324 Ancient Indian Mining Tools. 
Notice of some Ancient Indian Mining Tools, found in 
the Copper Districts of Lake Superior. By WILLIAM 
JoRY HENWoop, F.R.S., F.G.S., Member of the Geolo- 
gical Society of France; Corresponding Member of the 
Lyceum of Natural History, New York. 
Although the existence of native copper on the shores of Lake 
Superior has long been known, its abundance has been but lately 
discovered by the present inhabitants. It was, however, extensively 
wrought by the ancient population ; although no tradition relating 
to it remains amongst existing Indian tribes. So remote indeed 
was the period, that the oldest and largest trees of the forest have 
grown indifferently on and beside the old excavations. Few of 
these are found open; for the primitive workmen seem not to have 
lifted their rubbish to the surface, but to have thrown it behind 
them; thus filling their abandoned workings as they proceeded. 
The operation of obvious influences during the lapse of time has 
caused the loose stones and earth to pack more closely; and thus 
to form those depressions of the surface which the sharp-eyed 
American explorers soon found to mark, very frequently, the sites of 
ancient Indian copper-mining; many of which have been lately 
re-opened. Traves of copper have been found in them all; but the 
only instance in which riches were discovered, was one in which the 
mass of metal was about ten feet long, three feet wide, nearly two 
feet thick, and the weight more than six tons, on which the feeble 
means at command probably produced but little effect.* 
Amongst the rubbish so economically disposed of, thousands of 
stone hammers have been found ; sometimes singly, but more com- 
monly great numbers of them together. The one I have the 
honour of presenting to the Institution herewith, I took from a heap 
of about a wheelbarrowful, which I found lying on the brink of one 
of the lately reopened excavations near Eagle River in Michigan. 
It seems of siliceous sandstone, containing a few flakes of mica ; 
and is the hardest stone I found in the neighbourhood. It will be 
* «In the winter of 1847-8, Mr Samuel QO. Knapp, the intelligent agent of 
the Minnesota Mining Company, found near the Ontonagon river a pit of 
twenty-six feet deep. At the depth of eighteen feet he came to a mass of 
native copper, ten feet long, three feet wide, and nearly two feet thick, and 
weighing over six tons. On digging around it the mass was found to rest on 
billets of oak supported by sleepers of the same material. The ancient 
miners had evidently raised it about five feet, and then abandoned the work 
as too laborious. They had taken off every projeoting point which was acces- 
sible, so that the exposed surface was smooth.”—(Foster and Whitney’s 
Keport on the Oopper-Lands of Lake Superior, p. 159.) 
