This chapter is basically descriptive. It sets out to account for some of the more interesting institutions that were imposed on, and developed by, the miners of Zacatecas and its district in their efforts to extract the mineral wealth of their region, and to show the circumstances in which they worked. It is concerned, therefore, with what a French historian would undoubtedly call the structures of mining – for example, the connection between mining and land-ownership; systems of labour; mining technique; and the supply of raw materials. These subjects will be dealt with as discrete topics, and it is hoped that the inevitable ensuing loss of continuity will be compensated for by a gain in clarity. A preliminary qualification about the range of the discussion must also be made. What follows is intended to be an account of mining in the whole district of Zacatecas – that is, embracing both the city and the various lesser mining towns for which it acted as a centre. But to a large extent, specific reference will be made only to Zacatecas itself, and its mines and miners. The basic reason for thus limiting the view is simply that little information is available about the smaller towns. In any case, it is fairly clear that concentration on Zacatecas itself can lead to observations and conclusions which are valid for the whole region, merely because the evidence that is available indicates that conditions in the city (with certain exceptions, which will be obvious) were representative of those obtaining in the surrounding smaller towns.

A good description of a tina appears in AN.Z, FE 1678 (n.f.), in a lease contract dated Zacatecas, 22 June 1678. Matías Tenorio, a miner of Zacatecas, leased his hacienda de minas to Cristóbal Carrasco. The inventory of the works includes a description of the washing shed. ‘El lavadero contiene ocho tijeras enlatadas, todo cubierto de tajamanil, a medio servir, gualdra, rueda, dos lanternillas, eje con sus guijos y cinchos, y toda la dentazón nueva y bien tratada, peón con cincho y guijo espeque con sus cuartas y horquetas, una tina grande, bien tratada, con tres cinchos y guijo, corriente y moliente, todo bueno, una tinilla chica de apurar con sus cinchos y otra de limpiar plata pequeña.’ Although the exact meaning of some technical terms is not clear, a reasonable translation is as follows: ‘The washing shed contains eight trusses, with rafters, the whole being roofed with wooden shingles, in moderate condition; the principal upper cross-beam (of the machinery), the main driving wheel, two pinions, the shaft with journals and iron binding-straps, all the gear teeth being new and in good condition; a smaller shaft with strap and journal, a paddle with four cross-pieces and spikes, a large vat, in good condition, with three iron straps and an iron bearing, all in good running order; a smaller purifying vat, with iron straps and another small vat for washing small pieces of silver.’ The phrase ‘espeque con sus cuartas y horquetas’ presents some difficulty, and is here taken to mean the paddle assembly rotating in the vat, called in other inventories simply ‘el molinete’.

In 1609 the second Viceroy Luis de Velasco, now an old and sober man in his second term of office in New Spain, began a letter to a councillor of the Indies thus: ‘It is indeed as your worship judges it, that the most important business that exists today in the Indies is the matter of quicksilver, for it is their principal support . ..’. And some fifty years before, when Viceroy Enríquez in September 1572 had placed the distribution of mercury in New Spain under Crown control, he reported some reactions to his reform to the king. The friars, he said, had objected, ‘saying that to prohibit [free traffic in] mercury and to place it under monopoly (estanco) is like placing a monopoly on bread or meat, for it is understood that the sustenance (sustento) of this land depends on the mines of silver, and they cannot be maintained without mercury . . .’. These were typical comments, of which thousand-fold repetition can be found in Spanish colonial documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And given the current equation, for all practical purposes unchallenged, of bullion and wealth, it was natural that comments of this sort should be constantly made. For where there was no chance of refining silver ores by smelting, because they were not rich enough or were otherwise unsuitable, mining depended entirely on mercury. No mercury meant no silver. No silver meant that the motive force was removed from the economy of the colonies.

There is perhaps historiographical irony in the fact that the majority of the very considerable literature that exists on the administration of Spanish colonial towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is in many respects disappointing precisely because authors have drawn heavily for their information on the most obvious of sources – the lihros de cabildo, or books of transactions of municipal councils. These volumes, which survive in appreciable numbers from an early date in many regions of Hispanic America, record faithfully every meeting of town councils, the number, names and offices of councilmen, their votes on many issues, their proposals and their executive orders in matters which they were competent to decide. The books, then, serve admirably as sources for the description of a cabildo's activities, and many such descriptions have been drawn from them by local and general historians of municipal life in the Spanish colonies. But precisely because they are official records, compiled by the town council's scribe, they draw a veil across dissension and dispute within the cabildos, hiding almost completely from view the play of interests of whose existence the historian is frequently aware from other sources. The local politics of colonial towns, in short, cannot be followed from the libros de cabildo, and other sources for them are so sporadic that any account must contain a large element of surmise. This is certainly true of Zacatecas, where most of the libros de cabildo for the period under study survive, with the exception of the first book, ending in 1586, and the fourth, covering the years 1639 to 1650.

