6i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Quebec in 1535 were familiar with the fact that Saguenay was a 

 copper-bearing region. John Gilmary Shea, LL. D., says (Shea's 

 " Charlevoix ") : " The Saguenay of the St. Lawrence Indians was 

 evidently the Lake Superior region, and possibly the ports accessible 

 by the Mississippi. The river Saguenay was not so called from being 

 in but from leading to Saguenay.'^'' Thus, at a distance of from eight 

 hundred to one thousand miles from its origin, Cartier in L535, and 

 Champlain in 1610, encountered Indians who informed them of the 

 manner of mining, and of manufacturing coj^^^er implements, Cham- 

 j^lain stating that the coj^per was melted. 



It is not presumed that this is a complete list of historic references 

 to the use of copper and copper mining by the Indians, but it is amply 

 sufficient to show that it is not necessary to invoke a strange race, 

 prior to the Indian, to account for all the copper implements and 

 the nuggets of copper that have been found in the mounds, as well 

 as for those found on the surface of the ground throughout the 

 Northwest. 



The term mound-huilders is distinctively applied to the race that 

 constructed the remarkable earthworks of the valley of the Ohio, 

 and of the interior of the United States in general, but it is true 

 that in nearly all parts of the world the practice of mound-building 

 has prevailed, sometimes among nations that come within historical 

 epochs. Mounds are found among the Celts and the Scythians, in the 

 Sandwich Islands and in New Zealand, in Japan and India, and 

 throughout the central parts of the Eastern Continent, as well as in 

 both Americas, from the country of the Esquimaux to Chili and 

 Fuegia. The earliest of human records refer distinctly to this method 

 of honoring the dead. The heroic age of Greece, as sung by Homer, 

 abounded with ceremonies and curious details relating to the tumulus 

 erected over the bones of the slain hero. The burial of Patroclus, as 

 related in the twentv-third book of the " Iliad," is an illustration of 

 the practice of mound-building by the ancient Greeks : 



"The sacred relics to the tent they bore, 

 The urn a veil of linen covered o'er. 

 That done, they bid tlie sepulchre aspire, 

 And cast the deep foundations round the pyre ; 

 High in the midst they heap the swelling bed 

 Of rising earth, memorial of the dead." 



At the burial of Hector, the Trojans erect a pile of large stones 

 over the urn containing his remains, and upon that pile u^) the tumu- 

 lus. When ^Encas buried the pilot of his fleet, Misenus, he 



"... piously heaped a mighty mound sepulchral." 



Artachreas, superintendent of the canal at Athos, was honored by 

 Xerxes with a memorial mound which still remains, in remembrance 

 of the skill of that engineer, and an evidence of the custom of the 



