XII Antique Methods of Mining
Mina la Noria, Michoacan, Mexico,
December 4th.
We left the mines of Inguran early Saturday morning. We were up at four-thirty, and by five-thirty had packed and breakfasted, desayuno, and almuerzo combined. The traveling Mexican eats early and, while he may take a midday snack, it rarely rises to the dignity of the comida, and when the day’s journey is over, like the two morning meals, the comida and cena, are united into one. Our breakfast consisted of fried chicken and rice—rice so delicately fried that each grain was encased in a crisp and dainty shell, and each mouthful cracked with relish between your teeth. Eggs are always to be had. In Spain and Cuba an egg is called huevo, in Mexico the refinement of language substitutes the word blanquillo (little whitey). It is a courtesy to ask your hostess for blanquillos. It would be ill-bred to ask her for huevos. It is also a courtesy, to say, when you address her, señorita. If she protests she is a señora, mother of a family and long past the age of a señorita, you exclaim “it is impossible,” for since she looks so young, she must be a señorita. The blunt American manner which calls an egg a huevo, and a dame a señora, is regarded as unpardonably rude.
By 5:45 we were climbing down the three hundred feet of mountain side, through the mining village, over an ancient paved roadway about four feet wide, the paving stones set in so firmly between the curbs that the floods and wear of the centuries and seasons have left it as intact and solid as when first laid. The Spaniards built many such roadways to their mines, when they worked the Indians as slaves, centuries ago. The mining village was picturesque. The miner, when he goes to work, builds his own house and pays no rent. The walls are upright poles and the roof is a palm leaf thatch. When he quits his job he abandons his house, although he sometimes carries away the roof. Near each dwelling is built a sort of Dutch oven of clay, making an oven and stove combined. In it the bread is baked; upon it most of the cooking is carried on. Housekeeping is a simple process in this tropical land.
The mines of Inguran are situated at an altitude of about two thousand feet above the sea, and the dry air, not too light nor too heavy, seems to agree perfectly with the Americans there at work, and restored me to a vigor which the thin air of the highlands had partly relaxed. We were entertained, of an evening, at the delightful bungalow of the superintendent of the inside work, a Mr. O’Mahondra, a member of the distinguished family of that name of Richmond, Virginia. Originally he began the practice of law in Chicago, when, his wife being threatened with consumption, he fled with her to El Paso. There she gained nothing and he carried her further south and, abandoning the law, took this post at Inguran. She was tall, fine looking and the picture of robust health. A clever American woman, she had acquired the art of assaying and, as official assayer of the mines, received a handsome salary. “The only drawback to living in Inguran,” she said, “is that I am so delightfully healthy.”
Our way lay down and then across the San Pedro valley toward the southwest. The valley is a mile or two wide. The trail we followed ran through dense tropical foliage. The air in the early morning was cool almost to coldness. The birds were everywhere astir and all their notes were new to me. There were many doves, the little brown ground dove that merely stepped out of our way; a bigger dove, slate gray in color, which flew among the higher branches of the thickets. The large gray jay was numerous and there were many magpies and rusty and yellow-headed grakles. Along the watercourses we again came constantly upon bands of the big brown and small black vultures, as well as Caracara eagles which were fishing in the stream. Parakeets, resplendent in green and scarlet and gold, were abundant, and flocks of gray and green parrots tumbled clumsily in the air. I saw also my first big green Military macaws,—birds as large as chickens or small turkeys, the body a brilliant green, the head capped with red and yellow. I have never seen these splendid birds in captivity, nor among those brilliant macaws from the Amazon and from Australia which are so often exhibited in collections. These macaws were very tame, and a flock of them settled upon a mimosa tree under which we drew rein. I might have shot them with my pistol, and should have brought some of them home with me, if I had had any way to preserve the skins. In the thickets I also noticed flycatchers and several sparrows I did not know, but I saw no ravens as I did the other day upon the highlands.
After five or ten miles down the valley, winding through the forest, crossing open clearings, passing here and there a native hut, frequently fording the river, we left the main trail and turned up a shaded ravine, following it to its head, where we passed through a low gap with high mountains on either hand, and then descended toward the river again, thus cutting off a great bend and saving fifteen or twenty miles. As we came down toward the main valley, the timber grew smaller, the persistent mesquit more and more possessed the land, and the sun fell full upon us. The heat was intense. No living thing now seemed anywhere to exist; only the multitudes of little brown lizards, countless thousands of them scurrying on the sand; and iguanas, black as night, sleeping in the crotch of a tree, or on the heated top of a stone near the wayside. Nor did any sound now stir the midday silence except the hum of millions of cicadas, which the fierce sun rays seem only to nurse into active life.
