CHAPTER VIII.

THE METALS.

DAWN OF A METALLURGIC ERA—PRIMITIVE COPPER-WORKING—COPPER REGION OF LAKE SUPERIOR—THE PICTURED ROCKS—JACKSON IRON MOUNTAIN—THE CLIFF MINE—COPPER TOOLS—ANCIENT MINING TRENCHES—GREAT EXTENT OF WORKS—MINES OF ISLE ROYALE—THEIR ESTIMATED AGE—ANCIENT MINING IMPLEMENTS—STONE MAULS AND AXES—ONTONAGON MINING RELICS —SITES OF COPPER MANUFACTORIES—NATIVE COPPER AND SILVER— BROCKVILLE COPPER IMPLEMENTS—LOST METALLURGIC ARTS—CHEMICAL ANALYSES—NATIVE TERRA-COTTAS—ANCIENT BRITISH MINING-TOOLS—THE RACE OF THE COPPER MINES—CHIPPEWA SUPERSTITIONS—EARLIEST NOTICES OF THE COPPER REGION—ONTONAGON MASS OF COPPER—ANCIENT NATIVE TRAFFIC—NATIVE USE OF METALS—CONDITION OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS—MINERAL RESOURCES—ANTIQUITY OF COPPER WORKINGS —DESERTION OF THE MINES.

The same rational instinct which prompted man in his first efforts at tool-making, guided him in a discriminating choice of materials; and to this the discovery of metals, and the consequent first steps in metallurgy and the arts, may be traced. The Bronze Age of Europe derives its name from the predominance of relics illustrative of a period which, though old compared with that of definite history, belongs to a comparatively late era, characterised by many traces of artistic skill, and of mastery in the difficult processes of smelting ores and alloying metals. But the dawn of the metallurgic era in the New World is marked by phases which derive their distinctive character from two widely separated regions; and of which one supplies an important link in the history of human progress, at best but partially indicated in the disclosures of European archæology.

To untutored man, provided only with implements of stone, the facilities presented by the great copper regions of Lake Superior for the first step in the knowledge of metallurgy were peculiarly available. The forests that flung their shadows along the shores of that great lake were the haunts of the deer, the beaver, the bear, and other favourite objects of the chase; the rivers and the lake abounded with fish; and the rude hunter had to manufacture weapons and implements out of such materials as nature placed within his reach. The water-worn stone from the beach, patiently ground to an edge, made his axe and tomahawk: by means of which, with the help of fire, he could level the giants of the forest, or detach from them the materials for his canoe and paddle, his lance, club, or bow and arrows. The bones of the deer pointed his spear, or were wrought into his fish-hooks; and the shale or flint was chipped and ground into his arrow-head, after a pattern repeated with little variation, in all countries, and in every primitive age. But besides such materials of universal occurrence, the primeval occupant of the shores of Lake Superior found there a _stone_ possessed of some very peculiar virtues. It could not only be wrought to an edge without liability to fracture; but it was malleable, and could be hammered out into many new and convenient shapes. This was the copper, found in connection with the trappean rocks of that region, in inexhaustible quantities, in a pure metallic state. In other rich mineral regions, as in those of Cornwall and Devon, the principal source of this metal is from ores, which require both labour and skill to fit them for economic purposes. But in the veins of the copper region of Lake Superior the native metal occurs in enormous masses, weighing hundreds of tons; and loose blocks of various sizes have been found on the lake shore, or lying detached on the surface, in sufficient quantities to supply all the wants of the nomad hunter. These, accordingly, he wrought into chisels and axes, armlets, and personal ornaments of various kinds, without the use of the crucible; and, indeed, without recognising any precise distinction between the copper which he mechanically separated from the mass, and the unmalleable stone or flint out of which he had been accustomed to fashion his spear and arrow-heads. This is confirmed by philological evidence. The root of the names for iron and copper in the Chippewa is the same abstract term, _wahbik_, used only in compound words. Thus _pewahbik_, iron; _ozahwahbik_, copper: lit. the yellow stone; _metahbik_, on the bare rock; _oogedahbik_, on the top of a rock; _kishkahbikah_, it is a precipice; etc.

The earliest references to Britain pertain exclusively to the peninsula of Cornwall and the neighbouring islands, whither the fleets of the Mediterranean were attracted in ages of vague antiquity, and the traders from Gaul resorted in quest of its metallic wealth. The mineral regions of the New World disclose some corresponding records of its long-forgotten past; and some idea of their present condition is indispensable for preparing the mind to appreciate the changes wrought by time on localities which are now being rescued once more from the wilderness. The vast inland sea, which constitutes the reservoir of the chain of lakes whose waters sweep over the Falls of Niagara, and find their way by the St. Lawrence to the ocean, has been as yet so partially encroached upon by the pioneers of modern civilisation, that the general aspect of its shores differs but little from that which they presented to the eye of its first European explorers in the seventeenth century: or indeed to its Indian voyagers before the Spaniard first coasted the island shores of the Bahamas, and opened for Europe the gates of the West. With its wide extent of waters, covering an area of thirty-two thousand square miles, a lengthened period of sojourn in the regions with which it is surrounded, and many facilities for their exploration, would be required, in order to satisfy the curiosity of the scientific inquirer. But even a brief visit discloses much that is interesting, and that serves at once to illustrate, and to contrast with what comes under the observer’s notice elsewhere.

