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The Santa Fe County

CERRILLOS HILLS HISTORIC PARK







HISTORY OF THE LOS CERRILLOS MINING AREA

by Homer E. Milford
Part 1






Click anywhere in a box to go to that entry.

This material was originally published
by the New Mexico Abandoned Mine Land Bureau
Reports 1994 - 2 and 1996 - 1

Homer Milford is the former Environmental Coordinator of the Abandoned Mine Land Bureau,
the State of New Mexico Energy Minerals and Natural Resources Department.


Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Robert Eveleth of the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources for his assistance with references and information, and also Rick Hendricks of the Vargas Project at the University of New Mexico for his comments on the Vargas and Rodriguez Cubero period. I would also like to thank Dede Snow for information on Analco, and recognize posthumously the contribution of Verne Byrne and Michael O'Neil in continuing the mining tradition of the area, but especially for their preservation of the Territorial mining district record books.


Topo Map


INTRODUCTION

Historical Importance of the Cerrillos Mining District


In the 1960s, a survey of potential "Historic sites or Districts" in the United States was conducted by the National Park Service. One of the results was a list of 172 sites in the western United States as "Historic Districts Eligible for the Registry of National Historic Landmarks", and the "Cerrillos Mining District" was one of the sites judged eligible (Ferris, 1967). Following this early effort, the Museum of New Mexico staff tried in the early 1970s to have the Cerrillos Mining District listed as a "National Historic District". The effort failed to get Federal approval. In spite of the fact that it is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it does have national historical significance. The Pueblo Indians mined turquoise in the district before 800 AD and one theory attributes the development of the Chaco culture to their control of the Cerrillos Turquoise mines. By the 1300s, Pueblo Indians were mining lead in the area for the metallic glazes on their pottery. When European settlers arrived in 1598, it was the earliest European mining area in the United States.

Considering that numerous mining towns and districts are on the national list, it is unreasonable that the "Oldest Mining District in the U.S." is not listed. It was first prospected in 1581 and had a number of active mines almost a decade before the first English colonist landed at Jamestown.

This area is historically significant for reasons other than just being the oldest mining district in the United States. The miners of Los Cerrillos may deserve recognition as the founders of Santa Fe. They may have started a mining camp on the south side of the Santa Fe River about 1600. The solely Spanish community north of the river was not founded until four or five years later, in 1605. The silver produced in the Cerrillos District was probably a significant component of the 17th Century New Mexico economy. In northern New Mexico other than Santa Fe, the Los Cerrillos settlement was the only community to successfully resist the initial revolt of 1680. In 1695, Governor Vargas founded the Real de Los Cerrillos, which is tied for being the third to fifth oldest official European Community in New Mexico history, to service the mines of Los Cerrillos. Real de Los Cerrillos is the "oldest official mining community in the history of the United States". Governors Oñate, Vargas, and Rodríguez Cubero are the only known Spanish Governors to be involved personally with mines in the district, but at least two U.S. Territorial Governors, Lew Wallace and L. Bradford Prince, also owned and operated mines there. The history of this district has not been common knowledge in the past and only small segments of it are in books written on either New Mexico or its mining history.

Past studies of the Cerrillos Mining District


Although a great deal has been written in the popular press over the years about the Cerrillos Mining District, relatively few serious studies of the area have been published, and considerable confusion still exists about its history.

Twentieth-century studies have started the U.S. Period History of the area with the mining rush of 1879-80 reported by Hayward (1880) and the local and national press of the time, and ignored the mining of the 1860s and 1870s. Past writings have concentrated on the eastern portion of the district and ignored the western area. Hayward (1880) covered the entire area and listed a number of mines as "Old Spanish". Table 1 is an updated list of these mines. The 1800's newspaper accounts tended to promote mines in the eastern part of the district and published archaeological work has also been confined to that area. Thus there is a tendency to think of the important part of the Cerrillos Mining District as being the southeastern part of the district with its old Spanish mine, the Mina del Tiro, and major U.S. Period mines such as the Cash Entry. Turquoise Hill in the northeastern part of the district has also attracted attention. The history of the western part of the district has been largely ignored. Some of the notable researchers of the mining history of the general area are Joan Mathien, Albert Schroeder, John Townley, and A. Helen Warren. A previous Abandoned Mine Land Bureau project in the eastern part of the district funded a historical report by Levine and Goodman (1990) that collected a lot of historical data from the above authors, but followed the old precept that there was little or no significant mining during the colonial period.

Disbrow and Stoll (1957) authored the only detailed study of the western part of the district, but they did not go back before 1879 in their history. The mines reopened by Dr. Enos Andrews in the western area in 1872 may be mines associated with the 1695-1696 mining period. These mines are only half as far from Alamo Creek, the probable location of the Spanish mining camp of Real de los Cerrillos, as Arroyo de las Minas where the Mina del Tiro is located. It is a portion of this western part of the district which is the subject of this report.

For selected details from the Disbrow and Stoll 1957 - Hungry Gulch report see Appendix 2.

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Brief Time Line for the Cerrillos Hills Area


This Abandoned Mine Land Bureau Project covers a small portion of the western part of the district, called in the late 1800s, "Hungry Gulch". One objective of this project was to collect information on the mines of the Hungry Gulch area and to bring their importance and that of "Real de Los Cerrillos" to attention.

Of the Spanish metal mines whose Spanish names and locations have survived, only the Mina del Tiro has been written about in this century. The proposed leach mining in the southeastern part of the district, T 15N, R 8E, sections 7 & 8, in the early 1970s by Occidental Minerals Corporation, led to an archaeological survey of the area (Warren, 1974), and also led to efforts to salvage information on Pueblo and Spanish mining in that area (Karkins, 1971, 1972) before leach mining started. The Albuquerque Archaeological Society did two summers' work at the Bethsheba Mine, a U.S. period mine name from Hayward (1880). Only preliminary reports have been published (Sundt, 1973, Grigg and Sundt, 1975), but Richard Bice (Bice, 1993) is working on a final report which will not be ready for several years. The Mina del Tiro (Hawk-eye shaft) was also partially excavated, and Warren (1974) gave some results of that excavation but no report has been published. Nineteenth Century promotion and the work of Warren and others in the southeast area has led to the general assumption that the "Arroyo de las Minas" area with the Mina del Tiro was the most important area of Spanish mining in the Cerrillos Hills.

Though not discussed in writings of this century, two of the mines in Hungry Gulch covered by this report are probably the sites of richer and more important Spanish silver-lead mines than the Mina del Tiro.

In 1695, Governor Vargas founded the Real de Los Cerrillos, an official mining camp, in the vicinity of what we call Alamo Creek. This is the only official Spanish Period mining camp that historical documents have been located for in New Mexico. This mining camp, which also ranks as the third to fifth oldest official European community in New Mexico, has been ignored in New Mexico history. Its name was chosen in 1990 for this project to try to revive its history along with two mines in this project which may date from that period. Hopefully, the Vargas Project at the University of New Mexico will bring the mining camp to public attention when they release Vargas's 1695-96 Journals. They anticipate publication of these journals in 1996 on the 301st anniversary of Real de Los Cerrillos. The two mines that probably date from the Vargas era are the Santa Rosa and the Ruelena, which, according to 1870's reports, had richer silver ore than the Mina del Tiro.

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Nature of Cerrillos Silver Deposits


The silver deposits of Parral are in many ways similar to those of Cerrillos. The silver ores of Parral were formed in nearly vertical veins associated with Tertiary vulcanism (West, 1949, p. 17), as are those of Cerrillos. In Parral there were some deposits that were nearly lead-free silver sulphide (argentite) as well as silver-lead sulphide (galena) veins. In Cerrillos only the silver-lead sulphide (galena) were noted at the time of the first mineral descriptions of the area in the 1870s and 1880s. If argentite existed at Cerrillos it was not reported in the late 1800s. The mines of Santa Barbara developed prior to the colonization of New Mexico in the 1500s had only the galena type ores found at Los Cerrillos.

A peculiar characteristic of silver ore deposits is the occurrence of a pronounced oxidized zone of mineral enrichment above the ground water table. ... The supergene enrichment of sulphide ore by descending surface waters was one of the most significant factors affecting early colonial silver mining. (West, 1949, pp.17-18).


In nearly vertical veins such as Cerrillos and Parral over millions of years the sulphide ore above the water table was oxidized by oxygen in the descending surface water. This liberated the silver ions from the sulphur, allowing the silver to go into solution and be carried downward in the vein by the surface water. The silver ion then precipitated out of solution at the water table resulting in a zone of silver enrichment. This so-called "supergene enrichment of sulphide ore veins" created a zone of silver enrichment around the water table. It was the enriched portion around the water table that early colonial miners exploited. In Parral the water table was at a depth of three to four hundred feet and in Cerrillos around 100 feet.

This is why extensive drifts at a depth of around 110 feet (the water table), left by the Spanish miners were discovered in the 1800s in both the Mina del Tiro and Santa Rosa Mines. The Spanish miners had worked and removed most, if not all, of the zone of silver enrichment. The only exception would have been the Territorial mines developed on veins not exploited by Spanish miners, of which there were very few in Cerrillos. The Territorial mine Our Georgie (aka Tom Payne) and possibly the Marshal Bonanza may have been on veins not discovered by the Spanish miners. The 19th Century assays, with the exception of those reported by Raymond (1872, 1874), are not reliable, and no production figures indicating the quality of the ore have been located prior to 1905. The only evidence available on the silver content of the enriched zone ores of Los Cerrillos are a few circa-1600 assays, and the 1870-1880 assay claims of 80 to 200 ounce per ton silver. Below the zone of enrichment, the galena (lead sulphide ore) has relatively low silver content. Parral mining declined by the late 1700s as the zones of enrichment were exhausted, and this was probably also the case for the Cerrillos mines in the 1700s.

Mining in both areas was revived in the late 1800s due to lower costs associated with the arrival of the railroads in both areas. Both Parral and Cerrillos saw a major revival around 1900, when the non-enriched parts of their veins became profitable as sources of lead-zinc ore. The silver deposits of the Real (mining camp) of Parral, discovered 50 years after Cerrillos in 1631, suffered from its remoteness and it is 1/3 closer to Mexico City than Cerrillos. Both Parral and Cerrillos suffered from the high cost of transportation during most of their history.

- See Appendix 1 for details on Colonial Period Silver Refining Techniques -

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Cerrillos Myths


Once an idea becomes widely accepted and is repeated for decades or centuries, new writers of history accept the idea without question. After decades of acceptance by the best scholars in an area of study, only the foolish challenge an accepted concept. However, it is impossible to discuss the mining history of Cerrillos without questioning some myths that have been accepted for the past century. An attempt was made, perhaps unsuccessfully, to give enough information to start the process of changing three myths associated with Los Cerrillos without overburdening this report. Though these myths will not die with this report, at least the seeds of change are sown and future writers will feel more inclined to challenge them.

One, that the modern railroad-mining town of Cerrillos is or was close to the Spanish Los Cerrillos. Two, that there was no Spanish mining in New Mexico until after 1725, and three, that there was a significant amount of gold in the Cerrillos Hills. A fourth myth, that Spanish use of forced Pueblo Indian labor in the mines of the Cerrillos Hills was the cause of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, has been challenged since Bandelier's Final Report in 1890 and was discussed in the AML Turquoise Hill Report (AML, 1994).

