-witness accounts of the humble reality of the Zuni village relayed to them by Melchior Diaz’ advance party, early in 1540, when Coronado was still in present-day Sonora (Flint and Flint, 2012). Subsequently, when Coronado found no gold at Zuni, or elsewhere in the Pueblo villages, it morphed into Gran Quivira (with the help of what, in retrospect, appears to have be a clever diversionary tactic implemented by the Rio Grande Pueblo people), receded over the horizon and turned out to be another chimera. While Coronado was ruined by this expedition, the search for the Aztec’s ancestral homeland of Aztlan-Chicomoztoc-Copala continued off and on for 100 years, a fact that is explicitly recorded in Villagra’s epic poem celebrating the 1598 Oñate expedition to settle New Mexico (Levin Rojo, 2014).
The search for the Lost Dutchman mine began shortly after Waltz’s death in 1891, and in the last 128 years has produced no tangible results. In spite of this, searchers continue to comb the Superstition Mountains, often poorly prepared and in summer, the most dangerous season. As recently as 2010, three men died there looking for it (Gonzalez, 2011). In similar fashion, there have been numerous unsuccessful, and often highly publicized searches, for both the Lost Adams Diggings (Dobie, 1985) and the Victorio Peak Treasure (Smith, 1991).
I believe these are all cases of the power of Wishful Thinking and Belief Perseverance short-circuiting objectivity and skepticism, especially when combined with the Sunk Cost Bias. In the case of lost mine tales, the former two are most probably fed by greed, lust for adventure and fame; the latter allows seekers to ignore failure and persist. So, the legends go on, despite repeated failures to pay-off, over decades or centuries.
Sanctification by Blood marks the treasure search as a worthy quest. Many died as the result of searches for Cibola-Aztlan-Chicomoztoc-Copala over a period of nearly a century (Levin Rojo, 2014) and a number of people have died looking for the Lost Dutchman, the last three in 2010 (Gonzalez, 2011).
There may also be whispers of a government conspiracy (see Patternicity, above) to keep the mine out of the hands of “legitimate” seekers. This can take the form of purposeful government land withdrawals from mineral entry, denial of access on military bases, etc.; or government scientists pooh-poohing the possibility of the lost mine’s existence for geological reasons (e.g. Peterson and Jinks, 1985). The most popular site for the Lost Dutchman Mine is included in Superstition Wilderness which, along with other Wilderness Areas, was closed to mineral entry as of January 1, 1984 (US Forest Service). Treasure hunting is officially possible only with a special permit, of which very few have been authorized (US Forest Service). The Victorio Peak treasure is on the White Sands Missile Range and although several treasure hunting efforts were carried out there with government permission, they failed for “suspicious” reasons (Smith, 1991).
Keeping the Legend Alive
After her unsuccessful search for the mine, less than a year after Jacob Waltz’s 1891 death, his former caretaker, Julia Thomas, sold copies of a map to his supposed bonanza, trying to recoup some of her expenses (Kollenborn, 2009). Doc Noss, alleged discoverer of the Victorio Peak treasure, promised dividends to an investor who would help him get it out. The latter, disgruntled and claiming Noss had bilked him, shot and killed Noss in 1949 (Smith, 1991). Several more investor-financed expeditions, often sanctioned by Noss’ descendents, have been made into White Sands looking for his treasure since then (Smith, 1991). So, there are certainly commercial interests keen on perpetuating the legends for their own financial benefit.
In the case of the Lost Dutchman mine, an Arizona state park is named after it, there is a Lost Dutchman Days festival in Apache Junction, and a Peralta trail in the Superstitions, named after the mythical Spanish/Mexican prior owners of Waltz’s mine. The City of Apache Junction has a mascot that looks suspiciously like popular depictions of Jacob Waltz. None of these explicitly endorse the legend, but neither do they do anything to discourage its persistence.
From the late 19th through the late 20th C, books, newspaper and magazine articles kept these stories alive. if it was a really good tale, Hollywood made a movie, or a television channel (e.g. History Channel, 2015) a documentary, based on it, which inspired new generations of seekers. For example, the Lost Dutchman Mine was the basis for Columbia Pictures Lust for Gold (1949) and Legend of the Superstition Mountains, on the History Channel (2015). McKenna’s Gold (1969) was based on the Lost Adams Diggings. Today, the proliferation and persistence of Lost Mine tales is probably largely due to the internet. A Google search gave 1,170,000 results for “Lost Dutchman Mine”; 143,000 for “Lost Adams Diggings” and 62,600 for “Victorio Peak Treasure”.
