By: George A Slovitsky

The Legend: In the spring of 1867, the frontier town of Yuma, excitement ran high when two
Frenchmen halted their pack outfit in front of the W.B. Hooper and Company Store. From one of
their pack mules they unloaded a large amount of rough gold that had been hammered from rusty
looking quartz, bits of which still clung to some of the larger pieces of gold.
The two men were never seen alive again and nothing was ever heard of them. The $8,000 was
still on deposit at the Hooper store 20 years later.
Behind the Legend: One day in April 1867, different accounts give different dates, a party of
two, some say three roughly dressed Frenchmen stopped their pack animals in front of Hooper
& Company's Store in Yuma. A few accounts of this story put the number as high as five men
stopped at Hooper’s. Removing some sacks from their mules they stepped inside and deposited
$8000 worth of gold. A few days later, after purchasing supplies, the strangers mounted and rode
out of town toward the east. The strangers had not gone unnoticed in Yuma and when the word
of their rich deposit got out, there was considerable speculation as to who the men were, and
more particularly, where they had obtained their gold. Five Mexicans decided to find out. They
trailed the Frenchmen east to Agua Caliente where they found them camped at the hot springs
almost on the Yuma-Maricopa County line and directly south of the Eagle Tails Mountains, also
spelled Eagletail, so named because of three columnar shafts resembling the tail of an eagle.
The following morning the Frenchmen set out in a northerly direction, closely followed by the
Mexicans. Suddenly they reversed their direction and faced the Mexicans with the knowledge
that they were being trailed. The Frenchmen then returned to Agua Caliente where they went
through the motions of establishing a permanent camp. The ruse worked. During the night they
silently packed and rode away, leaving the Mexicans fast asleep.
Not to be outsmarted, the Mexicans took up the trail as soon as the Frenchmen were missed.
They followed them into the Eagle Tail Mountains to a point where their tracks took off in
several different directions. This was enough for the Mexicans. They returned to Yuma where
they related their experience.
Two of the Frenchmen were named Georges Le Ponde and Louis Pindree and believed to be
French Canadians. They had found a mine somewhere in the desert east of Julian. This story also
involves a black man with the named Jim. It seems that after the Frenchmen found their gold
Pindree came back to Banner to get supplies. When he decided to have a drink, he made the
mistake of paying with raw gold from a small pouch. That let everyone know that he had a big
find. Around 2AM when he left the bar he was shot, and Jim came to his rescue. Jim took him to
his shack and tried to care for him, but he died. Before Louis died, he said something to Jim and
after that Jim was a man of importance. As Jim was preparing to take some supplies to Georges,
Georges arrived in town. He was furious about his partner’s death and went crazy trying to find
the murderer but had no luck. Georges and Jim left Banner and went back to the mine. About a
month later Jim came back with a buckskin bag full of gold marbles. Gold marbles are leaf gold
rolled into tight balls. Jim also said that Georges went to Yuma with 12 more bags of gold.
In 1868, A. H. Peeples, a pioneer Arizona mining man, while passing through the Harquahala
Mountains, straight north of the Eagle Tails, came upon several Frenchmen, working a placer
near their camp. Sometime later Peeples again passed through the region on his return trip and

