and a half per acre ; March 1, 1847, lauds in Lake Superior district offered
at five dollars per acre.



42 MINING-CAMPS.

settled by the highest authority in the land. The lead-
claims of upper Louisiana introduced hitherto unknown
elements into our jurisprudence. Our government, act-
ing in accordance with the law of nations, had agreed
to recognize all lawful titles to lands in the ceded
territory. 1

Owing to these causes, it happened that American
lawyers who settled in New Orleans and St. Louis early
in the century found that a knowledge of French and
Spanish law was essential to success. As regards land-
titles, the courts of Louisiana have decided that the
colonial Spanish government of such rulers as Galvez,
Miro, and Carondelet, recognized verbal as well as writ-
ten grants. The grants made by French officers during
the ownership of Louisiana by France were never con-
tested, but most of the Spanish grants were. Land-
grants in some cases were referred for final decision to
the captain-general of Cuba, within whose jurisdiction
were Florida and Louisiana. The Indians were assigned
one square league about their villages, including the
town-site. A primitive land-title existing in any tribe
was never recognized. Absolute ownership in their
village-lands was not allowed, severe restrictions being
placed upon its sale and alienation. If all died or re-
moved, the lands reverted to the crown. A simple order
from the governor was sufficient to establish these reser-
vations. It thus followed that grants by Indian tribes



1 Among the important decisions that bear upon Spanish and French
claims, Indian rights, mineral lands, and United-States title, are the
following: Sanchez vs. Gonzales, Louisiana Rep., 11 M., p. 207; Le Blanc
vs. Victor, 3 L., 47; Laudry vs. Martin, 15 L., 1; De Vallv*. Chopniu, 15
L., 566; Murdock vs. Gurley, 5 R., 457; Reband vs. Nero, 5 M.; Moes vs.
Gilliard, 7 N. S., 314; Brooks vs. Norris, 6 R., 175; Breaux vs. Johns, 4 A.,
147; Choteau vs. Molony, 16 How (U.S.), 203; Wilson vs. Smith, Yeager
5, 347 (Mo. Rep.); Delassas vs. United States, 9 Peters, 117.



EAKLY MINING IN THE UNITED STATES. 43

to white men anywhere within the Louisiana territory
required acceptance and confirmation from the Spanish
authorities. A noted case which reached the Supreme
Court in 1853 decided the ownership of the Dubuque
lead-mines adversely to the claims of those who held
under title from scheming Julien Dubuque, the old
Indian trader and pioneer, who, in 1788, had received
from the five chief villages of the Fox Indians in coun-
cil assembled the gift of an illy defined tract of nearly
one hundred thousand acres of land. 1 Albert Gallatin
also made a report to the President upon the Dubuque
claims, saying that the tract was undoubtedly govern-
ment land. In 1832 there was trouble among the rival
claimants to the mineral soil ; and in 1833 troops were
called into requisition, who drove off one party, and
burned their cabins. The government then leased the
land to the miners.

The St. Vrain concession of mineral lands was de-
cided to have been perfected under the requirements of
Spanish law; and so to be outside of the jurisdiction
of the act of 1807, creating a board of commissioners for
the re-adjustment of land-claims. The "inchoate title"
of the descendants of " Pierre Charles Dehault, Knight,
Lord of Delassus Luzieres, and Knight of the great
cross of the royal order of St. Michael," covered a square
league on St. Francis River, Missouri, containing valu-
able lead-mines, which had been worked by prehistoric
miners, and were re-opened by the knight of many titles
in the days of Baron Carondelet, who purchased, in the
name of the Spanish Government, thirty thousand pounds



1 Le Sueur, the French explorer, discovered mineral on this Dubuque
tract in 1700 or 1701. The earliest notice of mines in the North- West,
however, is contained in the report of Jesuit missionaries, who in 1660
found copper-ore in the Lake-Superior region.



44 MINING-CAMPS.

of lead annually for five years. This title, legal as far
as it went, but never made complete, was confirmed by
the United States.

