Prehistoric man

by Sir Daniel Wilson

[73]	Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or People of the Long House, expressive of the numerous assembly in the Council of the Confederacy.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE METALS.

DAWN OF A METALLURGIC ERA—PRIMITIVE COPPER-WORKING—COPPER REGION OF LAKE SUPERIOR—THE PICTURED ROCKS—JACKSON IRON MOUNTAIN—THE CLIFF MINE—COPPER TOOLS—ANCIENT MINING TRENCHES—GREAT EXTENT OF WORKS—MINES OF ISLE ROYALE—THEIR ESTIMATED AGE—ANCIENT MINING IMPLEMENTS—STONE MAULS AND AXES—ONTONAGON MINING RELICS—SITES OF COPPER MANUFACTORIES—NATIVE COPPER AND SILVER—BROCKVILLE COPPER IMPLEMENTS—LOST METALLURGIC ARTS—CHEMICAL ANALYSES—NATIVE TERRA-COTTAS—ANCIENT BRITISH MINING-TOOLS—THE RACE OF THE COPPER MINES—CHIPPEWA SUPERSTITIONS—EARLIEST NOTICES OF THE COPPER REGION—ONTONAGON MASS OF COPPER—ANCIENT NATIVE TRAFFIC—NATIVE USE OF METALS—CONDITION OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS—MINERAL RESOURCES—ANTIQUITY OF COPPER WORKINGS—DESERTION OF THE MINES.

The same rational instinct which prompted man in his first efforts at tool-making, guided him in a discriminating choice of materials; and to this the discovery of metals, and the consequent first steps in metallurgy and the arts, may be traced. The Bronze Age of Europe derives its name from the predominance of relics illustrative of a period which, though old compared with that of definite history, belongs to a comparatively late era, characterised by many traces of artistic skill, and of mastery in the difficult processes of smelting ores and alloying metals. But the dawn of the metallurgic era in the New World is marked by phases which derive their distinctive character from two widely separated regions; and of which one supplies an important link in the history of human progress, at best but partially indicated in the disclosures of European archæology.

To untutored man, provided only with implements of stone, the facilities presented by the great copper regions of Lake Superior for the first step in the knowledge of metallurgy were peculiarly available. The forests that flung their shadows along the shores of that great lake were the haunts of the deer, the beaver, the bear, and other favourite objects of the chase; the rivers and the lake abounded with fish; and the rude hunter had to manufacture weapons and implements out of such materials as nature placed within his reach. The water-worn stone from the beach, patiently ground to an edge, made his axe and tomahawk: by means of which, with the help of fire, he could level the giants of the forest, or detach from them the materials for his canoe and paddle, his lance, club, or bow and arrows. The bones of the deer pointed his spear, or were wrought into his fish-hooks; and the shale or flint was chipped and ground into his arrow-head, after a pattern repeated with little variation, in all countries, and in every primitive age. But besides such materials of universal occurrence, the primeval occupant of the shores of Lake Superior found there a stone possessed of some very peculiar virtues. It could not only be wrought to an edge without liability to fracture; but it was malleable, and could be hammered out into many new and convenient shapes. This was the copper, found in connection with the trappean rocks of that region, in inexhaustible quantities, in a pure metallic state. In other rich mineral regions, as in those of Cornwall and Devon, the principal source of this metal is from ores, which require both labour and skill to fit them for economic purposes. But in the veins of the copper region of Lake Superior the native metal occurs in enormous masses, weighing hundreds of tons; and loose blocks of various sizes have been found on the lake shore, or lying detached on the surface, in sufficient quantities to supply all the wants of the nomad hunter. These, accordingly, he wrought into chisels and axes, armlets, and personal ornaments of various kinds, without the use of the crucible; and, indeed, without recognising any precise distinction between the copper which he mechanically separated from the mass, and the unmalleable stone or flint out of which he had been accustomed to fashion his spear and arrow-heads. This is confirmed by philological evidence. The root of the names for iron and copper in the Chippewa is the same abstract term, wahbik, used only in compound words. Thus pewahbik, iron; ozahwahbik, copper: lit. the yellow stone; metahbik, on the bare rock; oogedahbik, on the top of a rock; kishkahbikah, it is a precipice; etc.

