METALLIC IMPLEMENTS OF NEW YORK INDIANS 9 
Soon after Quebec was founded Champlain mentioned a piece 
of very handsome and pure copper given him by an Algonquin. 
It was a foot long. The great discoverer said, “ He gave me to 
understand that there were large quantities where he had taken 
this, which was on the banks of a river, near a great lake. He 
said that they gathered it in lumps, and having melted it, spread 
it in sheets, smoothing it with stones.”—Champlain, 2:236 
Presumably this refers to Lake Superior, and the melting 
merely to softening the metal by heat. The statement lacks 
precision in these ways, but it would have been possible for an 
eastern Algonquin while in alliance or friendship with the 
-Hurons to reach Lake Superior. ) 
A succeeding statement is more precise. Radisson wintered in 
1658 on the shore of that great lake, and mentioned the native 
copper several times. He seems to refer to ornamental forms 
when he speaks of a “yellow waire that they make with copper, 
made like a starr or a half-moon.”—Radisson, p. 188, 212. This 
would bring the making of native copper ornaments far within 
the historic period, but there is no notice of implements. In the 
same year occurred the visit which brought Lake Superior copper 
plainly to view. ‘This was made by an Algonquin chief living on 
the Saguenay, who had passed 10 years in the country of the 
Nipisiriniens, and whose name was Awatanik. Thence he went 
to Lake Superior in 1658, spending the following winter there. 
Two Frenchmen returned from this lake in 1660 with 300 Algon- 
quins, but they said nothing about copper, though they had 
wintered there also. 
The first definite Jesuit report of Lake Superior ore is in the 
Relation of 1660. In that year a French missionary met the 
Algonquin mentioned, just returned from that region, where he 
had gone in 1658. He found there “copper so excellent that it 
is found fully refined, in pieces as large as the fist.”” The infer- 
ence is that the Indians east of Michigan had little knowledge 
of this before. The Relation of 1667 contains the journey of 
Father Claude Allouez to Lake Superior in 1665. He reached 
the lake September 2, and went on to say: 