All four of these myths are not supported by contemporary records. As F. Stanley (1964, p.3) said in his little book, "The Cerrillos, New Mexico Story", "The legends of Cerrillos are more numerous than those of Santa Fe." These legends are not confined to popular press publications for the tourist industry like "Living Legends of the Santa Fe Country" (Bullock, 1972) which probably deliberately used misquotes to make interesting reading. In one form or another, one or more of these myths can be found in most government and scholarly publications of this century discussing the Cerrillos area (for example: USGS, 1977, p. 141 and Howard, 1967).

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A Different Perspective on Juan de Oñate


Most of the documents that have survived from the Oñate Period are those written by the two Viceroys or their officers in Mexico City. They served between the two terms of Viceroy Luís de Velasco (1595-1607). They tend to leave the reader with the impression that Juan de Oñate knew little about mining and accomplished very little in New Mexico. This appears to be a misconception that will in time be corrected.

Juan de Oñate was very knowledgeable about mining and was recognized by the King of Spain in 1624 as a leading mining expert of his time (Beerman, 1979). King Philip IV asked Oñate to evaluate all the mines and mills in Spain and to recommend new laws and ordinances for improving them. The results of that study were published in 1625, and are the first book on mining written by a resident of what was to become the U.S. The Viceregal documents paint Oñate as a novice regarding mining while he was in New Mexico, but that was part of the overall effort to discredit his administration.

Juan de Oñate and Vicente de Zaldivar were both second generation members of major silver mining families. They both grew up supervising and working in and around family silver mines, and it was the profits of these same family silver mines that funded and made possible the colonization of New Mexico. The "silver aristocracy" of northern New Spain had financed the exploration and colonization of Nueva Viscaya between 1563 and 1572, and New Mexico was a continuation of this tradition. Both men had extensive experience in the development of silver mines and the construction and running of silver refining mills before coming to New Mexico. After leaving New Mexico in 1610, both men returned to Zacatecas and revitalized their silver mines there. Oñate paid 129,454 pesos in the 10% severance tax (Simmons, 1991, p. 185) in the decade after he left New Mexico. Vicente de Zaldivar reportedly was so successful in running his families silver mines and mills after his return from New Mexico that he made three million pesos profit during the next decade (Simmons, 1991, p. 186).

A New Spain tribunal in 1614 found Oñate guilty of some of the charges brought against him by the 1601 New Mexico deserters. In 1621, Juan de Oñate went to Spain to clear his name of the various charges. The Spanish Government recognized his great mining expertise and in 1624 made Oñate the Royal Mine Inspector for the mines in Spain. The king directed Oñate to tour all the major mines of Spain and write a report on how the mines and production could be improved. King Philip IV even gave Oñate a special Royal privilege of wearing a uniform during his mine inspections (Royal Cédula, sold by Maggs Brothers to a private collector). The results of Oñate's study were incorporated into a new a new set of laws and ordinances for the operation of mines and were published in 1625. The title is very long, and though the product of other members of the Real junta de Minas it gives Oñate the major credit for the New Laws and Ordinances for improving the operation mines and refiners. (The cover page of the "Leyes y Ordenanzas") The 1625 edition of "Leyes y Ordenanzas" for mines even has a flowery biography of Juan de Oñate in the introduction written by Oñate's secretary ( Simmons, 1991, p. 193).

Juan de Oñate was not just the first governor of New Mexico, with a minor and totally unsuccessful interest in mining as most books and articles tend to indicate. With the exception of Oñate's effort to create a new Viceroyalty of New Mexico, north of New Spain, he devoted his entire life to mining. He grew up in silver mines, successfully managed them before and after being in New Mexico, and rewrote the laws and ordinances on mining for the kingdom of Spain. He even died while still continuing his study of the mines of Spain at the silver mining camp of Guadalcanal (Beerman, 1979). He did not miraculously stop silver mining when he crossed a line that would be drawn on the map two and a half centuries later. Juan de Oñate deserves recognition along with Vincente de Zaldivar as the premier (first great) miner of what centuries later would become the United States.

Juan de Oñate was the first resident of what is now the United States to write (or rewrite) a set of laws and ordinances to regulate mining (1625) over two hundred years before any other resident of the U.S. attempted the task.

If American (U.S.) mining is to trace its ancestry, it should not stop with the novice California gold prospectors of 1849, or the novices of Georgia and the Carolinas of the 1790s. These individuals were preceded by lead miners in New England and other British colonists in the 1600s. However, the European mining tradition started in the U.S. with the opening of the silver mines in the Cerrillos Hills in 1601. The actual miners were probably genízro (Tlascalans) and the superintendent was Vincente de Zaldivar at the request of, and possibly under the direction of, Juan de Oñate. Both men were immediately very successful and made new fortunes operating silver mines south of the border after they left New Mexico, and probably had a lot more success in New Mexico than surviving records indicate.

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PREHISTORIC PERIOD - MINING BY PUEBLO INDIANS, 700-1540



The Pueblo Indians started mining turquoise in the Cerrillos Hills around 700 AD, and by the 1200s it was the major export of New Mexico, with separate mining camps (small pueblos) in the hills. There is a yet unproven theory that Cerrillos turquoise was the economic base for the development of Classic Chaco culture. The history of turquoise mining was discussed in the AML-Turquoise Hill Report (1994) and will not be discussed in this report.

The Pueblo Indians started using lead glaze on their pottery about 1300. Though there is lead float or nuggets around lead veins just as there are gold nuggets around gold veins, eventually the Indians had to dig or mine to get the lead for their pottery. The major lead glaze producing pueblo was Tonque (Warren, 1969) which is east of San Felipe Pueblo, though other Rio Grande Pueblos also produced lead glaze pottery. "... the Pueblo Indian was the first prospector and miner in the Cerrillos district. Potsherds dating as early as A.D. 1325 have been found in underground lead mines. ... Dozens of prehistoric lode mines have been recorded in the Cerrillos district and two of these have been excavated partially." (Warren and Weber, 1979, p. 7).

The company exploring the possibility of leach mining of the southeastern part of the district in 1970 financed archaeological recording (Warren, 1974) and spurred efforts to salvage information (Karklins, 1971, 1972) by excavation before that area was destroyed (Sundt, 1971, Warren, 1974). Sundt (1971) reported pottery types found in the excavation of a filled-in prehistoric trench mine on the 1879 Bethsheba Claim of Maddux and Smith. A final report has not been published, but tentative tree-ring dates from three different logs from the mine and a platform above it are 1462, 1832 and 1908 (Bice, 1993). Its Laboratory of Anthropology (LA) number is (LA 5031). Pottery shards were dated from 1425 to post-1600 with 84% of the pottery being from San Marcos Pueblo. The trench mine at the time of the preliminary report (Sundt, 1971) had only been excavated to a depth of 4 meters (12 feet) but later went to 25 feet without reaching the bottom of debris.

Sundt (1971) is the only published excavation of a pre-historic mine in the area, though Warren (1974, p. 25) gives some information on the excavation at Mina del Tiro and her survey of the southeast area.

"... The 'thin mantle of rocky debris" which (Disbrow and Stoll (1957: 48) found on the apexes of many veins is undoubtedly the backfill, or tailings, of the prehistoric Indian miner.

The prehistorically worked lead veins in the survey area include Mina del Tiro (M1), Bethsheba (M6), the U.S. Grant (M9), the L. C. Cloury (M10), the Ethel shaft (M25), the Helena (M28), the Southwestern (M54), the "chimney" mine (M57), the Bonanza (M58), the J. A. Logan prospects (M63), the Globe veins (M66), and the Stillman vein (M68).

The most spectacular of the prehistoric lead mines is Mina del Tiro, which was mined prehistorically for 1800 feet along the vein outcrop, and to as yet unknown depths. ... Potsherds associated with the Pueblo mines are glaze decorated and, as at the turquoise mines, many were used in some part of the mining or refining process. Most of the glazes found are prehistoric and are from the San Marcos Pueblo, but some late glazes produced during the 17th century Spanish Colonial period also occur. These could have been brought to the area by either the Pueblo or Spanish miners.

Stone tools used in the lead mines are very similar to those found at the turquoise mines. Proportionately there seem to be more anvils at the lead mines. Occasionally, a non-utilized notched or grooved axe or maul will be found at a workshop area, indicating that workshops may have been used for more than the refining process. Refining areas located on the edge of the lead vein have been found. These include hearths, miscellaneous stone tools, and discarded fragments of lead ore and galena "dust". Debris from the refining of the potter's ore was often used to backfill the vein that had been mined out." (Warren, 1974, p. 25)


The pueblo's major sources of lead were probably the Cerrillos Hills, the Placitas area at the north end of the Sandias, and possibly the San Mateo Mountains. There is conclusive archaeological evidence that the Pueblos were mining lead as well as turquoise in the Cerrillos area centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

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PERIOD OF SPANISH EXPLORATION, 1540-1598



The records left by the Coronado Expedition to New Mexico in 1540-42 do not describe a visit to any site that fits the description of the Cerrillos Hills or the pueblo one league (note 1) east of them, San Marcos Pueblo. The Coronado Expedition did record the presence of galena (lead ore) in several pueblos and the use of lead glazes on the Pueblo pottery.

The first Spanish explorers to visit the area of whom we have a record are the Rodríguez-Chamuscado Expedition of 1581. They called San Marcos Pueblo by the name of Malpartida (Bad Parting) and said they found mineral deposits one league (2.6 to 3.4 miles,) from the pueblo (Hammond & Ray, 1927, p. 342). Two soldiers in the expedition, Philepe (or Filipe) de Escalante and Barrando, later testified that they found 11 veins of silver but did not specify the location in New Mexico. However, as Oñate 17 years later called the mines he visited in the Cerrillos Hills "Escalante's mines" (Minas de Escalante), the silver veins of the Cerrillos Hills must have been some that Escalante sampled in 1581. The 1581 expedition took samples from only three of the veins they discovered. Bolton (1930, p. 157) translates the reported assays of the three samples. One was half silver, one contained 20 marks (taking 1 mark as about 8 ounces then around 160 ounces) per quintal (quintal = hundred pounds or 3,200 oz. per ton), and one contained 5 marks (about 40 ounces per 100 pounds or 800 ounces per ton).

These are very high results and possibly exaggerations, but hand-picked ore could have been of that quality. The best ores left in the old Spanish silver mines of the Cerrillos Hills three hundred years later were about 150-200 ounces of silver per ton. Thus, Philipe de Escalante and his companions were the first Europeans that we know for certain prospected the Cerrillos Hills and sampled its silver ores. Their good results were probably a major reason for Escalante's return in 1598 with Oñate.

The Espejo Expedition of 1583 also visited the Cerrillos area and reported finding antimony (galena or silver-lead ore) near San Marcos Pueblo. The Castaño de Sosa Expedition of 1591 gave San Marcos Pueblo the Spanish name by which it has continued to be known. Some members of the Castaño de Sosa party found the mineral ores of the Cerrillos Hills so promising that they stayed in the San Marcos area and made assays showing silver while Castaño de Sosa explored the rest of New Mexico (Schroeder and Matson, 1965, p. 157).

