Nechí River is a river of northwestern
Colombia. It flows into the
Cauca River
The Cauca River () is a river in Colombia that lies between the Occidental and Central cordilleras. From its headwaters in southwestern Colombia near the city of Popayán, it joins the Magdalena River near Magangue in Bolivar Department, and ...
. Nechí River rises in the municipality of
Yarumal
Yarumal is a municipality in the Antioquia Department, Colombia.
The municipality (three parishes and 20 villages) has an area of , 35,315 inhabitants, and its average elevation is above sea level.
It has a minor basilica, Our Lady of Mercy, w ...
, and serves as a boundary between the municipalities of
Antioquia,
Campamento,
Angostura,
Anorí
Anorí is a town and municipality in the Antioquia Department, Colombia. It is part of the subregion of Northeastern Antioquia. The cloud forest near Anorí forms the majority of the range of the endemic
Endemism is the state of a species be ...
, Yarumal,
Valdivia
Valdivia (; Mapuche: Ainil) is a city and commune in southern Chile, administered by the Municipality of Valdivia. The city is named after its founder Pedro de Valdivia and is located at the confluence of the Calle-Calle, Valdivia, and Cau-Cau R ...
,
Tarazá,
Cáceres,
Zaragoza
Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...
,
El Bagre,
Caucasia and
Nechí. Significant gold deposits have been found in the area.
Etymology
Nechí in the
Yamesí language takes its name from ''Ne'' which means "gold", and ''Chi'' which means "river". This is because there are significant mineral reserves in the area, including gold.
Geography
The river is about 7 degrees north of the equator.
The Porce River, is a south tributary of the Nechi.
Angostura is a municipality situated where the Nechi river breaks through the Andes.
The weather is torrid and the humidity very high, even in the dry season when the temperature ranges between .
Mining properties of the area lie in an oval basin surrounded by crystalline rocks. This basin has been cut through by the Nechi river, which separates the properties. Within this basin are flat tables of gravel deposits whose edges form terraces. The bedrock of each of these gravel benches is clay, either red or blue according to exposure, in which are included beds of peat or brown coal. Each of these gravel benches is a re-concentration of the bench above it, and represents a former stationary level of the river. California Hill is a remnant of the upper bench. Below this was a lower bench whose bedrock stood above water-level. These two benches have been nearly removed by erosion and ancient workings. The third bench, partly submerged, forms the greater portion of the higher dredging ground. The fourth bench is that being dredged now and is nearly submerged. The outer and higher bench gravel is on the clay which lies directly upon the rim rock, but toward the centre of the basin, where there are lower layers of gravel, is assumed to be bedrock. The gold here is of fairly uniform sized thin flakes. There is very little black sand.
Mining
Dredging began on the Nechí sometime before 1900. Several companies originally operated dredges on the Nechi, but these were gradually taken over by Pato Consolidated Gold Dredging, Ltd., a Canadian company, which was one of the largest placer mining concerns in the world at the time. By 1964, 67 percent of Pato's stock was owned by the International Mining Corp with seven Pato dredges operating on the Nechí downstream from Zaragoza.
The Mapuri tract on the Nechi River, a few miles below Zaragoza, was exploited by the
Colombia Gold Mines Corporation.
One publication in 1909 reported, "The district of Zaragosa, on the Nechi River, paid to the Spanish Crown the sum of $1200000 in gold, this district having produced in nineteen years of Spanish occupation the sum of $6000000 in gold."
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver".
Pla ...
was saved by dredges on Nechi River in 1922.
In November 1986, a terrorist group bombed a dredge in the river, forcing the temporary cessation to gold production in the area.
Transportation
Navigation of the river is extremely hazardous. Steamers have been known to become wedged against a rock ledge by rough currents when the river is flooded.
Archaeology
The
Field Museum of Natural History in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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was the recipient of a rare collection of gold ornaments, excavated from the basin of the Nechi River in 1918. The donor was the
Wrigley Company
The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, known as the Wrigley Company, is an American multinational chewing gum (Wrigley's gum) company, based in the Global Innovation Center (GIC) in Goose Island, Chicago, Illinois.
Wrigley's is wholly owned by Mars, I ...
. Miners who excavated the treasure turned it over to an agent of the company in Colombia. Wrigley, a member of the Board of Trustees, turned it over to the museum. The collection consists of breast-plates, aprons, elaborate earrings, bells and neck, laces, all in pure gold, forming the most valuable collection in the world of art of Colombia's ancient dwellers.
In 1996, 29 archaeological sites, including Brisas Palagua, La Suiza, La Primavera, San Juan Bedout, Barcelona, El Amparo, Cano Regla, Palestina, Montenegro, and Tucuman, were found between the Nechí and Magdalena Rivers. Plano-convex scrapers and a projectile point were excavated.
Culture
The indigenous population are chiefly
Black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...
and
Mulatto. Due to a process of population sifting into darker and lighter groups, the lowland mining areas around the Nechi River demonstrate a significantly blacker population than the highland areas.
Most of the population is very poor. Their diet consists chiefly of river fish, rice, beans, plantains, meat and a great abundance of
panela
Panela () or rapadura (Portuguese pronunciation: ) is an unrefined whole cane sugar, typical of Central and Latin America. It is a solid form of sucrose derived from the boiling and evaporation of sugarcane juice. Panela is known by other na ...
.
See also
*
List of rivers of Colombia
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nechi River
Rivers of Colombia