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The Forged "Molina Document" Only in recent years has there been a facsimile of a document which treasure authors have come to call the "Molina Document." The name comes from a story that someone made up about a non-existent Spanish Nun named Micaela Molina, who supposedly brought the document from Spain and then translated it. It is interesting that her translation of it makes some of the same mistakes that John D. Mitchell made in his 1933 English version of the document. In fact, it appears that the document, or facsimile of it, did not even exist in 1933 but was written afterwards to give credence to what Mitchell said at that time. In 1933 he claimed that he got his English translation from a document that an "old Mexican" had given him some twenty years previously. By 1953, however, he had contrived several stories out of the one document and credited the information in it to:
1) "...stories told by some of the descendants of the Spanish Conquistadores;"
2) "...an old document said to have been copied from church records in Spain;"
3) "...many old Spanish documents;"
4) "...an old volume in the Arizona State Library at Phoenix;"
5) "...old church records brought from Spain ... by Don Santiago Diaz, former governor of Lower California."
Now, other treasure authors have connected the non-existent "Sister Molina" to the imaginary "Santiago Diaz," who was never a governor of Baja California, as being related. The story gets more outlandish with each passing generation. The one thing that becomes obvious in tracking the so-called "Molina Document" is that it was written either "by," "for," or "to fool" John D. Mitchell.
Click on the blue word to see the actual facsimile of page one of the forged document. If you have trouble reading it you can go to an exact, word-for-word, transcription that maintains all the original punctuation and spelling. Or you can click on translation to see exactly what it says in English. A full analysis of the forgery is also included which shows why it is not an old Spanish document or anything that even resembles one.

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Last Updated: November 1, 2003
http://www.nps.gov/tuma/home.htm