Appendix
A.
Mineria Report on the Mineral Riches of Sonora
Among the five-and-twenty states and territories that compose the Mexican confederation, there is no other which contains in its respective territory the like wonderful mineral riches which abound in the state of which we treat. This would appear almost fabulous; but there is proof enough from the testimony of many residents of that state, and from the assertion of travelers, from the evidences which the archives of the various missions exhibit, and from the royal registry of mines (reales de minas), and, lastly, from the indubitable fact of the production of great quantities of gold and silver from the mines and placers of this state, considering the small amount of forces, and its isolation from all the principal settlements of the republic by reason of the distance which separates it from them.
In fact, many metals of universal estimation, such as gold, silver, mercury, copper, and iron, in a pure state, in grains, in masses, or in dust, as well as mixed with other metals, superficially or in veins, are found in the extensive territory of Sonora; lead, or combinations of lead, for aiding in extracting metals by fire, and for the construction of munitions of war, amianthus or incombustible crystal, divers ores of copperas, exquisite marble, alabaster, and jasper of various colors, as well as quarries of stone of chrispa and magnetic stones, muriate and carbonate of soda, saltpetre or nitrate of potassa, are, in enumeration, the mineral productions which are found in abundance in the territory of the state of Sonora, which comprehends the region from the river of Fort Monte Clarasal at the south to the Gila at the north, and from the Sierra Madre at the east to the Colorado at the northwest.
To the disgrace of the nation, these authentic and exact notices of the marvelous riches of this remote state have availed nothing in determining speculators (empresarios) to resort to those places in pursuit of a fortune so certain, or at least to have avoided, by the means of colonization, the loss which is feared of this inestimable jewel.
The territory of the state of Sonora lacks nothing but security [from incursions of Indians] in order that the hand of man may be profusely recompensed for his labor. Virgin soils, where the agricultural fruits of all climates not only flourish, but many of these improve in quality; navigable rivers, which contribute in part to the easy transportation of the products to the ports of the Pacific for exportation and consumption; mines and placers of precious metals, in many of which there is no necessity of capital to explore and collect them—are not these stimulants enough to attract there a population thrifty and civilized? In order to ascertain the mineral riches which the nation may lose in a short time, we call attention to the mineral statistics which follow, although they are imperfect and diminutive.
As already we have said, the whole of Sonora is mineral; but as among us we only give this name to those places in which there have been discovered and worked a conjunction of veins, it results that the places in this state to which for this cause has been given the name of mineral are thirty-four. Some of the mines are amparadas [viz., worked sufficient to confer a legal title to the occupant], and are imperfectly in a state of operation. The names of all of these two classes, which are sixteen in all, are Hermosillo, San Javier, Subiate, Vayoreca, Alamas, Babicanara, Batuco, La Alameda, Rio Chico, El Aguaja, Aigame, El Luaque, Saguaripa, La Trinidad, San Antonio, and El Zoni.
The remaining eighteen are found abandoned, some for the want of water, and others for the want of laborers or capital, and by the fear which the barbarous Indians inspire. The names of these last minerals are San Juan de Sonora, that of the Sierra at the northwest of Guaymas, Arizuma, Bacauchi, Antunes, San José de Gracia, El Gavilau, San Ildefonso de la Cienequilla, San Francisco el Calou, Santa Rosa, San Antonio de la Huenta, Vadoseco Sobia, Mulatos, Basura, Alamo-Muerto, and San Perfecto.
In the same state have been discovered twenty-one placers; of these, one is of virgin silver, in grains and plates (planchas), and twenty of pure gold, in grains and dust; but as nearly all these are situated in the mineral districts (minerales) already mentioned, the names of those which are not given are the following: Agua Caliente, Quitovac, Las Palomas, La Canaca, and Totahiqui. With the exception of three, to which gold-hunters from time to time resort to relieve their necessities, all the others remain abandoned.
