Missing Treasure of The Cross on the Rock

The LEGEND speaks of how it is valued at above $350,000 or probably more specified the the latest spike in the price of gold and it mentions how Indigenous Us citizens realized of the tale of the “Cross on the Rock” as handed down by their elders. Also recognised as the lost treasure of Borie it is conjectured to be a person of the little identified caches of hidden wealth still to be discovered in The usa in the middle of a woodland paradise known as God’s Country, Potter County, Usa.

Could this treasure nevertheless exist?

Intrigued by the legend I embarked upon a journey of discovery hunting for the source of tale established that if it existed it was to be mine.

When this treasure was hidden, America was nevertheless a huge wilderness in the 1600’s. Couple other than the hardiest explorers and fur trappers experienced ventured even further inland than the coastal colonies. Even so when Louis Frontenac arrived in 1672 Canada was no for a longer time the toddler colony it experienced been when Richelieu started the Business of Just one Hundred Associates. By means of the efforts of Louis XIV and Colbert it had assumed the variety of an organized province and Frontenac as the new governor sought to build regulated parishes and trade prospects from Montreal to New Orleans in “New France”. Via armed conflict Frontenac expelled English Colonists and subdued the Indigenous Americans proclaiming a huge territory for France which was afterwards marked by lead plates buried in the ground as recognized by Celoron de Beinville and mapped by Father Pierre Bonnecamps, a “Jesuit Mathematician. The fur trade in individual flourished creating the wealth that Frontenac sought and the growth of “New France” was progressing swiftly.

My investigation yielded that mid in the 1680’s, practically a whole century in advance of white settlers began to completely occupy what is now Potter County, a little social gathering of French Canadians from the fur trading establishment that belonged to Louis Frontenac and Robert Cavelier remaining New Orleans by boat, for the return journey to Montreal. I promptly found out glitches in the legend as recorded by other people. I had been deceived in the particulars of the vacation most deliberately by a person desirous of maintaining the secret of this treasure cache to by themselves.

The initial tale states [The planned route was up the Mississippi to the junction of the Ohio and then up the Beautiful River, as the Indians call it, to the Allegheny and then northward to the mouth of the Conewango near present day Warren. From that point, a short run would bring the expedition to Chautauqua Lake near the present day Jamestown, New York. From this point, the party could practically roll down hill by the way of Prendergrast Creek and then home free by the way of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario and Northward to Montreal. Nearly the entire trip would be made by water, without the danger of long overland, backbreaking portages.]

I soon came to find out that a trip down the Mississippi was a 1 way ticket in the late 1600’s. A folly to think that one could pull rafts or paddle canoes counter present-day for over 3000 miles again to Montreal in an expeditious manner via a hostile and unsettled wilderness! The return excursions had been normally completed by means of sailing ships from the port of New Orleans to the port of Baltimore and then by ascending the Susquehanna River in canoe to the West Branch and Sinnemahonning Rivers and onward to Jamestown N.Y., up the Great Lakes to Montreal. The rivers have been the highways of the 1600-1700’s with the only trails remaining individuals of the Native People in america streets had nonetheless to be created in any of the interior colonies.

[And so the coureur de bois left New Orleans on rafts loaded with provisions and a number of small kegs, each of which were loaded with gold coins covered with a thin film of gunpowder, and anchored securely to the crude log transports by means of ropes and iron nails. The gold was to be delivered to His Most Gracious Majesty’s Royal Governor in Montreal, (Gov. Frontenac) and the party was instructed to guard the valuable cargo with their lives. Under no circumstances was it to fall into the hands of the English, the Americans nor the hated Senecas, who were always at war with the French. ]

The celebration created the uneventful trip close to the suggestion of Florida and up the East Coast of America to the Chesapeake Bay and began the 2nd leg and a lot more arduous part of their journey. The Susquehanna River a reasonably shallow overall body of water snakes languidly through Pennsylvania interspersed with white drinking water and rapids that are known to wreak havoc on Northward voyages relying upon the time. The hazards of ascending rapids, portaging compact waterfalls and evading hostile Indians via Pennsylvania’s Wyoming place had been well documented. As the rivers narrowed staying away from Indians turned significantly difficult. Tremendously outnumbered and pursued through the wilderness the Frenchmen grew to become more and more cautious realizing that they had develop into the prey in significantly a lot more than a cat and mouse activity along the West Branch River.

With situation fastened and mapped by the Jesuits the exasperated Frenchmen buried their treasure for risk-free preserving around the confluence of two rivers determining that it was safer to solution it briefly and return for it with a bigger expeditionary force than to possibility getting rid of their life and the treasure to the Seneca war get together. The precise location of the treasure was marked by the Jesuits by chiseling a substantial cross into the rock beneath which it lay.

The Jesuits led by Étienne da Carheil, perfectly educated as a mathematician, religious scholar and cartographer and Father Ernest Laborde determined to stay behind to decoy and change the savages to Christianity as the voyagers proceeded below include of darkness up the Sinnemahoning River and onto New York eluding their enemies and escaping to Montreal.

Louis Frontenac was recalled back to France soon right after his fur investing celebration arrived in Montreal not able to get to his revenue, and Cavelier died in 1687 at just one of the investing outposts that he experienced assisted to create.

Frontenac returned to Quebec in the autumn of 1689, just after the Iroquois massacred the people of Lachine and just just before they descended on people of La Chesnaye. The common mood was a person of terror and despair. Quelling the warring redmen and securing his outposts from English squatters led Frontenac on a military campaign that lasted many several years. Upon his victory he immediately despatched solders to the Pennsylvania wilds to get his gold. With his health and fitness declining Louis Frontenac was not able to accompany his men and on the 28th of November 1698 Frontenac died at the Château St Louis. His fortune now destined to stay in the ground.

Frontenac’s enemies ended up fond of declaring that he utilized his placement to make illicit income from the fur trade. Over and above dilemma he traded to some extent, but it would be harsh to accuse him of venality or peculation on the energy of this kind of evidence as exists. There is a sturdy chance that the king appointed him in the expectation that he would increase his revenue from resources which lay outside his income. As a member of the King’s Courtroom it was envisioned that to undertake these types of a desolate appointment in the new globe it would go unsaid that any riches that could be garnered would be one’s to retain. Public opinion may differ from age to age concerning the latitude which might be permitted a general public servant in these matters. Less than a democratic régime the regular is very various from that which has existed, for the most component, less than autocracies in earlier ages. Frontenac was a person of difference who acknowledged an crucial article at a modest income. We might infer that the king was inclined to make it possible for him some thing from perquisites. If so, his profits from the fur trade develop into a matter of degree. So long as he kept inside the bounds of explanation and decency, the govt lifted no objection. Frontenac surely was not a governor who pillaged the colony to feather his possess nest. If he took profits, they were not imagined abnormal by anybody besides Duchesneau who was Frontenac’s rival in the King’s court who experienced been snubbed for the placement of Governor. The king experienced recalled Frontenac not simply because he was venal, but for the reason that he was quarrelsome and returned him upon acknowledging that he was precisely the correct gentleman for the position.

Indigenous People realized of the rock and conjecturing as to its importance established their legend to clarify its existence.

Close to Keating until the railroad was designed in 1901, could be observed the “Cross on the Rock” a excellent pure marvel a perfect cross of heroic proportions carved on a rock along the river. The good thing is an excellent photograph of the exceptional normal curiosity is in existence since it given that has sloughed away.