Finding Lost Treasures: La Noche Triste
“The night of sorrows” - that is how Cortez described the defeat of the Spanish armed forces at the hand of Aztec Indians. Cortez and his men were surrounded in Tenochtitlan, the mythical city of gold in what’s today modern Mexico. They were holding the Aztec ruler, Moctezuma, hostage. When Moctezuma died, the Aztecs grew violent and stormed the city.
Cortez planned an escape by night and instructed his men to take as much treasure as they could carry. They were hoping to slip by the Aztecs but were apprehended and a bloody battle ensued in which no man escaped uninjured. Many Spanish infantry were killed, unable to flee because they were so weighed under with booty. They were fatally injured by spears or drowned in the lake that the city of Tenochtitlan was built on. A lot more of the infantry would have died except the Aztecs stopped to retrieve their silver and gold. The date was 1520.
Though Cortez escaped with his life and later returned with great force to take down the Aztec Empire, one query remains to this day: What has happened to the treasure of gold and silver that the Spanish squads tried to cart off?
It is a historic fact the treasure is real. Its value has been estimated to be worth close to 1/2 of all the wealth ever found in Spanish South America. Some of the things that disappeared included solid bands of gold and silver, semi-precious jewels, a solid gold life-size alligator head and many collars made of gold. To this date, that treasure has never been found.
There are countless speculations about what’s happened to the treasure. One theory is that a significant part of it sank into the lake and was covered by rubble when Cortez returned to raze the city to the ground. Treasure hunting has continued in the area to this day. The lake bed was even drained and dragged in attempts to find it.
Other hypotheses suggest the Aztecs hid the silver and gold in the close by hills or perhaps in another field some distance away. This is believable; particularly when you keep in mind that the Spanish conquerors brought illnesses like smallpox with them in which the Indians were defenseless. A severe pandemic in short finished the indigenous population in that area. So possibly the understanding on where the treasure was hidden expired with them.
Some may wonder if treasure hunting can be lucrative. There are enough success stories to prove it absolutely can be. In 1998, Mel Fisher found the wreck of a Spanish treasure ship in the Caribbean that was loaded down with 100,000 gold coins. He rapidly became a multi-millionaire as a consequence. In 2005, $10,000,000,000 worth of treasure-in the type of 6 hundred barrels of gold coins-was found at “Crusoe” Island close to the coast of Chile.
There is more advanced hardware for treasure hunting being developed all the time. A mini robot that can scan 50 meters into the ground was used to find the gold coins on Crusoe Island. With new equipment like this, it’s worth having another look at the tale of La Noche Triste and see if the mythical lost treasure can be found.
Tom one of the main contributors to the base knowledge, as well as, to the progress and advancement of Satellite Treasure Map Info overlaid on Google Maps. Tom has accumulated this data through many years of seeking out concealed truths thru many various sources.