Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

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  Contents

  PREFACE

  Chapter 1: The Effigy

  Chapter 2: The Education of a Confederate Code-Breaker

  Chapter 3: Knights of the Golden Circle

  Chapter 4: Coming Home: A Gold-Filled Legacy

  Chapter 5: The KGC: The Hidden History

  Chapter 6: Retracing History in the Arkansas Woods

  Chapter 7: Jesse James, KGC Field Commander

  Chapter 8: The Hunt Extends to Oklahoma

  Chapter 9: The Wolf Map

  Chapter 10: The Wolf Emerges

  Chapter 11: The Empty Pit

  Chapter 12: The Lost Dutchman Legend

  Chapter 13: A Confederate Fort Knox in Arizona?

  Chapter 14: Off to Arizona

  Chapter 15: Threats from Above

  Chapter 16: The Template: Walking the Lines

  Chapter 17: Evidence in the Ground

  Chapter 18: Arkansas: The Sentinel’s Treasure

  Epilogue—The European Connection

  NOTES

  INDEX

  For my wife, Linda, for her patience, support and assistance in our many years of arduous, often frustrating and always dangerous work.

  And for the Brushy Valley mountaineers who, through example, taught me the meaning of sacrifice, dedication and hard work. Whatever their mission in life, they did it well without complaint and took their secret to the grave.

  —BOB BREWER

  For Juli. Were it not for her devotion and shared love of history and adventure, the path might never have been clear.

  And for my parents, who provided a compass.

  —WARREN GETLER

  Acknowledgments

  WE’D like to thank the many sources of information and intellectual inspiration who made this book possible, experts from a multitude of professions—history, cartography, cryptography, genealogy, theology, geophysics, geology, mathematics, numismatics and treasure-hunting. They are too numerous to mention in full. The same must be said of the authors of relevant books and manuscripts, stretching back to the mid-1850s, who revealed disparate pieces of the puzzle. Their thought-provoking markers served as guideposts as we made our way through the encrypted trail left behind by the secretive Knights of the Golden Circle.

  We owe much gratitude to our editor, Bob Bender, for grasping the size and scope of the enigma surrounding the KGC and its hidden gold. Bob’s enthusiasm for the subject—and its implications for historical discourse—inspired us throughout the writing. It was with the help of Bob’s long experience that we were able to strike a fair and, we hope, engaging balance between historical analysis and adventure tale. Thanks to his assistant, Johanna Li, for helping us marshal the various visual components of the book.

  We are also highly appreciative of the support from our literary agents, Matt Bialer and Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media, who stood behind this complex and provocative project at an early stage. Matt’s sage advice at the proposal phase kept us rightly focused as we—an unlikely duo—hit the New York publishing circuit.

  Others who provided helpful comments and suggestions throughout include: Michael Getler, Bob Whitcomb, Ayfer Jafri, John Buffalo, Betsy Stahl and Cari-Esta Albert.

  Those providing much appreciated assistance in our research of primary and secondary sources include: Dave Kelly of the Library of Congress’s main reading room, James Flatness, of the geography and maps division, and John Sellers and his colleagues in the manuscripts division; Nick Sheets, of the special collections division at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Memorial Library; Fain McDaniel, Commanche County Museum in Commanche, Texas; Ana Lash, Hayden Public Library, Hayden, Arizona; and Paul and Joan Tainter, Freemont, Nebraska.

  Among those who contributed directly to the telling of the KGC story in Arkansas, providing invaluable help through personal insights, photos, memorabilia, documents and other pages from the past: Bob and Wanda Tilley, lifelong friends and neighbors of Bob and Linda Brewer; Don Fretz, a treasure hunter and lifelong friend of Bob’s; Don and Jeff Ashcraft, grandson and great-grandson of W. D. Ashcraft; Bud Ashcraft, nephew of W. D. Ashcraft; Dave and Jack Brewer, Bob’s brothers; and local history buff Mitchell Cogburn.

