TRACES OF ABORIGINAL OPERATIONS IN AN IRON MINE 

 NEAR LESLIE, MO.« 



Bv W. H. Holmes. 



Early in April, 1903, a comnmnic-ation was received hy the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology from Dr. S. W. Cox, of Cuba, Mo., stating 

 that evidences of ancient mining operations had l)een discovered in an 

 iron mine operated by him near Leslie, Franklin County. This report 

 was confirmed b}^ Mr. D. I. Bushnell and other St. Louis archeologists, 

 and the present writer, who is especially interested in the quarrying 

 and mining industries of the aborigines, repaired at once to Leslie to 

 make a stud}^ of the interesting phenomena. 



It was found that the miners had encountered a body of iron ore, 

 of unknown depth and horizontal extent, lying inmiediatel}' beneath 

 the surface of the soil on a gentle slope reaching down to the banks of 

 Big Creek, a branch of Bourbois River, and that the}^ had removed 

 the ore from a space about 100 feet wide, 150 feet long, and to a depth 

 at the deepest part of between 15 and 20 feet, as shown in plate i. 

 In beginning the work traces of ancient excavations were observed 

 penetrating the soil which covered the surface of the ore body to a 

 depth of from 1 to 5 feet, and as the work progressed it was found 

 that the ore had been fairly honeycombed by the ancient people, the 

 passagewa3-s extending even below the present floor of the mine, as at 

 the right of the figure in the plate. There w^ere many partialh^ filled 

 galleries, generally narrow and sinuous, 'but now and then larger 

 openings appeared, two of these being of sufficient dimensions to 

 accommodate standing workmen. 



In the debris of the old excavations many rude stone implements 

 were encountered, and upward of 1,000 of these had been gathered 

 by the miners into a heap on the margin of the mine. (PI. ii.) 

 These sledges are exceedingly rude, consisting of hard masses of 

 stone or hematite weighing from 1 to 5 pounds, and roughly grooved 

 or notched for the attachment of withe handles, no trace of the latter 

 remaining, however. The great number of these implements made 

 it certain that extensive operations had been carried on by the ancients, 



ff Reprinted, with additions, from the American Anthropologist, vol. 5, No. 3, 

 July-yept., 1903. 



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