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Semi-Autonomous Colony Period, 1598-1610



The original charter given to Juan de Oñate by Viceroy Louis de Velasco (viceroy of New Spain, 1590-1595), and approved by the Crown, gave Oñate autonomy from the colony of New Spain and the right to explore and colonize all of North America north of New Spain except Florida. However, Velasco's successor, Gáspar de Zuñiga y Acevedo, Conde de Monterrey (viceroy of New Spain, 1595-1603) reduced that autonomy from New Spain without crown approval prior to the actual colonization in 1598. This semi-autonomous status existed only during Juan de Oñate's (1598-1608) and his son Governor Cristóbal de Oñate's (1608-1610)(note 2) rule of New Mexico. There was extensive mineral exploration and the first "significant" European mining occurred in New Mexico during this period. Of the records that have survived from this period, virtually all first hand reports on mineral development in the Cerrillos Hills are from 1600 and 1601.

The first colonists reached San Gabriel, the site chosen for the capitol five miles north of Española, on July 18, 1598. Two days later, Oñate left for his first reconnaissance of the Pueblos of the Galisteo Basin and stopped at San Marcos and went further south before returning. Oñate wrote, "On the, 26th (July 26, 1598) we returned ... and spent the night at San Marcos ... . Ore was extracted there from the mines called Escalante" (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 321). Thus, within 9 days of the arrival of the first group of colonists at the future capitol of the new colony, the first silver ore was extracted from the Cerrillos Hills. Escalante apparently showed Oñate the mines of the Cerrillos Hills that he sampled 17 years earlier and that is why Oñate referred to them as the "mines of Escalante" (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 321). Escalante was killed four months later by the Acomas, along with Vicente de Zaldivar's brother, Juan, in the famous Acoma revolt of December 4, 1598, so any mining he did was of short duration. Just three years later New Mexicans testified that Juan Zaldivar was the first to mine there, rather than Escalante.

On March 2, 1599, Oñate sent the viceroy a summary of his mining and other discoveries and samples of the minerals that had been discovered (Bancroft, 1889, pp. 147-148). Juan de Oñate and a major portion of the colonists, both European and Tlascalan, were from Zacatecas and they and their fathers had been silver miners before coming to New Mexico. Thus, their interest and experience had been in silver mining and as far as is known, it was silver deposits, not gold, that they mainly looked for and tried to develop in New Mexico.

Vicente de Zaldivar de Mendoza, was the first known developer of mines in the Cerrillos Hills. According to the testimony of Baltasar Martinez, and others, there were only about 80 Spanish males in New Mexico on December 23, 1600 (Hammond & Rey, p.837). The number of Spanish, even before a large group of colonists fled in 1600, was well below 200 and most of them were probably occupied in Oñate's explorations and other duties. Thus, except for short periods, the Tlascalans were probably the major source of skilled miners available in the colony for working mines during the first years.

Juan de Oñate wrote a letter on March 22, 1601 to his brothers (one of whom was the official in charge of the procurement of mining supplies for all of New Spain) and other relatives in which he discussed the mines of New Mexico. Hammond and Ray (1953, pp. 619-622) located a summary prepared by a Viceregal bureaucrat in Mexico City titled "True Report Drawn from the Letters, Statements, and Papers which Governor Don Juan de Oñate Enclosed with His Letter of March 22, 1601, Addressed to His Brothers and Relatives". Hammond and Ray (1953) did not locate Oñate's letter. The summary written in Mexico City later in 1601 is reportedly based on Oñate's letter and also other reports carried with the couriers that left New Mexico on March 23, 1601. The summary was prepared for and sent to the Council of the Indies and the King, and colors Oñate's activity in New Mexico in the standard Mexico City view of the time as only rumors of progress with no real accomplishments except for the priest's claims of native conversion. Remember that the officials who supervised the writing of this summary are the same ones who conducted the fraudulent public assay that year. Hammond and Ray located the summary in the Archivo General de Indias (Patronato, legajo 22) in Spain. The original letter should contain the details on New Mexico mining that the summary said Oñate's letter contained but which were left out of the summary.

The fourth from the last paragraph of the summary was translated by Hammond and Rey as:

"The governor claims that at ten, fourteen, and twenty leagues from the pass of San Rafael,(3) where his camp is now, he has discovered many mines whose ores, on being assayed, were of high grade and contained much silver. Since he had but few people up to the present he has not allowed them to devote themselves to the exploitation of mines in order to prevent them from giving up the main objective of their undertaking through greed for silver. But he has given orders [to Vicente de Zaldivar] to construct a mill for crushing and exploiting ores while he is inland [exploring great plains in 1601]." (Hammond and Rey, p. 622).

Note (3)above is "Clearly an error for San Gabriel".

As Vicente Zaldivar stated later in 1601 that Governor Oñate ordered him to develop the Cerrillos and San Pedro mines, and Oñate's letter of 3/22/1601 says that he had already given this order, we can narrow the time of the starting of the Cerrillos silver mines and construction of the mill to between March and July of 1601.

The most extensive reporting of mining in the Oñate Period located are the responses to a series of questions asked by Vicente de Zaldivar in 1600 of twelve other colonists at San Gabriel, New Mexico, and similar questions asked in 1601 of three soldiers and an official in Mexico City. The testimony was only examined in translation as given by Hammond and Rey (1953). Zaldivar's question number 15 stated that Governor Juan de Oñate ordered him to explore (develop?) the mines of San Marcos (Cerrillos Hills) ( note 3), and Anuncíation due to his discovery and development with his servants (Tlascalans) of many other mines (Hammond and Rey, 1953, p. 815). Oñate apparently considered the Cerrillos and Tuerto deposits some of the most promising discovered and probably gave the order to develop them in 1599. By the summer of 1600, Zaldivar and his servants (Tlascalans) were mining in the Cerrillos Hills (San Marcos) and in the Golden area (Anuncíation or Tuerto) 20 miles further south. Zaldivar's mining results were good enough that other Spanish soldiers also started silver mines in the Cerrillos Hills. By July 1600, Zaldivar was building small smelters and other machinery to refine the ore from the mines.

Vicente de Zaldivar was maese de campo of the colony. Juan de Oñate's nephew and his family had invested heavily in the colonization of New Mexico. Zaldivar was petitioning for recognition of his service to the Crown and his interrogatory to the colonists were to collect evidence of his service. His question 15 was translated as follows,

"15. Whether they know that by order of the governor I went to explore the mines of San Mateo (sic., San Marcos) and Anuncíacion, because I had worked and examined many mines with my servants; that I have located many other mines which appear to be rich in silver and will result in much benefit and profit to the royal treasury and the welfare of this land." (Hammond and Rey, 1953, p. 815)

Hammond and Rey (1953, p. 883) only published the responses of two of the twelve individuals who gave formal responses to the interrogatories in July, 1600, as they felt the testimony of the others was essentially the same as the two they published. The following are the two responses to Zaldivars question 15, on his role in New Mexico mining that they published. Alférez Leonis Treminos de Bañuelos, a life-long silver miner gave the following testimony at San Gabriel on July 29, 1600:

"Among the many discoveries of mines that the sargento mayor made are those of San Marcos and Anuncíacion, from which with the aid of his servants (probably Tlascalan miners) and household, he obtained a quantity of silver, both by smelting and by the use of quick-silver. ... The sargento mayor has so stimulated us that this witness and others soldiers have been working the mines and taking out silver." (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 829).

Diego de Zubia's testimony, also taken on July 29, 1600, agrees with Treminos and specifies that Zaldivar discovered the mines of San Marcos and was the first to extract silver from them (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 821). Zubia does not mention any other location except San Marcos, thus confirming the Cerrillos Hills as a location of silver mining. Zubia was apparently not aware that Escalante or one of his 1581 companions discovered the Cerrillos silver veins.

Discontent among the colonists, as well as jealousy over Oñate's special privileges, led as early as 1600 to investigations into his administration. In the spring of 1601, three soldiers and another man took reports from New Mexico to Mexico City. In Mexico City, a government attorney (factor), Don Francisco de Valverde, had been appointed by the Viceroy, the Count of Monterrey, to investigate the situation in New Mexico. The three soldiers apparently carried Vicente Zaldivar's 1600 petition, as Francisco de Valverde asked them essentially the same questions Zaldivar had asked in New Mexico a year earlier. Their responses to the question of "whether mines of gold, silver, and other metals had been found since..." Juan de Oñate went there were as follows:

Marcelo de Espinosa said on July 28, 1601, "at the pueblo of San Marcos, six leagues from San Gabriel, silver lodes were found which, on being assayed by the smelting process, produced four ounces. He heard this told, and he also heard that there were other mines at the pueblo of El Tuerto which, it was said, were rich. The sargento mayor (Vicente de Zaldivar) stayed there to crush and smelt the ore, building machinery for this purpose. " ( Hammond and Rey, p. 641-642).

Captain Juan de Ortega testified on July 31, 1601, that he went with the relief troops in December 1600 with the understanding that he did not have to stay in New Mexico unless he wanted to do so, and that he left three months later with the governor's permission.

In response to the question he said, "... he had heard the governor, the sargento mayor, and a captain say that there were mines, but that he had not heard of this from the other captains and soldiers. On the contrary, he heard some of them say that the minerals found were of no value and that there were no mines;..." (Hammond and Rey, 1953, p. 667)

Joseph Brondate on July 28, 1601 said, "at the pueblo of San Marcos, six leagues from the camp, there were mines with rich lodes. These ores, on being assayed, yielded four ounces. This witness saw it himself, and also that the sargento mayor was building a device to crush ore and extract metals, of which there were numerous reports " (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 630).

The weight or volume of ore that four ounces of silver assayed from is not stated by either Brondate or Espinosa. The standard volume of ore at that time was a quintal, or a fraction of a U.S. pound greater than 100 pounds. The ounce is the same as our ounce and a Mark was eight ounces. Four ounces per quintal equals 80 ounces per ton. However, in 1600 that was not rich enough to be profitably smelted. The break-even point for smelting was from eight to ten ounces per quintal or 160 (Gonzalo Gomez de Cervantes, 1969, pp. 150-151) to 200 ounces per ton (Probert, 1969, p. 96). However, with the "Patio Process" of amalgamation, the break-even was around 20 ounces per ton or one ounce per quintal (Probert, 1969, p. 109-110). Thus, four ounces per quintal was good or bad ore depending on how it was going to be refined. Witnesses mentioned that amalgamation was being used, but that a Hacienda (Patio Process mill?) had still not been built in July 1601. The smelters built by Zaldivar were probably similar to the "Chimbo" furnaces described by Probert (1971), and the archaeological descriptions of furnace remains in Los Cerrillos (Warren, 1974) are compatible with that design.

Ginés de Herrera Horta was appointed in 1600 by the Viceroy as "chief auditor and legal assessor" to Governor Oñate. The Viceroy probably sent Horta to New Mexico to gather information for him. Horta went there with the reinforcements that arrived on December 23, 1600. He did not give his reason for leaving three months later in March 1601, but his testimony indicates a bias against Oñate. Ginés de Herrera Horta was not a miner and only spent three months in New Mexico during the winter. He testified on July 30, 1601, that he, "... had heard it said that at a pueblo named San Marcos there were silver lodes, but of very low grade. This witness saw a small piece of mineral which the sargento mayor showed to the soldiers. To all appearances it was very rich. He heard a friar, to whom the sargento mayor had showed it (the ore), say that it was fine if it were from that country. To this the sargento mayor made no reply." (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 653-654). Horta had not seen the mines and apparently based his comment on the San Marcos ore being of low grade solely due to Zaldivar's not responding to the friar's question.