But while the courts and the lawyers were deter-
mining the status of hundreds of varying claims under
Spanish and French titles, the region was being settled
by hardy and energetic pioneers, long before the
United-States Government had arranged to sell lands.
The immediate result was the formation of " squatter
associations," to take up, place on record, and hold
land-claims. Professor Macy of Iowa College, in a
paper upon " Institutional Beginnings in a Western
State," read before the Historical and Political Science
Association of Johns Hopkins University, Nov. 2, 1883,
and since then published as No. 7 of the second series
of the "University Studies in Historical and Political
Science," has well described the claim-laws of these
agricultural settlers, whose guiding principle was to
give each man his fair and equal chance.

In the mineral region of Iowa, we find early organi-
zation. Professor Macy tells us, that June 17, 1830,
the Dubuque lead-miners assembled, and appointed a
committee of five to draught regulations, which were
unanimously adopted. They agreed to live under " the
code of Illinois," with the following additions :

"ARTICLE I. That each and every man shall hold two hun-
dred yards square of ground, working said ground one day in six.

" ARTICLE II. We further agree, that there shall be chosen, by
a majority of the miners present, a person who shall hold this
article, and grant letters of arbitration, on application having been
made ; and that said letters of arbitration shall be obligatory on
the parties concerned so applying."

These simple laws, thus adopted by the lead-miners
in public meeting, form the earliest, and for thirteen



EARLY MINING IN THE UNITED STATES. 45

years the only, local code of Americans on the soil
of Iowa. In 1833 the Indian title to these mineral
lands was extinguished, and within a year Dubuque
contained two thousand inhabitants. May 20, 1834,
the miners tried and condemned a man for murder,
and a month later policed the town, and executed
him, after the Governor of Missouri and the Presi-
dent of the United States had been applied to for
pardon by the prisoner's friends, and had replied that
"the pardoning power rested with those who passed
the sentence."

The early local history of this interesting mineral
region shows most clearly the working of forces which
reached their fuller development only in the compara-
tive isolation of later camps. Lead-miners of Iowa, tin-
bounders of Cornwall, early silver-miners of Germany,
all recognized the claim-stake, dwelt under equal laws'
of their own creation, and tried and punished their
criminals.

Furthermore, as we have observed in the course of this
chapter, the lead and copper miners west of the Missis-
sippi came into contact, in many cases, with old Span-
ish grants and concessions. Here, in the heart of the
continent, midway between Lakes and Gulf, the Ameri-
can miner first met the Spanish influence that he was
to find once more, in far stronger forms, on the shores
of the Pacific. Americans had no sooner controlled the
lead-regions of Dubuque and St. Joseph, than they
pushed westward, in the years preceding the great gold
discoveries of California ; there to meet a current of
institutional development that had come from Spain by
way of Mexico, not by way of lower Louisiana, and so
had retained far more of its original characteristics. It
is to this Spanish-American realm that we must now



46 MINING-CAMPS.

turn our attention, in order to understand the elements
underlying California life, and the conditions that
favored peculiar local organizations in the mining-camps
of the Sierra and the Rockies.



CHAPTER V.

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.
MINING-LAWS OF MEXICO.

SPANISH rule, and the first attempts of Spaniards to
mine in the New World, are of especial significance by
reason of sharp institutional contrasts to the forms of
Germanic development; also because of the influence
subsequently exerted upon the South- West, and the Pa-
cific coast of the United States. The growth of the
Spanish system of government, and the complete sepa-
ration of mining-courts from civil courts that for a time
existed in Mexico, form an essential part of our investi-
gation.

The first Spanish colonists were lazy and lustful,
reckless and turbulent. They desolated the fairest
isles of the West Indies, they rebelled against their
governors, and tfyey drove to suicide the unhappy race
they had enslaved. Everywhere under their system,
with its strange contrasts of stately indifference and vol-
canic energy, the Spaniards forgot their own Castilian
proverb of awful significance, " Dios consiente pero no
para siempre " (God may consent, but not forever).

The only judicial officer of these early colonists was
the alcalde, a district judge, who possessed a great
variety of powers, as will be shown in a subsequent
chapter. The first mention we find of this officer is at
Cuba, early in the sixteenth century. The first mili-

47



48 MINING-CAMPS.

tary rule of Mexico brooked no interference from local
officers of any sort ; but Cortez soon developed great
administrative skill and energy, and rapidly introduced
the local institutions known to Old Spain.

