330 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



Indian hunters used to pass across the base of the penin- 

 sula where the Kioueounan Lake (the Portage Lake of the 

 voyageurs), enabled them to save two days' canoe journey- 

 ing in coasting along the south of Superior. Kioueounan, 

 or Keweenaw, is a solid mass of copper ore, and could, 

 I should think, supply the whole world, even on a waste- 

 ful scale, for tens of thousands of years to come. Much 

 of the peninsula, which is, roughly, ninety miles long by 

 more than a hundred broad, seems to be nearly pure 

 copper, judging from the specimens which I brought 

 away, and the reports of the miners. If the accounts of 

 the latter are to be relied on, masses of pure copper have 

 been found containing six or seven hundred tons' weight. 

 I saw, myself, great jagged masses peeping through the 

 soil, which seemed to be pure copper, but which, as I 

 have mentioned, prove to contain about one-tenth of 

 dross. 



Keweenaw has been frequented for copper by the 

 Red Men from time immemorial. Many vestiges of their 

 old mines still remain, and they came from immense 

 distances to obtain the metal for making knives, heads 

 to their spears, and a hundred different purposes. They, 

 of course, worked only the masses which they found at 

 the surface of the ground, but the traces of ancient 

 smelting works of rude construction still remain, showing 

 that the Indians had probably arrived at some degree of 

 skill in working the metal. Yet the peninsula was a 

 place of superstitious dread to them, as they believed it, 

 like innumerable other points round the lakes, to be the 

 haunt of an evil spirit. The Indians who resided nearest 

 to the peninsula were a tribe of Chippeways, while on the 

 opposite coast were Iroquois, a fierce and quarrelsome 

 race, and so many different tribes coming for copper, 

 it naturally came to pass that fierce fights took place 

 frequently, and perhaps this had something to do with 

 the superstitious dread in which Keweenaw was held 

 by all the Red Men. Certainly none ever permanently 



