History
In 1583, in the town of Mesquitique, Brother Diego de la Magdalena met with some of the Guachichil natives. Among them was one named Cualiname or Gualiname, who called their attention to golden outlines in their face paintings. The friar asked him where he had obtained this pigment. The native told him that there was much of the powder to the east of their present location.
Brother Diego told Brother Francisco Franco about this discovery, who told Captain Miguel Caldera, who took possession of the place. Captain Caldera sent Gregorio de León, Juan de la Torre, and Pedro de Anda to prospect for minerals. The latter named the place San Pedro del Potosí, to honor his namesake saint and in memory of the famous mines of the Potosí in Alto Perú, today Bolivia.
In and around the hill was much gold and silver, but there was not enough water to make it worth mining. The nearest water was towards the north, in a region still dominated by several native Chichimeca tribes, and where the city of San Luis Potosí would later arise. The historian Primo Feliciano Velázquez y Basalenque included extensive descriptions of the place in his accounts.
Read more about this topic: Cerro De San Pedro
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)