The earliest references to Britain pertain exclusively to the peninsula of Cornwall and the neighbouring islands, whither the fleets of the Mediterranean were attracted in ages of vague antiquity, and the traders from Gaul resorted in quest of its metallic wealth. The mineral regions of the New World disclose some corresponding records of its long-forgotten past; and some idea of their present condition is indispensable for preparing the mind to appreciate the changes wrought by time on localities which are now being rescued once more from the wilderness. The vast inland sea, which constitutes the reservoir of the chain of lakes whose waters sweep over the Falls of Niagara, and find their way by the St. Lawrence to the ocean, has been as yet so partially encroached upon by the pioneers of modern civilisation, that the general aspect of its shores differs but little from that which they presented to the eye of its first European explorers in the seventeenth century: or indeed to its Indian voyagers before the Spaniard first coasted the island shores of the Bahamas, and opened for Europe the gates of the West. With its wide extent of waters, covering an area of thirty-two thousand square miles, a lengthened period of sojourn in the regions with which it is surrounded, and many facilities for their exploration, would be required, in order to satisfy the curiosity of the scientific inquirer. But even a brief visit discloses much that is interesting, and that serves at once to illustrate, and to contrast with what comes under the observer’s notice elsewhere.

In tracing out the evidence of ancient occupation of the shores of Lake Superior, I have, on repeated visits, coasted its shores for hundreds of miles in canoes; and camped for weeks in some of its least accessible wilds. The force of the evidence is slowly appreciated, even by careful personal observation; but some description of the ancient copper region may help the reader to estimate the lapse of time since its forest-glades and rocky promontories were enlivened by the presence of industrious miners. The memorials of Time’s unceasing operations reach indeed to periods long prior to the earliest presence of man, and present certain lake phenomena, on a scale only conceivable by those who have sailed on the bosom of these fresh-water seas with as boundless a horizon as in mid-Atlantic; and who have experienced the violence of the sudden storms to which they are liable. But while the same broad ocean-like expanse, and the violence of their stormy moods, characterise Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Michigan: it is only on Lake Superior that the traveller witnesses the grandeur and wild ruggedness of scenery commensurate with his preconceived ideas of such inland seas. Along its northern and western shores bold cliffs and rocky headlands frown in savage grandeur, from amid the unbroken wastes of forest that reach to the frozen regions around the Hudson Bay, while the gentler coast-lines of its southern shores are varied by some of the most singular conformations, wrought out of its rocky walls by the action of the waves. Among such rock-formations, no features are so remarkable as those presented by a portion of the extensive range of sandstone cliffs, which project in jagged and picturesque masses from the southern shore, soon after passing the Grand Sable; and to which fresh interest has been given by the interweaving of the Algonquin legends of the locality into Longfellow’s Indian Song of Hiawatha.

The Pictured Rocks are situated between the copper regions and the ancient portage, which has been recently superseded by a canal opening navigation for the largest vessels from Lake Huron to Lake Superior. They lie in the centre of the long indentation, which, sweeping from Keweenaw Peninsula eastward to White Fish Point, forms the coast most distant from the northern shores of the lake. Here the cliffs have been exposed through unnumbered ages to the waves under the action of northerly winds; while a contemporaneous upheaval, prolonged probably through vast periods of time, has contributed no unimportant share in the operations by which their striking forms have been produced. Beyond those the voyager comes once more on rocky cliffs in the vicinity of Marquette: so named after the Jesuit missionary by whom the upper waters of the Mississippi were first reached two centuries ago, in 1673. Important changes have been wrought in the interval. Mineral treasures, undreamt of by the ancient miners, are now rewarding the industry of the Indians’ supplanters. The iron period, with its fully developed civilisation, is invading those forest tracks; and when I first visited Marquette in 1855, on the bold trappean rocks which form the landing, abraded and scratched with the glacial action of a long superseded era, were piled the rich products of the “Jackson Iron Mountain,” which rears its bold outline at a distance of twelve miles from the shore. Immediately to the north of this point the promontory of Presque Isle presents in some respects a striking contrast to the Pictured Rocks; though, like them, also indented and hollowed out into detached masses, and pierced with the wave-worn caverns of older levels of shore and lake. Here the water-worn sandstone and the igneous rocks overlie or intermingle with each other in picturesque confusion: the symbol, as it were, of the transition between the copper and iron eras. For it is just at Presque Isle that the crystalline schists, with their intermingling masses of trappean and quartz rocks, richly impregnated with the specular and magnetic oxide of iron, pass into the granite and sandstone rocks, which intervene between the ferriferous formations and the copper-bearing traps of Keweenaw Point. Beyond this, the rich copper-bearing region of the Keweenaw Peninsula stretches far into the lake, traversed in a south-westerly direction by magnificent cliffs of trappean rocks, presenting their perpendicular sides to the south-east, and covered even amid the rocky débris with ancient forest-trees. In this igneous rock are found the copper veins, which in recent years have conferred such great commercial value on the district of Michigan; and there I not only witnessed extensive mining operations in progress, but have investigated evidences of the ancient miners’ labours which prove the prolonged practice there, at some remote period, of native metallurgic arts.

