202 TRACES OF ANCIENT 



been seized upon."* This is the more surprising, because as 

 Schoolcraftf tells us "in almost all the works lately opened, 

 there are heaps of coals and ashes, showing that fire had 

 much to do with their operations." Thus, though they were 

 acquainted with metal, they did not know how to use it ; and 

 as Professor Dana has well observed in a letter with which 

 he favored me, they may in one sense be said to have been in 

 an age of stone, since they used the copper, not as metal, but 

 as stone. This intermediate condition between an age of 

 stone and one of metal is most interesting. 



In the neighbourhood of Lake Superior, and in some other 

 still more northern localities, copper is found native in large 

 quantities, and the Indians had therefore nothing to do but 

 to break off pieces and hammer them into the required 

 shape. Hearne's celebrated journey to the mouth of the 

 Coppermine River, under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, was undertaken in order to examine the locality 

 whence the natives of that district obtained the metal. In 

 this case it occurred in lumps actually on the surface, and the 

 Indians seem to have picked up what they could, without 

 attempting anything that could be called mining. Round 

 Lake Superior, however, the case is very different. A short 

 account of the ancient coppermines is given by Messrs. 

 Squier and Davis in the work already so often cited, by Mr. 

 Squier in " The Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New 

 York," by Mr. Lapham, J and by Mr. Schoolcraft, while the 

 same subject is treated at considerable length by Professor 

 Wilson. The works appear to have been first discovered in 

 1847 by the agent of the Minnesota Mining Company. 



" Following up. the indications of a continuous depression 

 in the soil, he came at length to a cavern where he found 



* One " cast " copper axe is however recorded as having been found in the State 

 of New York, but there is no evidence to show by whom it was made, 

 t Indian Tribes, p. 97. % I.e. p. 74. I.e. p. 95. 