  Also deserving thanks and credit for their insight into the KGC: John London, a KGC researcher and treasure hunter from Texas; Bud Hard-castle, a respected KGC authority and Jesse James researcher from Oklahoma; Stan Vickery, a KGC researcher and treasure hunter from Louisiana; Richard Scott from Texas, who provided valued assistance in field research; sisters Jo Anne and Ceci Gillespie, of Oklahoma, on whose property much KGC history is in evidence and for whose diligent research and warm hospitality we are especially grateful; Steve Wilson, author of Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales; and, for his unquestionable knowledge about the KGC’s money trail, Michael Griffith, a junior-high school history teacher from Oklahoma.

  In Arizona we’d like to thank a handful of people for their wisdom, documents and other invaluable information: Ellie Gardner, president, Heart Mountain Project, Apache Junction; Brian MacLeod, vice-president, Heart Mountain Project; and Bob Schoose, owner, Goldfield’s Ghost Town, Apache Junction.

  And ample credit is due those who have helped Bob with his Ouachita Treasure Consulting “Golden Circle Research” in other parts of the country, uncovering signs of KGC buried treasure from coast to coast.

  Credit is also due genealogists Barbara Fulton and Barbara Lucas.

  We thank DeLorme, www.delorme.com, for its cooperation and assistance, particularly topographical maps generated by TOPO USA® Ver. 3.0, 4.0, copyright © DeLorme, Yarmouth, Maine. TOPO USA® software has greatly simplified our treasure-hunting map work.

  We’d like to acknowledge Dr. Alan Witten, professor of geophysics at the University of Oklahoma; as well as Dan Woods, geophysicist with Digital Magnetotelluric Technologies, and independent geological consultant Jim Rose for their scientific insights into magnetometry.

  Finally, a word of appreciation must go to those universities that have provided a wonderful service in digitizing centuries-old magazines, journals and books and then making those documents available via the “Making of America” series on the Internet. This service, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has enabled researchers like us to dig for obscure yet vitally important nineteenth-century references, such as those for the Knights of the Golden Circle, by using keyword searches. Without this keystroke ability, some of the source material uncovered in this book—and the relationship of that information to what was generally known to be in the public domain—might never have surfaced.

  William M. Wiley, KGC sentinel

  Preface

  THIS book is the product of a five-year collaborative effort between Bob Brewer—a self-educated Arkansas mountainman, amateur historian and treasure hunter—and a Washington, D.C.–based investigative journalist. It is the story of how one man’s obsession to uncover family secrets in the backwoods of Polk County, Arkansas, led him to discover not only buried treasure but buried—and troubling—pieces of America’s past.

  For Bob, following decades of intensive fieldwork and archival research, it was a matter of “getting the story out,” for others to ponder. As for myself, I was intrigued by the scope and layered complexity of this all-but-unknown chapter in American history. After getting past my initial skepticism by observing Bob’s method on the trail and by jointly mining the archives, I realized that I had stumbled
upon one of the rare untold stories of hidden power and intrigue.

  We both knew that the ramifications of this story were large. In pursuing the mystery surrounding the Knights of the Golden Circle, or KGC, we hoped that readers might at least take away the thought that truth, in recorded history, lies just below the surface.

  Our foremost goal was to provide an authentic, accurate and plausible account of a chilling, unseen segment of Americana—the KGC, with its vast underground grid of wealth, its historic ties to Scottish Rite Freemasonry and its allusions to European Knights Templar traditions.

  The KGC, we demonstrate, existed not only during the Civil War but for decades thereafter. It included many powerful men of the times—politicians and outlaws, statesmen and generals—and some ordinary citizens as well. Its leadership, which took the organization fully underground in 1864, was fiercely determined that the American South would somehow, someday, prove victorious in a Second War of Rebellion. Toward that tomorrow, the KGC put in place a vast and extraordinarily ingenious network of underground caches of arms and money—much of it stolen U.S. payroll.

  The Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret society with members sworn to blood oaths, and it left virtually no written records. As a result, we rely on some limited primary material but are forced to work largely with circumstantial evidence—symbolism, place names, odd turns of event—in an interpretive, analytical framework. Of course, errors of fact are ours alone.

