Resources of Santa Cruz County (Classic Reprint) PDF Download

Author: Allen T. Bird
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781332234318
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
Excerpt from Resources of Santa Cruz County The old church at Tumacacori (as the place is known now) is a ruin, falling fast; the Guevavi mission is a shapeless mound, while the site of the Santiago Mission is unknown. Father Kino extended his explorations beyond the Gila River, and established a chain of missions in the Valley of the San Pedro River, but for the purposes of this bulletin nothing further need be written of them. In the vicinity of each mission was a presidio, or military post, with a garrison sufficiently strong for protection of the surrounding region from the marauding Apaches, who occupied regions beyond the San Pedro and the Gila, whence they were wont to make excursions of rapine and ravage into the country of the Pimas and the Papagoes, peaceable Indians occupying these regions, who readily embraced Christianity, coming easily under the domination of the gentle priests. Those Indians were tillers of the soil and laborers. From among them were drawn the workers in the mines and on the ranches that the friars and laymen among the Spaniards discovered and exploited. Tubac, on the Santa Cruz, twenty-two miles from Nogales, was the presidio near Tumacacori, and recently there have been unearthed there a lot of old, rusty twelve-pound cannon balls that were no doubt for use in some of the artillery of the garrison. Tucson, which had been the site of an Indian village, was the presidio for protection of the country surrounding. According to the history of that time, and the records of the mission, now preserved in Spain, the friars at Tumacacori discovered and wrought Rich Silver Mines in the Santa Rita Mountains, to the northeast, and in the Atascosa Mountains, on the southwest. The Salero mines and other properties in the Santa Ritas are known to have been operated by the friars, and in places vestiges of their workings are found yet today. In recent years a party from California having a plat or map with a written description of the location, said to have come from the archives of the old mission, has been searching in the Atascosa Mountains for an abandoned mine that the record they have tells of having been exploited by the friars. Those operations are established to have been inaugurated very shortly after completion of the Mission church and cloister at Tumacacori in 1688. So there is presented the record of the First Mining done on the Pacific Slope of the United States. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.