258 ANCIENT COPPER MIXES. 



all the works lately opened there are heaps of coals and ashes, 

 showing that fire had much to do with their operations." 

 Thus, though they were acquainted with metal, they did not 

 know how to use it ; and, as Professor Dana has well observed 

 in a letter with which he has favoured me, they may in one 

 sense be said to have been in an age of Stone, since they used 

 the copper, not as metal, but as stone. This intermediate 

 condition between an age of Stone and one of Metal is most 

 interesting. 



In the neighbourhood of Lake Superior, and in some other 

 still more northern localities, copper is found native in large 

 quantities, and the Indians had therefore nothing to do but 

 to break off pieces and hammer them into the required shape. 

 Hearne's celebrated journey to the mouth of the Coppermine 

 Eiver, under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, was 

 undertaken in order to examine the locality whence the natives 

 of that district obtained the metal. In this case it occurred 

 in lumps actually on the surface, and the Indians seem to 

 have picked up what they could, without attempting anything 

 that could be called mining. Eouud Lake Superior, however, 

 the case is very different. A short account of the ancient 

 copper mines is given by Messrs. Squier and Davis in the 

 work already so often cited, by Mr. Squier in " The Aboriginal 

 Monuments of the State of New York," by Mr. Lapham,* and 

 by Mr. Schoolcraft ; -f- while the same subject is treated at 

 considerable length by Professor Wilson. 



The works appear to have been first discovered in 1847 by 

 the agent of the Minnesota Mining Company. His observa- 

 tions have "brought to light ancient excavations of great 

 extent, frequently from twenty-five to thirty feet deep, and 

 scattered over an area of several miles. Mr. Knapp, the agent 

 of the Minnesota Mining Company, counted three hundred 

 and ninety-five annular rings on a hemlock- tree, which grew 

 * I.e. p. 74. t I.e. p. 95. 



