The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1920-03-25
MARVELLOUS JEWELRY
BY CHIBCHA INDIANS
Sixty-eight Pieces Dug From One
Ancient Grave Weighed
Sixteen Pounds.

gpon the long table in the dining
room of an ultra modern apartment
in unromantic West End avenue, Ne"
York, one day not long ago lay spread
out treasure that carried the thoughts
of it's beholders thousands of miles
away and six centuries back.
Gold! Not the minted tokens of
governments solvency, nor yet such
melted down bars as are corded up so
neatly in federal treasury vaults.
This was Chibcha gold. Breast
plates, aprons, bracelets, nose rings,
scepter heads, chimes; the loot OF a
chieftain's or princesse' grave in the
mountains of Antioqui, Colombia
the New Granada Of the days of the
Spanish conquest. 1t is (this on the
word of competent archaeologists)
the greatest collection of preconquest
gold ever assem- bled; it is, in fact,
almost the only collection of any pre-
tension.
What is it worth? What would
Solomon's crown be worth if it were
found?
But if you insist upon sordid de-
tails the collection, 50 major pieces,
weighs 16 troy pounds, all pure gold.
The Muyscas, or Chibchas, were
race of unknown antiquity. Their de-
scendants live today in Colombia, but
their traditions tell us little and their
forebears left no written records. 1t
is known, however, that prior to the
Spanish conquest they lived in settled
communities, mostly in the mountain
Gus regions back from the coast.
Unlike the Incas, the Chibchas have
left no massive buildings, no temples,
no roads. But in the graves of their
priests, their chiefs, and their prin-
cesses they left gold ornaments and
implements which equal in skill and
beauty of workmanship and design
anything the Incas made.
Their love of gold was chaste and
pure; there was no taint of CONNER
cialism or cupidity in it. Gold was to
them merely thing of beauty. 1t
had no commercial value; copper was
the more highly priced, for they knew
how to make tools from copper. Gold
was to them what the plumage OF
birds lis to us-merely the material
from which things of beauty could be
made.
They swathed their. dead in leaves
and grass and buried them in graves,
not i'm tombs, with their important
dignitaries they buried their posses
sions.
Then came the Spaniards. Alonzo
de ojeda, touched the coast of Colon
bia in 1499-1501. Columbus touched
it on the last voyage'in 1902. Gonzalo
Imenez de Quesada landed in 1886
81, and penetrated to Bogota, the
capital of the Chibchas. After the
explorers came the hordes OF adven-
turers lured by the one lure-gold!
s The Spaniards forced the Indians
to mine gold at the end of the lash,
and, prodded from behind by pixies
and bound together with chains,
made them carry it down to the sea
coast and aboard galleons, and at the
!; lash end, too, they made the indians
tell where their graves were and dig
them up for the gold ornaments.
The Spaniards swept as clean as
they could, but they couldn't find
every Chibcha grave. So nowadays,
in the interior of mountainous Anti
oquia, it is custom to stake an In
dian or half breed to GRUB and
clothes and send him out to search
for buried treasure. The graves are
tunjos; the searchers are tunjeros.
Thus Aurelio Gutierrez of Ayepel
kept grubstaking tunjeros for five
years. They brought back small
pieces now and then; enough to keep
up his interest, but never anything OF
importance.
Early in 1919 they were exploring
likely looking spots in the neighbor-
hood of Ayapel, village whose In
dian name means appropriately
naming pieces Senor Gutierrez took
practiced eyes were spying out the in
dications of early Chibcha occupancy
They dug into many graves that, con-
tanned little or nothing of value. Then
they made the richest find since the
early conquest period. sixty-eigh1
pieces were found in one grave.
Senior Gutierrez was delighted; he
might we'll have been. Here was
something worth while. 1t occurred
to him, too, that the stuff was Wortf
more in its original form than melted