Of the six witnesses whose 1600 and 1601 testimony Hammond and Rey (1953) published, the two engaged in mining in New Mexico give an optimistic opinion of mining, as did the other two long-time residents of New Mexico. The two individuals who had only spent three months in New Mexico, and did not claim any real knowledge of the area, gave pessimistic opinions of mining.

The attorney (factor), Don Francisco de Valverde, was still investigating the situation in New Mexico in 1602. However, the questions he asked in 1602 were not directly related to mining in New Mexico proper, but about what had been heard or seen of gold or silver on an expedition out onto the great plains. Thus the 1602 responses do not pertain to mining in what we consider New Mexico.

A large number of discouraged colonists fled New Mexico in 1600, including all but two of the friars. These individuals brought a variety of charges against Oñate for improper conduct, and tried to promote a negative picture of the prospects and conditions in New Mexico in order to justify their leaving without the governor's permission. As most of these individuals had signed up as soldiers for the entrada, they, in a legal sense, were deserters and subject to potential prosecution. One of the reasons for Vicente de Zaldivar's going to Mexico City in 1602 was to press for their arrest. Thus, there were a number of individuals around Mexico City trying to discredit Oñate and downplay all accomplishments in New Mexico, including mining.

Assays reported by Rossiter Raymond in the 1870's indicate that silver ore left on the dumps of the Santa Rosa and Ruelena mines averaged about 80 ounces of silver per ton (4 ounces/quintal), well above the late 16th century break-even point by the Patio Process, but below break-even by smelting. The galena left at the Mina del Tiro in the 1870's had considerably less silver. As the ore left on the mine dumps in the 1870s by the Spanish or latter miners would have been marginally profitable in the 1600s, it is reasonable to assume that the ore mined and refined in the 1600s was richer and profitable. If the assays of 200 ounces per ton silver reported in the 1880s were correct, that would have been profitable by smelting in the 1600s. The record seems clear that the Cerrillos Hills contained profitable silver ores and that these were being mined within three years of the European colonization of New Mexico.

The comments of the 1880's that the Spanish did not know how to smelt the silver-lead ores of the Cerrillos Hills are misleading taken out of their original context. These comments were originally made about the silver carbonate ores, which the first U.S. Period smelter at the railroad town of Cerrillos also failed to smelt successfully in the 1880's. The silver-lead galena ores near the surface could be easily smelted as well as refined by mercury amalgamation.

The witness Treminos, who was an experienced silver miner, said in 1600 "... when haciendas like those at Zacatecas and other places are constructed they will bring great revenues to the royal treasury" (Hammond & Rey, 1953, p. 829). What he is referring to is the construction of a refinery (hacienda, note 4) using the "Patio Process" developed by Bartolomé de Medina in the 1550's which increased ten fold the recovery of silver from ore by mercury amalgamation (Probert, 1969).

Bartolomé de Medina's "Patio Process" was the greatest discovery in mineral recovery or mining in the Western Hemisphere until the late 1800s. Without the Patio Process, silver mining would have died in the New World before New Mexico was colonized and very few mines would have been profitable anywhere. Some historians have said that it was the discovery or development of the great silver mines of Zacatecas and other places in Mexico that caused a loss of interest in exploring the far northern frontier (New Mexico) after Coronado's expedition. In fact, it was Bartolomé de Medina who made both the new and old silver mines extremely profitable all of a sudden in the late 1550s and shifted the New World's attention to silver mining from exploring for golden treasures that delayed the colonization of New Mexico.

If early Spanish mining in Los Cerrillos failed to be highly profitable, it may have been because the Patio Process was not used. Tremino's comment indicates that Zaldivar had not yet built a Patio Process mill at Cerrillos in July 1600, and he was recommending its construction. The patio process required water and salt, and the construction of tanks or a flat stone-floored patio for the ore to be mixed on and aged in the sun. There are records of Oñate and others bringing mercury to New Mexico. The nearest good water supply would have been Alamo creek to the north of the Cerrillos Hills. The colonists had a good supply of salt at the Salinas (salt lakes) southeast of the Sandias, from which they shipped salt in the 1600's to the Patio Process mills of Parral. No remains of Patio Process mills have been located to date in the Cerrillos area.

Hammond and Rey (1953) translate the witnesses comments as "built machinery or devices to crush the ores," so we do not know at this point if the witness specified the type of machinery built. In later times (1700s - on), the arrastra (or tahona seen on the cover of this report) was the commonly used crushing machine. However, in the late 1500s the Spanish adapted and developed stamp mills of the German type seen in Agricola (1950), generally referred to as "ingenios" in Peru and "Molinos" in New Spain. If water powered stamp mills were built, they would have had to be built where there was enough slope in the stream to allow a ditch to raise the water high enough for a vertical water wheel to power the stamp mill, though some were run by animal power.

The Viceroy, the Count of Monterrey, after looking at the testimony collected by Valverde in 1601 and 1602, and other documents, wrote the King of Spain (Hammond and Rey, 1953, p. 906-) defending his reduction of Oñate's powers as well as concerning the abandonment of the colony by colonists in 1600 and conditions there. His comments are of a general nature, but indicate that he believed that there were good copper deposits and possibly silver deposits of some yet-undetermined quality in New Mexico.

"When silver or copper, which they say abound, are discovered, we could introduce some form of coinage to circulate there. Some could be coined in that country and the value set low enough so as to leave a profit for the merchants who might bring and sell copper in bars. This seems impossible since the cost of transportation would be more than it is worth... I have not yet given up hope that we shall receive verification of what the governor still maintains, namely, that there is silver in some of the hills of the region where he is,... Oñate now writes that he is going to make a more extensive search and that in the meantime he cannot be sure of any wealth, because he does not know whether there are minerals of sufficiently high grade. I am not discouraged, since we lack definite reports. If it should prove to be a silver country, no matter how low grade the ore may be, it would sustain the hope that by continued prospecting greater riches would be found in the hills and sierras. Even though it is not certain that there is silver, if means were found to establish copper coinage, this would encourage and facilitate trade and aid in the support of the Spaniards there, even if the profits were not large. They have nothing to sell from which they can obtain cash, and poverty is everywhere. It therefore seems to me that these conditions, especially the lack of money, will discourage anyone from going there, or, if already settled, would discourage anyone from remaining there." (Hammond and Rey, p. 913-914)


There is a document summarizing the situation in New Mexico prepared by or for the Viceroy in 1602, titled "Summary of the Five Discourses Presented by the Viceroy Concerning the Situation in the Territory that has been Pacified and Settled by the Adelantado Don Juan de Oñate in the Provinces of New Mexico, the New Explorations Made from there to the North, the help the Adelantado Seeks for this Purpose, and Other Matters". (Hammond and Rey, 1953, p. 899-). However, they did not print the portion on mining. Under Discourse III, they wrote, "The discourse continues with matters of government, cattle raising, climate of the country, and coining of copper coins from the metal found in that land. It speaks of silver mines, which they assert are found, and of which possibility the viceroy has not lost hope. The last and necessary resort is to succor the settlers with some support from the royal treasury, and so forth." ( Hammond and Rey, 1953, p. 900)

The Viceroy Marquis of Montesclaros (1603-1607) wrote the King on March 31, 1605, "Just lately letters have come from Don Juan de Oñate, together with samples of ores obtained from the mines that have been discovered. These I have assayed here (Mexico City), and thus far the richest ore produced one-eight part copper, without any trace of silver" (Hammond and Rey, p. 1001). Either the public assay referred to by the Viceroy in this 1605 letter is the one done by the preceding Viceroy in 1600, or else a second public assay was done after he took office in 1603 which also showed only copper. Don Alonzo Oñate (Governor Oñate's brother) wrote the King of Spain on October 8, 1600, protesting a public assay done in Mexico City on ore sent from New Mexico. He wrote,

... after the governor (Juan Oñate) had sent rich silver metals from the lands he had discovered (New Mexico)... all that turned up in the hands of the viceroy was a sort of copperish metal. This was assayed publicly, and as the assay produced only copper it served to cool the spirits of all those who were watching events. (Hammond and Rey, 1953, Part I, p. 581).


With the exception of Beerman (1979) and Simmons (1991), historians have largely ignored Oñate's recognition by the Spanish government as a mining expert in 1624. Considering that both Oñate and Vicente de Zaldivar were two of the most knowledgeable mining experts of their time, it should be self evident that they did not send copper ore to Mexico City as silver ore; someone along the way or in Mexico City deliberately switched the ore and/or faked the public assay in 1601. The only reason for staging a public assay had to have been to discredit Oñate's efforts and results in New Mexico. Past authors have tended to accept the 1601 public assay showing only copper at face value as evidence that there was no silver in New Mexico. There may have even been a second fake public assay between 1601 and 1605, as in that year the new Viceroy wrote the king that he had personally seen a public assay showing only copper. His often-referenced comment is thus invalid, and either he or his subordinates must have been involved in the subterfuge against Oñate.

A detailed study of the period (one is underway at UNM) would be required to know if the Viceroys were aware of the fraud or not, but fraud was involved. In view of the facts that Oñate and Zaldivar were very experienced silver miners, and had at least some very rich silver ore from the silver mines in the Cerrillos Hills before 1601, the assay had to have been fraudulent.

Though no discussion of the question by historians was located, there appears to have been a conspiracy to discredit the mineral discoveries in New Mexico as a means of discrediting Oñate's administration of the colony.

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EARLY NEW SPAIN PROVINCIAL PERIOD 1610-1680



The Crown gave financial assistance and supplied soldiers as early as December 1600 to the Oñate Colony of New Mexico. It was not until a governor appointed by the Viceroy was accepted by the colonists in 1610, that New Mexico became just another provence of New Spain (Mexico). The debate over whether New Mexico should be maintained or abandoned continued for decades but the Crown accepted the idea that New Mexico would only continue if it subsidized the colony. Cristóbal Oñate's administration of New Mexico (governor 1608-1610) ended in 1610 with the arrival of the new governor subservient to the Viceroy.

With the arrival of Governor Pedro de Peralta, there apparently was a dramatic change in attitudes toward mining in New Mexico. Mining ceases to be mentioned in surviving government reports of the period from 1610 to 1680. The destruction of all local New Mexico records occurred during the 1680 revolution (note 5), and thus we only have records sent out of the province before the revolt or written elsewhere. The only items located in government reports written in Mexico City during this period were a comment by the Viceroy in 1620 that the claimed existence of good mines in New Mexico had not yet been verified, and a 1638 report claiming that although deposits of gold and silver were well known in New Mexico, they had never been mined. Both documents, as most other official correspondence of the period on New Mexico was slanted toward convincing the King that he needed to continue or increase his subsidy of New Mexico.

In 1620, the Viceroy wrote the king that the only town in New Mexico was Santa Fe, with only fifty residents (Spanish males?), and that the province was in danger of being abandoned. "... although it is said that there are mines, this has not been verified for sure, and the land is being maintained only in order not to desert the baptized Indians." (Hammond and Rey, 1953, Part II, p. 1140).

