Well, my father had seen a map owned by a fellow mason. Mason's are charged to always tell the truth especially to other masons. He thought the map a fake. For whatever reason he thought the mine was south west of Phoenix, not in the Superstitions. There is a lot of mining and way more prospecting between here and Phoenix. I'm guessing if the Dutchman actually had a working mine it's been found and worked out. A whole lot (all most all) of those small claims yielded a little and played out. That'd be my guess for the Dutchman.

I've spent a little time with a metal detector out in the desert. I've never found much, but it's a pretty good excuse to be out and about. I've worked the tailings piles of at least 100 small claims. Most of what I found amounted to dust-too fine to recover. A buddy and I actually used Mercury to amalgamate the gold then squeezed it through a chamois skin to be able to scrape the gold off the skin. In a year we recovered way less than an ounce. He got Leukemia and died. Probably wasn't worth it.

DeSoto's gold is interesting. There is pretty good documentation that it existed and there is no doubt the natives pursued his men hard down the Mississippi. Only 6 of them survived and none went back to collect the gold. Wasn't worth it to them...

It's a fun subject for a certain group of people, me included. Thanks for a concise report.