The LEGEND speaks of how it is valued at about $350,000 or in all probability much more specified the latest spike in the cost of gold and it mentions how Indigenous People in america understood of the tale of the “Cross on the Rock” as handed down by their elders. Also recognised as the misplaced treasure of Borie it is conjectured to be 1 of the tiny known caches of hidden prosperity but to be discovered in The usa in the middle of a woodland paradise identified as God’s State, Potter County, Usa.
Could this treasure however exist?
Intrigued by the legend I embarked upon a journey of discovery searching for the source of tale identified that if it existed it was to be mine.
When this treasure was concealed, The us was nevertheless a huge wilderness in the 1600’s. Couple other than the hardiest explorers and fur trappers had ventured further more inland than the coastal colonies. On the other hand when Louis Frontenac arrived in 1672 Canada was no extended the toddler colony it experienced been when Richelieu founded the Business of A person Hundred Associates. Via the endeavours of Louis XIV and Colbert it experienced assumed the sort of an arranged province and Frontenac as the new governor sought to create controlled parishes and trade possibilities from Montreal to New Orleans in “New France”. By way of armed conflict Frontenac expelled English Colonists and subdued the Native Americans boasting a vast territory for France which was later on marked by guide plates buried in the floor as determined by Celoron de Beinville and mapped by Father Pierre Bonnecamps, a “Jesuit Mathematician. The fur trade in certain flourished building the wealth that Frontenac sought and the growth of “New France” was progressing promptly.
My exploration yielded that mid in the 1680’s, just about a complete century ahead of white settlers commenced to permanently occupy what is now Potter County, a modest get together of French Canadians from the fur investing institution that belonged to Louis Frontenac and Robert Cavelier remaining New Orleans by boat, for the return vacation to Montreal. I rapidly found out faults in the legend as recorded by many others. I experienced been deceived in the particulars of the journey most deliberately by an individual desirous of retaining the magic formula 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 shortly arrived to understand that a vacation down the Mississippi was a just one way ticket in the late 1600’s. A folly to consider that 1 could pull rafts or paddle canoes counter present for about 3000 miles back again to Montreal in an expeditious way by means of a hostile and unsettled wilderness! The return trips were being generally accomplished by suggests 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 Terrific Lakes to Montreal. The rivers ended up the highways of the 1600-1700’s with the only trails remaining those of the Indigenous Individuals roads experienced but to be created in any of the inside 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 get together designed the uneventful trip all-around the tip of Florida and up the East Coastline of America to the Chesapeake Bay and began the next leg and a lot more arduous portion of their journey. The Susquehanna River a fairly shallow system of water snakes languidly by means of Pennsylvania interspersed with white water and rapids that are regarded to wreak havoc on Northward voyages based upon the season. The dangers of ascending rapids, portaging small waterfalls and evading hostile Indians by Pennsylvania’s Wyoming area have been very well documented. As the rivers narrowed preventing Indians turned progressively unattainable. Considerably outnumbered and pursued via the wilderness the Frenchmen grew to become significantly wary noticing that they had grow to be the prey in significantly more than a cat and mouse activity alongside the West Branch River.
With place fastened and mapped by the Jesuits the exasperated Frenchmen buried their treasure for harmless retaining in the vicinity of the confluence of two rivers choosing that it was safer to secret it briefly and return for it with a much larger expeditionary force than to hazard losing their lives and the treasure to the Seneca war get together. The exact place 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 established to stay behind to decoy and transform the savages to Christianity as the voyagers proceeded under go over of darkness up the Sinnemahoning River and on to New York eluding their enemies and escaping to Montreal.
Louis Frontenac was recalled back again to France shortly after his fur investing get together arrived in Montreal unable to get to his revenue, and Cavelier died in 1687 at 1 of the trading outposts that he had helped to build.
Frontenac returned to Quebec in the autumn of 1689, just after the Iroquois massacred the folks of Lachine and just right before they descended upon all those of La Chesnaye. The common mood was a single of terror and despair. Quelling the warring redmen and securing his outposts from English squatters led Frontenac on a military services campaign that lasted various a long time. Upon his victory he right away despatched solders to the Pennsylvania wilds to get his gold. With his well being declining Louis Frontenac was unable to accompany his adult males and on the 28th of November 1698 Frontenac died at the Château St Louis. His fortune now destined to continue to be in the ground.
Frontenac’s enemies ended up fond of expressing that he utilized his place to make illicit profits from the fur trade. Over and above query he traded to some extent, but it would be severe to accuse him of venality or peculation on the toughness of this sort of evidence as exists. There is a solid probability that the king appointed him in the expectation that he would increase his profits from sources which lay outside his wage. As a member of the King’s Court it was predicted that to undertake these a desolate appointment in the new globe it would go unsaid that any riches that could be garnered would be one’s to maintain. Public view differs from age to age relating to the latitude which may well be authorized a community servant in these types of issues. Underneath a democratic régime the typical is really various from that which has existed, for the most section, underneath autocracies in previous ages. Frontenac was a male of distinction who approved an vital article at a little income. We may possibly infer that the king was eager to allow for him a thing from perquisites. If so, his profits from the fur trade become a issue of degree. So lengthy as he stored inside of the bounds of explanation and decency, the government elevated no objection. Frontenac unquestionably was not a governor who pillaged the colony to feather his have nest. If he took income, they were not assumed too much by anybody except Duchesneau who was Frontenac’s rival in the King’s courtroom who experienced been snubbed for the place of Governor. The king experienced recalled Frontenac not simply because he was venal, but simply because he was quarrelsome and returned him upon noticing that he was exactly the proper person for the task.
Indigenous People in america understood of the rock and conjecturing as to its importance produced their legend to clarify its existence.
In close proximity to Keating until the railroad was constructed in 1901, could be found the “Cross on the Rock” a wonderful organic question a best cross of heroic proportions carved on a rock along the river. The good thing is an excellent photograph of the remarkable purely natural curiosity is in existence considering that it due to the fact has sloughed absent.