In 1638, in response to a royal cédula (Law or order) requesting information on New Mexico, Father Juan de Prada collected information from other priests who had been in New Mexico. He wrote the viceroy on conditions in New Mexico for a response to the King's order for information. Father Prada wrote that it was a very poor country and that Santa Fe was the only town with about 50 houses (Spanish males?) with about 200 persons. That the colonists were occupied with their encomienda services and defense of the area and that there only income was the tribute paid them by the Pueblo Indians. He also said, "Mines (ore deposits) of gold and silver are not lacking in that country, as is evident from the experience that has been had with metals that have been brought from there, but up to the present no mines have been worked there because of the unfitness and poverty, not only of the Indians but also of the Spaniards." (Hackett, 1937, p. 109). This sounds very much like a paraphrasing of Salmeron's book which was published 8 years earlier, which was probably available to Father Prada. One of Father Prada's objectives was to defeat a proposal to end New Mexico's exemption from paying tribute (taxes) to the Crown. He said the Christian Indians could not afford to pay any tribute beyond the encomienda tribute they already paid to the colonists.

Statements by New Mexicans after the reconquest indicated that objects made of silver were plentiful in New Mexico before the revolution (Hendricks, 1994). The fact that at least one out of the 50 European residents of Santa Fe in the 1630s (2% of the adult male population!) made a good living as a silversmith strongly indicates that silver mining continued during the early provincial period.

Though Oñate received minor assistance from the Viceroy of New Spain as early as the relief soldiers sent in 1600, an effort was made to try to find ways for the colony to be self supporting, such as the search for a good seaport and development of mineral resources. However, by the time the Crown took over the colony and made it a province of New Spain, it had accepted the idea that New Mexico would not be a self-supporting colony. The Crown accepted the idea that New Mexico would survive only if the Crown subsidized the area through paying for its missionary efforts to the Indians. Thus, governors sent by the Viceroy, as well as most of the missionaries, probably considered the best means of improving the lot of everyone in New Mexico would be the pleading of poverty and need for ever greater financial support from the Crown. In that environment, it would be treasonous for a government official or missionary, to claim there was anything but poverty in the province and a need for greater Crown support.

Father Gerónimo de Zarate Salmeron's memorial, written about 1629 (Land of Sunshine, 1899, Milich, 1966, Ayer, 1916, p. 217, note 21), implies that Oñate's successor, Governor Peralta (1610-1614), was responsible for the change in attitude toward mining. Father Benavides's memorial of 1630 (Ayer, 1916), when revised for publication in 1634 (Hodge, et al., 1945), had the section on mining dropped from the book. Salmeron criticized the hostility toward mining in New Mexico as the major cause of its poor economic condition.

Father Salmeron's memorial, as translated in Land of Sunshine (December, 1899, pp. 43-44 given by Hodge, et al., 1945, p. 227-228), lists the locations in New Mexico where minas (mines or ore veins) were known and he listed both Cienega and San Marcos Pueblos on the west and east side, respectively, of the Cerrillos Hills. The following is the 1899 translation as given by Hodge, et al.:

"It will be nine years since there came into that country (New Mexico) in search of mines (assuming this is nine years prior to the writing of the book which was probably written between 1626 and 1629 which would make the year about 1620), three Flemings, citizens of this City of Mexico, named Juan Fesco, Juan Descalzo, and Rodgrigo Lorenzo, very honest men of entire truth and good example. They found many ore bodies, made many assays, got out silver-as we all saw-and came back to this New Spain, where they bought tools and other necessary articles and got a miner and a refiner. They returned a second time. The day the news [of their return] reached the town of the Spaniards [Santa Fe] that these said Flemings were returning to work mines, that same night they set fire to the workshops in which they were to treat the ore. The which was done since Don Pedro de Peralta was governor [ca. 1608-1621] (sic 1610-14); for he was inclined to this; and with his contracts everything became quiet. By this is seen their depraved temper, and that it troubles them, since they are enemies of silver, that others should mine it." (first printed in Land of Sunshine, December, 1899, pp. 43-44 and reprinted Ayer, 1916, p. 218)


The next to the last sentence implies Peralta tried to stop mining. The last sentence states that New Mexicans were hostile to others (outsiders) mining silver. The Flemings' silver mines must have been those of the Cerrillos Hills since they located the refinery in Santa Fe. Bandelier interpreted the comment on the burning of machinery as having occured, "in the time of Governor Peralta". (Bandelier, 1890, p. 196, continuation of note 1 from page 195)

Salmeron and other writings between 1610 and 1680 seem to indicate that at least "officially" no mining was occurring. However, one of the Flemish miners mentioned by Salmeron, Rodrigo Lorenzo, stayed in Santa Fe. In a 1639 testimonial, it incidentally mentions that he was the bondsman (provided the money) for a church purchase and his occupation is listed as silversmith (Hackett, 1937, vol 3, p. 72). It seems unlikely that a silversmith could make a living in a remote province of less than a hundred European families that constantly pleaded poverty if no silver mining was occurring. The most reasonable hypothesis is that silver mining continued and that the silver was made into jewelry and other objects which avoided the tax on newly mined silver, which varied from 10 to 20%.

New Mexico from the early 1600s on was a province subsidized by the King of Spain. It was exempt from most taxation and the King's subsidy of the Franciscan Missionary effort was its major source of hard currency for imports. There was constant pleading of poverty and requests for the King to increase the funds he paid for the Franciscan missionary work in New Mexico. The King's financing of the missionaries and provincial officials has in the past been considered the major source of income for the colony. Surviving records indicate that little was produced in the way of exports, but the possibility of unrecorded silver exports has not been considered. According to past writings, which ignored the possibility of mining, the royal subsidy was an essential part of the economy and without it the colony probably would not have survived. The concept that New Mexicans in the 1600s were poor is starting to be revised (Kraemer, 1993, 1994). It is possible that any profitable activity such as mining was considered threatening to the royal subsidy and thus should be kept quiet.

A few of the writings of the early 1600s mention the silver ores of the San Marcos area but do not mention any mining. Zarate Salmeron lists both San Marcos and La Cienega Pueblos as having mineral ores by them and he lists silver as one of the ore types for New Mexico. Father Benevidez, who also lived in New Mexico during the 1620s, mentions that there is silver by San Marcos Pueblo but does not mention its being mined (Ayer, 1916). Fray Juan de Prada, in 1638, said that "mines (minas= mines or ore veins) of gold and silver are not lacking (in New Mexico)... but to the present no mine has been worked there because of the unfitness and poverty not only of the Indians but also of the Spaniards" (Hackett, 1937,vol. 3 p. 109). Either knowledge of all previous mining had been lost by the time Father Prada wrote, or past and current mining was ignored in order to plead the poverty of the province and its need for more financial support from the King. The latter seems more likely, as Father Prada must have known that Lorenzo, the Santa Fe silversmith, the next year loaned money to the Franciscans.

We know that at least to some small degree mining continued in the 1600s. There is archaeological evidence of silver mining in the Manzanos during or shortly after the Oñate Period (Hibben, et al, 1985), and in the Tuerto area. Three smelters were dated to the 1650-1670 period west of the Ortiz-San Mateo Mountains on the basis of pottery types (Warren & Weber, 1979). Some of the pottery associated with mines in the Cerrillos Hills also dates to the 1610-1680 period (Warren, 1971, Sundt, 1973). There is an unsubstantiated report of five mines operating in the Placitas area in 1667 (Toomey, 1953). Just as surviving documents are silent on the continued mining of turquoise by the Pueblo Indians, they may have ignored what ever metal mining was occurring.

Roque Madrid II told Vargas in 1694 that his father operated a lead mine in the Cerrillos Hills before 1680. The Pueblo Indians continued to make lead-glazed pottery throughout the 1600's so we know someone was mining lead for the pottery. The European and Tlascalan colonists of New Mexico as well as the local Indians must have continued to mine lead for local needs throughout the 1600s. The cost of shipping goods from Mexico to New Mexico made lead of much greater relative value here than elsewhere in New Spain.

Only one Spanish document, written 80 years later, states that "mines were being worked" at the time of the 1680 revolt. Father Juan Sanz de Lezaun wrote on November 4, 1760, about the deplorable conditions in New Mexico that conditions were better there before 1680.

"In the year 1680 occurred the general uprising, on the day of Señor San Lorenzo, with the loss of sixty odd missions, many little pueblos which were visitations, and numerous haciendas-all stocked with cattle and sheep, and large droves of horses and mules. Every year large numbers of these animals were being exported; mines were being worked, as is evident because their remains prove it, not only in regard to mines, but other industries as well. Indeed, there are still living many old men both in New Mexico and in the vicinity of Chihuahua who say so." (Hackett, 1937, p. 468). "Besides the silver-bearing ores, which are well known, there is much copper, lead, antimony, and everything necessary for mining. ... But all this lies waste, a kingdom with such great resources void of human energy because it is so poor and so neglected by the governors, for these gentlemen attend only to filling their own pockets." (Hackett, 1937, p. 470)


This is the only case located where a Franciscan missionary mentions that there was mining in New Mexico. He could do this as it did not work against his objective of showing the need in 1760 for Royal support of the missionary effort in New Mexico.

Father Augustín Vetancurt wrote a history of the Franciscan's missionary work in the New World. Though his work was published in 1698 and presumably written about 1691, the documents he used for information on New Mexico were probably written decades earlier. Thus, his comments generally represent reports written on New Mexico in the decades from 1620 to 1680. In his listing of all the pueblos the Franciscans had ministered to in New Mexico, he says number, "57. San Marcos.- ... with two little towns: the first San Lázaro, with a church, and the other La Cienega, has neighboring mountains or hills, bare and rocky, where you can find metals of lead, and silver and you can get turquoise rock." The original Spanish is: "57. San Marcos- ... con dos pequeños Pueblos: e uno S. Lázaro, con su Iglesia, y el otro la Cienega, tiene vezino un monte pelado, y pedregoso, dónde se hallan metales de plomo, y plata, y se sacan piedras chalchihuites..." (Vetancurt, 1961, p. 278). Though he only implies the potential for mining by saying, "where you can find metals of lead, and silver", his report at least shows that knowledge of the Cerrillos deposits were well known before the 1680 revolution. Silver objects were also reported by the colonists years later as being plentiful (Hendricks, 1994) in New Mexico before the 1680 revolt. Silver mining resumed on a large scale in the Cerrillos Hills following the revolt in 1695.

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THE SETTLEMENT OF THE LOS CERRILLOS AREA, 1643-1880s



The secondary literature of the 20th Century does not pinpoint the Spanish settlement area of "Los Cerrillos". However, it often contains some comment that it was close to the modern town of Cerrillos. This is correct only in a very crude sense. The Spanish Los Cerrillos was the area extending from the modern community of Cienega for about two miles to the southeast. Thus, it is over 7 air miles northwest of the modern town of Cerrillos. The "Los Cerrillos Area Pre-1680" map shows the 17th-Century names of the area and the distances from San Marcos Pueblo and Santa Fe. What today are called the Cerrillos Hills, were referred to as the "Sierras" or "Serrillos" of San Marcos (mountains or heights of San Marcos Pueblo) starting in the 1500s. They continued to be called the mountains of San Marcos throughout the 1600s after the pueblo three miles east of them.

