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Mining Camps: A Study in American Frontier Government

1948; University of Utah Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/442230

2325-8675

C. Gregory Crampton, Charles Howard Shinn,

Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies

THE following pages deal largely with ancient, medi- aeval, and modern mining-laws, and with the life of mining-camps ; but this is solely for their value as con- tributions to American political science and American institutional history.The proposed investigation is as far removed, on the one hand, from a technical history of mining, as it is removed, on the other hand, from a digest of mining-decisions.It is primarily a study of the mining-camp commonwealths ; that is, of those States and Territories in the remote West whose development has been under conditions widely different from those that prevailed on the Atlantic slope and in the Mississippi Valley.It is also a study of the Spanish land-system in Mexico and in California, and of the relations of priest, alcalde, and commandante, in mis- sion, pueblo, and presidio ; for otherwise the place of the true mining-camp, as a nucleus of most effective organization, cannot be fully understood.It is an at- i denly ended.Nevertheless, a large portion of this local law, created thus rapidly and under such unique social SCOPE OF THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION. 5 conditions, exhibited surprising vitality.It persistently kept its place, persistently extended itself to other Ter- ritories, persistently influenced township and county government.It found ample recognition from Terri- torial and State legislatures, from Congress, and from the Supreme Court of the United States ; and it ulti- mately developed into what can safely be called the "American system of mining-law," a system that is honored throughout the civilized world, and forms the basis of mining-jurisprudence in many of the newer gold-regions of other countries.At the present time in the United States, over nine States and Territories, and throughout a rapidly devel- oping region already peopled by more than three million persons, and extending from the silver-ledges of south- ern New Mexico to the frozen placers l of Cceur d'Alene, and even beyond, mining-property is still held in the main by customs of tenure originated by the early placer and quartz miners of California.Although the present laws allow mineral lands to be " patented," and purchased from the government, it is still true that only the well-developed mining-properties are so pur- chased, and that the vast majority of claims are held by simple possessory rights under the " land-laws " of the camp or district.Often the early " camp " grew into a " district," embracing several camps ; and this district ultimately developed into a township of a county ; while the original " camp " in many cases became a " countyseat," though still retaining strong evidence in local customs of its growth and previous history.The free, 1 The word "placer" is from the Spanish.It means "content,"" satisfaction."" Placers are superficial deposits of gold which occupy the beds of ancient rivers "(Decision in Case of Moxon vs. Wilkinson, 2d Montana Reports).6 MINING-CAMPS.strong life of the mining-camp has been a factor of prime importance in the social, literary, and institutional development of large and prosperous American communities.The laws of the mining-camp, in modiT fied form, still influence many of the newer States andTerritories.Nothing that is likely to happen will ever take from the civilization of this imperial domain of Pacific-Coast and Rocky-Mountain region certain char- acteristics due to the mining-camp era.Even when, a century hence, it is, perhaps, divided into twenty States, with a population of twice as many millions, the atmos- phere and traditions of the mining-camp will yet linger in the mountain gorges, and fragments of the miner's jurisprudence will yet remain firmly embedded in local and State law.In order to better understand these camps of the Far West, it has seemed proper, and indeed necessary, to first investigate, though briefly, the ancient and rneclue- val mining-systems.Through legal sources, and by means of history, chiefly Spanish, English, and German, we must connect the mining-experiences of the New World with those of the Old, sufficiently, at least, to serve for purposes of illustration.We shall every- where discover that, as Professor Stubbs says in his " Constitutional History,"" the roots of the present lie deep in the past," and that "nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is."The very kind of local law and self-gov- ernment known to the miners of California has existed in some degree among the miners of many other lands.The mining-tribes of ancient Siberia, the mining-cities of desert-guarded Midian, the Grecian "companies" that "drifted" in the hill of Laurium, the Carthaginian " prospectors " who " panned out " gold from the sands V mined for turquoise, copper, and silver.A papyrus of the nineteenth dynasty still exists, containing plans of the workings of the Nubian gold-mines.Herodotusgives the annual product of the ancient Egyptian mines, as recorded upon the walls of one of the palaces of the kings of Thebes, as a sum equivalent to thirty millions of dollars.This was chiefly from quartz-veins, which Diodorus describes as "glittering with bright metals, out of which the overseers cause the gold to be taken."Egj^ptian and Assyrian methods were purely despotic, crushing and destroying the earlier freedom of the miner, which had in all probability existed, and substituting the doctrine that the ownership of all minerals was vested in the crown.The Phoenicians mined copper in Kypros, and gold in the mountains of Thasos, where, as Herodotus tells us, they had "overturned a whole mountain," even before the thirteenth century B.C.The Book of Job contains a realistic description of the early methods of mining extant in Arabia, and