Prehistoric Colombian Gold Collectiona By H. M. CRAIN, Director Department of Publications Colorado School of Mines Prehistoric fishhooks of solid gold, dredged from the ancient bed of the San Juan River in Colombia, South America, by modern Yankee mining machinery, have arrived by air express at the museum of the Colorado School of Mines. With them came many other trinkets hand fashioned by South American Indians who fished in the San Juan before the Spaniards came. There is a golden necklace of some ninety hammered beads strung on golden wire; a little golden serpent; nuggets pierced for wearing as ornaments; ear and nose rings; a thin gold disc with a hole in the center, resembling a Chinese coin, and other things beaten out of the native gold by men who knew no other metal. To the Incas of Peru, gold was a sacred metal, reserved for use in temples and royal palaces. But the river folk of Colombia went fishing with it. The last three years in the hoary history of those thirty two golden fishhooks, now under glass at Golden, make as fascinating a tale as would their first three years, could time be turned back to reveal them now. When those hooks got snagged in the meshes of the machine age, all sorts of things happened to them. For centuries they lay mingled with the black sands at bedrock in the ooze of the San Juan. Then along came Frank M. Estes, Mines Graduate of 1902 with the degree of Engineer of Mines, now manager, for Compania Minera Choco Pacifico, South America, with headquarters at Buenaventura, Colombia. Perhaps the natives who made those barbless hooks with exquisitely tapered, still sharp points, panned their raw gold originally from those same river sands where the big buckets of five huge, modern dredges found them and dragged them back to light and a new role in human affairs. The gold and platinum miners weren't seeking archeological specimens. They were after dust and nuggets. But as the dredges worked, from time to time the golden trinkets appeared in the "pay dirt," mingled with raw flakes and grains. How did they get there? Prehistoric men, too, have "fisherman's luck." And when a big one got away with the hook in his jaw, the fisherman didn't feel too bad about it. He just dug himself up another nugget and pounded out another hook. Now, with gold worth $35 an ounce, enough gold to make the hook would buy a complete fishing outfit, reel, rod, creel, tackle, boots and all. How the golden necklace got in the river may well have been a prehistoric tale of tragedy. Possibly it sank with the wearer, whose bones have long since vanished. The gold, imperishable, untarnishing, survives. In July, 1942, President M. F. Coolbaugh received a letter from Estes. Estes had taken the prehistoric hooks and trinkets, together with 11.15 troy ounces of native gold flakes and dust from the San Juan to Bogota, the Colombian capital, intending to mail them to Golden—the trinkets for the museum, the dredged gold sample for the school's collection of native gold from mines of the world. Colombian customs officials pounced upon the treasure and impounded it under laws of that land which forbid shipment of gold out of the country. Estes suggested that if Dr. Coolbaugh would write Colombian authorities, expressing a desire to have the seized collection for the school museum, the trouble would be cleared up. Dr. Coolbaugh did. That started a sheaf of correspondence the better part of an inch thick. Meanwhile, the marines landed on Guadalcanal. MacArthur took back New Guinea. Eisenhower struck in North Africa and Montgomery chased Rommel out of Egypt. Back and forth went letters between Golden and Colombia, in English and Spanish. Red tape unravels slowly. Estes wrote that the stuff was dredged in the jungle, 100 miles (or one hour's flight) north of the Pacific port of Buenaventura, and 300 miles southeast of Panama, where the average rainfall is 282 inches a year, and 80 percent of that falls at night. The five dredges, he wrote, lift a million cubic yards of muck a month from the San Juan, and the pay dirt is gold and platinum, about half and half. Even correspondence with South American customs officials has to end sometime. Eventually, a deal was arranged. Dr. Coolbaugh signed an official request for the stuff. That was notarized. The Colorado secretary of state attested the signature of the notary. The United States secretary of state attested the signature of the Colorado official and signed his name in Washington, in the presence of the Colombian ambassador to the United States. That did it. The gold moved fast then, out of a Bogota vault, aboard a fast air liner it went and was delivered in Golden a matter of hours later on October 30, 1945—just three years and 101 days after Estes started to send it. No one could appraise the gold trinkets. As museum pieces, they are worth far more than their solid gold weight. The dust, at current prices, is worth more than $1,500. The fishhooks have no barbs, no eyelets for a line. Apparently, they were fixed in the end of sticks, baited, pushed under water. The fish bit, the fisherman pulled too hard and another prehistoric artifact was off to the showcases of the twentieth century. The native gold flakes and dust are now on display in the display safe in the collection of native gold. The artifacts have been placed in the show case in the museum by Dr. J. Harlan Johnson, curator of the museum. Mines Magazine November 1945