Prehistoric man

by Sir Daniel Wilson

The great copper region of North America lies along the shores of Lake Superior, and on its larger islands between the 46th and 48th parallels of north latitude; and from thence its metallic treasures were diffused by primitive commercial exchanges, throughout the whole vast regions watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries: including also the Atlantic states, and the shores of the great lakes. But southward and westward of this area of diffusion, the Rio Grande and its tributaries, with the Rio Colorado, drain a country modified by very diverse conditions of climate, and having a totally distinct centre of metallurgic wealth and civilising influences. In this central region of the twin continents of America, as well as independently in tropical Peru, native civilisation had advanced a considerable way, before it was arrested and destroyed by the aggressions of foreign intruders. The peculiar advantages derivable from the proximity of the distinct metals had been discovered, and metallurgy had been developed into the practical arts of a true American Bronze Age.

When Columbus, during his fourth voyage, landed on one of the Guanaja islands, before making the adjoining mainland of Honduras, it was visited by a large trading canoe, the size and freight of which equally attracted his notice. It was eight feet wide, and in magnitude like a galley, though formed of the trunk of a single tree. In the centre a raised awning covered and enclosed a cabin, in which sat a cacique with his wives and children; and twenty-five rowers propelled it swiftly through the water. The barque is believed to have come from the province of Yucatan, then about forty leagues distant, through a sea the stormy violence of which had daunted the most hardy Spanish seamen. It was freighted with a great variety of articles of manufacture, and of the natural produce of the neighbouring continent; and among them Herrara specifies “small hatchets, made of copper, small bells and plates, crucibles to melt copper, etc.” Here, at length, was the true answer to that prophetic faith which upheld the great discoverer, when, peering through the darkness, the New World revealed itself to his eye in the glimmering torch, which told him of an unseen land inhabited by man. Here was evidence of the intelligent service of fire. Well indeed might it have been for Columbus had he been obedient to the voice that thus directed his way. All the accompaniments of the voyagers furnished evidence of civilisation. They were clothed with cotton mantles. Their bread was made of Indian corn, and from it also they had brewed a beverage resembling beer. They informed Columbus that they had just arrived from a country, rich, populous, and industrious, situated to the west; and urged him to steer in that direction. But his mind was bent on the discovery of the imaginary strait that was to lead him directly into the Indian seas, and it was left to Cortez to discover the singular seats of native civilisation of Mexico and Central America.

When at length the mainland was reached, the abundance and extensive use of the metals became apparent; and as further discoveries brought to the knowledge of the Spaniards the opulent and civilised countries of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru, they were more and more astonished by the native metallic wealth. When the Spaniards first entered the province of Tuspan, they mistook the bright copper or bronze axes of the natives for gold, and were greatly mortified after having accumulated them in considerable numbers to discover the mistake they had made. Bernal Diaz narrates that “each Indian had, besides his ornaments of gold, a copper axe, which was very highly polished, with the handle curiously carved, as if to serve equally for an ornament, as for the field of battle. We first thought these axes were made of an inferior kind of gold; we therefore commenced taking them in exchange, and in the space of two days had collected more than six hundred; with which we were no less rejoiced, as long as we were ignorant of their real value, than the Indians with our glass beads.”

Ancient Mexican paintings show that the tribute due by certain provinces of the Mexican empire was paid in wedges of copper; and Dupaix describes and figures examples of a deposit of two hundred and seventy-six axe-heads, cast of alloyed copper, such as, he observes, “are much sought by the silversmiths on account of their fine alloy.” The forms of these, as well as of the chisels and other tools of bronze, are simple, and indicate no great ingenuity in adapting the moulded metal to the more perfect accomplishment of the artificer’s or the combatant’s requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade, as illustrated by Mexican paintings, are nearly all of the same rude description as are employed by the modern savage in fitting a handle to his hatchet of flint or stone; and, indeed, the whole characteristics of the metallurgic and artistic ingenuity of Mexico and Peru are suggestive of immature development; though, from the nature of Peruvian institutions, the civilisation of the latter, like that of China, may have long existed, with slight and intermittent manifestations of progress. It was indeed, in many respects, the transitional Bronze Period of the New World, in which not only the arts of an elder stone-period had been very partially modified by metallurgic influences, but in which the sword, or mahguahuitl, made of wood, with blades of obsidian inserted along its edge, the flint or obsidian arrow-head, the stone hatchet, and other weapons, were still in common use, along with those of metal.