The first reference to Los Cerrillos as a place name is 1660, but the area name probably dates from the 1630s. The etymology of the term "Los Cerrillos" is generally given as Spanish for "The Little Hills". If that is the origin of the name, the little hills are what today are called Cerro de la Cruz and Bonanza Hill, north of Alamo Creek, just southeast of the community of Cienega. Some portion of the Cienega (marshy or natural dense grass covered area) along Cienega Creek and/or Alamo Creek were probably granted to Diego Marquéz before 1643. By 1660, it was the established name for the Spanish settlement area around Alamo Creek and lower Cienega. The earliest reference to the Sierras of San Marcos or what we call the Cerrillos Hills by the name Cerrillos, little hills, is 1782. Juan Morfi (1782) mentions the mineral ores of "Los Cerrillos De Sta Fe" a century and a half after the name Los Cerrillos was established for the agricultural area to the north of the hills. The history of the use of the name thus seems to indicate that what we call the Cerrillos Hills acquired the name Los Cerrillos from the ranching-farming area to their north rather than the other way around.

La Cienega Pueblo was abandoned in 1680, and the new Spanish settlers of the area in the 1700s used its name, Cienega, for their settlement. The term Los Cerrillos after 1692 seems to have been confined to only the Alamo Creek area. Confusion about the location of the Spanish Period Los Cerrillos did not occur until this century.

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE

The earliest use of the term "Los Cerrillos" (spelling varies) located is the reference in 1660 by Father Nicholas de Chávez, who mentions a farm called Los Cerrillos located two leagues (about the distance to Alamo Creek) from the pueblo of San Marcos (Hackett 1937, vol 3, p. 153). Father Chávez also stated that the pueblo of San Marcos is "six leagues from Santa Fe". This, combined with the 1692 (1750) description that Los Cerrillos is 4 to 5 leagues from Santa Fe, tells us that "Los Cerrillos" was north of San Marcos Pueblo at about the distance of modern Alamo Creek. Estimating the ground distances of travel requires guessing the route of travel. To avoid these errors, air miles, a straight line, is used. In 1660 Father Chávez said San Marcos was 6 leagues from Santa Fe and two leagues from Los Cerrillos. The Pueblo of La Cienega was described in various ways (Hackett, 1937, vol. 3, pp. 228, 249, 261), but the descriptions indicate it was close to Los Cerrillos. Nelson (1914) was convinced that La Cienega was the little Pueblo described by Castaño de Sosa as 2 leagues from San Marcos Pueblo. Authors since Nelson have confused the history and location of La Cienega Pueblo and note 7 tries to clarify its name and location. The map titled "Los Cerrillos Area Pre-1680" (figure 2) shows the distances between Santa Fe, San Marcos Pueblo and Los Cerrillos.

Otermin's journal relates the survival of the residents of Los Cerrillos and their going to Santa Fe at the start of the 1680 revolt (Hackett and Shelby, 1942, vol.1, p. 11). Vargas's Journals and letters to the viceroy reported by Espinosa (1942) indicate that Vargas was actively promoting three mines in the Sierra de San Marcos in 1694, and his hope that mining would promote settlers to come to the colony. In January, 1695. Vargas said that he would visit the mines in the spring and that he was going to found a mining camp in the area. Espinoza (1942) said Vargas was originally going to name the mining camp after the Viceroy (this was not located by AML). The major indication of the location of the mining camp is Vargas's naming of it Real de Los Cerrillos. Giving it this place name strongly supports the idea that it must have been at Los Cerrillos (Alamo Creek). Ruins of what were probably the mining camp were still visible on Alamo Creek in 1750, but were falsely claimed as the ruins of Aguilar's Los Cerrillos hacienda. The area was finally given to Aguilar's descendants as the Los Cerrillos Land Grant in 1788.

No archaeological remains have been identified for the mining camp of Real de los Cerrillos. Remains may exist, but the area has never been studied in enough detail to locate any that may exist(note 8). Colorado College has been excavating, for the past decade, a circa 1680 site that was probably the Marquéz hacienda, about 8,000 feet northwest of the probable location of the mining camp.

Where would Vargas have located the Real de Los Cerrillos? The essential requirement would have been a constant and reliable source of water for the arrastras and any "patios" that may have been planned or constructed, and the site also should be as close as possible to the mines to minimize transportation cost. Though there are two very small springs on the southern end of the hills, the closest large and reliable source of water is Alamo Creek, or the Galisteo River. As Vargas named the mining camp Real de Los Cerrillos, it logically must have been located at Los Cerrillos (Alamo Creek). The term Los Cerrillos apparently was restricted to the Alamo Creek area after 1692, and the term Cienega came into use for the small river drainage where the pre-1680 Marquéz hacienda and Pueblo of La Cienega were located.

If the ruins on Alamo Creek mentioned in the 1750 grant petition were the Real de Los Cerrillos ruins, the site would be very close to the modern Hughes (Bonanza Creek) Ranch house. If not, the site would have been within a few miles of the ranch house. Vargas did not reopen the mining camp after the 1696 revolt and his term as governor ended in 1697. Though Governor Cubero apparently took over Vargas's mines or started his own, he as well as Vargas, had orders from the Viceroy not to spread out the population and not to found new settlements. Thus Cubero probably did not formally reactivate the mining camp.

Knowledge of the mining camp faded quickly in New Mexico and by 1750, when the Los Cerrillos Land Grant request was made, the camp was claimed to be the ruins of Alphonso Aguilar's Vargas Period ranch. Alfonso Aguilar died in 1735 (Chavez, 1973) and his will was not located, but his son Alonso (aka Alfonso II, Alonzo II), whose children five years later claimed an interest in the grant, did not claim in his 1745 will any interest in a Los Cerrillos ranch. This indicates the ruins visible in 1750 on Alamo Creek were the ruins of the mining camp.

The community or area term "Los Cerrillos" in Spanish times referred to the agricultural areas at the upper end of what we call the Cerrillos Hills. Apparently before the 1680 revolt, "Los Cerrillos" was a term applied to Spanish settlements in Alamo Creek south of "the little hills", as well as around the Pueblo of La Cienega west of them. Once La Cienega Pueblo was abandoned, its name became used for the new Spanish settlements in that area and the term Los Cerrillos was confined to the Alamo Creek area. Los Cerrillos does not appear on the Miera y Pacheco maps of the 1700s. His son did not acquire the Sitio de Los Cerrillos grant until 1788, after his maps were made. Los Cerrillos is not in Morfi's 1782 Geography of New Mexico, so it appears that no one was living in Los Cerrillos when Escalante or whomever supplied the information to Morfi, did a survey of the area. A Cerrillos ranch is mentioned in a 1764 mine grant, indicating that someone was living along Alamo creek or that buildings were there at that time. The Sitio de Los Cerrillos Land Grant claimants presented sale documents from the 1760s for land on Alamo Creek, also indicating its private use.

The location descriptions for "Los Cerrillos" in all Spanish documents located are compatible with the Alamo Creek area. Not until the founding of the railroad community called "Cerrillos" without the article "Los" in front of it did confusion occur in the literature. The Santa Fe Railroad first referred to Elkins's town site as "Cerrillos Station" and later its name changed to Elkins's town plat name of just "Cerrillos".

Pre-revolt Residents of Los Cerrillos


The earliest reference to the Pueblo of Cienega was probably by the explorer Castaño de Sosa in 1591. Nelson (1914, p. 27), referring to the Oñate period reports said, "The Name San Marcos also occurs, however, and somewhat near it is mentioned Cienega de Carabajal, undoubtedly the unnamed pueblo referred to by Castaño de Sosa (1591) as being two leagues distant (from San Marcos Pueblo)." This reference comes from the assignment of Friars to be missionaries to the various Pueblos in the Fall of 1598. "Fr. Juan Rosas, (to)... Sto Domingo,... Cochiti; that of the Cienega de Carabajal, S. Marcos,..." (original Spanish in Bancroft, 1889, Bandelier, 1890, and Twitchell, 1911, vol. 1, p. 322). The use of a Spanish surname as an adjective modifier of La Cienega Pueblo indicates a relationship not seen in the naming of any other Pueblo. It could be an indication that La Cienega Pueblo was already associated with the Carvajal family, possibly as an encomienda paying tribute to the family.

There is a reference to a 1632 estancia (ranch) at La Cienega (Kraemer, 1994), but the first references to the area by the name Los Cerrillos is in the 1660s. Information on only two families, the Marquézs and Carvajals, with haciendas in Los Cerrillos were located. There were other Spanish residents in the area, but these were probably the two major ranches before 1680, and the only area families whose history is known. Roque Madrid's 1680 hacienda was about halfway between Los Cerrillos and Santa Fe, and Ana Baca's El Alamo estancia (1661) was described as 4 leagues south of Santa Fe (Kraemer, 1994). Morfi (1782) gives us the description of these locations a century later. The estancia "Alamo" is close to the estancia "las Golendrinas", each with only one family, and La Cienega has four families and is bounded on the west by the estancia Alamo. Kraemer (1994) also has a reference in 1632 of an Alonso Varela Jaramillo having an estancia in La Cienega. The small Tano (or Tano/Queres) Pueblo community, La Cienega, was also in the area (note 7). It was probably within a half-mile of the Marquéz hacienda. It was probably at some point either a Carvajal or Marquéz encomienda and was very close to their haciendas in Los Cerrillos. However, the only known record gives it as an encomienda of Francisco Anaya Almazán I and his son Cristóbal (Chávez, 1973, Snow, 1983), and indicates that Cristóbal Marquéz was the trustee for the encomienda after Francisco's death in 1662, while his son was imprisoned by the inquisition. Francisco Anaya Almazán's wife's name was Juana Lopez and the name of the mesa south of Alamo Creek may come from her name.

When the revolt started in 1680, the residents of the area assembled at the hacienda of Bernabé Marquéz and held off the rebels until Governor Otermin ordered them into Santa Fe. The hacienda being excavated by Colorado College had a torreón (defensive tower). They tentatively dated its abandonment to 1680. Thus, the most reasonable assumption as to its owner in 1680 is Bernabé Marquéz. The newspaper reported that Colorado College had tree-ring dated one log in their excavation to 1629 (Santa Fe New Mexican, 7/18/94, p. 1). Bernabé would more likely have gotten the hacienda started by his father Diego than his sister and her husband Gerónimo Carvajal. The Marquéz family may have been related to Vincente de Zaldivar (Chávez, 1973), who started mining in the Cerrillos Hills in 1599. Diego's father, Gerónimo Marquéz, reportedly did not come to New Mexico until 1600 and established a hacienda in the Rio Abajo (Chávez, 1973), so it was probably Diego who started the hacienda at Los Cerrillos. Gerónimo Carvajal and his wife are the only other known wealthy residents of pre-1680 Los Cerrillos. Antonio de Carvajal in 1681 reported that the household contained 33 people of which only 8 or so were family members.