In tracing out the evidence of ancient occupation of the shores of Lake Superior, I have, on repeated visits, coasted its shores for hundreds of miles in canoes; and camped for weeks in some of its least accessible wilds. The force of the evidence is slowly appreciated, even by careful personal observation; but some description of the ancient copper region may help the reader to estimate the lapse of time since its forest-glades and rocky promontories were enlivened by the presence of industrious miners. The memorials of Time’s unceasing operations reach indeed to periods long prior to the earliest presence of man, and present certain lake phenomena, on a scale only conceivable by those who have sailed on the bosom of these fresh-water seas with as boundless a horizon as in mid-Atlantic; and who have experienced the violence of the sudden storms to which they are liable. But while the same broad ocean-like expanse, and the violence of their stormy moods, characterise Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Michigan: it is only on Lake Superior that the traveller witnesses the grandeur and wild ruggedness of scenery commensurate with his preconceived ideas of such inland seas. Along its northern and western shores bold cliffs and rocky headlands frown in savage grandeur, from amid the unbroken wastes of forest that reach to the frozen regions around the Hudson Bay, while the gentler coast-lines of its southern shores are varied by some of the most singular conformations, wrought out of its rocky walls by the action of the waves. Among such rock-formations, no features are so remarkable as those presented by a portion of the extensive range of sandstone cliffs, which project in jagged and picturesque masses from the southern shore, soon after passing the Grand Sable; and to which fresh interest has been given by the interweaving of the Algonquin legends of the locality into Longfellow’s Indian _Song of Hiawatha_.

The Pictured Rocks are situated between the copper regions and the ancient portage, which has been recently superseded by a canal opening navigation for the largest vessels from Lake Huron to Lake Superior. They lie in the centre of the long indentation, which, sweeping from Keweenaw Peninsula eastward to White Fish Point, forms the coast most distant from the northern shores of the lake. Here the cliffs have been exposed through unnumbered ages to the waves under the action of northerly winds; while a contemporaneous upheaval, prolonged probably through vast periods of time, has contributed no unimportant share in the operations by which their striking forms have been produced. Beyond those the voyager comes once more on rocky cliffs in the vicinity of Marquette: so named after the Jesuit missionary by whom the upper waters of the Mississippi were first reached two centuries ago, in 1673. Important changes have been wrought in the interval. Mineral treasures, undreamt of by the ancient miners, are now rewarding the industry of the Indians’ supplanters. The iron period, with its fully developed civilisation, is invading those forest tracks; and when I first visited Marquette in 1855, on the bold trappean rocks which form the landing, abraded and scratched with the glacial action of a long superseded era, were piled the rich products of the “Jackson Iron Mountain,” which rears its bold outline at a distance of twelve miles from the shore. Immediately to the north of this point the promontory of Presque Isle presents in some respects a striking contrast to the Pictured Rocks; though, like them, also indented and hollowed out into detached masses, and pierced with the wave-worn caverns of older levels of shore and lake. Here the water-worn sandstone and the igneous rocks overlie or intermingle with each other in picturesque confusion: the symbol, as it were, of the transition between the copper and iron eras. For it is just at Presque Isle that the crystalline schists, with their intermingling masses of trappean and quartz rocks, richly impregnated with the specular and magnetic oxide of iron, pass into the granite and sandstone rocks, which intervene between the ferriferous formations and the copper-bearing traps of Keweenaw Point. Beyond this, the rich copper-bearing region of the Keweenaw Peninsula stretches far into the lake, traversed in a south-westerly direction by magnificent cliffs of trappean rocks, presenting their perpendicular sides to the south-east, and covered even amid the rocky débris with ancient forest-trees. In this igneous rock are found the copper veins, which in recent years have conferred such great commercial value on the district of Michigan; and there I not only witnessed extensive mining operations in progress, but have investigated evidences of the ancient miners’ labours which prove the prolonged practice there, at some remote period, of native metallurgic arts.

On landing at Eagle river, one of the points for shipping the copper ores, on the west side of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the track lies through dense forest, over a road in some parts of rough corduroy, and in others traversing the irregular exposed surface of the copper-bearing trap. After a time it winds through a gorge, covered with immense masses of trap and crumbling débris, amid which pine, and the black oak and other hard wood, have contrived to find a sufficient soil for taking root and attaining their full proportions; and beyond the cliffs, in a level bottom on the other side of the trap ridge, is the Cliff Mine settlement, one of the most important of all the mining works in operation in this region. Here I descended a perpendicular shaft by means of ladders, to a depth of sixty fathoms, and explored various of the levels: passing in some cases literally through tunnels made in the solid copper. The very abundance of the metal proves indeed, at times, an impediment to its profitable working, owing to the labour necessarily expended in chiselling out masses from the solid lump, to admit of their being taken to the surface, and transported through such tracts as have been described, to the Lake shore. The floor of the level was strewed with copper shavings: for the extreme ductility of the native copper precludes the application of other force than manual labour for separating it from the parent mass. I saw also beautiful specimens of silver, in a matrix of crystalline quartz, obtained from this mine; and the copper of the district is stated to contain on an average about 3·10 per cent. of silver. This is indeed by far the richest mineral locality that has yet been wrought. In a single year upwards of sixteen hundred tons of copper have been procured from the Cliff Mine, and one mass was estimated to weigh eighty tons. Its mineral wealth was known to the ancient miners; but the skill and appliances of the modern miner give him access to veins entirely beyond the reach of the primitive metallurgist, who knew of no harder material for his tools than the native rock and the ductile metal he was in search of.

At the Cliff Mine are preserved some curious specimens of ancient copper tools found in its vicinity, but it is to the westward of the Keweenaw Peninsula that the most extensive traces of the aboriginal miners’ operations are seen. The copper-bearing trap, after crossing the Keweenaw Lake, is traced onward in a south-westerly direction till it crosses the Ontonagon river about twelve miles from its mouth, at an elevation of upwards of three hundred feet above the lake. At this locality the edges of the copper veins crop out in various places, exposing the metal in irregular patches over a considerable extent of country, many of which have been partially wrought by the ancient miners. Here, in the neighbourhood of the Minnesota Mine, are extensive traces of trenches and other mining operations, which prove that they must have been carried on for a long period. These excavations are partially filled up, and so overgrown in the long interval between their first excavation and their observation by recent explorers, that they scarcely attract attention. Nevertheless some trenches have been found to measure from eighteen to thirty feet in depth; and one of them disclosed a detached mass of native copper, weighing upwards of six tons, resting on an artificial cradle of black oak, partially preserved by immersion in the water with which it had been filled. Various implements and tools of the same metal also lay in the deserted trench, where this huge mass had been separated from its matrix, and elevated on the oaken frame, preparatory to its removal entire. It appeared to have been raised about five feet, and then abandoned, abruptly as it would seem: since even the copper tools were found among the accumulated soil by which it had been anew covered up. The solid mass measured ten feet long, three feet wide, and nearly two feet thick; every projecting piece had been removed, so that the exposed surface was left perfectly smooth, possibly by other and ruder workers of a date subsequent to the desertion of the mining trench by its original explorers.

