Fitz-John, followed father and grandfather as a colonial governor.
Winthrop Jr. was a man of many parts, being interested in science, medicine and astronomy. Indeed he acted as a physician in Connecticut for a number of years and on the astronomical side claimed the sighting of a fifth moon around Jupiter many years before it was confirmed through the work of others. He also carried out experiments to mine salt from the ocean by evaporation. He died in 1676 of a cold caught in Boston where he was attending the New England Convention.
The Winthrop family is one of the exclusive group of rich upper class Americans who trace their heritage back to the founding days of the American colonies and beyond that back to England and even the Normans. Today the rich founding families are often seen as outposts of American snobbery whose past is perhaps more glorious than their present. John Winthrop Jr., dedicated administrator and politician, mining entrepreneur and scientist, a man of brilliance, underlines the difficulties for his ancestors in living up to the family’s past glories.
Mining for lead
Further to the west in what was then French influenced territory, the search for minerals uncovered lead deposits. In the 17th century French traders such as Louis Joliet and Robert de La Salle made journeys from Quebec which took them down the Mississippi River, eventually as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, and in the process the French traders observed outcropping lead ore which resulted in the opening up of the lead mines of the Mississippi Valley. These were amongst the earlier fully documented mining developments in what was to become the USA. The French explorer, Henri Joutel, recorded the existence of lead mines in the northwest part of Illinois in the late 17th century. It is also thought that local Indians had come across free lead and copper and not knowing how to work it had used it as adornment. With the coming of the French they soon picked up the idea of mining the lead ore and smelting it in hollowed-out tree stumps or in campfire hearths.
The reason for French interest in lead was its use as ammunition for the rifles of traders and trappers. One of the earlier Mississippi Valley lead mines was developed by Nicolas Perrot, a French explorer and trader, who was an important figure in the history of French colonies in North America as a diplomat working with the indigenous Red Indians. Perrot also had some knowledge of mining techniques and instructed Indian workers how to dig inclines into the orebody, thereby making it easier to set fires in order to fracture the ore and remove the richest material, a technique that should be very familiar to us by now.
Perrot was followed by Pierre le Sueur, another French explorer and trader, who had mistaken green sand for copper ore in an earlier loss-making deal. Le Sueur had hoped to further develop the lead mines in the area, including Perrot’s, but after initial work they were deemed to be uneconomic. Other lead mines, however, were developed by both the French and the English, including Mine la Motte in Missouri’s Ozark Hills. La Motte was eventually run by Philippe Renault, who came to America in 1719 and whose father was an iron founder back in France.
Mining in the Mississippi Valley was affected by Indian action from time to time, and for some decades lead mining was concentrated in Missouri, but by the end of the 18th century interest had returned to the region, including Illinois and Wisconsin. The treatment process remained fairly crude, using logs to shape a large fire and then melting the mined material in a large bowl within the structure. The resulting metal was then made into bars and often shipped to France.
Other French lead mine owners included Julien Dubuque, who operated in Iowa and Illinois and had a particularly close relationship with local Indians. Dubuque’s mines were thought to produce around 1000 tonnes of lead a year, enough with his winter trapping activities to make him a very rich man. His Indian miners operated in the traditional manner, again using fire setting to crack the ore and then stag horn implements to break off the metal bearing parts of the ore. Smelting was done in a log furnace but with a stone base, and built into sloping ground. Lead recovery was satisfactory at around 65%, taking into account the fairly rudimentary technology used. Mining by the French continued into the early decades of the 19th century and when the French began to leave the US, Indians took over the mines for a short period before the expansionary and now independent Americans from the east moved in.
The pace of exploitation accelerated as the US pushed west and more lead mines were opened. The Indians lost out and the expansionary US government began to enclose land and then issue leases to interested parties with royalty requirements attached. The system was on the chaotic side and not well policed initially by the government, but in due course mining became more organised, and more efficient smelting technology was introduced. The displaced Indians, indignant at losing their land, created problems and security remained an issue for many years. One of the worst offenders in his ignoring of both US government instructions and Indian rights was Henry Dodge, who in 1827 was producing at least 1.5 tonnes of lead a day from land owned by the Winnebago Indians in the Wisconsin Valley. Dodge, having made his fortune, became Governor of Wisconsin, a post he held for many years, and then became a US senator. However, by the middle of the 19th century a recognisable and organised lead mining industry was beginning to emerge, as we will discover later.
9. Gold, Silver and the Spanish Conquistadors
One of the most wide-reaching events in the Middle Ages as far as metals and mining are concerned was the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors in Latin America. If the Middle Ages ended with the Reformation and the dislocation that ensued, its golden time was surely the Renaissance when art and culture began to blossom – the first indications of an economic revolution to come were seen in the form of the futuristic sketchings of Leonardo de Vinci.
The Spanish certainly were inspired by the atmosphere of the Renaissance to sail out into the Atlantic, pushing west in the hope of finding a route to the east – in particular India and China – where riches in the form of spices, not to mention gold, beckoned. The Portuguese had earlier sailed into the Atlantic, also anxious to find a passage to India that did not take them through the lands of the Ottoman Empire; they first turned south to probe the west coast of Africa.
So it was that in 1492 Christopher Columbus, an Italian sea captain, supported and equipped by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, set sail for India going west across the Atlantic. Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean on the island of San Salvador, far from his target of India and the east. Over the years he made a number of trips to what became known as the West Indies, landing on Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba and establishing administrations there. Despite his pioneering success Columbus found little gold and certainly no spices and in due course he was recalled to Spain, having fallen out with the Spanish crown.
It was not, however, the case that the Spanish interest in Latin America’s gold and silver came about as a result of any plan to explore for and then mine gold. Whilst Spain has a long history of mining, the Conquistadors were adventurers and though gold was their primary target they thought that their voyage across the Atlantic would bring them to India eventually, where it was rumoured that great quantities of gold, already mined, were to be found. When they reached the West Indies the Spanish did find some gold on Haiti, but it needed mining and the Conquistadors were really looking to acquire mined gold by trading other goods for it and then shipping it back to Spain for the Crown’s treasury.
The Haitian gold operations were basically alluvial, mining river beds and streams, and the miners were indentured native Indians who the Spanish treated harshly with the consequence that many of them died, and were then replaced by slaves from west Africa. The Spanish in due course opened gold mines on Cuba. The gold mined was shipped back to Seville in Spain, which was the designated port where the gold had to be landed, and here it was delivered to the Casa de Contratacion which was the depot built to receive American gold.
Whilst the quantity of gold found on the Caribbean islands occupied by the Spanish was relatively modest, rumours abounded of great riches in a land called Mexico to the west. It was Hernan Cortez, an adventurer who had fallen out with the Cuban governor, who decided to flee Cuba before more trouble ensued and set sail for Mexico with a force of 600 men. There he encountered the Aztec civilisation, and gold.
Cortez found the rumours about gold in Mexico were correct and