Research Material on the Mine

I think bowie was from the same area and friends with this guy ,could this be the loot?The story of $2 million dollars worth of Spanish treasure, stolen by the Pirate Jean Lafitte and dumped into Hendricks Lake near Tatum, has persisted in Rusk County for over 150 years --- and, according to many Tatum residents, "has given rise to about that many treasure hunts".
This romantic story goes that Lafitte and his band robbed the "Santa Rosa" in 1816 in Matagorda Bay on the Texas Gulf of pure silver bars and headed for St. Louis with their loot. The pirates are supposed to have joined with one of Nicholas Trammel's caravans in an attempt to transport the silver to safety. In a mad flight from pursuing Mexican soldiers, Trammel himself was reported to order the six wagons carrying the silver to the edge of Hendricks Lake. There the mules were cut loose and the wagons allowed to roll down the bank into the lake.
Over the years, the legend has undergone many variations. Dates differ --- with dumping said to have happened in 1812, 1816, or 1818. Gossip has it silver bars have been taken from the lake --- three in 1913 by loggers, two by fishermen in the 1920's. Others say the treasure was not silver bars, but silver ingots, gold nuggets, hogshead of gold of rare silver Spanish coins.
At any rate, treasure hunters persist in the belief that something of value may have been dumped into Hendricks Lake in the early 1800's.
One of the first attacks on the lake was by the colorful "Fox" Tatum (who named the nearby town) in the 1890's. Tatum and friends tried to pump the lake dry using a wood-fed boiler pump. Hendricks Lake is spring-fed, and the group abandoned the idea after a month of steady pumping that didn't lower the lake a whit. Since that time, a steady stream of both professional treasure hunters' combines, scuba divers and local amateurs have prowled the steep banks and clear waters of the lake. ...................... By 1817 the privateers of Jean Lafitte and his predecessor, Luis de Aury, were capturing numerous Spanish slavers off the coast of Cuba. The pirate's barracoons, or slave pens, on Galveston Island were often swelled beyond capacity, containing a thousand or more African chattels. Many buyers came to the island to buy slaves at $1.00 per pound, and three brothers, John, Rezin, and James Bowie, were among the pirate's best customers.