found the camp burned. He located one skeleton which he thought to be that of a white man but
was not sure.
In 1873 when King S. Woolsey, pioneer Indian fighter, was chasing a band of Apache’s across
western Arizona, his party passed through the Eagle Tails. Following the trail which crossed
through Tenhachape Pass, they came upon a pile of rich ore. Obviously, it had been placed there
by parties unknown, and no attempt had been made to conceal it. The ore was taken to Yuma and
there it was identified as the same type as deposited by the Frenchmen several years earlier. The
only explanation was that the Frenchmen, suddenly overtaken by hostile Indians, had dumped
their gold ore to better facilitate their escape. Had they not been chased down and killed, it was
reasoned that they would have later recovered their ore.
In 1889 a middle-aged Mexican arrived in Yuma and hired Old Bill Bear to haul water and
supplies into the Eagle Tails. Enroute to the mountains the Mexican told Bear that, as a boy, he
had run away from home. He fell in with some French prospectors who offered to feed and
clothe him if he would cook and take care of their camp in the mountains. The camp was near a
spring, with a cottonwood and large mesquite tree nearby.
Each morning the prospectors left the camp and disappeared into a canyon. Each night they
returned, the Mexican related, with something in yeast powder cans.
I was curious, the Mexican continued, and when they were away, I looked in the cans. The cans
contained large and small nuggets of gold.
I carefully trailed them the next day and found them in a canyon about one-fourth mile from
camp busily engaged in taking out nuggets. They must have seen me for that night they eyed me
suspiciously. They moved the cans to a hiding place and beat me so much I feared for my life.
One morning after they left for their diggings and got together some blankets, food and water
and departed. I was careful to cover my tracks. I had to hide from Indians and finally I reached
Agua Caliente. The Frenchmen disappeared. I think the Indians killed them. I am now on my
way to the Lost Frenchman Diggings. I know the way and can go right to it, but it had been too
many years. Things seen in childhood hill sides, arroyos, the shapes of mountains are not the
same when seen in later years.
Some years later two skeletons were discovered in the mountains to the east, but there was no
way of identifying them. Many Oldtimers believe that those piles of bleaching bones were all
that was left of the two Frenchmen.
Lincoln Fowler and a brother prospecting in the Harquahala country in 1889 discovered an old
working on a gold ledge and the remains of a camp nearby. There was nothing to indicate when
or by whom it had been worked. Closer examination proved the outcrop to have been a rich
pocket, but only a few small pieces of the were found scattered about.
My Notes: A couple of items that need to be addressed:
1. Some accounts and descriptions indicate there may have been as many as five Frenchmen.
Was Jim considered a Frenchman?
2. I was not able to find Tenhachape Pass in any maps new or old in the Eagle Tails but did find
Tehachapi Pass. Spellings of old places are often spelled differently by different individuals
and their backgrounds/schooling.
3. I was not able to locate the towns of Banner or Julian but suspect they are somewhere
between Yuma and Agua Caliente and the Gila River north to the Harquahala Mountains,
west to the Colorado River. Just a small area to investigate.
Experienced miners of that time pointed out that it was very unlikely that the Frenchmen would
have packed their ore all the way from the Harquahala country to the Tenhachape pass when it

would have been much easier for them to have taken it to the Hassayampa river and ground it in
arrastres. Many of the old-time prospectors and desert rats around Yuma have looked for the rich
outcropping from which the Frenchmen took their ore. Most of the searching has been done in
the Tenhachape pass country where the pile of rich ore was found by Woolsey and his men.
The firm of W. B. Hooper and Company was later changed to Hooper, Barney, and Company,
but is now out of business. George Sears of Ajo and Gunsight always claimed there was plenty
of gold in the Eagle Tails Mountains. George had about 25 pounds of rusty looking gold quartz
to prove it.
George was on his way from Phoenix to Ajo one time and decided to detour west and
prospect the Eagle Tails Mountains. He spent the night after a hard rain near a small depression
on the side of a wash in the Eagle Tails and the next morning while getting breakfast, noticed his
hobbled mules drinking water from what looked like a shallow prospect hole. There were some
loose rocks on the small dump below the hole. After breakfast he packed up and when passing by
the hole filled his canteen and threw some rusty looking pieces of rock into the pack with his grip
to balance the load more evenly. As his food supply diminished, he found it necessary to balance
his load several times by picking up rocks along the way. When George finally reached the
Gunsight mine 16 miles east of Ajo there was not much food left, but in unloading his packs, he
discovered that the rocks he had put in first in the Eagle Tails Mountains were chuck full of free
gold. George was never quite sure whether he could find the place where he picked up the golden
rocks that morning, but he had the rocks to prove to any doubting Thomas that there is gold in
the Eagle Tails.
Whether the shallow hole from which old George Sears took the rusty chunks of rich gold
quartz has any connection with the Lost Frenchman mine would be difficult to say. However, the
ore found by Sears seemed to be the same kind from which the Frenchmen pounded their $8,000
worth of gold and is said to be the same kind of ore that was found by King Woolsey and his
men in the Tenhachape pass country.
The story is sound, but no two accounts agree on most of the major details. If you could find
the old records of Hooper & Co. (mercantile store in Yuma, later Hooper, Barney & Co., long
out of business), it stands to reason there may be information that could lead you to the location
of the Lost Frenchmen Mine.
Add to all this, there is some reason to believe the Frenchmen re-discovered the original
Penhachape Mine. There are many who will agree that the Penhachape Mine and the Lost
Frenchmen are the same, but the Lost Frenchmen Mine may still be waiting in the Eagle Trails
Mountains for some lucky person to find it. Good Luck and Happy Hunting!!!