The first settlers in the Joplin region were mainly farmers and trappers who lived from its abundant wildlife, timbered hillsides, fertile river valleys, and prairie grasslands. Early settlers and Native Americans found fragments of lead ore near the surface and melted them into shot, not yet knowing that deeper underground lay rich deposits of lead and zinc. During the 1840s, the first non-Native settlers in Jasper and Newton Counties found galena on land taken from the Osage people, sometimes locating shallow Native American mines and sometimes making new discoveries. They opened small, only slightly profitable mines with primitive smelters, drawing several hundred experienced lead miners to this isolated border region by the mid-1850s. By 1860, the area was producing one-fourth of the lead used in the United States, though lead mining demanded far more labor and patience for less reward than gold mining. In 1848, commercial mining began in western Jasper County when William Tingle became the first settler-farmer to mine there. A year later, David Campbell judged that John C. Cox's land also showed good evidence of ore, and Cox then found lead near Joplin Creek, built a primitive furnace, and smelted it into refined lead. Other discoveries followed around the Tingle and Cox properties. In 1839, Methodist minister Harris G. Joplin came to Jasper County, built a cabin on 80 acres leased from Cox, and used it as the first Methodist church in the area before returning to Greene County by 1845. He died two years later, never knowing that the future mining community in Jasper County would bear his name.