There was only one mineral district actually in work at the close of the last century and the beginning of the present; those now actually in process of being worked are fourteen, and their names are La Grande, La Quintera, El Subiate, Bulbaucda Europita, Vayoreca, La Cotera, Santo Domingo, Noercheran, La Sibertao, Minas-Núevas, El Tajo, Minas Prietas, and another near La Grande.
From the mineral districts (minerales) abandoned there ought to be inferred an increased number of mines, which are in the same condition, but we do not know their names, and we have only notices of the twenty following: Pimas, La Tarasca, Ubalama, Ojito de San Roman, Yaquis, La Guerita, Noaguila, Las Animas, Afuerenos, Piedras-verdes Navares, La Calera, Caugrejos, Guillarmena, San Atilano, San Teodoro, and El Gavilau. In those in Pinas, and in one of those of the mineral of San José de Gracia, have been found considerable amounts of pure silver deposited in their veins, and mineral taken from San Teodoro has produced one half silver. In extracting the silver from the ore in this place, we ought to mention that the greater part of these mines are susceptible of great bonanzas, from not having been worked extensively, as their proprietors abandoned them when the metals failed to appear upon the surface, and when the exploration was a little more costly.
There are eleven haciendas in the State of Sonora for purifying the metals which the mines and placers produce, without taking into the account many little establishments, with from two to five horse-mills, with one bad furnace for the fusion of metals. Three of these are situated in Alamas, five in Aduana, one in Promontorio, another in Tatagiosa, and the last in Minas Nuevas (New Mines). There are many abandoned mines, as the rubbish and ruins indicate, which we have noticed, in all the abandoned mineral districts.
The methods which they have observed in extracting the metals from the ore are the patio [by application of quicksilver in an open yard], and that of fusion, with the aid of some metals that assist the fusion; but from the fact that the quicksilver augments considerably the price, the few that there carry on the business have preferred the process of fusion to that of the patio, from being less costly, and because the docility of the metals afford facilities to this process.
No machines of new invention have been introduced into that state, either for the drainage of the mines or for facilitating the extracting of the metals. This ought not to surprise us, in places so desert and distant from the metropolis, unaccustomed to the vivifying movements of commerce, and to the necessities which civilization has engendered in the more important populations in the central parts of the republic. That which is rare, and ought to call attention, is the exception of some mines, where malacatos [water-sacks of bull-hides, drawn up by a windlass] are used for discharging water. In almost all those which have thus been worked, they have not had an opportunity to exhibit their riches, as the abundance of water in many of them was the principal cause of their abandonment.
The greatest difficulty in the way of giving an exact idea of the products of the mines and placers of Sonora is the scandalous contraband exportations of gold and silver which are made from the ports of the Sea of Cortéz [Gulf of California] on the one hand, and, on the other, the difficulties that have presented themselves to his Excellency, the Governor of that state, for giving the statistical notices which have been sought on repeated occasions by the Junta of the Mineria, both of which causes have made difficult the account which we furnish; but by those which they themselves furnished of the production of those minerals before and since the independence of the nation, and by the exhibits of various witnesses presented in the remission of bars which from thence they made to the capital of the republic, when the ports of the Pacific were sealed to foreign commerce, the production of precious metals having yielded in divers epochs not far from 4500 pounds of silver, without considering the gold (abundant enough in placers and in rivers), and from what is known, the quantities of this metal extracted have been considerable, and in more abundance than in the mineral districts of the other states of the republic.
Attention having been much called to the ley and weight of the grains of pure gold found on the surface in Quitovac, Cienequilla, and San Francisco, as well as those masses of virgin silver found in Arizuma, which wonderful riches stimulated the colonial government to despoil the proprietors of it, and afterward the King of Spain, in declaring that it pertained to his royal patrimony.