  As noncredentialed authors of an investigative history, we recognized our limitations going into such uncharted terrain as this book covers. With the hope of provoking debate and stimulating further exploration of the subject, we decided to plug on.

  On a personal level, Bob’s investigation into the inexplicable behavior of some of his forebears and his subsequent journey into the world of hunting for Rebel gold has produced rich insights into the idiosyncratic treasure-hunting community.

  Stretched finances, badly strained relations with family and friends, accusations of being mad, private-property and public-land issues, runins with armed interlopers and bruised emotions from betrayal have all been part of the mix. No less so the constant support and forbearance of his closest family and colleagues.

  Ultimately, Bob’s search for treasure has become a mere touchstone in his larger quest for truth—a half-century-long probe into the activities of beloved relatives and their unswerving devotion to an obscure cause.

  What this book does not do is pass judgment on the nature of the hidden system unveiled. Nor does it attempt to provide concrete, final answers as to why the underground grid of secreted wealth exists (or why it may still be guarded in places). In addition, we are unable to fully explain what might be behind startling parallels to a similar phenomenon—geometric grids possibly tied to treasure—in Europe. We would prefer that curious readers analyze, synthesize, chew over the possibilities and then turn to other sources. Ours is only one interpretation of an extraordinary sequence of discoveries.

  The book is intended as a measured, deliberate journey into the subtle: into subtle signs that go unnoticed, into subtle associations that go unacknowledged. Only the understated, persistent approach, over many years, could have rendered a glimpse into the mind-boggling forms of communication behind an organizing force like that of the clandestine KGC.

  We tip our hats to others who have touched on this arcane, controversial topic. We believe there is something here that goes beyond “tantalizing possibilities.” When gold repeatedly is found through decipherment of coded maps, etched carvings and buried metallic clues, logic says there is a system behind it.

  WARREN GETLER

  October 2002

  1

  The Effigy

  THE effigy twisted on a thin steel wire.

  When Bob Brewer brought his Jeep to a full stop, he could see that the headless figure hung precisely over the spot where he had walked the day before. It was dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt. And it was riddled with bullet holes. The dummy’s torso was stuffed with rocks, and it slumped forward in a deadweight slouch—nearly snapping the sapling from which it dangled. There were other ominous changes to the landscape, as well. Tree trunks surrounding the spot had been spray-painted with inverted crosses. A stack of spent rifle shell cases, piled on the boxes that had held them, lay nearby. A trail of yarn, tied to the back of the effigy, led to the pile of used ammunition … in case anyone missed the connection.

  Twenty-four hours earlier, on a crisp October morning in 1993, Bob and a friend had arrived at the remote site along a dirt trail in Arkansas’s Ouachita Mountains. They had brought along an old topographical map of the region, a metal detector and a camera for the purpose at hand: to find and record clues leading to what Bob suspected were buried caches of treasure. It was not a farfetched suspicion. The experienced treasure sleuth had previously unearthed caches of Civil War–era gold and silver coins not far from the site, and he had reason to believe that this area was linked to those sites. Over the course of that first day, the two men had discovered and photographed numerous buried clues: rusted plow points and other pieces of metal that served as geographic pointers. The location of the buried directional markers had been carefully recorded on a grid to ensure the correct orientation of each piece, which was then reburied. It was a system that had yielded results in the past and which Bob was steadily improving. As Bob and his friend had headed back to camp that night, he felt sure that he was close to finding something big.

  When the men returned the next day with a third treasure-hunting friend, they quickly realized that their plans would have to change.1 They agreed to notify the police about the overnight transformation of their site. When a deputy sheriff and a U.S. deputy marshal for the Forest Service arrived, the officers asked a few questions, took photos of the effigy and removed it—carrying it off as if it were a cadaver.2 As Bob looked on, he wondered about the decision he’d made to pursue a decades-old mystery deep in the Arkansas timberlands.

