Hola amigos,
As we have gone over this argument
ad nauseum, I won't go too far on it: that said I will raise a couple of points.
One - there is no citizenship requirement for the land-exchange deal. Just have to have land the Feds want, worth as much or more than the land you are trying to get. Not necessarily the same number of acres. Also, a non-citizen can BUY or LEASE a mining claim from a citizen.
Two - despite what people say on the internet, mining inside of Wilderness Areas is legal under that Wilderness Act, however with strict restrictions. The authorities are especially strict/stringent over the Superstitions Wilderness Area because SO many people want to go in and just tear a giant hole in the earth, based on having solved clues, maps etc often of very questionable provenance to begin with. Hence the very high bar they set. I know personally a person whom has an active Treasure Trove permit inside of a wilderness area, kept up to date for several years now, and this is in AZ to boot, plus if memory serves Ron Feldman got permission to dig out an old mine shaft a few years ago. It is NOT IMPOSSIBLE to get the necessary permission, but you have to have
VERY SOLID PROOF, and that means documentation, photos etc not just satellite images and solutions for treasure maps.
Three - a mine and ore are not treasure trove, and gold bars are not minerals, they require separate and different legal permissions; the treasure trove law requires that the govt gets half the treasure right off the top, but half of millions is still millions and 100% legal. A mine is a different deal entirely, as is ore, which would be covered under a mining claim. As Cactusjumper Joe posted, the Wilderness Areas have been closed to mineral entry, (meaning you cannot claim a mine inside the wilderness area boundaries) however if you could prove that you had indeed found a valuable mineral deposit, such that would clearly be worth mining it, you do have a legal course to follow to TRY to get a claim on it. I posted one legal argument, that of getting that land withdrawn from the Wilderness Area as all mineralized areas were supposed to be excluded from all Wilderness Areas. Another route one MIGHT try is to simply file your claim with the BLM; they will take your money and file your papers for a mining claim on the Moon, which however
does not make it a valid claim.
Sorry for the off-topic bit (again) just that it seems that some folks like to use the excuse that it is "illegal to mine" as the reason why they can not and will not prove they found a lost mine. It CAN BE DONE, legally, but you have to prove your case to the Fed and no amount of argument about solving clues or treasure maps, nor satellite photos will work it has to be a real deposit of gold or silver or platinum or diamonds etc that you can literally take a Ranger to and show it to them in person. It HAS BEEN DONE - even inside of supposedly off-limits military bases! People forget that the govt stands to reap a fat profit at the discovery and recovery of lost treasures, and even royalties on mines too.
Don Jose de la Mancha wrote
Under legal language the lost Dutchman mine, it would not be a new onem if had ever been filed under any name, or any time, and could legally be filed upon, It is NOt a new claim, but a refiling and bringing it up to date. ?
No salt this time amigo - the Dutchman never filed any claim on his mine. If it were an old Spanish mine there might be legal title back there somewhere, however this seems doubtful in light of the facts, and if it were a Jesuit mine, any paperwork has almost certainly been taken by earlier treasure hunters and we may never see them again.
ConceptualizedNetherlandr wrote
If by workers you mean slaves. Are you seriously suggesting the Jesuits enslaved Indians? Or was whipping free men the norm then?
We might get caught up in a word definition here amigo - the Mission Indians were not exactly legally "slaves" however they were NOT free, could not leave the mission without permission of the padres for instance, and DID have forced labor as most peons of Mexico also did, which was three days per week. At least that was the rule, however there is evidence the three days rule was widely ignored. The Jesuits DID introduce actual slaves from Africa into Sonora too, as they found the Indians did not live too long working in the mines. The thing is that the Indians had a legal standing similar to that of minor children today, with the padres as the "legal guardians" in charge of them. And whipping was one of the main forms of corporal punishment used on the Indians, along with the stocks. Whipping was not that un-common as a legal punishment for minor crimes in that time. So in a sense you could argue that the Mission Indians were indeed "slaves" being that they were not free and had to do forced labor, and yet you could also argue that they were NOT slaves, as they could not be bought and sold as true slaves were, and for three days of each week they were "free" to do their own work, which would be most unusual for slaves of that time.
Sorry for the long-winded and partially off-topic post,
Oroblanco
Had much experience dealing with bureaucracies?
??
