After the famous uprising of the Pueblo Indians in 1680, which spread throughout New Mexico, many of the ancient mines fell into the realm of legend. The folklore of the US Southwest is still replete with stories of incredibly rich forgotten mines and lost treasures. One of the central places in these stories is occupied by the legendary "Mine of Mines" - El Mina del Tiro.
The first rumors about her were brought by the people of Francisco Vasquez Coronado. In 1540, walking along the valley of the Galisteo River, Coronado heard from the local Indians a story about the rich deposits of silver and turquoise, located somewhere nearby. The Indians have been working on these richest mines for a long time, and the Spaniards were able to see for themselves: all the way through the valley they met traces of old mining developments. The main ore vein was rumored to be somewhere in the mountains. The people of Coronado could not find her: they were driven forward by the ghost of the "golden city" of Sivola. The Pueblo Indians, dissatisfied with the greed and cruelty of the Spaniards, tried to get rid of the newcomers as quickly as possible and willingly told them all sorts of tales about the "golden cities" supposedly lying somewhere further in the northeast. So the Coronado expedition took place in the immediate vicinity of the El Mina del Tiro mine,and the secret of the "Shakhty mines" remained unsolved. Until the time.
In 1580, Fra Bernardino Beltran received permission to travel north, to completely unknown and uncharted areas of New Mexico, in order to find and rescue two priests who had fallen behind Rodriguez's expedition. Together with him went a wealthy industrialist from Santa Barbara named Antonio Espejo. In essence, the Beltran and Espejo expedition was intended to be a rescue mission, but in practice this resulted in an exploration expedition looking for new gold and silver mines.
In 1581, Fra Bernardino Beltran and Don Antonio Espejo, accompanied by 14 soldiers, explored north and west of Tusayan and found rich deposits of silver and copper on the Verde River in Arizona. The Indians also showed Espejo a rich silver vein (near present-day Prescott, Arizona). The small expedition then went to the western part of present-day New Mexico, where they discovered an ancient Indian silver mine that had been in development for many years. Don Espejo was shocked by her wealth: "I took ore out of it with my own hands … It is very rich and contains a lot of silver." This was the legendary El Mina del Tiro, "Mine of Mines".
The Spaniards examined the mine and were surprised at the scale of the extensive work being done here. It was very risky to mine silver ore here: the vein went deep into the mountain range at a very steep angle, constantly bending and changing direction. In some places, miners had to descend into steep wells, in others - to punch narrow holes called "coyote hole". Only a very small person or a teenager could squeeze into such a gap. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of silver and gold was extracted to the surface.
Espejo and Beltran returned to Mexico in 1583. The discoveries they made made a lot of noise. Their appearance in Chihuahua, then the capital of Northern Mexico, with a bag of nuggets and ore samples, caused a sensation. In his letter to Viceroy Espejo, he said that New Mexico is abundant in silver and gold, and the information obtained by the Coronado expedition at one time is generally true: “New Mexico is very rich, and I brought ore samples from there with me to to prove it . Espejo filed a petition to the Spanish king, seeking to obtain the right to develop the richest deposits in New Mexico, but this was refused. Instead, the king commissioned Juan Onyate, a wealthy mine owner from the Mexican city of Zacatecas, to mine the treasures of the northern lands. Eager to get this concession at all costs, Onyate even agreed to equip the expedition with his own funds, pay the salaries and equipment of the royal soldiers and all the expenses for the manufacture and delivery of six guns, two dozen chain mail and two dozen arquebusses.
It took Onyata several years to prepare this large-scale enterprise. Only on January 26, 1598, a perfectly equipped expedition, consisting of 130 soldiers, eight priests and several dozen Indian slaves, led by Juan Onyate, left Santa Barbara and moved north. The expedition was accompanied by 83 wagons and a huge herd of 7,000 head of cattle. Many of his soldiers took their families and property with them, as the expedition was supposed to establish colonies and missions along the way. The first of these was the San Gabriel mission (now included in the city of Santa Fe). It became the "capital" of Onyate, the base for his further actions.
From all sides, the Spaniards heard rumors about rich Indian mines and silver veins. In the village of San Marcos, located in the northern part of the Galisteo River Valley, Onyate was told about the vast deposits of silver and turquoise nearby, long exploited by the Indians. Captain Marcos Farfan was sent in search, accompanied by six Indian guides. “They found a mine, three stages deep, from where the Indians extracted ores to decorate bodies and to dye their fabrics,” wrote Juan Onyate. - The mine contained brown, black, blue, and green ores. The blue was so bright that I thought it was turquoise … I was told that this silver is the best in the world. " Samples showed that the ore found contained 11 ounces of gold and silver per quintal (220 ounces per ton). So the end was put in the history of the search for "Shakhty Shakhty" …
Promotional video:
For nearly a hundred years, El Mina del Tiro regularly supplied the royal treasury with silver and gold. However, it was not only the king who benefited from it. In the 1660s, there were persistent rumors that the mine - through dummies - was owned by none other than the governor of New Mexico, Don Jochen Codallos y Robal. Thousands of Indian miners laid their heads in the bowels of the Shakhty Shakhty: they had to work here in incredibly difficult conditions. The shaft's vertical wells were so deep that the lower levels were almost constantly flooded with water. The work did not stop day and night. The miners worked by torchlight, sometimes standing knee-deep or even waist-deep in water. There were landslides every now and then. To replace the dead, new poor fellows were lowered into the mine …
They say that the fatal collapse, which killed more than 100 people and became the immediate cause of the uprising in 1680, occurred precisely at the El Mina del Tiro mine. Be that as it may, it was 1680 that was the last in the history of the Shakhty Shakhty. According to one version, the rebels flooded the mine, according to the other, they blew up and covered the entrance to it. Huge reserves of unloaded silver remained underground, and the richest life itself …
The Spaniards could no longer find the mine. After 1692, when the lands of New Mexico returned to the rule of the Spanish crown, many tried to find the "mine of mines". Several other “missing” mines were found during these searches, but the fate of El Mina and Tiro's goal remained a mystery. It is said to have been located in the vicinity of the village of Serillos, within a "half-hour mule ride" of it. In these places, you can often find large piles of stones overgrown with cacti. Under one of these embankments, perhaps, lies the entrance to the legendary "Mine of Mines" …
From the book: "100 Great Treasures". Nikolay Nepomniachtchi, Andrey Nizovsky