America’s first tin swindlers were Kansas Indians. They said that they knew the location of rich tin deposits on the Kansas plains. It was just a scam to get trade goods from greedy white people, in exchange for information on the location of the imaginary deposits.

The Etta tin mine in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory was a fiasco for its British investors.

Trabuco Canyon, in Orange County, California, was falsely said to contain incredibly rich tin ore. Little remains but a few mine shafts, and the crumbling foundations of an ore mill.