MINERAL REGIONS OF LAKE SUPERIOR,
AS KNOWN
FROM THEIR FIRST DISCOVERY TO 1865.
BY HON. H. M. RICE, OF SAINT PAUL.
One hundred and twenty-one years ago there were found, north Lake of Superior, several “large lumps of the finest virgin copper.” The finder wrote: “In the honest exultation of my heart at so important a discovery, I directly showed it to the Company, (Hudson’s Bay Company) but the thanks I met with may be easily judged from the system of their conduct. The fact, without any inquiry into the reality of it, was treated as a chimerical illusion, and a stop arbitrarily put to all farther search into the matter, by the absolute lords of the soil.”
The first attempt made to obtain copper from the Lake Superior region was by a company of adventurers from England, soon after the conquest of Canada, “but the distracted state of affairs in America obliged them to relinquish their scheme.” The next effort was made in 1771, by a company who petitioned for, and obtained, a charter from the British Government. The partners, in England, were His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, Mr. Secretary Townsend, Sir Samuel Tutchet, Baronet; Mr. Baxter, Consul of the Empress of Russia, and Mr. Cruickshank; in America, Sir William Johnson, Baronet, Mr. Bostwick, Mr. Baxter and Alexander Henry.
“In 1770 (says Henry,) Mr. Baxter, who had sailed for England, returned, bringing with him papers by which, with Mr. Bostwick and himself, I was constituted a joint agent and partner, in, and for, a company of adventurers for working the mines of Lake Superior. We passed the winter together at the Sault de Sainte Marie, and built a barge, fit for the navigation of the lake; at the same time laying the keel of a sloop of forty tons. Early in May, 1771, the lake becoming navigable, we departed from Point aux Pius, our ship yard, at which there is a safe harbour, and of which the distance from the Sault is three leagues. We sailed for the Island of Yellow Sands, promising ourselves to make our fortunes, in defiance of its serpents.” After coasting about for five days, they returned to Point aux Pius, where they erected an air-furnace. The assayer made a report on the ores which had been collected, stating that the lead ore contained silver in the proportion of forty ounces to a ton, “but the copper ore, only in very small proportions indeed.” Facts developed by recent explorations go far to show, that the day is not far distant when the silver mines of Lake Superior will rank among the most prolific in the world.
Soon after testing the ores at Point aux Pius, the expedition coasted westward for the mouth of the Ontouagon river. Henry says: “Proposing to ourselves to make a trial on the hill, till we were better able to go to work upon the solid rock, we built a house, and sent to the Sault de Sainte Marie for provisions. At the spot pitched upon for the commencement of our preparations, a green-colored water which tinged iron of a copper color, issued from the hill, and this the miners called a leader. Having arranged everything for the miners during the winter, we returned to the Sault. Early in the spring of 1772, we sent a boat load of provisions; but it came back on the 20th day of June, bringing with it, to our surprise, the whole establishment of miners. They reported, that in the course of the winter, they had penetrated forty feet into the hill; but, that on the arrival of the thaw, the clay on which, on account of its stiffness, they relied, and neglected to secure it by supporters, had fallen in;—that to recommence their search would be attended with much labor and cost;—that from the detached masses of metal which, to the last, had daily presented themselves, they supposed there might be, ultimately, reached some body of the same, but could form no conjecture of its distance.” They concluded that the work would require more men than could be fed, and their operations in that quarter ended.
A little over eighty-two years ago, the independence of the United States was acknowledged by Great Britain, in a treaty concluded at Paris, in which the boundaries were agreed upon. By reference to that instrument, it will be observed that the northern line, after striking the River St. Lawrence, follows up that stream to the great lakes, thence through the middle of the same, and their connecting rivers, to Lake Superior; thence through Lake Superior, northward of the Isles Royal and Philippean, to the Long Lake, now known as Pigeon River; thus securing to what is now Minnesota, about one hundred and fifty miles of the north shore of that inland sea, and believed to contain the richest copper and silver deposits known in the world. Benjamin Franklin was one of the commissioners to the treaty. It is supposed that he obtained information in France of the richness of that region; and, to his great foresight, we are mostly indebted for that valuable acquisition. In fact, he wrote that the time would come when the American people would consider the part he took in securing that vast mineral region to them as one of the greatest acts of his life. Seventy-five years after the death of that great and good man, the people of Minnesota are about to realize the importance of the vast interests secured by that far-seeing statesman.
On the 5th day of August, 1826, Lewis Cass and Thomas L. McKenney, commissioners on the part of the United States, made and concluded a treaty with the Chippewa Indians at Fond du Lac, Lake Superior, by which the Chippewas granted to the United States the right to search for, and carry away, any metals or minerals from any part of their country. No efforts under this grant were ever made; but from that period (and even before,) explorations, from time to time, were made by individuals; and many indications of rich mines, (now within the limits of Minnesota,) were discovered. Licenses to trade with the Indians were obtained,—buildings for the ostensible purpose of trade were erected, and possession maintained for many years, in hopes the Government would extinguish the Indian title to the land, so that individual titles might be acquired. Time and expense caused the abandonment of most of these points, and a consequent dissipation of the bright visions raised by the knowledge of the wealth which was beyond the reach of the discoverers.