THE ONTONAGON COPPER BOWLDER. 1029 



terms the accounts of Julius Eldred and sons for their time' ^nd 

 exj)enses in purchasing and removing the mass of native copper com- 

 monly called the copper rock." The sum thus paid was $5,664.98. 



From the yard of the old War Department to the National Museum 

 is not a loug Journey for so traveled a rock, and we need spend no time 

 on it. There is, however, another and a really important question as 

 to the origin of the bowlder. Accepting the statements of Schoolcraft 

 and Doctor Houghton that the coi)j)er rock as found was an isolated 

 mass, but that it undoubtedly came from one of the veins in the narrow 

 copper belt, let us examine the results of explorations made since 

 their day. 



During the winter of 1847-48 Mr. Samuel O. Knapp, the agent of the 

 Minnesota mine, observed on the ]jresent location of that mine a curi- 

 ous depression in the soil, caused, as he conjectured, by the disintegra- 

 tion of a vein. Following up these indications, he came upon a cavern, 

 the home of several porcupines. On clearing out the rubbish, he 

 found many stone hammers; and at a depth of 18 feet he came upon a 

 mass of native copi^er 10 feet loug, 3 feet wide, and nearly 2 feet thick.^ 

 Its weight was more than 6 tons. This mass was found resting upon 

 billets of oak supported by sleepers of the same wood. There were 

 three courses of billets and two courses of sleepers. The wood had 

 lost all its consistency, so that a knife blade penetrated it as easily as 

 if it had been jjeat; but the earth packed about the copper gave that a 

 tirm support. By means of the cobwork the miners had raised the 

 mass about 5 feet, or something less than one-quarter of the way to the 

 mouth of the pit. The marks of fire used to detach the copper from 

 the rock showed that the early miners were acquainted with a process 

 used with effect by their successors. This fragment had been pounded 

 until every projection was broken off and then had been left, when and 

 for what reason is still unknown.^ From similar ints on the same loca- 

 tion came ten cart loads of ancient hammers, one of which weighed 39J 

 pounds and was fitted with two grooves for a double handle. There 

 were also found a copper gad, a copper chisel with a socket in which 

 was the remains of a copper handle, and fragments of wooden bailing 

 bowls. At the Mesnard mine, in 1862, was found an 18-ton bowlder 

 that the "ancient miners" had moved 48 feet from its original bed. 



' In Senate Report 260, Twenty-eighth Congress, first session, Mr. Eldred relates 

 his trials and final success. Several of the official communications quoted in this 

 article are printed in that report. The existence of the report, however, was devel- 

 oped from the communications which were kindly furnished me by Colonel F. C. Ains- 

 worth, chief of the Record and Pension Division of the War Department; Captain 

 C. T. Shoemaker, chief of the Revenue-Cutter Service, and Honorable T. Strobo 

 Farrow, Auditor of the Treasury for the War Department. 



^Foster & Whitney's Report. House Ex. Doc. 69, Thirty-first Congress, first ses- 

 sion, p. 159. 



^A cut and a full description of this find is given by Colonel Whittlesey in his 

 article on Ancient Copper Mining in the Lake Superior Region, Smithsonian Contri- 

 butions to Knowledge, XIII. 



