Copper Mining Prior to 1848

Mining prior to 1800

Archeological finds of turquoise beads, copper bells (figure 7), pyrite mirrors, pottery and other items decorated with mineral pigments, demonstrate that mining in the region dates back thousands of years. There is good evidence of a Pre-Columbian continental-scale trade in luxury goods, including these mineral products, as well as certain seashells, macaws and macaw feathers and chocolate.

Figure 7. Copper bell, Wupatki ruin, near Flagstaff. Presumed to be from Mesoamerica, but provenance unknown.

Turquoise, a copper phosphate with great spiritual significance to Native Americans, is a common oxidation product of primary ores in many porphyry copper (and other copper-rich) districts of Southwestern North America. While it was once thought that most of the turquoise in Meso-America arrived there via trade with Southwestern North America, recent isotopic work has called this into question. There is, however, no doubt that there was an important regional trade. Hull et al. (2014) used Cu and H isotopes to show that turquoise from Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) sites came from both nearby and very distant mines. Thibodeau at al. (2018) analyzed Sr and Pb isotopes in Aztec turquoise artifacts to show that most came from Mexican sources.

One of the most interesting turquoise mining sites in the Americas is Mt. Chalchihuitl, near Cerrillos, in northern New Mexico. It was mined at least as early as Anasazi times (8th-11th C AD), and much of the turquoise found in excavations at Chaco Canyon has its isotopic fingerprint. It has been mined sporadically ever since then and a small, low-grade porphyry copper deposit was discovered nearby in the 1960s by Bear Creek, Kennecotts exploration arm.

The Hopi led the Spanish (Don Antonio de Espejo, exploring out of Parral, Chihuahua. See Espejo in Bolton, 1916) to the copper deposits at Jerome, Arizona, in 1550. The deposits at Santa Rita del Cobre, New Mexico appear for the first time on Spanish maps dating from the 1750s but may have been known at least as early as the time of Cabeza de Vaca’s trek in the 1530s. While he was in what is today northern Coahuila, he was given copper bells from an area where the natives reported large sheets of native copper sticking out of the ground. Santa Rita meets this description as few other places do.

Spanish and Mexican mining:1800-1848

The Spanish began to work Santa Rita in a serious way in the early 1800s, mining native copper and shipping it to Chihuahua, via the presidio at Janos, for coinage. However, Spanish and Mexican mining outside of narrow well-defended corridors, like the Rio Grande and Santa Cruz river valleys, and the trail between Santa Rita and Janos, was very limited due to the Apache’s fierce defense of their homeland, and their aggressive raids outside of it. For this reason, there was very little Spanish or Mexican mining in Arizona, despite legends to the contrary (e.g. the supposed “Peralta” antecedents of the Lost Dutchman Mine). Santa Rita (Huggard and Humble, 2012) and Janos were two of the most important centers of Native-European American interaction in Southwestern North America, right through the 1850s and witnessed numerous acts of friendship and betrayal that ultimately set the course of the two people’s relationship thereafter. For a sober, objective survey of Spanish mining in Arizona, based on documentary sources, I cannot recommend Officer (1991) too highly.

Figure 8. Map of documented Spanish mines in Arizona and Sonora, from Officer (1991).

The Apaches were never going to be impressed with a few colored beads, or even a few thousand troops. It took 20+ years and some of the best minds and troops in the US Military to beat them, and they did it using mostly Apache troops (known as scouts), with a few Anglos “leading” them.