Six hours in the forepart of the day brought us to the Hacienda de Oropeo, on the borders of the Rio de San Pedro. Here we halted for the noontime rest, lying-by beneath an Indian shelter, a wide-thatched roof of palm leaves, under which we could tie our horses, and where we might ourselves repose. Here an old Indian woman cooked for us tortillas and frijoles. We watched her make the tortillas, little cakes of corn meal as thin as sheets of paper. The dry kernels of the corn are first soaked in lime water until the enveloping shell readily comes off. It is then much like samp. The swelled and softened grain is then rubbed to a pulp between two stones, the moistened pulp is patted between the hands to the thinnest sort of a wafer, and these thin wafers are laid upon the top of the clay oven to be slowly dried. The tortilla is said to be the most nutritious of all foods prepared from maize. It is the staff of life of the Mexican peon, and the making of tortillas is the chief vocation in life of his wife and daughters. As soon as the little girls are big enough they begin to pat tortillas, and they continue to pat tortillas throughout their lives. If you travel through an Indian village your ear will be struck by the pat, pat, pat, of hundreds of pairs of hands. The Indian women are patting tortillas. They are always patting tortillas, when not specially occupied in other toils.
Toward 4:00 P. M. Izus, our mozo, repacked the loads, again we mounted, and in an hour were across the river, where we ascended a small creek a couple of miles to these ancient mines. It was while resting at noontime, that we noticed a group of thirty or forty men bearing on their shoulders the palm-thatched roof of a moving mansion. Later, we rode past the new domicile, the roof was already set upon the corner posts, and the family were already moved into their habitation.
We are bivouacked in a building where once lived the lord of the mines,—mines now filled with water and abandoned, although none of the workings go down more than one hundred feet. The building is chiefly constructed, both the floor and walls, of sun-baked clay. High above the walls rests the palm-thatched roof. There are no frames in the window openings, no frames in the doorways. Walls and roof being only a protection from the sun heat, the air may blow through where it listeth. Our cots are taken from the back of “Old Blacky,” unrolled and set in the breezy chamber; upon them we sit and sleep.
Our only terrors are the ants, but we set the legs of the cots in little earthenware pans of water and are safe. An Indian family, living in the distant end of the rambling, abandoned buildings across the courtyard, provides us with boiled rice and stewed chicken. Izus has brought us an abundance of bananas and oranges, fresh, fragrant, and luscious. We buy several oranges for a centavo, and a centavo is worth less than half an American cent. The Indian keeps poultry and also gamecocks. These latter are tied by the leg near his door. They are his pride, and he fights them on Sunday after church. When the priest has closed the services the neighbors, who have all brought their chickens, form in a circle, and there the week’s wages are staked and lost upon the issue of the fights. I send you a snap shot of a battle.
When dining, we sit on improvised stools around a homemade table and just back of us crouch a group of attentive admirers—the famished family dogs, rough-haired, cadaverous, wolf-eyed, silent dogs they are. They watch with furtive intentness each morsel we put into our mouths, they instantly pounce upon each crumb and bone which falls within their reach. They never bark—only a shrill melancholy howl I sometimes hear breaking the stillness of the night; they never wag their tails, for these are always tucked between their legs. When we have finished, we toss to these wistful watchers the refuse of our meal. There is a silent scuffle, a hasty crunching and then each dog sits up as hungry and observant as before. Thus our friends breakfast and dine and sup with us, and so filled with suspicion and fear of man are they, that they never by any chance allow us to approach. “Veni aqui perro” (come here, dog) an Indian boy calls out, and immediately perro slinks out of sight. Descended originally from the wild coyote, which they much resemble, these dogs seem to have acquired little taming by contact with man.
Next up the creek above us lie the Azteca mines, long since abandoned, and then come the China (pronounced cheena) mines, the only group now being worked, the present superintendente being a member of the Castrejon family to whom they belong. The vein is a porphyry-and-quartz carrying copper, and is about three hundred feet wide and almost vertical. It is nearly with the watercourse, about one degree to the west, and how deep it may go no one knows. This whole region is full of holes, generally, say, four feet to six feet square, from which for centuries the copper ore has been taken. The rich pieces were carried away and the balance was thrown upon the ground. The entire country is filled with innumerable piles of this abandoned copper ore carrying two and three per cent of copper, and waiting for that distant day when railroads, modern machinery and efficient labor shall make this natural wealth profitable to modern enterprise. As it is, the present primitive Indian methods of mining and transportation on mules, unventilated pits, and awful trails climbing stupendous heights, destroy the possibility of profit even in working the richest ores.
Sunday we spent in riding over the hills which rise from three to five hundred feet above the stream. Up their easy, rounded slopes a horse can clamber almost anywhere. It is a country where cattle roam and where the Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) are the only human beings. In the afternoon, we went down to the San Pedro River, now a small stream, and bathed in the tepid water, where I surprised an old familiar friend, also watching the limpid water, a Belted Kingfisher.