It is, however, to a colony and a mining-camp that
we must look for the best Spanish example of elected
officers and local organization. Early in the sixteenth
century, about a hundred Spaniards, led by Enciso,
founded the town of " Santa Maria de la Antigua del
Darien." The afterwards famous Vasco Nunez de Bal-
boa, roused by some acts of petty tyranny, persuaded
the colonists to depose Enciso, and elect himself chief
alcalde, with an assistant and a regidor. A little later,
in 1514 in fact, some rich gold-placers were discovered
three leagues from " Santa Maria del Darien ; " and a
rush to the new mines was the immediate result. Al-
most at once the miners organized. They elected a
mining-superintendent and a surveyor of claims, under
whose supervision and authority plats of ground twelve
paces square were measured off for each able-bodied
miner ; no one being allowed to hold or to work more
than one claim at a time. They paid the royal de-
mands ; but, while the mines lasted, they managed their
own local affairs with more skill and energy than
miners of their race have elsewhere displayed. Here,
in this little camp of Spaniards, a seed of local self-
government had been planted ; but it could find no firm
root in national characteristics, and no abiding support
from national institutions. Instead of springing up,
bearing fruit, and extending itself to camp after camp
northward along the Isthmus through Central America
to the placers of Yucatan and Mexico, its blossom fell
to the earth unfructified, its stem withered and perished
in a single summer.



SPANISH-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF GOVEENMENT. 49

Permanent social order, and organized self-govern-
ment, could not develop from the early Spanish placer-
mining, any more than from the gold-lust of Spanish
leaders like Cortez and Pizarro. Hither and thither
through the New World, the freebooters of Spain had
hastened, searching for traces of gold, as wolves follow
the scent of smoking blood. Impelled by this passion,
they hewed paths through tropic forests, crossed des-
erts, explored unknown seas, illustrated the utmost
valor, cruelty, endurance, and fanaticism, and unfurled
the intertwining standards of Rome and Spain at al-
most the same time in Amazonian and Floridian for-
ests, in Patagonian and Oregonian wildernesses, and
over hills of Arkansas, deserts of Arizona, and isles of
the California pearl-coast. This breathless search was,
happily, futile: the continents held no more semi-
civilized kingdoms rich in treasures of gold. By the
help of slaves, the baffled conquistadores then began to
develop the mineral resources of New Spain. They
still sent out expeditions by land to follow such mi-
rages as the Golden Temple of Dabaiba, and fleets to
search the North Pacific for the fabled Straits of An-
nian ; but the fever of exploration had nearly run its
course. Silver and gold bearing rock soon began to be
worked with system and success. Humboldt says that
the annual gold-yield of America, from 1492 to 1521,
was 8250,000; from 1521 to 1546, it was $3,150,000.
In 1545 Potosi began to pour forth its treasures, and
the annual yield of gold and silver combined was $10,-
300,000 for the sixty years after that discovery. The
ransom of Atahualpa had been $20,000,000. Jacob, in
his "History of the Precious Metals," says that the
mining-industry of Europe was greatly stimulated by
the mining done in America; that, in fourteen years



50 MINING-CAMPS.

after 1516, there were twenty-five rich veins found in
Bohemia; and that, between 1538 and 1562, over a
thousand leases and grants of new mining-ground were
made by the Bishopric of Salzburg.

The Mexican system of civil law, as transplanted
from the overlordships of Castile and Aragon, lasted,
with few changes, until well into the present century ;
and its more abiding local forms of administration still
rule the land that Cortez conquered. The principles
upon which the colonial possessions of Spain were gov-
erned, and even the details of that government, present
remarkable parallels to the complex system of authority
extended by Rome over her subject provinces. Under
Spain, all titles, power, and dignity flowed from the
royal throne, as, under the later Roman system, they
all flowed from the emperor. The viceroyalties of
Spain in Peru, Grenada, Mexico, corresponded with
singular fidelity to the proconsulates and pro-prsetor-
ships of Syria, of Gaul, and of Spain herself under
Rome. As, in the Roman world, hardly any two citias
bore the same yoke, or occupied exactly identical rela-
tions to the central government, whether that of senate
or of emperor ; so, in the Spanish empire, hardly two
viceroys had equal rank, or exercised identical powers.
The most casual observer cannot but seize upon strik-
ing similarities and instructive contrasts between these
vast and ultimately unsuccessful colonial empires.