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Pre-revolt Cerrillos Marquéz Family Tree


                            Fernando de Oñate
                            & Juan de Oñate         Vincente de Zaldivar
                              uncles?                cousin?
                                    |                 |
                                    |        ----------
                                    |        |
	Gerónimo Marquéz ------ Doña Ana de Mendoza
                           |
  ? ---------------------Diego Marquéz(?-1643)------------Bernardina Vasquez
	 |                                          |
	 |	 ---------------------------------------------
	 |       |           |                 |             |
    	 |   Cristóbal 	  Bernabé----(A)     Pedro,     Margarita----Gerónimo Carvajal
	 |   (note B)     (1642-?) |        (note C)     (note D)  |  (note E)
	 |                         |                               |
	Alonzo                6 children                      6 children
	Catiti           (half-grown in 1680)             (almost adults 1680)
	(?-1684)                                        Maria Ana (G) post-1658-?
	(note F)                                        Magdalena (H) post-1658-?
	                                                Josephina (I) post-1658-?
                                                        Antonio (J) 1658-?
 	                                                Ambrosio 1656-?
                                                        Luís (K) 1661-?
NOTES:

note A: her name was Maria de Chávez

note B: Cristóbal is not discussed by Chávez (1973) but was reported as the trustee for the encomienda of La Cienega Pueblo in the 1660s (Snow, 1983).

note C: It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate references to individuals with the same name three hundred years later. The Pedro Marquéz that Chávez (1973) identifies as Diego's son is his nephew as he was born 8 years after Diego's execution in 1643. The Pedro born about 1640 was Diego's son. Which Pedro helped colonize Casas Grandes in 1682 is not certain but was probably Bernabé's brother as he may have taken Luís Carvajal with him.

note D: Margarita was born about 1639 and a reproductive line to Governor Juan Manzo de Contreras with a possible son born around 1659 should be on the chart for Margarita. Her first husband, Gerónimo Carvajal, apparently died prior to 1681, and she remarried Alonzo Garcia about 1682 in El Paso. Chávez (1973) lists her as Juan Garcia de Noriega's (Alonzo Gracia's son's) first wife but also lists Juan as married when leaving New Mexico in 1681. The error on who Margarita married led Chávez to other interpretation problems. Their ages in 1681 were: Margarita Marquéz 38, Alonzo Garcia 45, and his son, Juan Garcia de Noriega, was only 23. All of Alonzo Garcia's children eventually added "de Noriega" to their names. Margarita's marriage to the father, Alonzo Garcia, is confirmed by the marriage records of her children. The informant for the marriage of "Maria Anna" to Miguel de Herrera in 1690 said the father was born in Zacatecas (as Alonzo was but his son, Juan, was born in New Mexico) and that the mother, Margarita Marquéz, was dead. Chávez's entry under Miguel de Herrera says, "His first wife at Guadalupe del Paso was Mariana Garcia...". Under José de Contreras, "married, a Magdalena de Carvajal or Garcia..." (Chávez, 1973). The "Josefa (Ana)" who married Alfonso Rael de Aguilar in 1683 was probably the other daughter of Margarita Marquéz, "Josephina". The primary document for Josephina's marriage to Alfonso Rael de Aguilar, book one of the El Paso Matrimonial Records, is lost and the pages for 1683 are missing from the copy of the records (Hendricks, 1994). However, Bandelier's notes on this book exist and need to be checked to confirm that "Josefa (Ana)" was Margarita's natural child, not a step-daughter, as Chávez (1973) reported that "de Noriega" was used in her name.

If Alfonso Aguilar's wife was Josephina Carvajal de Marquéz, it would have given him a claim to the Los Cerrillos area based on pre-revolt grants or land use, and all comments that no pre-revolt Cerrillos residents returned after the revolt probably needs to be qualified by, "except for Josephina Rael de Aguilar de Garcia de Carvajal de Marquéz". A brief biography of Alfonso Aguilar is given by Kessell & Hendricks (1992, p. 203, note 8).

note E: Gerónimo Carvajal was born about 1632 in the Sandia District. Chávez (1973) said he is not on any 1681 list of survivors of the revolt and must have died in the revolt. If Antonio was his son as Chávez (1992) suggests, he also said he was born in the Sandia District about 1658, which indicates the family moved to Los Cerrillos after that date. His sons Antonio and Ambrosio were probably the two Carvajal nephews Bernabé Marquéz took with him in 1684.

note F: The Isleta Indian, Juan Moro, reported on 2/12/1685 upon returning from northern New Mexico that Catiti had died in his house shortly before he arrived there (Waltz, 1951, p. 180). Bancroft (1889, p. 185) incorrectly implies in his translation of Escalante's Carta that Alonso died about 1688.

note G: Ana tried to poison her husband, José de Cháves, in 1682 (Chávez, 1973).

note H: Chávez (1973), under José de Contreras, says he was at El Paso "as early as 1687, when he married a Magdalena de Carvajal or Garcia...". The confusion on Magdalena's last name probably came from Margarita Marquéz being married to Alonzo Garcia, and thus the matrimonial record probably contained Magdalena's mother's current last name, Garcia, as well as Magdalena's natural fathers last name, Carvajal. Magdalena apparently died in El Paso, as José de Contreras remarried there in 1693.

note I: The "Josefa (Ana) Garcia de Noriega" (Chávez, 1973) that married Alfonso Rael de Aguilar in 1683 must be Margarita Garcia de Marquéz's daughter, Josephina. Bandelier's notes from the matrimonial book at the Peabody Museum (Chávez, 1973, p. 337) need to be checked for other matrimonial information to verify this.

note J: Chávez (1973) indicates Luís left El Paso without permission, probably with Pedro Marquéz. If Luís went to Casas Grandes in 1682 with Pedro, then the two Carvajal nephews who left with Bernabé Marquéz in 1684 (Kessell & Hendricks, 1992) must be Antonio and Ambrosio.

note K: Luís is described by Chávez (1973) as, "He followed Antonio in the muster-roll, whose younger brother he might have been, or else a son of Felis (Luís) de Carvajal." Antonio, in 1680 said he had four younger brothers and sisters (Abrosio was 2 years older, making the 6 Carvajal children).


See note 9 for further discussion of the family history and note 10 for where they went after 1680.

Based on historic documents, the Marquéz hacienda must have been started before Diego Marquéz's execution in 1643 and Colorado College's earliest reported tree ring dating of 1629 would support a 1630s building of the hacienda. All land grants and other official documents were destroyed in the 1680 revolution, so this is as close as we may get to document dating of the site.

Gerónimo Carvajal grew up on his father's estancia at the north end of the Sandia Mountains, which was another prehistoric and early historic mining area. The date of his marriage to Bernabé Marquéz's sister, Margarita, is unknown, but it probably was the early 1650s. Chávez (1973) gives a date of 1656 for Margarita's scandalous affair with Governor Manzo (1656-1659). However, if Antonio was her son, and he said he was born in the Sandia district in 1658 (Chávez, 1973), it indicates they moved to Los Cerrillos after his birth. Governor Manzo could not have had much contact with her when she lived in the Placitas area, so the affair probably started after they moved to Los Cerrillos around 1658. Margarita must have given birth to Manzo's child while living in Los Cerrillos, as she supposedly had a doll buried as a fake dead child at La Cienega Pueblo (Hackett, 1937, vol. 3, p. 228).

Gerónimo Carvajal had enough political power to acquire a separate land grant in the area, as he was alcalde mayor of Galisteo and the other Tano Pueblos (Hackett, 1937, vol. 3, p.249). He just as likely could have received part of Diego Marquéz's land via his wife, Margarita. In any case, by 1663 he had a separate hacienda at Los Cerrillos called "Nuestra Señora de los Cerrillos", as opposed to his mother-in-law's home called "La Casa de Cerrillos". Members of the two families went to Casa Grande and other areas of Nueva Viscaya in the 1680s, during the revolution. Bernabé and two of Gerónimo Carvajal's sons may have gone to mine silver in Nueva Viscaya in 1684.

Though in the past it was believed that no members of the immediate Los Cerrillos Marquéz or Carvajal families returned after the revolution was suppressed, Alfonso Rael de Aguilar's wife was probably Margarita Marquéz's daughter. Governor Vargas took over at least part of the area for his mining camp, Real de Los Cerrillos, in 1695, and probably did not give out new land grants for the area. The 1692 "Los Cerrillos" land grant is a forgery made in 1750, but Alfonso Rael de Aguilar, through his wife, had a pre-revolt claim to the area, and Vargas may have given him such a grant that was lost around 1745 as the claimant said in 1750.

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AREA LAND GRANTS AND POST 1700 RESIDENTS

Formal land grants may not have been given before the 1680 revolution, and if any were issued, they were lost. Only land grants issued following the reconquest of New Mexico in 1692-3 are known. Spanish law considered abandoned land grants invalid and thus all Carvajal or Marquéz pre-revolt Los Cerrillos land grants became invalid when they did not return to New Mexico.

The 1692 forged land grant to Alfonso Rael de Aguilar mentions prior settlement of Los Cerrillos, but did not claim the area on the basis of his wife's Carvajal-Marquéz family pre-1680 settlement there. A claim (lawsuit), however, was made to part of the Cerrillos area in the 20th century, partially based on Alonzo Catiti Marquéz's pre-1680 family ownership of the area by Santo Domingo Pueblo. The so-called confirmation of Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in New Mexico were in reality the creation of new land grants from the United States Government. Many of the rules of Spanish and Mexican land grants were ignored in this process. Though Twitchell's (1914, vol. 1) number 14 discusses the 1692 Los Cerrillos Land Grant in some detail, it is misleading and in error in many respects. It is discussed as a separate note (note 11) to clarify its content. The so called 1692 land grant was admitted in 1750 to be a copy made from memory, but the evidence indicates it was a forgery.

The Alamo Creek Area, the post-1692 Spanish period Los Cerrillos, was prime pasturage for the Santa Fe garrison horse herd from at least Vargas's time until the U.S. conquest in 1846 (PLC #79, Roll 41, fs. 1284, 1287). It was not until the late 1700s that post-revolution land grants were given in the Los Cerrillos area. The U.S. government created or recognized three small land grants in the Cerrillos area, and through the efforts of Steven B. Elkins and Thomas B. Catron, one very large one, the Mesita de Juana Lopez. The oldest of these grants was recognized without a granting document based on old sales documents dated in the 1760s. One land grant was given in 1782. The other two were granted in 1788 to individuals connected to the Governor, or to individuals who quickly sold their grants to officials connected to the Governor. There may have been a prearranged agreement to allow what had previously been land reserved for government use to be deeded to individuals. Either the associates of Governor Concha (1788-1794) took advantage of him, or else he was in on the reversal of Governor Gachupín's decision of 1750 to retain the area as pasture for the garrison horses.

Microfilm copies of the Surveyor General (S.G.) case files and the later Court of Private Land Claims (PLC) case files are at the Bureau of Land Management, the State Records and Archives in Santa Fe, and at the National Archives.

Los Cerrillos Grant S.G. No. 59 [Roll 19, f. 182-366], PLC No. 78 [Roll 41, f. 1123-1231]

See note 11 for a detailed discussion of the so-called 1692 Grant as reported by Twitchell. The will of Alonso Rael de Aguilar (aka Alphonso, or Alonso II), the son of Alfonso Rael de Aguilar, written on his death bed in Santa Fe and dated May 20, 1745 (SANM, R. 4, f 1045-1051, Twitchell # 765), lists a house in Santa Fe and a house on the southern outskirts of town with a little land but no other real estate. His will lists his property and assets in minute detail and would have included any interest he had in Los Cerrillos property. His siblings and children, five years later, claimed equal shares of the so-called 1692 Los Cerrillos Land Grant even though he did not claim any interest in such a grant in his will. Two Land Grant Claims were filed with the U.S. Government other than the Los Cerrillos Grant, based on grants supposedly given to him or his father Alfonso. They are both referred to as "Alfonso Rael de Aguilar Grants" in the New Mexico Archives (one at Cuyamunga dated 1699, and the other just south of Santa Fe in 1744). Both were denied or rejected by the Court of Private Land Claims for various reasons.