Yet such traces of primitive arts are accompanied with remarkable evidence of progress in some directions. Humboldt remarks, in his Vues des Cordillères, on the surprising dexterity shown by the Peruvians in cutting the hardest stones; and, after reference to the observations of other travellers, he adds:—“I conjectured that the Peruvians had tools of copper, which, mixed with a certain proportion of tin, acquires great hardness. This conjecture has been justified by the discovery of an ancient Peruvian chisel, found at Vilcabamba, near Cuzco, in a silver mine worked in the time of the Incas. This valuable instrument, for which I am indebted to the friendship of the Padre Narcisse Gilbar, is four and seven-tenth inches long, and four-fifths of an inch broad. The metal of which it is composed has been analysed by M. Vauquelin, who found in it 0·94 of copper, and 0·06 of tin.” Unfortunately, the composition of Mexican and Peruvian bronzes has hitherto attracted so little attention, that it is impossible to obtain many accurate records of analyses, or to procure specimens to submit to chemical tests. Dr. J. H. Gibbon, of the United States Mint, favoured me with the analysis of another chisel or crowbar, brought from the neighbourhood of Cuzco by his son, Lieutenant Lardner Gibbon, who formed one of the members of the Amazon Expedition. Through the kind services of Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of the American Ethnological Society, I also obtained, in addition to results determined by himself, eight specimens of such Peruvian implements, though only a portion of them proved to be of metallic alloys. They were submitted to careful analysis by my colleague, Professor Henry Croft, and the results in reference to the bronzes are given on a subsequent page. Mr. Squier, in the Appendix to his Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York, engraves an implement found with various Peruvian knives and chisels, about the person of a mummy, taken by Mr. J. H. Blake, of Boston, from an ancient cemetery near Arica. On analysis, it proved to contain about four per cent. of tin. More recently I inspected a valuable collection of antiquities brought by Mr. Blake from Peru, including a variety of bronze implements; and he has favoured me with the following results:—“Many years ago, I made a series of analyses of bronze instruments, knives, chisels, hoes, etc., which I found in ancient cemeteries in Peru in connection with embalmed bodies. I have not been able to find my notes made at the time; but I know that they consisted of copper and tin only, and that the proportion of the latter varied from upwards of two to four per cent. After receiving your last letter, I made an analysis of a small knife found by me, with many other articles, with the body of a man, in the ancient cemetery near Arica, in South Peru. The handle is of the same metal as the blade, and at right angles with it, being joined at the middle. The end is fashioned to represent the head of a llama. On analysis, the composition proves to be: Copper, 97·87; tin, 2·13.” Dr. C. T. Jackson communicated another analysis of a “Chilian bronze instrument, probably a crowbar,” to the Boston Natural History Society. It contained 7·615 parts of tin, and is described by him as a bronze, well adapted for such instruments as were to be hammer-hardened.[^[81]] The general results indicate a variable range of the tin alloy, from 2·130 to 7·615 per cent.; which, in so far as any general inference can be drawn from so small a number of examples, shows a more indeterminate and partially developed metallurgy than the analyses of primitive European bronzes disclose.

Such is all the evidence I have been able to obtain relative to the composition of Peruvian alloys, and the progress indicated thereby in scientific metallurgy. It accords with other evidence of their mining operations. During a recent visit to Peru Mr. James Douglas obtained for me a set of primitive stone mining implements recovered from an ancient shaft, exposed in working the Brillador mine, in the Province of Coquimbo, Chili. They consist of a maul of granite, eight inches long, with a groove wrought round the centre and over the thicker end; one of diorite, also with a groove about one-third from the thicker end; a conical hammer of granite; and another implement made of diorite, apparently designed for pounding the copper ore. It has indentations worked in the sides for the fingers and thumb; and when found was covered at one end with green oxide of copper, as if from use in pounding the ore. Near the mine are ancient graves indicated by circles of stones; within which the skeletons are disposed in a sitting posture, accompanied by conical bones and rude pottery. Such mining implements were, no doubt, supplemented with others of metal; but so far as they illustrate the progress of the ancient miners of Chili, the evidence fully accords with the ideas otherwise formed of the Peruvians as a people who had discovered for themselves the rudiments of civilisation, but who had as yet very partially attained to any mastery of the arts which have been matured in modern centuries for Europe. This agrees with the description furnished by Dr. Tschudi of some of the metallurgic processes still practised in Peru. “The Cordillera, in the neighbourhood of Yauli,” he remarks, “is exceedingly rich in lead ore containing silver. Within the circuit of a few miles above eight hundred shafts have been made, but they have not been found sufficiently productive to encourage extensive mining works. The difficulties which impede mine-working in these parts are caused chiefly by the dearness of labour and the scarcity of fuel. There being a total want of wood, the only fuel that can be obtained consists of the dried dung of sheep, llamas, and huanacos. This fuel is called taquia. It produces a very brisk and intense flame, and most of the mine-owners prefer it to coal. The process of smelting, as practised by the Indians, though extremely rude and imperfect, is adapted to local circumstances. All European attempts to improve the system of smelting in these districts have either totally failed, or in their results have proved less effective than the simple Indian method. The Indian furnaces can, moreover, be easily erected in the vicinity of the mines, and when the metal is not very abundant the furnaces may be abandoned without any great sacrifice. For the price of one European furnace the Indians may build more than a dozen, in each of which, notwithstanding the paucity of fuel, a considerably greater quantity of metal may be smelted than in one of European construction.” At the village of Yauli, near the mines referred to, situated at an elevation of 13,100 feet above the sea, from twelve to fourteen thousand Indians are congregated together, chiefly engaged in mining, after the fashion handed down to them from generations before the Conquest. Their processes correspond with the imperfect results disclosed by the analysis of native alloys; as well as by other proofs that the Peruvians were also accustomed to work the native copper into tools and personal ornaments for common use, very much in the same fashion as the ancient metallurgists of the Ohio valley.