  2

  The Education of a Confederate Code-Breaker

  THE backwoods that surround Hatfield, Arkansas, are thick, nearly opaque in places, and vast. Towering pines and hardwoods crowd steep mountain slopes, their canopies eclipsing much of the sun’s rays. On the north-facing ridges, where the giant hardwoods cluster, only the rare splash of sunlight reaches the damp forest soil. This shadowed environment, spiked with its treacherous crags, can seem uninviting—even menacing—for those who come from beyond the rugged hill country of west-central Arkansas. But for those native to the hills, the natural shroud helps keep things private, elemental, protected.

  That is why, despite their sometimes unforgiving topography, the Ouachita Mountains have attracted frontier-minded people for millennia. Abundant elk and bison herds lured primitive hunter-gatherers some ten thousand years ago. Prospects of finding gold and silver deposits in Paleozoic-aged veins of quartz charmed Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto into the region in the 1500s, while ample beavers and minks attracted French trappers in the following centuries. The French gave the mountains their name, from the local Quapaw Indian phrase, “Wash-a-taw,” which means “good hunting grounds.” Settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee and surrounding areas began arriving in substantial numbers in the 1830s. Homesteading in a land with limited agrarian potential, these robust Scots-Irish mountaineers carved out a hardscrabble existence.

  With settlement came the stagecoach. This, in turn, pulled in the out-law gangs, which used this great Southern range—stretching east to west from Little Rock to Atoka, Oklahoma—as a springboard for some of their dramatic raids. Jesse James was reported to have ridden through the Ouachita hills following a stagecoach robbery near Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1874. Then, the ill-defined border area between frontier Arkansas and the Indian Nations territory to the west was a haven for every fugitive from justice, giving rise to the maxim, “There is no law west of Little Rock, and no God west of Fort Smith.”

  It was these images of the unta
med woods that captured the imagination of nine-year-old Bob Brewer, back in 1949. Tiny Hatfield—population 300—had been home to generations of Brewers before him. Many of his forebears had figured in the growing wave of westward migration from Kentucky in the mid- to late-1800s. Most, like his paternal grandfather, William Brewer, a Kentucky-born teacher turned cotton farmer who would become mayor of the town, decided to stay in Hatfield for most of their adult lives. Bob’s father, Landon, sought adventure for a time beyond the timbered hills, but, in the end, succumbed to the pull of the Ouachitas.

  In 1949, after a long career as a naval officer, capped by several years at war in the Pacific, forty-one-year-old Landon Brewer moved his family to the bluffs of Arkansas’s Polk County from his latest posting on the outskirts of San Diego, California. It was time, he sensed, to return to the interior, to the soil, after a two-decade hiatus. For Bob, who loved reading Jack London, Mark Twain and tales of outlaws and treasure, the Arkansas hill country held out enormous possibilities. And none too soon. Life as a Navy brat on the fringes of the city had long lost its luster.

  Young Bob swiftly embraced the surrounding Ouachitas. The pristine two-million-acre forest of red oaks, white oaks, beeches, hickories, maples, hollies, shortleaf pines and Eastern red cedars seemed a boundless playground. Life was suddenly distilled to its simple pleasures and truths. Whatever light penetrated the thick foliage was good enough for him; whatever steep trail let him navigate two-thousand-foot elevations was just added sport. The same could be said for dodging rattlesnakes, copperheads and the occasional feral hog. Ticks, chiggers and poison oak abounded, but Bob regarded them as minor nuisances.

  To Bob, the mountains and the dense deciduous forest were not the least bit threatening. They were inviting, nourishing—clear streams teeming with fish; seasonal yields of hickory nuts, black walnuts, wild huckleberries, blackberries, cherries and muscadine. The Ouachitas, he sensed, were materially and spiritually tied to his parents’ backwoods past. A child who had known his father only as an infrequent visitor during the war years and his mother as a dutiful career Navy wife, Bob began to grasp what his parents had meant by settling down and “going home.” It was a phrase that he had heard many times.