188 PRE-COLUMBIAN COPPER-MINING 



Hearue's Indians. They found arrows ''shod with a triangular piece 

 of bhick stone, like slate, or a piece of copper.'' " Their [the Esqui- 

 maux] hatchets are made of a thick lump of copper, about 5 or G inches 

 long and from 1^ to 2 inches square. They are bevelled away at one 

 end like a mortise chisel. This is lashed into the end of a piece of wood 

 about 12 or 14 inches long, in such a manner as to act like an adze; in 

 general they are applied to the wood like a chisel and driven in with a 

 heavy club instead of a mallet. Neither the weight of the tool nor the 

 sharpness of the metal will admit of their being handled either as adze 

 or ax with any degree of success." 



This testimony of a modern eye-witness to the working and use of 

 co^jper by aborigines is very instructive, and it requires little imagina- 

 tion to see that we have here a reproduction of the conditions that pre- 

 vailed on Keweenaw Point two and three hundred years before. The 

 summer visits of the miners, the manufacture of the copper into tools 

 and weapons, some to be used in the neighborhood and others to be 

 carried away for barter — for Hearne gives the rate of exchange between 

 copper and iron from tribe to tribe — were doubtless the same in both 

 cases; even the mythical or "medicine" feature of the subject, which 

 was noticed by early writers in the stories of the Indians of Lake 

 Superior, is not wanting here. The Coppermine story was that a 

 woman (who was a magician) was the discoverer of the mine and used 

 to conduct the Indians there every year. Becoming offended, she 

 refused to accompany the men on one occasion when they left the place, 

 after loading themselves with coi)per, but declared that she would sit 

 on the mine until it sank with her into the ground. The next year 

 when the men returned (women did not go on these ex2)editions) she 

 had sunk to the waist and the quantity of copper had much decreased. 

 On the next visit she had disappeared and the principal part of the 

 copper with her, leaving only pieces here and there on the surface. 

 Before this untoward event the copper was so plentiful that the Indians 

 had only to turn it over and pick out such pieces as would best suit 

 the different uses for which they intended it. 



From this account it will be seen that it is not necessary to imagine 

 a mysterious and extinct race more advanced in industrial arts than 

 Indians to account for the ancient mines on Lake Superior. Besides, 

 other workings requiring as much labor have been carried on by Indians. 

 The catlinite or j)ipestoue quarry in Minnesota was worked far into 

 the i)resent century. The mica mines in North Carolina, which are 

 now worked, were operated in a way and to an extent suggestive of the 

 Lake Superior copper mines, and were abandoned, according to Prof. 

 Kerr, the geologist who examined them, a little over three hundred 

 years ago, or after the arrival of the whites. There are also novaculite 

 mines in Arkansas, obsidian workings in the Yellowstone Park, soap- 

 stone pottery quarries in several places in the Eastern States and iu 

 California, and especially the astonishingly extensive workings at Flint 