The contrast which the civilisation alike of Mexico and Peru presents, when compared with the highest arts pertaining to any of the tribes of North America, is well calculated to excite admiration. But the wonder of the Spanish conquerors at their gems and gold, the ready credulity of the missionary priests in their anxiety to magnify the gorgeous paganism which they had overthrown, and the patriotic exaggeration of later chroniclers of native descent, have all tended to overdraw the picture of the beneficent despotism of the Incas of Peru; or the crueller but not less magnificent rule of the Caciques of Mexico. With a willing credulity Spanish historians perpetuated what the Peruvian Garcilasso and the Mexican Ixtlilxochitl related, in their adaptations of native history and traditions to European conceptions. Religious, political, and social analogies to European ideas and institutions, accordingly, strike the modern student with wonder and admiration; nor has the gifted author of the Conquests of Mexico and Peru always sufficiently discriminated between the glowing romances begot by an alliance between the barbarous magnificence of a rude native despotism and the associated ideas of European institutions. The metallic treasures of the Incas of Peru are probably not exaggerated; and if so, the precious metals with which their palaces and temples were adorned would have been the index, in any European capital, of a wealth sufficient to employ the merchant-navies of Venice, Holland, or England in the commerce of the world. But in Peru this was the mere evidence of the abundance of the precious metals in a country where they were as little the representatives of a commercial currency as the feathers of the coraquenque, which were reserved exclusively for the decoration of royalty.

The Peruvians occupied a long extent of sea-coast, but no commercial enterprise tempted them to launch their navies on the Pacific, excepting for the most partial coasting transit. The great mass of the people patiently wrought to produce from their varied tropical climates and fertile soil the agricultural produce on which the entire community depended; resembling in this, as well as in the vast structures wrought by a patiently submissive people at the will of their absolute rulers, the great oriental despotisms when in their earliest and least licentious forms. Their own traditions traced the dawn of their government no further back than the twelfth century; and the characteristics of their imperfect and unequally developed civilisation confirm the inference that they have not in this respect departed from the invariable tendency of historic myth and tradition to exaggerate the national age. Extensive ruins still existing on the shores of Lake Titicaca are affirmed by the Peruvians to have existed before the Incas arrived. But slight importance can be attached to the traditions of an unlettered people concerning events of any kind dating four or five centuries back. The authority of Bede is of little value relative to Jute or Anglo-Saxon colonisation less than three centuries before his time; and the modern New Englander, with deeds and parchments, as well as abundance of printed history to help his tradition, cannot make up his mind as to whether the famous Newport Round Tower was built by a Norse viking of the eleventh, or a New England miller of the seventeenth century. “No account,” says Prescott, “assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes before the Conquest. But this number is altogether too small to have spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations of the monarchy, on any probable computation, beyond two centuries and a half—an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico.” Humboldt, in his Vues des Cordillères, indicates the borders of Lake Titicaca, the district of Callao, and the high plains of Tiahuanaco, as the theatre of ancient American civilisation; and Prescott, in view of the apparently recent origin of the Incas, assumes that they were preceded in Peru by another civilised race, which, in conformity with native traditions, he would derive from this same cradle-land of South American arts. Beyond this, however, he does not attempt to penetrate into that unchronicled past. Who this people were, and whence they came, may afford a tempting theme for inquiry to the speculative ethnologist; but it is a land of darkness lying beyond the domain of history. The same mists that hang round the origin of the Incas continue to settle on their subsequent annals; and so imperfect were the records employed by the Peruvians, and so confused and contradictory their traditions, that the historian finds no firm footing on which to stand till within a century of the Spanish conquest.

In reality only a very small portion of what is called Peruvian history prior to that conquest can be regarded as anything but a historical romance; and the exaggerated conceptions relative to the completeness and consistent development alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation, are based on the old axiom which has so often misled the archæologist, ex pede Herculem.

Viewed, however, without exaggeration, the progress in mechanical skill and artistic ingenuity attained by both of the semi-civilised American nations, is very remarkable; and seems to find its nearest analogy among the modern Chinese and Japanese. Small mirrors of polished bronze now in use in Japan exactly reproduce some of those found in the royal tombs of Peru. These tombs of the Incas, and also their royal and other depositories of treasure, have disclosed many specimens of curious and elaborate metallurgic skill: bracelets, collars, and other personal ornaments of gold, vases of the same abundant precious metal, and also of silver; mirrors of burnished silver and bronze, as well as of obsidian; polished masks, rings, and cups of the same intractable material; finely adjusted balances made in silver; bells both of silver and bronze; and numerous commoner articles of copper, or of the more useful alloy of copper and tin, of which their tools were chiefly made.