178 APPENDIX. 



It was the difficulty of obtaining iron from the ores, or the possession of the 

 art of so tempering or hardening copper as to make it answer most of the pur- 

 poses to which steel is now applied, one or both, that perpetuated the use of bronze 

 instruments in Egypt, as well as in Greece and Rome, long after those nations 

 became acquainted with the former metal. 



It may be regarded as certain, that the American aborigines, at the period of the 

 Discovery, were in ignorance of the uses of iron. It is true Vespucius mentions a 

 tribe of natives near the mouth of the La Plata, in South America, who possessed iron 

 points to their arrows. It was probably obtained from native masses in that vicinity. 

 The inhabitants of Madagascar obtain a part of their iron from such sources.* 

 A late traveller in Chile observes : " It appears that the Indians of Chile had, at 

 the time of their discovery, in some very rare instances, iron blades to their lances ; 

 which led to the erroneous supposition that they were so far advanced in metallurgy 

 as to be able to reduce and refine that metal from the ores. Our surprise will 

 cease upon recollecting that this valuable metal already existed naturally in South 

 America, in the very extensive deposits of native iron at Santiago del Estero, which 

 has proved to be of meteoric origin, and differing from that at Zacatecas and 

 Durango in Mexico, described by Humboldt, in the absence of earthy matter, and in 

 not being, like them, in round masses, but in a horizontal bed of considerable extent 

 and variable thickness, now for the most part covered with drifting sand, and rest- 

 ing on a bed of the same material." — (iH?'er's Travels in Chile, etc., Vol. II., p. 464.) 

 Copper, on the other hand, seems to have been very abundant, and much used for 

 implements, among all the semi-civihzed nations of the continent. Columbus, 

 when at Cape Honduras, was visited by a trading canoe of Indians Amongst the 

 various articles of merchandise which constituted their cargo, were " small hatchets, 

 made of copper, to hew wood, small bells and plates, crucibles to melt copper, 



* Lieut. H. C. Flacjg, Trans. Am. Association, 6tk Meeting, p. 40. It is unnecessary to remark, that 

 all accounts of the discovery of iron in the mounds, or under such circumstances as to imply a date prior 

 to the Discovery, are sufficiently vague and unsatisfactory. The fragment of an iron wedge, found in a 

 rock near Salem, Washington County, Ohio, and which has been alluded to by several writers upon 

 American antiquities, does not probably possess an antiquity of more than fifty years. It is now in the 

 possession of Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta ; and its history, stripped of all that is not well authenticated, 

 is simply that it was found fastened in the cleft of a rock, and no one could tell how it came there ! The 

 author of the paper on American antiquities, in the first volume of the Archaeologia Americana, states that, 

 in a mound at Circleville, Ohio, was found amongst other articles " a plate of iron which had become an 

 oxyde ; but before it was disturbed by the spade, resembled a plate of cast iron. {Archceol. Am., Vol ]., 

 p. 1 Vs.) It is obviously no easy matter to detect iron when fully oxydized in the earth ; and when we 

 are obhged to base our conclusions respecting the use of that metal, by an evidently rude people, upon 

 such remains, if any there be, the strictest examination should be given them ; appearances alone should 

 be disregarded, and conclusions, after all, drawn with extreme caution. Whether it is likely the requisite 

 discrimination and judgment were exercised in this case, it is not undertaken to say. But few masses of 

 native iron, and these of small size and meteoric origin, have been found in this country; consequently the 

 presence of iron to any extent amongst the mound-builders, can be accounted for only on the assumption 

 that they understood the difficult art of reducing it from the ores, which involves a degree of knowledge, 

 and an advance in the arts of civilization, not attained by the Mexicans nor by the Peruvians, and not 

 sustained by the authenticated remains of the mounds. 



