The development of mining in early colonial New Mexico is a story unfamiliar to most people. Yet, it forms an intriguing tale, filled with triumphs and tragedy.

The importance of the subject is underscored by the fact that New Mexico's founder, Gov. Juan de Oñate, came with the expectation of making some significant mineral discovery.

He was counting on that to support the economy of his new colony. Son of a silver baron from Zacatecas, Oñate had plenty of experience in all phases of the mining industry.

Soon after establishing his headquarters at the Tewa pueblo he called San Juan, the governor and his men began the search for precious metals.

The most promising area proved to be the highly mineralized Cerrillos hills in central Santa Fe County. There, the Spaniards found prehistoric turquoise and lead mines controlled and worked by the large neighboring pueblo of San Marcos.

The colonists saw little value in turquoise but were very interested in lead for two reasons. First, that metal often occurred in association with silver. And second, the lead was immediately useful in casting musket balls for their firearms.

It is known that Oñate sent a party of his soldiers down from San Juan to establish a mining camp called the Real de San Buenaventura, somewhere below the future Santa Fe.

Quite likely, it was located at one of the lead mines long exploited by the people of San Marcos. As it happened, Cerrillos lead was the chief ingredient in the making of glaze paint, widely used to decorate Pueblo pottery.

Archaeologists refer to such ceramics as Rio Grande Glazeware. The San Marcos potters made quantities of this ware for trade.

The principal lead deposit worked by the Indian miners lay three miles west of their village. It was a spectacular vein that came right to the surface, perfectly accessible.

The width of the vein was only about a yard, but the depth of the ore body extended far into the ground. Over the centuries, with nothing more than primitive implements, the Indians had created a deep trench that stretched some 60 yards in length.

In time, colonists opened nearby a handful of mines that produced some silver and even a little gold. Drafted Indians performed the labor.

Then, with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, all mining came to a halt in the Cerrillos hills. San Marcos pueblo was abandoned, never to be reoccupied, and the Spaniards withdrew to El Paso for a dozen years.

Other Pueblo Indians from Santo Domingo and Cochiti came and filled in with rubble all the mine excavations to discourage their reopening should the Spanish occupation resume.

That occurred with the reconquest in 1692-1693. At that time, Captain Roque Madrid, needing to make a supply of bullets, returned to a Cerrillos lead mine that his father worked before the revolt.

But he found it sealed up and unusable.

In 1879, after New Mexico had become an American territory, a mining boom engulfed the Cerrillos hills and lasted for 20 years. Prospectors swarmed over the area staking 1,000 claims, digging vertical shafts and building whims and windlasses.

Two of these men, named Smith and Maddox, filed a claim on the site of the buried San Marcos lead mine, naming it the Bethsheba. They cleared rubble from three places in the old trench and in each spot sunk a shaft.

The pair were hoping to find silver, but apparently their efforts failed to pay off.

In 1971 Helene Warren and a survey crew from Santa Fe's Laboratory of Anthropology accidentally stumbled upon the historic Bethsheba lead mine, whose origins trace back to the 1300s.

The Albuquerque Archaeological Society took on the job of excavating the site, which ended up taking eight years to complete.

During that period, I was invited to visit the project and was enthralled by what was being found. From the rubble thrown into the trench in 1680, the archeologists were recovering beautiful stone hammers, axes, picks and other prehistoric mining tools.

In addition, I was excited to view the remains of a Spanish arrastre, an ore crusher with a stone floor that had been powered by a burro.

Later, the crew discovered the remains of a small smelter, dating from the mid-1600s at least. Could Oñate's men have been here even earlier? And might this be the location of the Real de San Buenaventura? That question can probably never be answered.

In 2005, the Albuquerque Archaeological Society published a thick technical report on its Bethsheba findings. Mining historian Homer Milford has pointed out that the study contains the first reported excavation of a Spanish smelter and lead mine in the United States.

That statement deserves to be ended with an exclamation point!

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.