Monday, we spent from seven o’clock to ten, going through the China mines, which are worked by the Mexicans in the old primitive way. We went into the side of the hill by a short tunnel, which led to a black hole up out of which stuck a slippery pole. On one side of this pole notches are cut, and into these notches, if you want to descend, you must sidewise set your feet. Our guide clasped the pole with one arm, holding aloft his flickering light with the other, and slowly sank from sight into the blackness below. We all went down, not knowing what might be beneath us. At first, my feet would not hold in the notches, but it was a matter of setting in my feet or falling into unlimited darkness, so I clung tight and came slowly down. The distance was only about twenty feet. Here there was an off-set of eight or ten feet, and then another pole and more notches, blackness above as well as below, and the notches had grown slick through years of contact with shoeless Indian feet. Thus we went down and down, descending some two hundred feet to where the air lay hot and heavy and our breathing became stertorous and slow. We then followed a long narrow tunnel, and came to where naked Indians with steel wedges were sledging out the ore. The Indians descend in the morning, they work as long as the foul air permits, then they gather up all the rock they have dislodged, put it into a bull hide sack, load this on their backs and climb up the notched poles again to daylight. On issuing from the mines they stagger to an ore pile, under a thatched roof set on high poles, and dump their loads. Around this pile of ore squat twenty or thirty Indians, each holding a stone in his hand. Each has before him a large flat piece of rock. He reaches for the ore pile, takes from it a lump which looks fairly good and cracks it to powder between the two stones. The mean ore is thrown on a dump pile, the rich ore is all cracked up. This is the original of the modern stamp mill, and it is the only stamp mill the Indian-Mexican will probably ever know. The ore, after it is pulverized in this way by hand, is put into a wooden trough into which water is poured which has been carried up in bull hide sacks from the stream below, and the ore is thus washed and concentrated. It is afterwards put into sacks, about two hundred pounds to the sack, and taken fifty or sixty miles, over the frightful precipitous trails, to the railroad at Patzcuaro, whence it is shipped to the smelter.
It is a wonder that even the Mexicans can thus work these mines, year after year, and make the smallest profit. The most efficient American manager would find this to be impossible. The Mexican superintendente lives on nothing and his Mexican employes live on less. Eighteen to twenty cents a day Mexican (less than ten cents a day in American) is the miner’s pay. On this amount he must support himself and often a large family. The Mexicans follow the old Spanish theory, that human labor is cheaper than machinery, if you can crush down the human labor to a sufficiently low wage. Hence, the Mexican employing classes discourage both the use of machinery and the education of the peon. Ignorance and the abject poverty of the working class is the Spanish-American ideal. The day laborer in Mexico is little better than a slave. The wealthy mine owner, who lives in luxury in the distant Capital, or in Paris, or Madrid, may exhibit the evidences of culture and refinement, but Mexico can never greatly advance until the masses of the common people shall be enlightened and by modern statesmanship be lifted from this condition of industrial servitude.
Some of the types among these Indians are curious. One man has a head that runs up straight behind his ears, nor has he much brain in front. Another looks like a Japanese. These Indians—they are called Indians, but are many of them half-breeds, for there is much Spanish blood mixed in among them—are pitifully poor and are hopeless in their poverty. They have been hammered and battered for so many centuries by the merciless Spanish overlord, that they have had all spirit long ago knocked out of them. They seem to be unable now to rise. Nor are they a hardy race. When sickness prevails they are too poor to employ a doctor, but rely upon charms and religious rites. I have just acted the part of a physician. I have brought with me a small box of selected medicines sufficient for the common ailments of this land of semitropics. I am now prescribing quinine for Doña Caldina, calomel for Señor Perez. I hear that a crippled man is coming to-morrow to see me and ask whether the white señor can cure him and make him walk. There is a certain childlike quality about these peones. How humbly they accept the superiority of the white man, whom they do not love!
I see many instances of what might be called degenerates, misshapen heads, ill-shaped and deformed bodies, signs of a race too much inbred. They wear white cotton clothes, peaked straw hats and rawhide sandals. The men generally carry blankets (zerapes) folded across the shoulder which they wrap up in, as do their brothers on the highlands, when the air grows cold.
The coldness of the nights and the burning heat of the day are strange. I slept last night in flannel underwear, a woolen jersey over that and flannel pajamas still outside; then two thick wool blankets and a rubber poncho over all. Early, toward one or two o’clock I woke up chilled to the bone. I put on my corduroy coat. I was just warm, for an icy wind was blowing down from the lofty altitudes of the Tierra Fria. This morning when the sun rose about six o’clock, the air was still cold. In an hour it was pleasantly warm, birds were singing and flying from tree to tree. By nine o’clock the sun blazed like a ball of fire. I am now, at half past nine, going about in slippers, in linen trousers and my thin pajama coat, and even then I hide from the sun. By ten o’clock a silence lies upon the land profound and overwhelming, not a living thing is astir, except only the lizards and the cicadas. The daylight ends precipitately. The day lasts only as long as the sun is up. By half past five the sun hangs above the mountains on the west. Suddenly it is gone. In fifteen minutes it is dark, the stars are out, and such white stars they are! The cold air of the highlands then settles down upon us for the night.