One of the things for which a city may be celebrated is the great amount of gold or silver it

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1 Document 5.1: Early Seventeenth-Century Zacatecas [The following description of Zacatecas was written by the Bishop of Guadalajara, Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, in about 1605.] One of the things for which a city may be celebrated is the great amount of gold or silver it produces. Zacatecas is renowned for the unlimited amount of silver that has been extracted from it and that continues to be extracted today At the time of its discovery, there were many forests and woodlands in this rocky land, all of which have vanished, felled when smelting was initiated, so that now except for some little wild palms, no other trees remain. Firewood is very expensive in this city because it is brought in carts from eight and ten leagues away. In the time of the heathens, the whole mountain range and its woods were a famous preserve of deer, hares, rabbits, partridges and doves, none of which had an owner in the world. The lords and caciques [local native leaders], whose nation and vassals were called Zacatecos, possessed and enjoyed them, and their name has stuck to this city of Zacatecas. The wood here produces a great quantity of fruit called tuna, which is fertilized and yields without any cultivation, and the wood also produces a great diversity of sweet-smelling flowers. This treasure was discovered in the year 1540, in the following way. When Nuño de Guzmán, having finished the conquest of [Nueva] Galicia left there, his soldiers remained, spread out over the entire kingdom. Since no more towns remained to conquer and since they had so many Indian slaves, they devoted themselves to looking for and enriching themselves

2 from silver mines. One of these soldiers was a bachiller [baccalaureate] Joanes de Tolosa, a Basque, who happened to have an Aztec among his Indian slaves. The Aztec, it is said, seeing his master so anxious to discover mines and claim silver, told him: if you so desire this substance, I will take you where you can fill your hands and satiate your lust with it. Hearing this, Joanes de Tolosa, without saying anything to his Spanish companions, left secretly and was guided by his Indian slave to this mountain range and to these minerals whereupon he started to dig out the metals and assay them. He found the hills so full of metals and of such value that there were some, although very few, with only half the silver, so that while one quintal [100 pounds] of earth might produce two arrobas [50 pounds] of silver. At the start, the smelting of each quintal usually produced ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty marcos [marks] of silver. This caused the mines to be populated in great haste, and the first inhabitants were the soldiers who found themselves closest to the site, and at the same time many people from Mexico [City] started to come and lay claim to the silver and among them came the merchants with their merchandise The Spaniards who first populated the place never planned to remain here, but sought only to extract the most silver they could, and so they made their houses, or better said, shacks, as journeying people in the midst of their travels might. But there was so much promise in the city that they never abandoned it and have remained here with these short, low houses and with no order to their streets It is not known if His Majesty had given a land grant to assist in the foundation of this city, or if only the title of city, which does not include rent or property to cover its expenses. Zacatecas is subjected principally to the Real Audiencia and is governed locally by a corregidor supplied by the Real Consejo de Indias [Royal Council of the Indies] who earns one thousand

3 ducats in salary, and a municipal council that elects two alcaldes ordinaries [chief municipal officers] each year. There is an aguacil mayor [constable] and His Majesty sells the privilege of occupying this office for nineteen thousand pesos. There are three public notaries for sale, each of which sells for six thousand pesos. This city has its own municipal buildings which house the corregidor and the place where he holds his court, the jail, and the place where the regidores [councilmen] meet to hold council. At present, there are four of these and they are commonly sold by His Majesty for four hundred pesos each. One of the notaries serves as the clerk of the council The houses of this city are made of adobe and mud, they all have earth floors, and few are large; some are made of stone with high roofs, but there are few of these. There are more than three hundred houses of his type There is a parish church in the middle of the city dedicated to Our Lady of the Nativity because the city was conquered from the Zacatec Indians on Her day, and the regiment takes its banner from the memory of this festival day. Two beneficiary clerks serve this church, provided, according to the Real Patronato [Order of Royal Patronage] by the president; there are no tithes to pay because there are no residential tithes since the miners never work the soil to plant it, but only to extract metals from it. Neither do the residents provide a salary to these curates, because these latter enjoy the privileges of the citizens, sustaining themselves with some chaplaincies that have been founded in the parish, as well as from confraternities votive masses and frequent processions This city also has three hundred large and small houses of the construction described above, it houses at least six hundred residents, more or less, and most of them are Spaniards. There are at times more than one hundred and sometimes two hundred people who come and go

4 on business, bringing their merchandise. Sixty or seventy children of Spanish residents have been born here, some of whom are occupied in studying, others in being miners, and others in running agricultural estates. There are, according to what I know of this city, up to ten or twelve Portuguese and Italian foreigners in this city. I do not know if they have made arrangements with His Majesty about living in this kingdom. Of black slaves and mulattoes, women and men, there are about eight hundred. There are also some free blacks that come and go and rent themselves out to work in livestock, farming, mining, and commonly they are bad and depraved, these free blacks, just like the other slaves, but as it is said there it is bad to have them, but much worse not to have them. There are about fifteen hundred Indians of these residents in the work gangs who labor in all types of occupations in the mines, but who come and go, leaving and returning with great ease and in this way a precise number for them cannot be given, as we said earlier in the preface. Spanish is the language that is generally spoken in this city; some Indians speak the tongues of their nations, because here there are Mexicans, Otomies, Tarascans, and those of other nations Among the noble residents, there are few who are extremely rich and those that are, are the miners; however, along the intermediate classes of people, there are many who are rich with twenty, thirty of forty thousand pesos and there are three of four individuals who possess one hundred thousand pesos, and all of these are merchants of public stores. But none of the stores are in Spain, as they call it here; rather they operate in Mexico, from where they bring all types of clothing from Castile, cloths, linens, silks, wine, oil, steel, spices and also clothing and silks from this land, and from China, all of which are transported to this city in carts. There are at least

5 fifty merchandise stores whose worth ranges between two thousand and thirty thousand pesos. The merchants of the least value and wealth work in their own stores and the richest ones have servants and attendants working for them who are Spanish There are sufficient and necessary numbers of those who perform the mechanical offices of tailor, cobbler ironsmith, and carpenter. Of these, there are Spaniards, mulattoes, and Indians, and those that earn the most are the carpenters and masters of making engines for mining, because these are burned and damaged continuously.

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