On 8 September 1546 Juan de Tolosa, leading a small force of Spaniards and Indian auxiliaries, made camp under a hill crowned by a peculiar semi-circular crest of bare rock. The place lay 150 miles north-north-east of Guadalajara. From the summit of the Cerro de la Bufa, as the Spaniards later called the hill, a group of Zacatecos Indians watched the strangers' activities. Tolosa in due course made friendly approaches to them, and the Indians, in appreciation of his good intentions, showed him stones which, on subsequent examination, were found to be rich in silver. And in this way, according to the traditional account, was the wealth of Zacatecas uncovered to the civilised world. How did Tolosa come to be there?

His arrival on the future site of Zacatecas proved to be the culmination of a movement of exploration and expansion in search of wealth that had started immediately after the conquest of Tenochtitlan. The search for a route to the East, and then the quest for the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola, had led Spaniards westward and northward from central Mexico in the very early years of the settlement of New Spain. By 1528, Cortés' lieutenants and followers had explored large areas of land to the south of the Lerma–Santiago river system, in what is today the state of Michoacán. And in 1529 began the conquests to the north of the Santiago of Beltrán Nuño de Guzmán, traditionally the blackest of figures among Spanish conquerors of Mexico.

The history of Mexico in the second half of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth as a whole is a vast and so far largely unpainted canvas. Any limited study, such as this one, while answering some questions, can hardly fail to raise others and to leave connections unmade or only badly made.

This study throws light on an episode in the northward expansion of New Spain. The power of wealth as a force in extending Spanish settlement into hostile regions is scarcely shown better anywhere than in the creation of the towns of the Zacatecas district. It appears, also, that this expansion into the lands of rich minerals was a prime cause of the development of the agricultural regions of the Bajío and Michoacán. Settlement and farming activities trailed in the wake of the silver rush. The city of Zacatecas was a great magnet in the north for much of the later part of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth, drawing roads, supplies and men to itself from central Mexico. And as, for many years, the effective northern terminal point of the Camino Real de la Tierra Adentro, Zacatecas was not only a destination in itself, but also a centre of distribution and trade for a wide area of the northern plateau, embracing New Biscay and New León, and ultimately, New Mexico. Up to the time of the Parral strike, in the early 1630s, this northern area was empty and unproductive of all but cattle.

‘No measures are taken, nor is any necessary, to ensure that this city is well provided with all supplies; for there are many people who live by this trade, and they take great care to bring each thing in its season and to supply the city with all its needs.’ Thus the writer of a report on Zacatecas in 1608 explained how the city, with a permanent population of 1,500 Spaniards and 3,000 Indians, Negroes and mestizos managed to survive in surroundings largely useless for cultivation. Freighting with wagon trains was one of the earliest secondary occupations to grow up in the north as a result of the discovery of the silver of Zacatecas. Carretas and, soon afterwards, heavier carros had begun to roll over the rough tracks from central Mexico and Michoacán by 1550, carving themselves a permanent road within a few years. Despite the perils of Indian attack, the flow of goods into Zacatecas from the south was thereafter continuous; the lure of high prices made the risk and the hard journey worth while. Areas already producing food-stuffs quickly found themselves able to export to Zacatecas; and patterns of trade were set up which persisted beyond the end of the seventeenth century. The linking of the grain-producing areas of Michoacán with the Camino Real in 1550 is one example. Mendoza encouraged this, since he had been told that the inhabitants of Michoacán wished to cart supplies from the towns of Zitácuaro and Tajimaroa to Zacatecas, and to bring back ores to be refined in Zitácuaro.

Enthusiastic modern writers have dubbed Zacatecas ‘mother’ and ‘civiliser’ of the north of Mexico in their descriptions of the large contribution that the city made to the colonisation of the provinces of New Biscay, New León and New Mexico. Zacatecas' part in the northward expansion of Spanish colonisation, both as a base for exploration and as a source of men, was indeed great. In the following pages some account will be given of the major movements to which it contributed. The detailed history of those movements lies outside the scope of this study; but before any local study of the city is undertaken, it may conveniently be fitted into the background of colonisation over the north as a whole.

As has been seen, expansion began very soon after the settling of the primitive mining camp under La Bufa, with discoveries of ores at mines in the area of Sombrerete. But even while this was taking place, the intensity of Indian hostility was increasing. The first concerted Chichimec campaign against established settlements came in 1561; the defeat of that campaign marked the true beginning of Spanish occupation of the north, and left the way clearer than before for exploration to continue. This campaign of allied Guachichil, Zacatecos and other Indians against Sombrerete, San Martín and estancias in that area in 1561 may have received more attention that it deserves, and hence appeared more serious than it was, because of the long and eloquent report given of it by Pedro de Ahumada Sámano, the leader of the force that put it down.