The Spanish system had a feudal element, in that the
land, and the Indians as attached thereto, were divided
among the colonists. This royal gift of soil and people
was called an encomienda, and first occurred in Hispa-
niola, extending thence to all the Spanish dominions.
Cortez made a provisional repartimiento, or division of
the natives; and this was re-adjusted by a royal audien-



SPANISH-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT. 51

cia, or council. Cruelty, Disease, and hard work slew
them so rapidly, that the greater part had perished be-
fore they were set free, and given land to cultivate in
common, as in some of the modern pueblos.

The system of Spanish civil government extended
upward from the alcalde of the village to the viceroy
of the whole territory, all appointed or elected with
such severe restrictions that matters were in practice
kept under royal control. The detailed minuteness of
the administrative affairs in even the most obscure prov-
inces of Peru or the Indies, that passed under the eyes
of the king himself, and were decided according to
his wishes, is something that almost surpasses belief.
Some choice in village and district affairs was all that
was left in the hands of the people, until the mining-
laws differentiated the powers of the system, and the
local alcaldeship was thus enabled to gain a greater
dignity and influence. Spiritually, Mexico was divided
into provinces, sees, and parishes. The visidados, or
special emissaries of the king, and the " legates of the
pope," formed ambassadorial links between the Old
World and the New.

Government of the towns (pueblos) was, in Spanish
days, intrusted to a town-council, or ayuntamiento,
whose head was either a mayores or an alcalde, assisted
by several regidors (directors) and syndicos (clerks).
The villages had only an alcalde. In the large towns
of each district, the municipality chose two alcaldes de
mesta, to preside over semi-annual councils of the live-
stock owners. This pastoral custom was carried wher-
ever Mexican colonists journeyed ; in a modified form it
survived in California until a few years ago, and still
exists in New Mexico and the South- West.

Studying as a whole the civil government instituted



52 MINING-CAMPS.

by Spain, we can safely affirm that no nation has ever
possessed a nicer sense of the theoretical proportions
of aristocratic rule, or brought to the difficult labors
of colonial government a more dignified and stately ad-
ministrative genius; but the fatal facility with which
department was added to department, and wheel to
wheel, made the whole cumbrous machinery break down
at last beneath its own weight. It was an ingenious
mechanical contrivance, not a vital organism. Pulleys,
levers, and speaking-tubes, not arteries, nerves, and mus-
cles, set the mandates of the central government in
operation throughout the system. Hence its weight
and increasing weakness, its decay and final failure, its
giant wrecks rusting in solitude on the hills of every
Spanish-American province, its mournful problems, as
of misgoverned Cuba. This overloaded mechanism of
government reaches its climax in the mining-laws of
New Spain, more particularly of Mexico, which con-
stitute the most unique, laborious, and complicated sys-
tem of special jurisprudence ever developed on this
continent.

In February, 1774, the miners of Mexico petitioned
the King of Spain, by whose orders a perpetual corpora-
tion was established, embracing all the mine-owners, and
ruled by a great tribunal consisting of an appointed
president, an appointed director, and three elected depu-
ties. Acting under this central organization were local
tribunals, one in each province. The system proposed
was to have jurisdiction in all cases which concerned
the mines or the miners, and it was at first received
with universal enthusiasm. One of the first things
done was to found a college of mines on an immense
scale in the city of Mexico. Alexander von Humboldt,
in his " Political Essay on New Spain," describes this



MINING-LAWS OF MEXICO. 53

Real Seminario de Mineria as it existed in the city of
Mexico in 1803. The director of the college had then
been collecting statistics from the thirty-seven Depu-
taciones de Minas, and from these reports he had per-
fected a mineral-map for the use of the supreme college
or head tribunal. A great banking-system, whose rami-
fications were to extend to the remotest mining-town,
was early organized. The tribunal, soon after its crea-
tion, had formulated a code of laws for the government
and regulation of mine-towns, mine-owners, and mine-
laborers. In 1783 this code received the full approval
of the king and the grand council of the Indies. 1 Thus
the mining-interests of Mexico were separated from
direct control of the civil authorities ; and the powerful
corporation created in accordance with the petition of
the miners received rights of separate courts, and privi-
leges and immunities almost royal in scope and nature.

No " mine-town " had a right to vote at any election
for a tribunal deputy, unless it contained "an inhabiting
population, a church, and a curate or deputy, a judge
and deputy of mines, six mines in actual working, and
four reducing-establishments."