Conclusions
The persistence of lost mine, lost city and buried treasure stories may be due in large part to cognitive biases, specifically the Narrative Fallacy, Confirmation and Sunk Cost Biases. In addition, Wishful Thinking and Belief Perseverance play a part in the survival of these tales. Sanctification by Blood and conspiracy theories have lessor roles in keeping some of the stories alive.
The Lost Dutchman Mine legend can serve as a model for the evolution of many of these tales. It may well have begun with a real deposit, based on contemporary sources and basic geological inference. However, in the hands of several very imaginative writers, it rapidly blossomed into an amalgam of whatever kernel of original truth was there, with accreted layers of imaginative additions that have appeared and reappeared in many other tales since then, establishing a pattern for subsequent lost mine legends.
Appropriation of the legends for commercial and promotional purposes by both private and public sector entities plays no small part in their persistence. In the 20th C, movies and television began to play a major part in their popularization. Digital media, such as websites and blogs, devoted to these tales have vastly expanded their reach in the early 21st C.
Many Southwestern lost mine stories share characteristics of older folktales, specifically early American treasure stories, although most of the latter have a magical element and result in the discovery of the treasure, whereas the Southwestern variety usually lack supernatural aspects and the treasure remains unfound.
References
Anderson, Craig, Mark Lepper and Lee Ross. 1980. “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, v39, n6, 1037-1049.
Bicknell, Pierpont. 1894. A Mythical Mine. Saturday Review, November 17, 1894.
Bicknell, Pierpont. 1895. A Mine in the Superstition Mountains. San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 1895.
Cookridge, E. H. 1972. The Baron of Arizona. New York: Ballantine Books.
Dobie, J.F. 1985. Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Flint, R., & Flint, S. C. 2012. Documents of the Coronado expedition, 1539-1542: "they were not familiar with His Majesty, nor did they wish to be his subjects". Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Gonzalez, Nathan. 2011. More remains found in Superstitions, may be hikers. Arizona Republic, January 17, 2011.
History Channel (2015), Legends of the Superstition Mountains: Jesuit Clues. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBX_hlzmPMs, accessed Sept 23, 2019.
Hurley, Gerald T. 1951. “Buried treasure tales in America”. Western Folklore, 10 (July), 197-216.
Kahneman, David. 2011. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Kollenborn, Tom. 2009. The Origin of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine Story, Parts 1 and 2. http://superstitionmountaintomkollenborn.blogspot.com/2009/, accessed Sept 9, 2019.
Levin Rojo, D. 2014. Return to Aztlan: Indians, Spaniards and the Invention of Nuevo Mexico, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Lewis, Michael. 2017. The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. New York: W.W. Norton.
Mayraz, Guy. 2011. “Wishful Thinking”. CEP Discussion Papers, dp1092, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
Nickerson, Raymond S. 1998. “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”. Review of General Psychology, v2, n2, 175-220.
Obituary of Jacob Waltz. 1891. Phoenix Daily Herald, October 26, 1891.
Officer, James E. 1991. “Mining in Hispanic Arizona: Myth and Reality” in History of Mining in Arizona, vol. 2, edited by Canty, J.M. and Greeley, M.N., 1-28. Tucson: Mining Club of the Southwest Foundation and American Institute of Mining Engineers, Southwest Section.
Peterson, Donald and Jimmie Jinks. 1983. “Mineral Resource Potential of the Superstition Wilderness and Contiguous Roadless Areas of Maricopa, Pinal and Gila Counties, Arizona”. United States Geological Survey, Open File Report, 83-885.
A Queer Quest. 1892. Arizona Daily Gazette, August 27, 1892.
Shermer, Michael 2008. “Patternicty: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise”. Scientific American, v299, issue 6.
Smith, W. 1991, January 14. “Golden Opportunity”. Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-01-14-9101040813-story.html, accessed Sept 20, 2019.
Storm, Barry. 1945. Thunder God’s Gold: the amazing story of America’s most famed lost gold mines, epitome of Western tradition. Tortilla Flat, Arizona: Southwest Publishing Co.
Taleb, Nassim. 2011. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House.
US Forest Service. Prospecting, Mining and Searching for Treasure in Wilderness Areas. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/tonto/specialplaces/?cid=fsbdev3_018726, accessed Sept 12, 2019.
Zajac, Mandy. 2009. Legendary Peralta Stones get Public Display. East Valley Tribune, June 20, 2009.