Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1898 — AZTEC MINES REDISCOVERED. [ARTICLE]

AZTEC MINES REDISCOVERED.

Important Find of an Exploring Exposition late Mexico. Tho discovery of William Niven, of Brooklyn, of important evidences of the past civilization of the Aztecs and related tribes has been verified on the arrival of the explorer in the capital of Mexico. He found a number of prehistoric ruins and a sealed ossuary containing skeletons. He has incidentally round new silver mines and promising placers, the latter perhaps a rediscovery of diggings from which the Aztecs drew their wealth. It needs that only half which is on record of the Aztecs in Montezuma's time be true to indicate that gold was the commonest of their metals. They did not hold it in the value that Europeans gave to it, and this fact enabled Cortez and his followers to rob these people m a royal fashion. Shields, helmets, cups, bracelets and nuggets were delivered in exchange for promises and friendships that were as empty as the promises of Spain have ever been. After enriching Cortez the natives found themselves at his mercy, their emperor a captive, their temples despoiled, strange images set up in public places before which they were compelled to bow and worship, and in the end the Spaniard possessed the land. In Peru and adjacent states similar dramas were enacted, and the white man gained his power by the copious shedding of blood. It is nOt improbable that when the greed of the invaders for the yellow metal was discovered the Aztecs and other native tribes desisted from the mining of it,* hoping by representations that the supply was exhausted to keep the troops, with their swords and thundering cannon, from any further advance into their country. It does not take Tong in a tropical country for eroded banks to clothe themselves afresh in vegetation, hence in a few years the tokens of placer mining would have disappeared, and after the people had been driven to other parts of the country or had been occupied in the general defense, these beds of gold-bearing gravel would be forgotten . Their d iscovery, if such it is, may prove to be important—not so much so as the Klondike, probably, for much has already been taken from them, yet not insignificant, since modern methods insure a larger return for labor than the old way, which was nothing but the picking of nuggets from the stream beds. American capital will probably develop these mines and we may have a peed of gold in the next few years.—Brooklyn Eagle.