“This mine was betrayed to monks who had come to the Indians with oiled speeches of saving their souls and shipping them off to heaven. The church took possession of the mine. Before long, however, the viceroy of New Spain—that was what Mexico was called in those times—in consideration of huge land concessions, bought the mine in the name of the king.
“It was an unbelievably rich mine. The gold lay practically open, and in thick lodes. The mine was located in a mountainous region, and near by was a little lake of crystal-clear emerald water bedded in the rocks. From this beautiful little lake the mine received its name.
“Something was certainly queer about the mine. The Spaniards who were working there as officials seldom survived for any length of time. Hardly one of them ever saw his country again, and few even returned to the capital. They were attacked by all sorts of misfortune. Some were bitten by snakes; others by venomous scorpions or tarantulas; others contracted rare skin diseases that never healed, or they caught a sickness the cause and nature of which nobody, including all their doctors, could explain. As if this was not sufficient, whoever was spared attacks from reptiles and mysterious diseases died from the different kinds of fevers that abounded.
“It was evident that the Indians had cursed the mine to revenge the tortures inflicted upon them for the possession of the mine and the outrageous robbery committed by the invaders. In those times whatever could not be explained was considered caused by witchcraft.
“Priests and even bishops were sent to bless the mine. When this was of no avail the Pope himself sent his special benediction for the mine. A hundred masses were celebrated all about the mine; every drift_way and tunnel was blessed separately; all tools, machinery, and furnaces were blessed.
“Anyway, the curse of the Indians turned out to be far stronger than all the blessings and benedictions of all the dignitaries of the Roman church. Conditions became worse. Officials lasted hardly a year; then they died or disappeared on huntingtrips.
“Men, Christians and Jews alike, are so greedy or brave where gold is at stake that, regardless how many human beings it may cost, as long as the gold itself does not give out and disappear, they will risk life, health, and mind, and face every danger and risk conceivable, to get hold of the precious metal.
“The curse, or what the invaders called the curse, took on greater dimensions, but this widening of the curse had nothing to do with mysterious doings of the Indians and of their chiefs.
“All the real work at the mine was done by Indians. At the beginning, when the monks owned the mine, labor was acquired by a clever scheme of the fathers. The Indians were baptized, and in return for having their souls saved, they had to work for the new Lord in heaven, since they were considered now His beloved children and with those Indians it was law that children had to work for their fathers whenever required. Occasionally the fathers gave them little gifts of cheap merchandise. One of the various reasons why the church so readily agreed to sell out to the government was that the labor problem had become extremely difficult. The Indians became wise to the real meaning of the tricks of the fathers and to the fact that these white men with their new god cared less for the earthly welfare of their children than for the riches they could accumulate. Consequently the fathers found every day fewer men willing to work here just for the grace of the Lord. Since the fathers were more concerned with an easy life for themselves than with walking on thorny and rocky roads and doing all the work in the mine without the help of the innocent children of the earth, it was decided that exploiting this gold mine was a sinful operation if carried on by the church, and that it was more virtuous before the Lord to accept the good offer of the government to buy it. Concessions for immense tracts of land suited the church better, for a mine may give out, while land will last forever. Besides, a very important point had been that the fathers could not transport the proceeds of the mine to the capital without the help of the government, which furnished the soldiers to protect the transport. And the viceroy, if asked for the convoy, never had soldiers ready, for— this was his excuse—they were badly needed to quell an upheaval of rebellious Indians somewhere. No gold has any value if it cannot be transported to a place where people need it. The pious fathers knew too well that if they hired soldiers on their own account, these soldiers would never reach the capital; but the transport would fall into the hands of somebody else, very likely the viceroy himself.
“The government, once in possession of the mine, tried to get out of it as much as it held in the shortest time possible. The tricks used by the fathers to procure sufficient labor did not work any longer. They did not work at all with the government officials, and without native labor the mine was worthless. For a while the government tried to work it with convicts. But long before the transport reached the mine, there was no convict left to work. They had all turned highwaymen, and to catch them the government had to send out whole regiments.
“Natives were lured to work with the promise of gifts, consisting of cheap jewelry, goods, and light hardware. After working for a few months they asked for their wages. But either the merchandise promised them had not arrived or the officials had traded it to other natives for necessities. So the workers found themselves cheated of their wages and they decided to leave. This was prevented by the officials through all sorts of nasty tricks and severe punishments. The natives, knowing the country, succeeded in escaping one by one or in groups.
“Now the officials, all armed, went raiding all the villages and brought in as many men as they could capture. The prisoners could not be put in chains, for there were no chains. All heavy hardware was needed for the mine, and to transport any superfluous amount of hardware on these two-thousand-mile trips when so many other things were needed more urgently would have been sheer madness. No matter how well the captured were guarded, after a few weeks not one was left to work.
“So there was nothing to do but again raid the villages. The natives had burned their own villages and had emigrated to other parts. The raiding-trips had, therefore, to be made farther away from the mine.
“To prevent desertions the Spaniards went to villages to which the deserters belonged, and here, as a warning, they caught at random a dozen women, children, and old men and hanged them as punishment for the desertion of men they could not capture.
“Such things can be done for a long time with Africans. But they never went for long with American Indians. One day, when a raiding party was away from the mine, the warriors came, killed every white found about the mine, and destroyed the whole place. This done, they waited in ambush, and as soon as the raiding party returned with their captives, the Spaniards were massacred, with the assistance of the prisoners. Not a single Spaniard survived or escaped.
“A transport from the mine to Mexico City, the capital, took, according to the season, between two and three months for the journey. When this massacre took place, a transport had just left the mine. It was not until six months had elapsed that the government received word of what had happened. An expedition was sent to recover the mine. This expedition arrived there almost a year after the massacre. The leader of the expedition sent a strange report to the capital, saying that after six weeks’ tedious exploring the mine had not been located. Worse, not even the site where the mine had been could be made out with any certainty. There was no lake or any sort of cave-in that would be of help to indicate even approximately the site. It was obvious that the Indians had destroyed the mine so completely that all signs and landmarks had changed places or disappeared altogether. Not satisfied with this, the Indians might have gone so far as to plant trees and shrubs all over the place and cover certain places with rocks and patches of new soil. Since a whole year had passed by, the climate had done its part to change the aspect of the ground so much that even if there had been any officials left, they themselves would hardly be able to find the mine again.