All those places in Sonora which are actually abandoned, as well as all the lands of that state, are susceptible of producing great riches. The reasons on which these assertions are founded are those which M. Saint Clair Duport mentions in speaking of the probable variation there will be in value of gold and silver in time, by reason of the great extractions hereafter of these metals, particularly in California [this was before the annexation of California] and Sonora, where, as in the Ural Mountains, and the Altai Mountains of Central Asia, gold is extremely abundant, and because in the placers mentioned explorers have recognized gold in dust, which they have not washed for want of water in some, and from the difficulty that exists in others in order to work them, such as those of Arizuma and La Papagueria.
Nothing could be said in relation to the number of operatives who are employed in working the mines of this state, nor the day-laborers; nor in respect to articles consumed there, as well in the digging of the metals as in extracting them from the ores, because, as has already been said, his Excellency the Governor has not been able to give the notices which have been sought, and there are no other better authorities through whom information can be procured. For in this state there are no mining courts,84 but the ordinary judges of first instance are the authorities which take cognizance of matters which occur in the department of the Mineria.
There are no companies for the exploration of the mines in that remote state. Some inhabitants, in distant periods, have procured the formation of numerous caravans with the character of companies, and with the object of collecting precious metals, which they encountered in the placers of Arizuma and of Papagueria, but until now they have not been able to hold with effect undertakings so laudable.
Various are the causes on account of which the riches which lie buried through all parts of the immense territory of the State of Sonora have not been explored. Some of these reasons have already been referred to, but, for greater clearness, we take this opportunity to recapitulate them all. The first, which are much noted, are the following:
1st. The absolute want of personal security.
2d. The scarcity of population, and of the means of subsistence for the few hands that they were able to have devoted to working mines in the immediate vicinity of hostile Indians.
3d. The irregularity and the want of experience and capital in those who have undertaken the exploration and the extraction of metals, which has occasioned the abandonment of this class of speculations whenever they presented any difficulties, or commenced to be more costly by failing to produce metals upon the surface of the earth. Some certain speculations which have been directed with regard to the rules which regulate mineral industry, and have been prosecuted with capital, have well compensated the labors and efforts of the proprietors.
Gold and silver, as above said, are not the only mineral productions of Sonora. In the part of Muchachos, situated in the Sierra Madre, between Tueson and Tubac, and in Mogollon, a place situated in the mountains of Apuchuria, in those of Papagueria, and near the Colorado, are found great masses of virgin iron, and abundant veins of the same metal. Cinnabar was discovered in 1802 in the hill of Santa Teresa, situated in the mineral of Rio Chico; and in the hills which are at the north of the Colorado, it has been found in the past age. Copper is also found in Antunes, Tonuco, Bacauchí, Pozo de Crisante, Sierra de Guadalupe, Sierra de la Papagueria, and particularly in the Couanea, from whence have been extracted great quantities of this metal, with a great ley of gold. Metals of lead (metales plomosos) abound in Agua Caliente, Alamo-Muerto, La Papagueria, Arispe, and La Cieneguilla. From these two last points have been taken considerable quantities of them, for supplying all other mines of the state [to aid in fusion], and for munitions of war. Copperas, or sulphate of iron, is abundant in San Javier, San Antonio de la Huerta, and Agua Caliente. In the first of these placers a vein runs from south to north, from pieces of which, dissolved in water, there results a tint which, by evaporation, forms into grains, and produces the same effect as the tint of China. In Cucurpe is amianto, or incombustible crystal, which the ancients so much valued. Marbles of various classes and colors, as well as alabasters and jaspers, are found in Opasura, Hermosillo, Uores, La Campana, and other points; but we do not know as yet the place from which the Aztecs obtained the beautiful reddish marble which they used in the construction of their divinity of Chapultepec, which is preserved in the National Museum, and which, according to all conjectures and probabilities, proceeded from the quarries of marble of that state. There are quarries of the stone of chrispa, and even the magnet in Alamas, Hermosillo, in Sierras of the frontier, and in the causada of Barbitas, ten leagues distant from Hermosillo, near the route of La Cieneguilla. Muriate and carbonate of soda, saltpetre, or nitrate of potassa, are found in the margin of the rivers which empty into the Gulf of Cortéz [of California], and particularly in the mouths of the Colorado.