doubtless stimulated by Phoenician traders.When the merchandising of the Phoenicians began to assume world-wide proportions, their caravans developed the gold-searching instincts of many a semi-civilized nation and half-savage mountaineer tribe.Throughout Asia, the "Golden Continent," are the remains of ancient and extensive gold-workings on the Smejewka in Siberia, in the Urals and the Caucasus, along the Oxus and Indus, in Arabia, Persia, Tibet, Biluchistan, Japan, and at many other widely separated places.The probabilities in regard to most of the prehistoric placer-mines in Northern Asia are, that they were worked by wandering Scythian tribes, who were, perhaps, on much the same intellectual level as the turquoise-miners claims, and rules of mining-life, prevailed among these first Thuringian miners who struck pick into rocks of Black Forest and Hartz, and unveiled the treasures of Freiberg, no less certainly than similar laws and usages prevail to-day among the organizers of the newest camps on the Rio Grande and Yukon.The Mark method of dividing lands was no more certainly a product of the thought of the Germanic race than are the customs which to-day govern freemen in distributing with fair- ness the auriferous soil of western placers.The spirit of the tribes of whose social and political organization Tacitus gave so vivid an account, lives at this hour in free " miners' courts " of Idaho and Alaska.To Germanic sources we must trace the most impor- tant principles of mining-law.The local customs of the earliest Hartz miners have never since ceased to exert an influence upon civilization.The Mark system of common lands, annually re-distributed, was most likely the foundation of early German mining-regulations ; but it took so long to make a mine productive, that the re-distribution plan could not be permanently adopted.The plan of making ownership depend upon actual use, and limiting it to small, well-defined tracts, was the obvious substitute.All the early German codes express the idea of mining-freedom, of a possible ownership of the minerals apart from the soil, of the right of the individual to search for and possess the precious metals, provided he infringed on no previous rights.This "mining-freedom " (Bergbaufreiheit) contains the essence of all frontier mining-customs ever since.The right to "prospect," "locate " a given claim, and hold it against all comers until abandoned, is the right guaranteed, in one form or another, by the newest mining-camps of Montana.This is the same right once possessed by CODES OF TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES.21 the men of the " seven mining-cities of the Hartz," and by those of Freiberg, of Truro, of Penzance, and of other cities of the middle ages where mining guilds and organizations existed.The first written document which embodies these rights is the mining-treaty of 1185, between the Bishop of Trent and certain immigrants from Germany.Other codes appear later ; in 1250 one in Moravia, in 1307 one in Styria.All these, and others of the period, were founded on the unwritten custom, on those usages " which have lasted from tune immemorial."The Moravian or Iglau code provides for the appointment of officials to fix mine-bounds, and defines conditions of ownership.The full size of a claim is set at four hun- dred and seventy-nine feet long, and one hundred and ninety-six feet wide ; a portion is set aside for the king, and a part for the town if on common lands, for the owner if on private property.Mining-courts are granted with special rights and jurisdictions (Bergbehorde).In later years the miners gave effective aid to burghers and artisans in their struggles against the robber barons.The precious " mining-freedom " asserted by the work- ing miners underwent severe assaults from small land- owners, from petty princes, and from the emperor himself; but its broader principles were, as a rule, main- tained intact.During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, German mining-jurisprudence grew exceedingly complicated, and covered a great range of topics.Associated mining-enterprises were frequent.Miners from the most famous districts of Germany had long been in demand in other mineral regions of Europe, and often offered their services to foreign kings.Every- where they carried with them the customs, laws, ex- perience, and superstitions of the craft.They worked early Britons, or as modern Cornishmen call them " the old-men," were simple placer-miners digging up " stream tin " from alluvial channels, and leaving traces of their toil from Land's End to Dartmoor ; when Beltane-fires were lit, and St. Piran became the miners' merry saint, there was rude organization among the miners of Corn- wall.They held great public assemblies under the open sky, upon chosen spots on the wild moor, surrounded by earthen walls, traces of which yet remain ; and these meetings were called Guirimears or speech-days.Old smelting-furnaces of this Keltic period still exist, and the modern miners call them " Jews' houses."A curi- ous old song, apostrophizing early Cornwall, says, " Come old Phoenicians, come tin-dealers, From Marazion come, ye Jews; Come smugglers, wreckers, and sheep-stealers, Come tell the ancient county news/'Into this prehistoric drift, to borrow a term from geology, an adventurous element was brought from widely diverse sources.There was a wild freedom in the air of Cornwall ; and outlaws sought its forests, searovers the shelter of its cliffs.Literature, with its divine instinct, loves the stormy land where Tristram slew giants, and Hereward wrought deeds of prowess ; and some of the greatest of living poets have made its shadowy legends as immortal as the tales of the Vol- sungs.Long ago the miners of "wild, bright Corn- wall " chose their standard, a white cross on a black ground ; until within this century they kept " Old Christmas," the 5th of January, and for twelve days suffered no fire to be taken from their hearths.So U.S. vs. Gear, 1845, confirmed the previous act;