On landing at Eagle river, one of the points for shipping the copper ores, on the west side of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the track lies through dense forest, over a road in some parts of rough corduroy, and in others traversing the irregular exposed surface of the copper-bearing trap. After a time it winds through a gorge, covered with immense masses of trap and crumbling débris, amid which pine, and the black oak and other hard wood, have contrived to find a sufficient soil for taking root and attaining their full proportions; and beyond the cliffs, in a level bottom on the other side of the trap ridge, is the Cliff Mine settlement, one of the most important of all the mining works in operation in this region. Here I descended a perpendicular shaft by means of ladders, to a depth of sixty fathoms, and explored various of the levels: passing in some cases literally through tunnels made in the solid copper. The very abundance of the metal proves indeed, at times, an impediment to its profitable working, owing to the labour necessarily expended in chiselling out masses from the solid lump, to admit of their being taken to the surface, and transported through such tracts as have been described, to the Lake shore. The floor of the level was strewed with copper shavings: for the extreme ductility of the native copper precludes the application of other force than manual labour for separating it from the parent mass. I saw also beautiful specimens of silver, in a matrix of crystalline quartz, obtained from this mine; and the copper of the district is stated to contain on an average about 3·10 per cent. of silver. This is indeed by far the richest mineral locality that has yet been wrought. In a single year upwards of sixteen hundred tons of copper have been procured from the Cliff Mine, and one mass was estimated to weigh eighty tons. Its mineral wealth was known to the ancient miners; but the skill and appliances of the modern miner give him access to veins entirely beyond the reach of the primitive metallurgist, who knew of no harder material for his tools than the native rock and the ductile metal he was in search of.

At the Cliff Mine are preserved some curious specimens of ancient copper tools found in its vicinity, but it is to the westward of the Keweenaw Peninsula that the most extensive traces of the aboriginal miners’ operations are seen. The copper-bearing trap, after crossing the Keweenaw Lake, is traced onward in a south-westerly direction till it crosses the Ontonagon river about twelve miles from its mouth, at an elevation of upwards of three hundred feet above the lake. At this locality the edges of the copper veins crop out in various places, exposing the metal in irregular patches over a considerable extent of country, many of which have been partially wrought by the ancient miners. Here, in the neighbourhood of the Minnesota Mine, are extensive traces of trenches and other mining operations, which prove that they must have been carried on for a long period. These excavations are partially filled up, and so overgrown in the long interval between their first excavation and their observation by recent explorers, that they scarcely attract attention. Nevertheless some trenches have been found to measure from eighteen to thirty feet in depth; and one of them disclosed a detached mass of native copper, weighing upwards of six tons, resting on an artificial cradle of black oak, partially preserved by immersion in the water with which it had been filled. Various implements and tools of the same metal also lay in the deserted trench, where this huge mass had been separated from its matrix, and elevated on the oaken frame, preparatory to its removal entire. It appeared to have been raised about five feet, and then abandoned, abruptly as it would seem: since even the copper tools were found among the accumulated soil by which it had been anew covered up. The solid mass measured ten feet long, three feet wide, and nearly two feet thick; every projecting piece had been removed, so that the exposed surface was left perfectly smooth, possibly by other and ruder workers of a date subsequent to the desertion of the mining trench by its original explorers.