Paternal government over the mines and the miners
was developed to such an amusing and exasperating
degree, that some of its manifestations seem almost
beyond belief. Supervision was never reduced to a

1 This great Council of the Indies was created by Ferdinand in
1511, but was not fully organized till thirteen years later under Charles
the Fifth. It was a plan much favored by that wise statesman, Cardi-
nal Ximenes, whom Sir Arthur Helps has compared to the English Earl
of Chatham. The Recopilacion de las Leyes de las Indias declared that
this council should consist of twenty-two councillors, presided over by
the king himself as perpetual president, and of four secretaries. It was
given supreme jurisdiction throughout Spanish America and the Philip-
pines. As a rule, the councillors were men who had seen service as
viceroys or captains-general in the New World.



54 MINING-CAMPS.

more exact science. This royal ordinance of 1783
declares that all cases must be decided " without any
of the usual delays, written declarations, or petitions of
lawyers." It sets apart the refuse ore-heaps and " tail-
ings " as " support for the widows and orphans, old and
helpless." It forbids reduction of wages, fixes rations,
commands registration of laborers with a view to pre-
vent their leaving a mine, and orders that the price of
articles used in the mines shall be fixed by law so that
" no undue profit " shall be taken by any one. It also
prohibits all persons from making demands of the work-
men for alms, this being aimed at the beggars and the
mendicant friars of the time. One of the most interest-
ing provisions is to the effect that " persons going about
to search for mines shall be allowed to have one beast
to ride on, and one to carry their bedding and provis-
ions, and shall not have to pay for their pasture, either
on public or private property, whether it be customary
or not to pay for the same." The reason for this pro-
vision is evidently to be found in the royal rights over
mineral ground. Whoever discovered a new mine was
an unofficial "king's messenger;" he was increasing the
revenues of the crown. The prospector was, therefore,
a more privileged charactei in Mexico during the days
of Washington, and under the rule of pleasure-loving
Charles the Third of Spain, than he is at the present
time in any spot on the American Continent.

The code ordained by the miners' tribunal further
provided for certain local officers, called disputaciones,
to reside in mining-towns as arbitrators in difficulties
respecting mining-property, and also to discharge the
very peculiar duty of " admonishing extravagant, waste-
ful, or gambling miners." If this warning was not
heeded, the tribunal had power, which it often exer-



MINING-LAWS OF MEXICO. 55

cised, of "appointing a guardian for said miner, and of
limiting his expenditures." In ways like this the
mining-code of Mexico descended to the most minute
particulars and trivial details of daily life, regulating
the laborer's food, attire, and hours of labor ; forbidding
" dice, cards, and cock-fighting," still besetting sins of
the Mexican miners ; punishing idlers and vagabonds ;
and seemingly making some provision for every possible
emergency.

The use of a disputaciones, or arbitrator, was a favor-
ite idea of Mexican jurisprudence. The powers of this
office were, at its abolishment, transferred to the alcalde-
ships. The disputacione*, under this later form, was
long in use in California. The same idea sprang up
in the early " mining-courts " of the American mines,
as we shall hereafter see ; but the " arbitrators " of the
miners had little historical connection with the Spanish
disputaciones, except that this particular function of
the early alcalde-courts might have aided to suggest the
plan in some few of the mining-camps.

That section of the Spanish mining-laws which orders
cases to be decided " without delay " is peculiarly char-
acteristic of all mining-communities. Time is precious;
every one is in haste ; the poor are about to be made
rich, the rich about to become extremely wealthy. The
world over, all mining-codes in whose making the miners
themselves have had a hand are certain to ignore tech-
nicalities, urge swift decisions, and laugh to scorn each
fine-spun argument.

The laws of Mexico, as of Spain, recognized two dis-
tinct interests in land, surface and mineral ; interests
not only legally distinct, but even transferred by sepa-
rate and differently worded titles. One was la propie-
dad del suelo, the other was la propiedad de la mina.



56 MINING-CAMPS.

The first, the right of pasturage and of agricultural use,
was transferred or conveyed from the authorities of the
province, by sale, by absolute gift, or by gift conditioned
on settlement ; the second, the right to dig for minerals,
was obtained by special gift of the king himself, by
registration of discovery, by denouncement of another
mine for "non-working" and its consequent forfeiture,