66 DR. DANIEL WILSON ON 
founded on traditions of the Iroquois narrated by an Onondaga chief, represents Gitche 
Manito, the Master of Life, descending on the crag of the red pipe-stone quarry at the 
Côteau des Prairies, and calling all the tribes together : 
“ And they stood there on the meadow 
With their weapons and their war gear, 
Wildly glaring at each other. 
In their faces stern defiance, 
In their hearts the feuds of ages, 
The hereditary hatred, 
The ancestral thirst of vengeance.” 
So far the picture is true to nature; but no dream of a millennial era for the Red-Man, 
in which all were thenceforth to live together as brothers, can have fashioned itself in the 
mind of Indian seer. The Sioux, the Crees, and the Blackfeet, are still nursing the same 
feud of ages, and thirsting for each others blood; while the thousands of European 
emigrants crowd in to take possession of their vast uncultivated prairies, destined to become 
the granaries of the world; and the buffalo, on which they have mainly depended, is 
rapidly disappearing and will in a very few years be as extinct as the fossil urus or 
mastodon. The Red-Man of the North-West exhibits no change from his precursors of the 
fifteenth century ; and for aught that appears in him of a capacity for self-development, 
the forests and prairies of the American continent may have sheltered hunting and warring 
tribes of Indians, just as they have sheltered and pastured its wild herds of buffaloes, for 
countless centuries since the continent rose from its ocean bed. 
Only by prolonged hereditary feuds, more insatiable, and therefore more destructive 
in their results, than the ravages of tigers or wolves, is it possible to account for such an 
unprogressive condition of humanity as the archeological disclosures of this northern 
continent seem alone to reveal. Its numerous rivers and lakes, and its boundless forests 
and prairies, afforded inexhaustible resources for the hunter; and both soil and climate 
have proved admirably adapted for agriculture. Still more, the great copper region of Lake 
Superior provided advantages such as have existed in no other country of the known 
world for developing the first stages of metallurgic art on which civilization so largely 
depends. Whether brought with them from Asia, or discovered for themselves, the grand 
secret of the mastery of the ores by fire was already familiar to Peruvian metallurgists, 
and not unknown to those of Mexico. Unalloyed copper, such as that which abounds in 
the igneous rocks of the Keweenaw peninsula on Lake Superior, is extremely difficult to 
cast; and the addition of a small percentage of tin not only produces the useful bronze 
alloy, but renders the copper more readily fusible. This all-important secret of science the 
metallurgists of Peru had brought with them, it may be from Asia, or had discovered 
for themselves, and turned largely to practical account. The pictured chronicles of 
the Mexicans throw an interesting light on the value they attached to the products of this 
novel art. It appears from some of their paintings that the tribute due by certain provinces 
was paid in wedges of copper. The forms of these, as well as of chisels and other tools of 
bronze, are simple, and indicate no great ingenuity in adapting the moulded metal to the 
artificer’s, or the combatant’s requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade appear 
to have been of nearly the same rude description as are in use by modern savages in fitting 
the handle to a hatchet of flint or stone; and the whole characteristics of their metallurgy 
are suggestive of a recently acquired or borrowed art. 