The mining operations of upwards of a quarter of a century have done much to efface the traces of the ancient works, as every indication of them is eagerly followed up by the modern miner, as the most promising clew to rich metalliferous deposits. But towards the close of 1874 Mr. Davis, an experienced old miner of Lake Superior, recovered from another ancient trench, in the same region, a solid mass of nearly pure copper, heart-shaped, and weighing between two and three tons. It lay at a depth of seventeen feet from the surface, as when originally detached from its bed by the ancient miners. Alongside of it were a number of smaller pieces, from a single ounce to seventeen pounds in weight, evidently broken off the large mass by the original workers of the mine. Numerous stone mauls and hammers also, weighing from ten to thirty pounds, lay scattered through the lower débris with which the trench was refilled. But the absence of any copper tools seemed to point to the final desertion of the mine, from some unknown cause, at the very time when its resources were most available.

Attention was first directed to such traces of ancient mining operations, by the agent of the Minnesota Mining Company in 1847. Following up the indications of a continuous depression in the soil, he came at length to a cavern where he found several porcupines had fixed their quarters for hybernation; but detecting evidences of artificial excavation, he proceeded to clear out the accumulated soil, and not only exposed to view a vein of copper, but found in the rubbish numerous stone mauls and hammers of the ancient workmen. Subsequent observation brought to light excavations of great extent, frequently from twenty-five to thirty feet deep, and scattered over an area of several miles. The rubbish taken from these is piled up in mounds alongside; while the trenches have been gradually refilled with soil and decaying vegetable matter gathered through the long centuries since their desertion; and over all, the giants of the forest have grown, withered, and fallen to decay. Mr. Knapp, the agent of the Minnesota Company, counted 395 annular rings on a hemlock-tree, which grew on one of the mounds of earth thrown out of an ancient mine. Mr. Foster also notes the great size and age of a pine-stump which must have grown and died since the works were deserted; and Mr. Whittlesey not only refers to living trees upwards of three hundred years old, now flourishing in the abandoned trenches; but he adds: “on the same spot there are the decayed trunks of a preceding generation or generations of trees that have arrived at maturity and fallen down from old age.” The deserted mines are found at numerous points extending over upwards of a hundred miles along the southern shore of the lake; and reappear beyond it, in extensive excavations on Isle Royale. Sir William Logan reports others observed by him on the summit of a ridge at Maimanse, on the north shore, where the old excavations are surrounded by broken pieces of vein-stone, with stone mauls rudely formed from natural boulders. The extensive area over which such works have thus been traced, the evidences of their prolonged working, and of their still longer abandonment, all combine to force upon the mind convictions of their remote antiquity.

At Ontonagon river I met with Captain Peck, a settler whose long residence in the country has afforded him many opportunities of noting the evidences of its ancient occupation. Repeated discoveries had led him to infer the great antiquity of the works; and he specially referred to one disclosure of ancient mining operations near the forks of the Ontonagon river, where, at a depth of upwards of twenty-five feet, stone mauls and other tools were found in contact with a copper vein; in the soil above these lay the trunk of a large cedar, and over all grew a hemlock-tree, with its roots spread entirely above the fallen cedar, in the accumulated soil with which the trench was filled, and indicating a growth of not less than three centuries. But the buried cedar, which in favourable circumstances is far more durable than the oak, represents another and longer succession of centuries, subsequent to that protracted period during which the deserted trench was slowly filled up with accumulations of many winters. In another excavation a bed of clay had been formed above the ancient flooring to the depth of a foot. On this lay the skeleton of a deer which had stumbled in and perished there; and over it clay, leaves, sand, and gravel had accumulated to a depth of nineteen feet. Not only are such indications frequent throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula, and to the westward and southward of Ontonagon; but on Isle Royale the abandoned mines disclose still stronger evidence of their great antiquity. The United States Geologists remark: “Mr. E. G. Shaw pointed out to us similar evidences of mining on Isle Royale, which can be traced lengthways for the distance of a mile. On opening one of these pits, which had become filled up, he found the mine had been worked through the solid rock, to the depth of nine feet, the walls being perfectly smooth. At the bottom he found a vein of native copper eighteen inches thick, including a sheet of pure copper lying against the foot-wall.” Stone hammers and wedges lay in great abundance at the bottom of the trenches, but no metallic implements were found: a proof perhaps that the mines of Isle Royale continued to be wrought after their workers had been hastily compelled to abandon those on the mainland. Mr. Shaw adopted the conclusion, from the appearance of the wall-rocks, the multitude of stone implements, and the material removed, that the labour of excavating the rock must have been performed solely with such instruments, with the aid, perhaps, of fire. But the appearance of the vein, and the extent of the workings, furnished evidence not only of great and protracted labour, but also of the use of other tools than those of stone. Accumulated vegetable matter had refilled the excavations to a level with the surrounding surface, and over this the forest extended with the same luxuriance as on the natural soil. In this barren and rocky region the filling up of the trenches with vegetable soil must have been the work of many centuries; so that the whole aspect of the deserted mines of Isle Royale confirms the antiquity ascribed to them.

