Wildly glaring at each other.
In their faces stern defiance,
In their hearts the feuds of ages,
The hereditary hatred,
The ancestral thirst of vengeance.
So far the picture is true to nature; but no dream of a millennial era for the Red Man, in which all were thenceforth to live together as brothers, can have fashioned itself in the mind of Indian seer. The Sioux, the Crees, and the Blackfeet, still continued to nurse the same feud of ages, and thirsted for each other’s blood, while European emigrants crowd in to take possession of their vast prairies, destined to become the granaries of the world. The buffalo, on which they mainly depended for their food, and their téepees or tents, have vanished from their prairies, and will ere long be as extinct as the fossil urus or mastodon. The Red Man of the North-West exhibits no change from his precursors of the fifteenth century; and for aught that appears in him of a capacity for self-development, the forests and prairies of the American continent may have sheltered hunting and warring tribes of Indians, just as they have sheltered and pastured its wild herds of buffaloes, for countless centuries since the continent rose from its ocean bed.
Only by prolonged hereditary feuds, more insatiable, and therefore more destructive in their results than the ravages of tigers or wolves, is it possible to account for such an unprogressive condition of humanity as the archæological disclosures of the northern continent seem to reveal? Its numerous rivers and lakes, and its boundless forests and prairies, afforded inexhaustible resources for the hunter, and both soil and climate have proved admirably adapted for agriculture. Still more, the great copper region of Lake Superior provided advantages such as have existed in few other countries of the known world for developing the first stages of metallurgic art on which civilisation so largely depends. Whether brought with them from Asia, or discovered for themselves, the grand secret of the mastery of the ores by fire was already familiar to Peruvian metallurgists, and not unknown to those of Mexico. Unalloyed copper, such as that which abounds in the igneous rocks of the Keweenaw peninsula on Lake Superior, is extremely difficult to cast; and the addition of a small percentage of tin not only produces the useful bronze alloy, but renders the copper more readily fusible. This all-important secret of science the metallurgists of Peru had discovered for themselves, and turned largely to practical account. The pictured chronicles of the Mexicans throw an interesting light on the value they attached to the products of this novel art. It appears from some of their paintings that the tribute due by certain provinces was paid in wedges of copper. The forms of these, as well as of chisels and other tools of bronze, are simple, and indicate no great ingenuity in adapting the moulded metal to the artificer’s or the combatant’s requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade appear to have been of nearly the same rude description as are in use by modern savages in fitting the handle to a hatchet of flint or stone; and the whole characteristics of their implements suggest the probability that their metallurgy was a recently acquired art, derived from the civilised races on whom they had intruded as conquerors.
Such knowledge, partial as it was, must have been derived from the south. Everywhere to the north of the Mexican Gulf we look in vain for anything more than the mere hammered native copper, untouched by fire. Dr. J. W. Foster does indeed quote Mr. Perkins, who himself possesses sixty copper implements, including knives, spear heads, chisels, and objects of anomalous form, as having arrived at the conclusion “that, by reason of certain markings, it was evident that the Mound-Builders possessed the art of smelting copper,”[[69]] but the illustrations produced in proof of it scarcely bear out the opinion. The same idea has been repeatedly advanced; but the contents of the Mounds amply prove that if such a knowledge had dawned on their builders it was turned to no practical account. Mr. Charles Rau, in his Ancient Aboriginal Trade in North America, says: “Although the fire on the hearths or altars now enclosed by the sacrificial mounds was sometimes sufficiently strong to melt the deposited copper articles, it does not seem that this proceeding induced the ancient inhabitants to avail themselves of fire in working copper; they persisted in the tedious practice of hammering. Yet one copper axe, evidently cast, and resembling those taken from the mounds of Ohio, has been ploughed up near Auburn, in Cayuga, in the State of New York. This specimen, which bears no trace of use, may date from the earlier times of European colonisation. It certainly would be wrong to place much stress on such an isolated case.”[[70]] The well-known volume of Messrs. Squier and Davis furnishes illustrations of copper and other metallic relics from the mounds of Ohio.[[71]] Mr. J. T. Short engraves a variety of similar relics from Wisconsin, where they appear to have been found in unusual abundance.[[72]] In the Annual Report of the Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1878 the copper implements in their collection are stated to number one hundred and ninety implements, classified as spear or dirk heads, knives, chisels, axes, augurs, gads, and drills, in addition to beads, tubes, and other personal ornaments made out of thin sheets of hammered copper. Dr. J. W. Foster has furnished illustrations of the various types from the valuable collection of Mr. Perkins.[[73]] Colonel Charles C. Jones engraves a specimen of the rarely known copper implements of Georgia;[[74]] and Dr. Abbott shows the prevailing forms of the same class of relics found along the whole northern Atlantic seaboard.[[75]] All tell the same tale of rudest manipulation by a people ignorant of the working of metals with the use of fire.
And yet the native copper was ready to hand in a form and in quantity unknown elsewhere. No such supplies of the pure metal invited the industry of the first Asiatic or European metallurgists. The Cassiterides yielded in abundance the ores of copper and tin, but these had to be smelted and worked with all the accumulated results of tentative skill before they yielded the copper or more useful bronze. By whom or where this first knowledge was mastered is unknown: the tendency is still to look to Asia, perhaps to Phœnicia, or to the still undetermined cradle of the Aryans, wherever that may prove to have been, for the birth of this phase of metallurgic art which constituted so important a stage in early civilisation. Yet if the ancient American missed it, it was not for want of opportunity. Examples of the accidental fusion of copper by the sacrificial fires of the Mound-Builders repeatedly occur in the mounds of the Ohio valley. But no gifted native alchymist was prompt to read the lesson and turn it to practical account.
Asia and Europe appear to have passed by a natural transition, step by step, from their rudest stages of lithic art to polished stone, and then to implements of metal. Some of the steps were doubtless very slow. Worsaae believed that the use of bronze prevailed in Denmark “five or six hundred years before the birth of Christ.”[[76]] In Egypt it undoubtedly was known at a greatly earlier date. I still incline to my early formed opinion, that gold was the first metal worked. Found in nuggets, it could scarcely fail to attract attention. It was easy to fashion into shape; and some of the small, highly polished stone hammers seem fitter for this than any other work.[[77]] The abundant gold ornaments of the New World at the time of the discovery of Mexico and Peru accord with this idea. The like attraction of the bright native copper, is proved by its employment among the southern Indians for personal ornaments; and in this way the economic use of the metals may have been first suggested.