BeeLines - June 15, 2017
By Marybelle Beigh, Westfield Town & Village Historian
Unraveling the History and Legends About Westfield Before the Settlers…Part One – Dreams and Legends About Lost Gold Caves on Chautauqua Creek
It seems inevitable that whenever someone mentions the Portage Road or Trail and Chautauqua Creek Gorge, someone else brings up the Legend of Lost Gold, supposed to be somewhere between Barcelona and Mayville in a cave along the creek. And being the local historian, yours truly gets pulled into yet another round of research and writing about my favorite topic, a “history mystery.” This spring, several inquiries about the story managed to interact with a current rash of really strange dreams that have been enlightening my attempts to get a good night’s sleep. Having kept “dream journals” over the years, a number of which have provided answers to questions and puzzles, it is now habitual for me to remember and make notes when awakening from particularly exciting dreams (and nightmares).
In my recent dream, aka nightmare, we (that would be a couple of rather large, scruffy, and angry men and myself) are “holed up” in a rustic cabin somewhere along Big Chautauqua Gorge. The two men are arguing about how to get away from the authorities who are closing in on the cabin… they have knives, and I’m apparently their hostage… I’m trying to keep up a dialog with them, but only one of them pays any attention to me… I manage to make and keep eye contact with him enough that it seems to touch a more human place in him… Soon we are outside in the woods, and they decide to split up to try to confuse those trying to capture them… (I think they are escaped convicts)… the one with whom I’ve made a sort of connection, is dragging me along with the knife at my throat, and we are ducking into thickets and behind large trees… we are heading toward the edge of the gorge… I notice a faint animal trail heading toward a brushy, leafy-covered indentation in the ground, and point it out to my “companion”... when he suggests pushing me down the hole that is appearing, I suggest it may be a bear cave, and he says, “I ain’t askeerda no bears” and shoves me in, and drops down behind me…
It takes a while to adjust to the darkness, and then, sure enough, there is a mother bear and a couple of cubs in an alcove… we very slowly move past the bears and the cave tunnel keeps going slightly down and around a turn and then we see “light at the end of the tunnel,” only there is another big bear out there, but he disappears out the opening and drops down out of sight… I’m thinking to try to distract my captor, and mention the legend of the cave of lost gold… and he takes the bait and starts looking for possible buried or hidden gold, and I try to get to the opening in the gorge cliff, but he catches on to my ruse as I peer out… There is a sort of narrow ledge of shale but the cliff drops down a couple hundred feet… I’m forced to slide along the ledge until it “peters out” … the only way is DOWN, but interestingly, there is a large tree that has recently been uprooted and fallen over and down the cliff, about ten feet below, still covered with relatively fresh leaves… so he forces me to jump into the tree, and he follows and the tree slide down the cliff to the bottom of the gorge… I make eye contact with my captor and suggest that if he lets me go, things will go a lot better with him should he be captured and this is when I wake up!
Well, to say the least, I intensified my research, particularly in Devon Taylor’s “Chautauqua Gorge – History, Legends, and People.” In Taylor’s chapter on “Legends,” on page 8, he describes two separate stories, the first of which is about a cache “of lost gold… supposed to be somewhere near the mouth of the creek at Barcelona.” Taylor explains that he has never seen this particular legend in print, that it was “passed along by word of mouth,” and that although it shares common points with the more well-known story of involving the French and a cave for the gold, it deals with ships carrying gold being attacked by the French near Dunkirk, two ships escaping, one acting as a decoy, while the other finds harbor at Barcelona, and the gold is loaded onto row boats to a hidden cave up the creek and buried in the floor of the cave. Cave and gold never found. (And to be perfectly honest, none of my own research has ever located anything about such a scenario.)
The second story about lost gold locates a cave several miles further upstream, includes references to Button’s Inn (which wasn’t built until 1823), but also includes the gold being brought by the French (to pay their soldiers) during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and mentions a cannon guarding the cave. Our Portage road was built from Barcelona, along and across Chautauqua Creek, to Chautauqua Lake (Mayville), to access the outlet at the other end of that lake, and on to the Allegany River, Ohio River, and Mississippi River, by the French in 1753, at about the same time as another road from Presque Isle (Erie PA) to a fort they built (near Waterford PA), on French Creek that connects to the Allegany River, Ohio River, and Mississippi River. These were to try to protect the French claims of land along the Mississippi River system, from the British. These two portage roads were used for military maneuvers, and there were forts or camp areas built at Barcelona near the mouth of the creek, as well as Chautauqua Lake shore near Mayville… early settlers saw and wrote about the remains (including some circular cook areas, chimney, small cannon left at the Mayville site.) The road was also used for early pioneers to get to and from early Westfield both to settle and to get supplies, etc.
There are some translated French journals of their explorations, including maps dating from the 1700s, which document a lot of this. Also, a British soldier was captured and then escaped who actually watched the French build the road and provided an affidavit about this that agrees closely with the French documents. (Please stay tuned for another BeeLines about the French explorations and journals).
As for gold being buried, it seems there are at least two other historical incidents that have somehow become mixed into the legend. First is that much earlier than the Indians here during the French and Indian War, there were an ancient people who built mounds and forts. Since these ancients were thought to be connected to the gold of the Incas or Mayans, many digs were made, as late as the 1860s, to try to locate “buried treasure” – none ever found. A second historic item is that one of the French expeditions actually buried LEAD plates at several locations along the waterways, as claim markers for the areas. Some of these documented lead plates have been found and are in museums.