What appear to the eye of the traveller as the giants of the primeval forest, are the growth of comparatively modern centuries, subsequent to the era when the shores of Lake Superior rang with the echoes of industrial toil. Two or three centuries would seem altogether inadequate to furnish the requisite time for the most partial accumulation of soil and decayed vegetable matter with which the old miners’ trenches have been filled. Four centuries thereafter are indisputably recorded by recent survivors of the forest, independent of all traces of previous arborescent generations; and thus in the excavations and tools of the copper regions of Lake Superior, we look on memorials of a metallurgic industry long prior to those closing years of the fifteenth century, in which the mineral wealth of the New World awoke the Spanish lust for gold. An uncertain, yet considerable interval must be assumed between the abandonment of those ancient works, and the forest’s earliest growth; and thus we are thrown back, at latest, into centuries corresponding to Europe’s mediæval era for a period to which to assign those singularly interesting traces of a lost American civilisation.

Owing to the filling up of the abandoned mining trenches with water, not only the copper and stone implements of the miners are found, but examples of wooden tools and timber framing have also been preserved, in several cases in wonderful perfection; and these furnish interesting supplementary evidence of the character of their industrial arts.

Of the wooden implements, the most noticeable are the shovels, by means of which the soil was excavated. The accompanying woodcut represents two of them worn away to the one side, as in most of the examples found, as if used for scraping rather than digging the soil. Mr. Whittlesey gives a drawing of one which measured three and a half feet long, recovered among the loose materials thrown out from an extensive rock excavation in the side of a hill about four miles south-east of Eagle Harbour. Part of a wooden bowl used for baling water, and troughs of cedar-bark, were also found in the same débris, above which grew a birch about two feet in diameter, with its lower roots scarcely reaching through the ancient rubbish to the depth at which those relics lay. Mr. Foster describes another wooden bowl found at a depth of ten feet, in clearing out some ancient workings opened by the agent of the Forest Mine; and which, from the splintered pieces of rock and gravel imbedded in its rim, must have been employed in baling water. Similar implements have been met with in other workings, but they speedily perish on being exposed to the air. All of them appear to have been made of white cedar. The indestructible nature of this wood, when kept under water, or in a moist soil, is abundantly illustrated by the experience of settlers who, on attempting to clear and cultivate a cedar swamp, discover that the dead trunks, exhumed undecayed after centuries of immersion, rest above still older cedar-forests, seemingly unaffected by the influences which restore alike the oak and the pine to the vegetable mould of the forest soil.

The process of working the ancient mines seems to be tolerably clearly indicated by the discoveries referred to. The soil having been removed by means of wooden spades, doubtless with the aid of copper tools to break up the solid earth and clay: remains of charcoal, met with in numerous instances on the surface of the rock, show that fire was an important agent for overcoming the cohesion between the copper and its matrix. Before the introduction of gunpowder fire was universally employed in excavating rock; and where fuel abounds, as in the old Harz and Altenberg mining districts of Europe, it is even now found to be quite as economical in destroying siliceous rocks. Stone hammers or mauls were next employed to break up the metalliferous rock. These have been found in immense numbers on different mining sites. Mr. Knapp obtained in one locality upwards of ten cart-loads; and I was shown a well at Ontonagon constructed almost entirely out of stone hammers, obtained from ancient workings in the immediate vicinity. Many of these are mere water-worn boulders of greenstone or porphyry, roughly chipped at the centre, so as to admit of their being secured by a withe around them. But others are well-finished, with a single or double groove for attaching the handle by which they were wielded. They weigh from ten to forty pounds; but many are broken, and some of the specimens I saw were worn and fractured from frequent use.

The extent to which co-operation was carried on by the miners, with the imperfect means at their command, is illustrated by the objects recovered on exploring one of their trenches, on a hill to the south of the Copper Falls mines. On removing the accumulations from the excavation, stone axes of large size made of greenstone, and shaped to receive withe-handles, and some large round greenstone masses that had apparently been used for battering-rams, were found. “They had round holes bored in them to the depth of several inches, which seemed to have been designed for wooden plugs to which withe-handles might be attached, so that several men could swing them with sufficient force to break the rock and the projecting masses of copper. Some of them were broken, and some of the projecting ends of rock exhibited marks of having been battered in the manner here suggested.”[74]

But the industrious miners fully appreciated the practical utility of the metal they were in search of; and it is not to be supposed that they employed themselves thus laboriously in mining copper, and yet themselves used only stone and wooden tools. Copper axes, gads, chisels, and gouges, as well as knives and spear-heads, of considerable diversity of form, have been brought to light, all of them wrought from the virgin copper by means of the hammer, without smelting, alloy, or the use of fire. At Ontonagon, I had an opportunity of examining an interesting collection of mining relics, found a few months before. These consisted of copper tools, with solid triangular blades like bayonets, one fourteen inches, and the others about twelve inches in length; a chisel, and two singularly shaped copper gouges about fourteen inches long and two inches wide, the precise use of which it would be difficult to determine. The whole were discovered buried in a bed of clay on the banks of the river Ontonagon, about a mile above its mouth, during the process of levelling it for the purposes of a brick-field. Above the clay was an alluvial deposit of two feet of sand, and in this, and over the relics of the ancient copper workers, a pine-tree had grown to full maturity. Its gigantic roots gave proof, in the estimation of those who witnessed their removal, of more than two centuries’ growth; while the present ordinary level of the river is such that it would require a rise of forty feet to make the deposit of sand beneath which they lay.

An experienced practical miner, who had been among the first to reopen some of the ancient works at the Minnesota mine, recognised in the copper gouges implements adapted to produce the singular tool-marks which then excited his curiosity. Subjoined is a representation of a peculiar type of copper tools, sketched from one of those found at Ontonagon. The socket, formed by hammering out the lower part flat, and then turning it over partially at each side, corresponds to some primitive forms of bronze implements found in Britain and the north of Europe; but the latter are cast of a metallic compound, and prove a skill in metallurgy far in advance of the old metal-workers of Ontonagon.

