METALLIC IMPLEMENTS OF NEW YORK INDIANS t 
There may have been misunderstandings on both sides, but 
the plain statement is that this people knew copper and had a 
name for it, though they had none themselves. When Bar- 
-tholomew Gosnold was at Cape Cod in 1602 he saw a young 
Indian with plates of copper hanging from his ears. These may 
have come from European contact, but Gosnold did not suggest 
this. Farther south they were visited by natives, one of whom 
wore a copper plate, a foot long and half as broad, on his breast. 
Others had copper pendants in their ears. John Brereton added 
to this, accounts of their beads, chains, arrows and other things, 
and said that not one lacked something of the kind. Another 
described pipes partly of copper, much as Hudson did in New 
York a few years later. Belknap says of these statements: 
All these. Indians had ornaments of copper. When the 
adventurers asked them, by signs, whence they obtained this 
metal, one of them made answer by digging a hole in the ground 
and pointing to the main; from which circumstance it was 
understood that the adjacent country contained mines of copper. 
In the course of almost two centuries no copper has been dis- 
covered; though iron, a much more useful metal, wholly un- 
known to the natives, is found in great plenty. The question, 
whence did they obtain copper? is yet without an answer.— 
Belknap, p. 151 
To this it may be said that the arrows, tubes, belts and pipes 
“of copper, as described by Brereton, are all represented on 
_ recent Iroquois sites, and may fairly be considered as European 
articles, furnished by some unknown early trader. 
When it is said that Henry Hudson saw “copper tobacco 
pipes ” among the Indians of New York bay, he may have mis- 
taken those of bright red clay for this metal, or they may have 
come from the same unknown trader. They were not afterward 
mentioned by any one, and none of native metal have ever been 
found. The natives could not have cast them, and it would have 
been extremely difficult to make them by hammering. The 
copper ornaments seen in this voyage may have had the same 
source. The brass pipes which Roger Williams thought the Nar- 
ragansetts made may well be classed with these. They are 
never mentioned inland, and this affects the question of origin, 
