186 PRE-COLUMBIAN COPPER-MINING 



ceased at the particular trencli where that tree was felled at the date 

 indicated, it does not necessarily follow that all the workings were 

 abandoned at the same time. Indeed, the tree which grew on the 

 dump of the pit Avhere the Minnesota mass was found did not begin its 

 growth until over a hundred years later, or after the French had been 

 up the St. Lawrence and there had been considerable traffic with 

 Europeans on the seacoast. Hovr hmg a 2)<trtc ante the wliolc system 

 had been worked can only be a matter of conjecture. When one 

 reflects that many hundreds of men were busily engaged for several 

 consecutive seasons, with all the feverish energy born of the modern 

 thirst for gold, in the diggings of a)iy one of the i)lacer cam])S which 

 are now seen abandoned in Idaho, Oregon, and California, it will be 

 apparent that the old miners on Lalve Superior must have taken a long 

 time for their leisurely work. Their tools were primitive, their work 

 was desultory, and they knew nothing about the desire of wealth. 

 Primitive peoples are supposed not to have prosecuted any industry 

 .persistently and assiduously, like modern civilized men. Where there 

 are no wages, no expenditures, no companies and employees, no stocks 

 or fluctuations of the market, nothing even which can be called a 

 demand, there is no need of pushing a laborious work. It was also, 

 probably, only in the summer, and it may have been only at considera- 

 ble intervals, that Keweenaw, Ontonagon, and Isle Eoyale were visited 

 for copper. It must also not be forgotten that the ancient miners only 

 carried away "barrel work." They were forced to abandon mass 

 copper. Barrel work from the excavations and float copper froai the 

 neighboring and remote drift wouhl furnish the material necessary for 

 all the tools, weapons, and ornaments that have been found, and 

 although the quantity of coi)per from these sources was small when 

 reckoned in tons, yet the desultory and selective kind of mining which 

 produced it, especially if carried on by a comparatively small number 

 of persons over such an extensive territory as the mineral range of 

 Keweenaw, would naturally require an indefinite length of time. 



From the historical references which will be presently considered, it 

 will appear tiiat Keweenaw and Ontonagon' were known as a copper 

 district at the time the French arrived in Canada. But as it has been 

 inuigined that an extinct race superior in culture to Indians opened the 

 trenches and mined copper there, it maybe well to give a comparatively 

 modern instance of a similar search for copi)er by Indians l)efore taking 

 U]) the historical argument. Such an instance is afforded in Hearne's 

 narrative of his Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in the Hudson's 

 Bay Company's territory to the Coppermine River in 1771. Hearne 

 was an employe of the Hudson's Bay Company, ami undertook the expe- 

 dition in the interest of the company. His party was composed of 

 Indians who were not very far removed in i>oint of culture from their 

 savage stone-using ancestors of three or four generations previous, and 

 no better idea could be gained of the character and life of neolithic man 