Another, and in some respects more interesting discovery, was made at a point lying to the cast of Keweenaw Point, in the rich iron district of Marquette, in what appears to have been the ancient bed of the river Carp. About ten feet above the present level of its channel, various weapons and implements of copper were found. Large trees grew over this deposit also, and the evidences of antiquity seemed not less obvious than in that of Ontonagon. The relics included knives, spear or lance-heads, and arrow-heads, some of which were ornamented with silver. One of the knives, made, with its handle, out of a single piece of copper, measured altogether about seven inches long, of which the blade was nearly two-thirds, and of an oval shape. It was ornamented with pieces of silver attached to it, and was inlaid with a stripe of the same metal from point to haft. Numerous fragments and shavings of copper were also found, some of which were such as, it was assumed, could only have been cut by a fine sharp tool; and the whole sufficed to indicate, even more markedly than those at Ontonagon, that not only was the native copper wrought in ancient times in the Lake Superior regions, but that manufactories were established along its shores, and on the banks of its navigable rivers. The recognition of silver as a distinct metal by the present race of Indians is proved by the specific term _shooneya_, by which it is designated in Chippewa; whereas gold is only known as _ozahwah-shooneya_, or yellow silver.

FIG. 66. FIG. 67. Brockville Copper Gouge. Dagger.

In 1856, Dr. Thomas Reynolds of Brockville exhibited to the Canadian Institute a collection of copper and other relics discovered in that neighbourhood under singular circumstances; and possessing a special interest owing to the distance of the site from Lake Superior. They included a peculiarly-shaped chisel or gouge, six inches in length, (Fig. 67), a rude spear-head, seven inches long (Fig. 68), and two small daggers or knives, one of which is shown in Fig. 66, all wrought by means of the hammer, out of native copper which had never been subjected to fire, as is proved by the silver remaining in detached crystals in the copper. They were found at the head of Les Galops Rapids, on the river St. Lawrence, about fifteen feet below the surface, along with twenty skeletons disposed in a circular space with their feet towards the centre. Dr. Reynolds remarks of them: “Some of the skeletons were of gigantic proportions. The lower jaw of one is sufficiently large to surround the corresponding bone of an adult of our present generation. The condition of the bones furnished indisputable proof of their great antiquity. The skulls were so completely reduced to their earthy constituents that they were exceedingly brittle, and fell in pieces when removed and exposed to the atmosphere. The metallic remains, however, of more enduring material, as also several stone chisels and gouges, and some flint arrow-heads, all remain in their original condition; and furnish evidence of the same rude arts which we know to be still practised by the aborigines of the far West.” After discussing the possibility of their European origin, Dr. Reynolds adds: “There is also a curious fact, which these relics appear to confirm, that the Indians possessed the art of hardening and tempering copper, so as to give it as good an edge as iron or steel. This ancient Indian art is now entirely lost.”

The reference thus made to the popular theory of some lost art of hardening the native copper, afforded an opportunity of testing it in reference to the Brockville relics. They were accordingly submitted to my colleague, Professor Henry Croft, of University College, Toronto, with the following results: The object of the experiments was to ascertain whether the metal of which the implements are made is identical with the native copper of the Lake Superior mines; or whether it has been subjected to some manufacturing process, or mixed with any other substance, by which its hardness might have been increased. A careful examination established the following conclusions:—No perceptible difference could be observed between the hardness of the implements and that of metallic copper from Lake Superior. The knife or small dagger was cleansed as far as possible from its green coating; and its specific gravity ascertained as 8·66. A fragment, broken off the end of the broad, flat implement, described as a “copper knife of full size,” having been freed from its coating, was found to have a specific gravity of 8·58. During the cleaning of this fragment, a few brilliant white specks became visible on its surface, which appeared, from their colour and lustre, to be silver. The structure of the metal was also highly laminated, as if the instrument had been brought to its present shape by hammering out a solid mass of copper, which had either split up, or had been originally formed of several pieces. These laminæ of course contained air, and the metal was covered with rust, hence the specific gravity. The process by which a flat piece of copper has been overlapped, and wrought with the hammer into a rude spear-head, is shown in the accompanying illustration. A portion of very solid copper, from Lake Superior, of about the same weight as the fragment, was weighed in water, and its gravity found to be 8·92. The specific gravity of absolutely pure copper varies from 8·78 to 8·96, according to the greater or less degree of aggregation it has received during its manufacture. The fragment was completely dissolved by nitric acid; and the solution, on being tested for silver by hydrochloric acid, gave a scarcely perceptible opacity, indicating the presence of an exceedingly minute trace of silver. The copper having been separated by hydro-sulphuric acid, the residual liquid was tested for other metals. A very minute trace of iron was detected. The native copper from Lake Superior was tested in the same manner, and was found to contain no trace of silver, but a minute trace of iron. From this, it appears that the implements are composed of copper almost pure, differing in no material respect from the native copper of Lake Superior.

It is thus apparent that, in the case of the Brockville relics, the theory of a lost art of hardening and tempering copper was a mere reflex of the prevalent popular fallacy; and there is no reason for anticipating a different result in other cases in which the same theory is tested.

More recently a well-finished dagger of hammered copper, nine inches long, and a smaller copper gouge, have been turned up by the plough: the former at Burnhamthorpe, and the latter at Chinguacousy, in Ontario; and from time to time similar discoveries suffice to show the ancient diffusion of the native copper throughout the whole region of the great lakes. In his account of the discovery of the Brockville relics, Dr. Reynolds assumes them to pertain to the present Indian race. The evidences of antique sepulture, however, are unmistakable; and other proofs suggest a different origin. Mr. Squier, by whom they had been previously described, remarks in the Appendix to his _Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York_:[75] “Some implements entirely corresponding with these have been found in Isle Royale, and at other places in and around Lake Superior.” But besides the copper implements, there lay in the same deposit a miniature mask of terra-cotta of peculiar workmanship, suggestive rather of relation to the arts of the Mound-Builders. Mr. Squier has figured it from an incorrect drawing, which indicates a minuter representation of Indian features than the original justifies. It is engraved here, the size of the original, from a photographic copy, and, as will be seen, is a rude mask, such as is by no means uncommon among the small terra-cottas of Mexico and Central America. This mingling of traces of a certain amount of artistic skill with the arts of the primitive metallurgist, entirely corresponds with the disclosures of the ancient mounds of the Mississippi; and, indeed, agrees with other partial manifestations of art in an imperfectly developed civilisation.

