SECRET MINES IN MEXICO.

West Coast Times, Issue 1328, 24 December 1869, Page 3

SECRET MINES IN MEXICO.

The Acapulco corresponelent of the Alia California Aviites :—"lt: — "It affords pleasure to see how tbis despised race (the Indians) commenced to gain an ascendancy from the very day that the Liberal party purged the country of all the nobler blood, who attracted by royalty, lent theiraid to the unfortunate Maximilian. You see now many of the ecclesia-tical estates and city houses owned by Indians, who have escaped from , the turmoils of war, and whose modest cit*as;e did not excite tie cupidity of roving bands. They have also gone ,largely into mining, and the discov ery of new .mining regions, which now create so, much excitemer f ; oi>ly amount to tins, that the Indians wei c long acquainted with their existence, j but previously did not flare to make their knowledge known. Among these, one of the mo^t imp.»rtant is the Mineral ■ de Coalcoman, or rather the Valley of the Chacalapan, on the right shore of the i Mescala river, which has attracted general attention, being rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, and other minerals. At a trifling depth all the old Indian works have been re- opened, -jiving an interesting picture of how the Indian procured the oro in the time of the Montezumas, and strengthened the , belief that the Otomis covered up their mines to pievent their being worked by the Spaniards ; that they burnt their villages and destroyed all trncc of th.c existence of these mines,, leaving their remembrance only as a vague tradition from generation to genersttion. I have been told repeatedly that certain tribes in O.ijacu and other States are familiar with the localities of rich silver anil gold mines,

•which they only work iv secret, and at long intervals, when in want of funds for some religious festival ; that in certfin villages the people have invariably killed the party suspected of revealing their secret, and

, that even their priests have been among the victims. Now these Indians commence i to take a more lively interest in public affairs, they are largely represented in • Congress by numbers of their kin, and have partly withdrawn from the clerical influence , which kept them subjugated for centuries. Instead of burying their dollars, as they used !to do, they have bought many of the ,' estates whose farmer owners losr their property by confiscation or bj the ruin brought t upon them in consequence of the eternal .. wars; these Indians become amhitious, nnd j-'< they are among the first to explore their ■ "mines on a larger scale, and thus re-conquer •' an aboriginal supremacy which they had lost since the time of Monfeziima. While "the Indians of the interior of Mexico thus ' give evidence of a certain kind of civilisa-

tipji, those of the frontier States have re

' „-mained true barbarians, driven to acts of ji , by the persecution to which they ,<< ,were subject. The Apiches and Coman-.-rtjhes on the north are doomed to extermi--'i'nation by American and Mexican rifles, ■ -while ' the Mayas and of'er tribes on th.3 Yucatan and Chiipas frontier have only to contest with an emaciated Mexican ponularion, who have b»t limited means of defence. In Chiaphas it came lately to a pitched battled, in which 'he Indians wore defeated with the loss of 300 nun, but the affair created much uneasine-s that the -question arose whether it would not be advisable to remove the capital from San Cri^toval to a safer locality. In Yucatan •these. savage, Indians have lately burned seven la'ge farms near Yzamal; they have defeated the 150 men sent aganst them from Sotuta (of wh.nn only ten c oldiers returned),' and 'are threatening the larger . places, of which Yaxcaba fell into the '•' ' hands of the Indians after a valiant de- '•' "' fence. ' The town was plundered and then h: 'burned'' down. The Vi e- Governor had raistd all the avail.-ble troops in Merida, a,nd was going ,to open the campaign in ,r, r person."