ABORIGINAL PAINT MINE GROUP 
Museum Label 
The Indian tribes were not acquainted with iron as 
a malleable or fusible metal, but employed the harder iron 
ores merely as a kind of stone. The solid ore, usually a 
hematite, had the advantage over stone of being exceedingly 
heavy. Fragments and waterworn masses of this material were 
gathered for implements from the surface and from the beds of 
streams. In recent years, when our miners began working a 
large body of iron ore near St. Louis, Missouri, they were 
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surprised to find the deposit honeycombed by irregular tunnels 
or burrows down to a depth of twenty-five feet or more. From 
these old tunnelings, upward of 1200 rude mining implements of 
stone were thrown out. The Indians had doubtless used these 
in breaking up the compact bodies of ore, and had obtained 
large quanties of the red and yellow ochers which occur dis¬ 
tributed throughout the deposit for use as paint, a most essen 
tial feature of the native toilet. 
This showcase is represented as containing a solid 
block of the reddish, impure ore, within which the ancient 
miners are conducting their very primitive, but extraordinary 
operations. One man is engaged in breaking up the ore while 
the other (not seen in the photograph) crawls upward toward 
the surface, carrying a load of the red and yellow ochers in 
a basket. 