I was struck, when examining the rude stone mauls of the miners of Ontonagon, by their resemblance to some which I have seen, obtained from ancient copper workings of North Wales. In a communication made to the British Archæological Institute by the Hon. William Owen Stanley, in 1850, he gave an account of an ancient shaft broken into at the copper mines of Llandudno, Carnarvonshire. In this were found mining implements, consisting of chisels, or picks of bronze, and a number of rudely-fashioned stone mauls of various sizes, weighing from about 2 lbs. to 40 lbs. Their appearance suggested that they had been used for breaking, pounding, or detaching the ore from the rock; and the character both of the bronze and stone implements seems to point to a period long prior to the Roman occupation of Britain. These primitive mauls are stated to be similar to water-worn stones found on the sea-beach at Pen Mawr. Mr. Stanley also describes others, corresponding in like manner to those found on the shores of Lake Superior, which had been met with in ancient workings in Anglesea. Were we, therefore, disposed to generalise from such analogies, as ingenious speculators on the lost history of the New World have been prone to do, we might trace in this correspondence a confirmation of the supposed colonisation of America, in the twelfth century, by Madoc, the son of Owen Gwynnedd, king of North Wales. But the resemblance between the primitive Welsh and American mining tools, can be regarded only as evidence of the corresponding operations of the human mind, when placed under similar circumstances, and with the same limited means, which is illustrated in so many ways by the arts of the stone-period, whether of the most ancient or of modern date. Nor can such correspondences be regarded as altogether accidental. They confirm the idea of certain innate and instinctive operations of human ingenuity, ever present and ready to be called forth for the accomplishment of similar purposes by the same limited means.

From this review of the evidences of long-abandoned mining operations on the shores and islands of Lake Superior, it cannot admit of doubt that in them we look on the traces of an imperfectly developed yet highly interesting native civilisation, pertaining to centuries long anterior to the discovery of America in the fifteenth century. The question naturally arises: By whom were those ancient mines wrought? Was it by the ancestry of the present Indian tribes of North America, or by a distinct and long-superseded race? The tendency of opinion among American writers has been towards a unity and comprehensive isolation of the races and arts of the New World. Hence the theories alike of Morton and of Schoolcraft, though founded on diverse premises, favour the idea that the germs of all that is most noticeable even in the civilisation of Central America may be found among the native arts, and the manners and customs of the forest tribes. But neither the traditions nor the arts of the Indians of the northern lakes supply any satisfactory link connecting them with the Copper-Miners or the Mound-Builders. Of Loonsfoot, an old Chippewa chief of Lake Superior, the improbable statement is made that he could trace back his ancestry by name, as hereditary chiefs of his tribe, for upwards of four hundred years. At the request of Mr. Whittlesey he was questioned by an educated half-breed, a nephew of his own, relative to the ancient copper mines, and his answer was in substance as follows:—“A long time ago the Indians were much better off than they are now. They had copper axes, arrow-heads, and spears, and also stone axes. Until the French came here, and blasted the rocks with powder, we have no traditions of the copper mines being worked. Our forefathers used to build big canoes and cross the lake over to Isle Royale, where they found more copper than anywhere else. The stone hammers that are now found in the old diggings we know nothing about. The Indians were formerly much more numerous and happier. They had no such wars and troubles as they have now.” At La Pointe on Lake Superior, it was my good fortune to meet with _Beshekee_, or Buffalo, a rugged specimen of an old Chippewa chief. He retained all the wild Indian ideas, though accustomed to frequent intercourse with white men; boasted of the scalps he had taken; and held to his pagan creed as the only religion for the Indian, whatever the Great Spirit might have taught the white man. His grandson, an educated half-breed, acted as interpreter, and his reply to similar inquiries was embodied in the following sententious declaration of Indian philosophy:—“The white man thinks he is the superior of the Indian, but it is not so. The Red Indian was made by the Great Spirit, who made the forests and the game, and he needs no lessons from the white man how to live. If the same Great Spirit made the white man, he has made him of a different nature. Let him act according to his nature; it is the best for him; but for us it is not good. We had the red-iron before white men brought the black-iron amongst us; but if ever such works as you describe were carried on along these Lake shores before white men came here, then the Great Spirit must once before have made men with a different nature from his red children, such as you white men have. As for us, we live as our forefathers have always done.”

La Pointe, or Chaquamegon, where this interview took place, was visited by the Jesuit Father, Claude Alloüez, in 1666, and is described by him as a beautiful bay, the shores of which were occupied by the Chippewas in such numbers that their warriors alone amounted to eight hundred. In the journal of his travels, he thus refers to the mineral resources for which the region is now most famed:—“The savages reverence the lake as a divinity, and offer sacrifices to it because of its great size, for it is two hundred leagues long and eighty broad; and also, because of the abundance of fish it supplies to them, in lieu of game, which is scarce in its environs. They often find in the lake pieces of copper weighing from ten to twenty pounds. I have seen many such pieces in the hands of the savages; and as they are superstitious, they regard them as divinities, or as gifts which the gods who dwell beneath its waters have bestowed on them to promote their welfare. Hence they preserve such pieces of copper wrapped up along with their most prized possessions. By some they have been preserved upwards of fifty years, and others have had them in their families from time immemorial, cherishing them as their household gods. There was visible for some time, near the shore, a large rock entirely of copper, with its top rising above the water, which afforded an opportunity for those passing to cut pieces from it. But when I passed in that vicinity nothing could be seen of it. I believe that the storms, which are here very frequent, and as violent as on the ocean, had covered the rock with sand. Our Indians wished to persuade me it was a divinity which had disappeared, but for what reason they would not say.”[76]

