122 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE COPPER-MINES OP ISLE ROYALE. 

 Messrs. Editors. 



I HAVE read with much pleasure Profes- 

 sor Wine-hell's paper on the " Ancient 

 Copper-Mines of Isle Royale," in " The Pop- 

 ular Science Monthly " for September. As 

 the Professor's very laudable object is un- 

 doubtedly " to make a little history " re- 

 specting the wonderful copper-mines of 

 Lake Superior, and as no narrative (with 

 the exception of some occasional geological 

 reports) respecting the late working of 

 them has to my knowledge been published, 

 and as he has inadvertently made some 

 quite important omissions, with your leave 

 I will endeavor to supply the deficiency. 

 On page 602 he says : " The finding of these 

 thin chips of copper is the first indication 

 of the proximity of a large mass. In the 

 summer of 1874 the first of these large 

 masses was discovered." 



In the summer of 1822, fifty-two years 

 before "the summer of 1874," General Cass, 

 at that time the United States Territorial 

 Governor of what now constitutes the States 

 of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and 

 ex-officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs 

 for the Northwest, made his celebrated trip 

 from Detroit to the head of Lake Superior, 

 with his party, "in birchen canoes," and 

 thence overland to the Mississippi River. 

 He stopped at the mouth of the Ontonagon 

 River, on the south shore of Lake Superior, 

 two or three days to recruit his voyageurs 

 after a " canoe-paddle" of nearly one thou- 

 sand miles from Detroit. Knowing what 

 the " early Jesuits " had said about copper 

 in that country, in the published memoirs 

 of their operations in the " Great Lake 

 country," nearly two hundred years before, 

 he naturally sought information of the Ind- 

 ians he found there respecting it. They 

 took him to a mass of copper which was 

 lying on the bank of the Ontonagon River, 

 some eight miles from its mouth. It was 

 found to be, apparently, pure native copper. 

 In 1845, I think it was, Julius Eldred, of 

 Detroit, by permission of the Government, 

 took it to Washington, for the purpose of 

 its being eventually put into the Washing- 

 ton Monument, as a contribution showing 

 the mineral resources of Michigan. It 

 weighed something like six thousand pounds. 

 In 1848 the Minnesota Mining Company 

 commenced work on their mine, in the range 

 of hills some twenty-one miles (by the 

 course of the stream) up the Ontonagon 

 River. They began work in what are called 



the "ancient diggings.'''' This "digging" 

 was simply an open trench, some ten to 

 twelve feet wide, running on the course of 

 a mineral vein that had been excavated by 

 the " ancients " in the " country rock " to 

 uncover the vein. I do not now recollect 

 the length of that particular trench. The 

 country is full of them. 



I give you what Mr. William Hickok, 

 one of the owners and originators of the 

 Minnesota mine which mine, by-the-way, 

 has produced several million dollars' worth 

 of copper and who now resides at Tarry- 

 town in this State, says of their work and 

 what they found. In reply to a note I ad- 

 dressed him respecting it on the 25th ulti- 

 mo, he writes : " The mass of copper dis- 

 covered by Mr. Knapp in the Minnesota 

 mine in 1848, of which you inquire, was 

 found in the vein, resting upon skids 

 about twenty-five feet from the surface. It 

 weighed 12,480 pounds. All the rock had 

 been cleaned from its surface, giving it 

 the appearance of being as pure as refined 

 copper. There were found in the excava- 

 tion a large number of ' stone hammers,' 

 weighing from one to forty pounds each, 

 and encircled by a ' groove ' cut undoubt- 

 edly for the purpose of receiving a hick- 

 ory ' withe,' to be used as a handle. There 

 were also several copper implements, such 

 as chisels, etc., found, that showed, from 

 the manner they had been used the bat- 

 tered heads of the chisels, for instance 

 that the ' art ' of hardening and weld- 

 ing that metal (an art now lost) was known 

 by those who had made them. There 

 was at that time growing in that excava- 

 tion (which was filled with alluvial soil) 

 over the vein and the mass of copper a 

 hemlock-tree, of about three hundred and 

 seventy-five years' growth,, judging from the 

 number of its concentric rings. We must, 

 I think, go back to the ' stone age ' to find 

 the workers of these copper-mines. The 

 discovery of the mass of copper in the vein 

 of the Minnesota mine entirely free from 

 rock, ready to be moved, unlocks the mys- 

 tery of those ' floating masses ' that seen 

 by General Cass was one of them found in 

 various places on the surface, showing that 

 they had all been mined and taken from 

 the veins, and had been abandoned while 

 being transported to the lake, for some cause 

 to us unknown." 



It occurs to me that, if the foregoing is 

 added to Professor Winchell's very valuable 

 paper, the account of those remarkable min- 