The Los Cerrillos Land Grant was recognized by the U.S. based on the 1788 grant given to Alfonso Rael de Aguilar's descendants, not the so-called 1692 grant. The U.S. Government recognized that the 1692 grant's validity was questionable, but the 1692 grant was considered irrelevant as the 1788 grant was considered valid. The value of the 1692 (1750 forgery) Los Cerrillos Land Grant for this report is that it gives us the concept of Los Cerrillos as of 1750. The 1692 Grant forgery was made by people familiar with the Los Cerrillos area. Forgers generally try to be as accurate as possible about all elements they are not lying about and, thus, the definition of Los Cerrillos is probably very reliable. The 1750 Grant request document does contain a few historical errors, such as the fact that Alfonso Rael de Aguilar could not have built there until late 1693 (not 1692) when he returned with Vargas. He left on June 6, 1696, when he and the other residents of Real de Los Cerrillos were ordered to come to Santa Fe, thus he only lived there between 2 and 3 years at the most and probably only one year. The forger was unaware of "Real de Los Cerrillos", or was counting on Governor Vales Gachupín's being unaware of it so that its ruins could be claimed as Aguilar's ranch. Another problem is that the grant was dated only days after the 1692 Entrada to Santa Fe. This was a poor choice for a date, as the Marquéz and Carvajal family pre-revolt titles to the area would still have been valid until 1693. Thus Vargas would not have issued a new land grant to the area in 1692. If Alfonso Rael de Aguilar had purchased or gotten permission from his mother-in-law, Margarita Marquéz, or her brother, Bernabe, to their pre-revolt lands in Los Cerrillos, it should have been included in a 1692-dated grant. A land grant would not have interfered with mining in the area (note 12).

In late 1694, or early January 1695, Governor Vargas appointed Alfonso (Rael) de Aguilar alcalde (mayor) of the new mining camp, "Real de Los Cerrillos", and if he lived there, it was in that capacity. His background in mining before 1685 is unknown. He was involved in New Mexico mining or at least acquired part ownership of a mine grant ten years before his appointment as mayor of the mining camp. On March 25, 1685, the soldier Pedro de Avilos received a mine grant named "Nuestra Señora de Pilar de Zaragosa" from Governor Domingo Jironza (Petriz de Cruzarte). Aguilar received a 1/2 interest in the mine grant. This is the oldest "Land Record" document in the New Mexico Archives and is the earliest mine grant that has survived. Thus, Twitchell (1916) numbered this mine grant document number one (volume I) of his catalog of the New Mexico Archives.

This 1685 mine grant being the oldest surviving mine grant has been commented on by most writers discussing New Mexico mining, from Bandelier (1890) onward. The original (SANM, Roll 1, frames. 81-83) has both interpretation and translation difficulties. The best translation located is in the Ritch Collection (RI 16) in the Huntington Library. When Ritch did his translation, it was document 54 in the Surveyor General's Office. The mine was described as 45 leagues north of El Paso, almost half way to Santa Fe, which was considered 100 leagues north of El Paso. It was in the mountains or craggy rocks called "Xgtonal" (my decipher) or "Xotoreal" (WPA decipher). Hendricks (1994) indicated the word was probably "Xptoval". Ritch and others have translated the mountain's name as the Fray Cristóbal (note 13).

Authors generally refer to the grant as the "Pedro de Avalos Grant" even though he transferred title in the original application. In the grant petition he gave 1/2 to Captain Alfonso de Aguilar and the other half equally to Juan Garcia de Noriega and his brother Antonio de Avalos.

Pedro Avalos claimed that it was a new mineral discovery made "... when order of His Majesty the(sp?) M_u__s(sp?) of New Mexico was entered..." (Ritch, RI 16, Huntington Library). Neither the WPA translator nor I can decipher the two (sp?) words. Ritch felt he could, but I can not decipher his hand written translation of the two words. The original does not look similar to the names of any of the governors of the period. If Avalos was on the 1681 Otermin entrada (the 1681 entrada muster role is in SANM, but was not checked), why did he wait four years to file the mine grant? It is of interest as it may refer to a second entrada into New Mexico on the order of Jironza in the 1683-85 period. A reference to an early 1683 entrada is made by Waltz (1951, p. 179), but no report on it has been mentioned in the general histories of the period. An early 1683 entrada would still have been two years prior to the mine grant. The grant was signed both by Governor (Jironza) Cruzate and by "Alphoniso de Aguilar" (aka Alfonso Rael de Aguilar) as Secretary of Government and War. Alfonso may have written the document, and half of the mine grant may have been given to him for his services and in getting the governor's approval. We do not know if Aguilar or the other owners ever worked the mine, but it was not far south of Soccoro, where there were pre-revolt mines. Robert Eveleth (1990) of the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources only knows of manganese deposits in the north end of the Fry Cristóbal Mountains, and said that it has been assumed that Avalos mistook one of them for a silver deposit.

In 1707-1708, there was a silver mining rush to a new area discovered by where Chihuahua City is now located, and in 1709 Alfonso Rael de Aguilar was there acting as scribe (Kessell & Hendricks, 1992, p. 203, n. 8). By 1713, Alfonso was back in New Mexico and obtained another mine grant (SANM-LR, Roll 4, fs. 896-899, T# 739). This mine, which he named "Nuestra Señora de los Reyes de Linares", was in what we today call the San Pedro Mountains south of Golden. He divided the ownership of that mine amongst 9 or 10 people including his son, Alphonso (aka Alonso) Rael de Aguilar (this father and son with the same or similar names may be confused in some references), and his grandsons. Aguilar, besides being Alcalde of Real de Los Cerrillos and adjacent Rio Grande Pueblos in 1695-6, was secretary to three Governors, Jironza de Cruzarte, Vargas, and Rodríguez Cubero. He worked with his fellow military-politico, Antonio de Ulibarrí (aka Uribarrí), who took over the Santa Rosa mine in the Cerrillos in 1709 and claimed another in the San Pedros in 1710 in the area of Aguilar's mine grant of 1713. Uribarrí remained in important offices and was Alcalde Mayor of Santa Fe in 1745 and co-executrix with Alonso Aguilar's wife of his 1745 will.

The first record of Alfonso Rael de Aguilar being in New Mexico is his marriage in El Paso in 1683 to Josepha (Ana) Garcia de Noriega (probably Josephina the daughter of Margarita Marquéz and Gerónimo Carvajal). After rejection of the 1692 document, the 1750 claimant reportedly admitted to Joseph de Bustamante that the original document the 1750 copy was supposedly made from did not exist, but claimed it had existed until about 5 years earlier (the time of Alonso Aguilar's death). The official 1750 denial of the Los Cerrillos 1692-land grant gives three reasons: 1. It was not and had not been occupied, 2. No original grant had been supplied and claimant agreed they could not supply an original, and 3. The area was the closest and best pasturage for the garrison horse herd.

Sitio de los Cerrillos Grant S.G. No. 229 [Roll 29, f.1058-], PLC No. 79 [Roll 41, f. 1232-]

The term "Sitio" as used here was the Spanish-Americanism for a small farm and is not referring to its use in one of three different large units of land measurement. Petitioned for on January 21, and granted January 24, 1788, to Cleto de Miera and Pedro Bautista by Governor Concha (1788-1794). Petition boundaries: east "ojo ( spring) de los Cerrillos", west "sitio de Juana Lopez", north "sitio de las Cienega", and south "the wooded hills". In the granting document (1/24/1788) the east boundary was changed to "lands of the heirs of Alfonso Real", (the Los Cerrillos Grant) made at the same time, and the west boundary was restated as "lands of Piño" (the Sitio de Juana Lopez Grant).

In a 1893 testimony of Jesus Narraes, he said he lived at the Piño Ranch house, which was the only house in the area. He said the boundaries of the grant were: West of the arroyo, which is at the foot of the Mesita de Juana Lopez; North is the Alto de Guieu; South is the Alto de los Cerrillos; East is a small hill "Lomita de los Esturcos(sp?)". (SGR, no. 229, PLC No. 79, Roll 41, f. 1244-). He also reported that the area was used for pasture for the garrison horses from 1750 to 1846 (f.1284 & 1287).

Sitio de Juana Lopez Grant S.G. No. 230 [Roll 30, f.208-255], PLC No. 82 (Roll 42, f. 577-639)

The petitioner to the U.S. did not have the original grant, but had sales documents starting with a sale dated December 30, 1762, and several more leading to Piño in 1788.

Mesita de Juana Lopez Grant S.G. No. 64 (Roll 19, f.842-1268)

The original grant was to three Romero Brothers on January 18, 1782. This grant went from the lowest part of Alamo Creek where it drains into the Santa Fe River east to what later was the Sitio de Juana Lopez Grant and south to the southern edge of the mesa (Mesita de Juana Lopez). Under the ownership of Steven B. Elkins and Thomas B. Catron, the grant was greatly expanded in the 1870's. In the 1870s, Elkins and Catron acquired an 8/9 interest in the grant (Elkins letter to Catron 8/15/79, 24 (53)). The other 1/9 was owned by Antonio Ortiz, which he mortgaged to the First National Bank of Santa Fe (though that 1/9 may have been in Catron's name) (T.B. Catron letter to S.B. Elkins, 2/26/1904, no number). The 1876 grant survey by Rollin J. Reeves took it all the way to just north of the modern town of Madrid. They then used the overlap with the Ortiz Mine Grant, which Elkins controlled to get a major stock interest in the Cerrillos Coal and Iron Company which Elkins created in 1884 to develop the Madrid Coal field. The public record has misled some to think that Catron owned the grant and was in conflict with Elkins over the south boundary, which was not the case. They cooperated in defending the grant against several efforts by government officials to reduce its size.

Los Cerrillos Residents after 1800


The title transfers of the four land grants after 1788 was not researched for this report. The documents encountered do not give a complete picture and a number of questions remain. After the U.S. occupation only two families seem to have dominated the area and were consistently mentioned: the Delgados in the eastern portion, and the Pinos in the western portion of the Los Cerrillos (Alamo or Bonanza Creek) area.

Don Clito Miera y Pacheco (a son of Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, the multi-talented map maker, santero, metallurgist, and politico) was one of the two recipients of the 1788 Sitio de Los Cerrillos Grant. Twitchell (1914, #14) said Clito Miera y Pacheco bought the Los Cerrillos Land Grant from the Penas in 1791 for 450 pesos. Clito sold his Los Cerrillos ranch, which must have included both Los Cerrillos grants prior to October 13, 1803, when he signed a document accepting payment for the ranch. [The details of the sales price as given by Boyd (1974, p. 284) is in note c at the end of Appendix 3.] Clito sold the two Los Cerrillos grants to Don Miguel Delgado (senior, who died in 1815), who turned the ranch over to his son of the same name.

The Pinos were the recipients of the small 1788 Sitio de Juana Lopez Grant on the west side of the Sitio de Los Cerril