Such is the earliest notice we have of Indian ideas relative to the native copper. It accords with all later information on the same subject, and is opposed to any tradition of their ancestors having been the workers of the abandoned copper mines. A secrecy, resulting from the superstitions associated with the mineral wealth of the great Lake, appears to have thrown impediments in the way of inquirers. Father Dablon narrates a marvellous account communicated to him, of four Indians who, in old times, before the coming of the French, had lost their way in a fog, and at length effected a landing on Missipicooatong. This was believed to be a floating island, mysteriously variable in its local position and aspects. The wanderers cooked their meal in Indian fashion, by heating stones and casting them into a birch-bark pail filled with water. The stones proved to be lumps of copper, which they carried off with them; but they had hardly left the shore when a loud and angry voice, ascribed by one of them to Missibizi, the goblin spirit of the waters, was heard exclaiming, “What thieves are these that carry off my children’s cradles and playthings?” One of the Indians died immediately from fear, and two others soon after, while the fourth only survived long enough to reach home and relate what had happened, before he also died: having no doubt been poisoned by the copper used in cooking. Ever after this the Indians steered their course far off the site of the haunted island. In the same relation, Father Dablon tells that near the river Ontonagon, or Nantonagon as he calls it, is a bluff from which masses of copper frequently fall out. One of these presented to him weighed one hundred pounds; and pieces weighing twenty or thirty pounds are stated by him to be frequently met with by the squaws when digging holes for their corn. The locality thus celebrated by the earliest French missionaries for its traces of mineral wealth, is in like manner referred to by the first English explorer, Alexander Henry: a bold adventurer, who visited the island of Mackinac, at the entrance of Lake Michigan, shortly before the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and was one among the few who escaped a treacherous massacre perpetrated by the Indians on the Whites at Old Fort Mackinac. In his _Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories_, he mentions his visiting the river Ontonagon, in 1765, and adds, “I found this river chiefly remarkable for the abundance of virgin copper which is on its banks and in its neighbourhood. The copper presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The Indians showed me one of twenty pounds. They were used to manufacture this metal into spoons and bracelets for themselves. In the perfect state in which they found it, it required nothing but to be beat into shape.”[77] In the following year, Henry again visited the same region. “On my way,” he says, “I encamped a second time at the mouth of the Ontonagon, and now took the opportunity of going ten miles up the river with Indian guides. The object which I went most expressly to see, and to which I had the satisfaction of being led, was a mass of copper, of the weight, according to my estimate, of no less than five tons. Such was its pure and malleable state that with an axe I was able to cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds.” This mass of native copper which thus attracted the adventurous European explorer upwards of a century ago, has since acquired considerable celebrity, as one of the most prominent encouragements to the mining operations projected in the Ontonagon and surrounding districts. It is now preserved at Washington, and is believed to be the same to which Charlevoix refers as a sacrificial block held in peculiar veneration by the Indians; and on which, according to their narration, a young girl had been sacrificed. The Jesuit father did not obtain access to it, as it was the belief of the Indians that if it were seen by a white man, their lands would pass away from them. Those various notices are interesting as showing to what extent the present race of Indians were accustomed to avail themselves of the mineral wealth of the copper regions. Illustrations of a like kind might be multiplied, but they are all nearly to the same effect, exhibiting the Indian gathering chance masses, or hewing off pieces from the exposed copper lodes, in full accordance with the simple arts of his first Stone Period; but affording no ground for crediting him with any traditionary memorials of connection with the race that once excavated the trenches, and laid bare the mineral treasures of the great copper region.

The evidence indicative of the great length of time which has intervened since the miners of Lake Superior abandoned its shores, receives confirmation from traces of a long protracted traffic carried on by the subsequent occupants of their deserted territory. The mineral wealth that still lay within reach of the non-industrial hunter of the forests which grew up and clothed the deserted works, in the interval between their abandonment and re-occupation, furnished him with a prized material for barter. The head-waters of the Mississippi are within easy reach of an Indian party, carrying light birch-bark canoes over the intervening portages; and, once launched on its broad waters, the whole range of the continent through twenty degrees of latitude is free before them. Through Lake Huron and the Ottawa into the St. Lawrence, and by Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, into the Hudson, other extensive areas of native exchange were commanded. Articles wrought in the brown pipe-stone of the Upper Mississippi, the red pipe-stone of the Couteau des Prairies, west of St. Peters, and the copper of Lake Superior, constituted the wealth which the old north had to offer. In return, one of the most valued exchanges appears to have been the large tropical shells of the Gulf of Florida and the West Indian seas: from which wampum-beads, pendants, gorgets, and personal ornaments of various kinds were manufactured.

Copper is obtained in its native state still farther north; and Mackenzie, in his _Second Journey_, mentions its being in common use among the tribes on the borders of the Arctic Sea; by whom it is wrought into spear and arrow-heads, and a considerable variety of personal ornaments. Mr. Henry found the Christinaux of Lake Winipagon wearing bracelets and other ornaments of copper; and most of the earlier explorers describe copper implements and personal ornaments among widely-scattered Indian tribes of the New World. But in all cases they appear to have been rudely wrought with the hammer, and sparingly mingled with the more abundant weapons and implements of stone, of a people whose sole metallurgic knowledge consisted in gathering or procuring by barter the native copper,—just as they procured the red or brown pipe-stone,—and hammering the mass into some simple useful form. Silver, procured in like manner, was not unknown to them; and pipes inlaid both with silver and lead are by no means rare. But it is only when we turn to the scenes of a native-born civilisation, in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, where metallurgic arts were developed, that we discover evidence of the use of the crucible and furnace, and find copper superseded by the more useful alloy, bronze.

