Mining in the Santa Catalina Mountains

Spanish period of Arizona
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First Settlements
Spaniards established towns for themselves in southern Arizona in the second half of the eighteenth century. By the late 1600s, however, a few settlers were grazing their livestock on the lush grasslands drained by the headwaters of Santa Cruz. Ten years before Kino and Manje explored the Pimería Alta, José Romo de Vivar was running cattle at the southern end of the Huachuca Mountains. A prominent Spanish rancher and miner, he may have been Arizona's first Hispanic pioneer.
More colonists trickled into the region after the Jesuits reestablished the missions of Bac and Guevavi in 1732, but the most important impetus to Spanish settlement was the discovery of large chunks and slabs of silver lying on the ground near a ranch called Arizona, which was located in Sonora a few miles southwest of modern Nogales.
The name Arizona has been proposed to come from the Spanish words 'zona arida' (arid zone) shortened to Arizona, or the O'odham phrase al? ?onak, meaning "small spring".[1][2] Another possible source for the name is the Basque phrase aritz ona, meaning "good oak";[3][4] since the ranch was the property of Bernardo de Urrea, one of the several Basque residents of Sonora. The treasure of Arizona was a popular story, and eventually became the name of the territory.


San Xavier Mission, south of Tucson, Arizona.
The discovery of the silver itself was made by a Yaqui Indian in 1736. Prospectors streamed into the region, creating Arizona's first mining boom, but a legal dispute ensued to determine if the silver was a buried treasure or a natural deposit. If the former case was true, the king was entitled to the whole treasure, but only one fifth in the case of a natural deposit. Juan Bautista de Anza senior, father of the famous explorer and soldier, was the commander of the Fronteras presidio and the chief justice of Sonora, and was ordered to seize the silver until the issue was resolved. After investigation, the silver was declared a natural deposit, and the miners were allowed to keep their share of their discoveries. The owner of a huge 2500-pound chunk of pure silver, Lorenzo Velasco, became Sonora's largest rancher. Like Espejo's ore, the treasure of Arizona added to the mining myths that would attract prospectors in later years, and cause railroad speculators to pressure U.S. President James Buchanan to buy southern Arizona from Mexico in the early 1850s.
Most of the pioneers who remained in Arizona made their living as subsistence farmers, not miners. These were families that cleared the fields, built up the herds, and constructed homes for themselves along the Santa Cruz and its tributaries. The mission registers of Guevavi recorded their names, Ortega, Bohórquez, Gallego, and Covarrubias. They also chronicled ceremonies that marked the end of one generation and the beginning of another.
The generations faced extinction on several occasions. The first was in 1751, when O'odham led by Luis Oacpicagigua rebelled against the harsh discipline of several Jesuit missionaries. Luis and his followers killed two priests and more than two hundred Spanish settlers before the revolt dissipated and Luis surrendered to the Spaniards at the Pima community of Tubac along the Santa Cruz River. The rebels received pardon, but Luis would die in prison a few years later for preparing another rebellion. To prevent further uprisings among the O'odham, the Spanish Crown established a new garrison of professional soldiers at Tubac in 1752. It was the first permanent Spanish settlement in Arizona and the northernmost military outpost of Spanish Sonora.