But intermediately between the copper regions of Lake Superior and the ancient southern scenes of native American civilisation, the Mississippi and its great tributaries drain a country remarkable for monuments of a long forgotten past, not less interesting and mysterious than the forsaken mines of Keweenaw and Ontonagon, or Isle Royale. Those great earthworks are ascribed to an extinct race, conveniently known by the name of the Mound-Builders. Careful investigations into their structure and contents prove these builders to have been a people among whom copper was in frequent use, but by them also it was worked only by the hammer. The invaluable service of fire in reducing and smelting ores, moulding metals, and adapting them to greater usefulness by well-proportioned alloys, was unknown; and the investigation and analysis of their cold-wrought tools seem to prove that the source of their copper was the Lake Superior mines. But though the ancient Mound-Builder was thus possessed of little higher metallurgic knowledge than the Indian hunter: he manifested in other respects a capacity for extensive and combined operations, the memorials of which perpetuate his monumental skill and persevering industry in the gigantic earthworks from whence his name is derived. From these we learn that there was a period in America’s unrecorded history, when the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries were occupied by a numerous settled population. Alike in physical conformation—so far as very imperfect evidence goes,—and in some of their arts, these Mound-Builders approximated to races of Central and South America, and differed from the Red Indian occupants of their deserted seats. They were not, to all appearance, far advanced in civilisation. Compared with the people of Mexico or Central America when first seen by the Spaniards, their social and intellectual development was probably rudimentary. But they had advanced beyond that stage in which it is possible for a people to continue unprogressive. The initial steps of civilisation had been inaugurated; and the difference between them and the civilised Mexicans is less striking than the contrast which the evidences of their settled condition, and the proofs of extensive co-operation in their numerous earthworks supply, when compared with all that pertains to the tribes by whom the American forests and prairies have been exclusively occupied during the centuries since Columbus.

The Mound-Builders were greatly more in advance of the Indian hunter than behind the civilised Mexican. They had acquired habits of combined industry; were the settled occupants of specific territories; and are proved, by numerous ornaments and implements of copper deposited in their monuments and sepulchres, to have been familiar with the mineral resources of the northern lake regions, whether by personal enterprise, or by a system of exchange. What probabilities there are suggestive of a connection between the Mound-Builders and the ancient Miners will be discussed in a later chapter, along with other and allied questions; but to just such a race, with their imperfect mechanical skill, their partially developed arts, and their aptitude for continuous combined operations, may be ascribed, _à priori_, such mining works as are still traceable on the shores of Lake Superior, overshadowed with the forest growth of centuries. The mounds constructed by the ancient race are in like manner overgrown with the evidences of their long desertion; and the condition in which recent travellers have found the ruined cities of Central America, may serve to show what even New York, Washington, and Philadelphia: what Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec, would become after a very few centuries, if abandoned, like the desolate cities of Chichenitza or Uxmal, to the inextinguishable luxuriance of the American forest growth.

The accumulations of vegetable mould, the buried forests of older generations, and the living trees with their roots entwined among the forsaken implements of the miners, all point to the lapse of many centuries since their works were abandoned. Changes wrought on the river-courses and terraces in the Ohio valleys suggest an interval of even longer duration since the construction of the great earthworks with which that region abounds. But to whatever period the working of the ancient copper mines of Lake Superior be assigned, the aspect presented by some of them when reopened in recent years is suggestive of peculiar circumstances attending their desertion. It is inconceivable that the huge mass of copper discovered in the Minnesota mine, resting on its oaken cradle, beneath the accumulations of centuries, was abandoned merely because the workmen, who had overcome the greatest difficulties in its removal, were baffled in the subsequent stages of their operations, and contented themselves by chipping off any accessible projecting point. Well-hammered copper chisels, such as lay alongside of it, and have been repeatedly found in the works, were sufficient, with the help of stone hammers, to enable them to cut it into portable pieces. If, indeed, the ancient miners were incapable of doing more with their mass of copper, in the mine, than breaking off a few projections, to what further use could they have turned it when transported to the surface? It weighed upwards of six tons, and measured ten feet long and three feet wide. The trench at its greatest depth was twenty-six feet; while the mass was only eighteen feet from the surface; and in the estimation of the skilled engineer by whom it was first seen, it had been elevated upwards of five feet since it was placed on its oaken frame. The excavations to a depth of twenty-six feet, the dislodged copper block, and the framework prepared for elevating the solid mass to the surface, all consistently point to the same workmen. But the mere detachment of a few accessible projecting fragments is too lame and impotent a conclusion of proceedings carried thus far on so different a scale. It indicates rather such results as would follow at the present day were the Indians of the North-west to displace the modern Minnesota miners, and possess themselves of mineral treasures which they are as little capable as ever of turning to any but the most simple uses.

Such evidences, accordingly, while they serve to prove the existence, at some remote period, of a mining population in the copper regions of Lake Superior, seem also to indicate that their labours came to an abrupt termination. Whether by some devastating pestilence, like that which nearly exterminated the native population of New England immediately before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers; by the breaking out of war; or, as seems not less probable, by the invasion of the mineral region by a barbarian race, ignorant of all the arts of the ancient Mound-Builders of the Mississippi, and of the miners of Lake Superior: certain it is that the works have been abandoned, leaving the quarried metal, the laboriously wrought hammers, and the ingenious copper tools, just as they may have been left when the shadows of the evening told their long forgotten owners that the labours of the day were at an end, but for which they never returned. Nor during the centuries which have elapsed since the forest reclaimed the deserted trenches for its own, does any trace seem to indicate that a native population again sought to avail itself of their mineral treasures, beyond the manufacture of such scattered fragments as lay upon the surface.

[74] Squier’s _Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York_. Appendix, p. 184.

[75] _Smithsonian Contributions_, vol. ii. pp. 14, 176.

[76] _Relations des Jésuites_, vol. iii. 1666 _et_ 1667.

[77] Henry’s _Travels and Adventures_, New York, 1809, p. 194.