[1828] Cf. S. D. Peet in Amer. Antiquarian, vii. 15.
[1829] Rau is an authority on stone implements. See further his paper on stone implements in the Smithsonian Rept., 1872; one on drilling stone without metal in Ibid. 1868; and one on cup-shaped and other lapidarian sculpture in the Contributions to No. Amer. Ethnology, vol. v. (Powell’s Rocky Mountain Survey, 1882). These carved, cup-like cavities in rocks are also discussed in Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, vol. i. ch. 3, where it is held that they were formed by the grinding process in shaping the rounded end of tools. H. W. Henshaw in the Amer. Jour. of Archæology (i. 105) discusses another enigma in the stone relics, called sinkers or plummets. Foster (Prehist. Races, 230) believes they were used as weights to keep the thread taut in weaving.
[1830] Cf. also Stevens’s Flint Chips, 292, and Charnay, Eng. transl., p. 70.
[1831] Cf. G. Crook “on the Indian method of making arrow-heads” in the Smithsonian Rept., 1871, and C. C. Jones, Jr., on “the primitive manufacture of spear and arrowpoints along the Savannah River” in Ibid. 1879. A paper by Sellers in a later report is of importance. Cf. Stevens’ Flint Chips, pp. 75-85, and Schumacher in Smithsonian Report, 1873. True flint was not often, if ever, used in America, but rather chert or hornstone, and quartz, though implements are found of jasper, chalcedony, obsidian, quartzite, and argillite. Cf. Rau on the stock in trade of an aboriginal lapidary in Smithsonian Rept. (1877); and Rosny’s “Recherches sur les masques, le jade et l’industrie lapidaire chez les indigènes de l’Amérique” in Arch. de la Soc. Amér. de France, n. s., vol. i. Jade or jadite implements and ornaments have been found in Central America and Mexico, and others resembling them in northwestern America; but it is not yet clear that the unworked material, such as is used in the middle America specimens, is found in America in situ. Upon the solution of this last problem will depend the value of these implements when found in America as bearing upon questions of Asiatic intercourse. Cf. Dr. A. B. Meyer in the Amer. Anthropologist (vol. i., July, 1888, p. 231), and F. W. Putnam in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Jan., 1886, and in the Proc. Amer. Antiq. Society.
[1832] Wilson (Prehistoric Man, i. 200) points out that philology confirms it, the word for copper meaning “yellow stone.” On the question of their melting metal see letter of Prof. F. W. Putnam in Kansas City Rev. of Science, Dec. 1881; Wilson (i. 361); Foster’s Prehistoric Races, 293.
[1833] Wilson (i. 209, 227) thinks the arboreal and other evidences carry the time when these mines were worked back, at latest, to a period corresponding to Europe’s mediæval era. The earliest modern references to copper in this region are in Sagard in 1632 (Haven, p. 127) and in the Jesuit Relation of Allouez in 1666-67. Alexander Henry (Travels and Adventures in Canada) in 1765 is the earliest English explorer to mention it. Wilson holds to the belief that the present race of red Indians had no knowledge of these mining practices, but that they knew simply chance masses or exposed lodes. Wilson (i. 362) also gives reasons for supposing that the Lake Superior mines may have been a common meeting ground for all races of the continent.
[1834] Wilson, i. 205. MacLean’s Moundbuilders, ch. 6, gives a section of the shaft as when discovered.
[1835] Of the Lake Superior mines, the earliest intelligent account we have is in C. T. Jackson’s Geological Report to the U. S. Gov’t, 1849; but a more extended and connected account appeared the next year in the Report on the Geology of Lake Superior (Washington, 1850), by J. W. Foster and J. D. Whitney, which is substantially reproduced in Foster’s Prehistoric Races (1873), ch. 7. Meanwhile, Col. Charles Whittlesey had published in vol. xiii. of the Smithsonian Contributions his Ancient Mining on the shores of Lake Superior (Washington, 1863, with a map), which is on the whole the best account, to be supplemented by his paper in the Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. Jacob Houghton supplied a description of the “ancient copper mines of Lake Superior” to Swineford’s History and Review of the mineral resources of Lake Superior (Marquette, 1876). Cf. also Annals of Science (Cleveland), i. for 1852; Dawson’s Fossil Men, 61; Baldwin’s Ancient America, 42; Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, i. 204; Dr. Harvey Read in the Dist. Hist. Soc. Report, ii. (1878); Joseph Henry in the Smithsonian Reports (1861; also in 1862); and Short, p. 89, with references.
On the mines at Isle Royale, see Henry Gillman’s “Ancient works at Isle Royale” in Appleton’s Journal, Aug. 9, 1873; Smithsonian Repts., 1873, 1874, by A. C. Davis; the Proceedings of the Amer. Asso. for the Advancement of Science, 1875; and Professor Winchell in Popular Science Monthly, Sept., 1881.
See further, on the copper implements of these ancient workers: Abbott’s Primitive Industry, ch. 28; Foster’s Prehistoric Races, 251; P. R. Hoy’s How and by whom were the copper implements made? (Racine, 1886, in Wisconsin Acad. of Science, iv. 132); J. D. Butler’s address on “Prehistoric Wisconsin” in the Wisconsin Hist. Coll., vol. vii. (see also vol. viii.), with his “Copper Age in Wisconsin” in the Proc. of the Amer. Antiquarian Society, April, 1877, and his paper on copper tools in the Wisconsin Acad. of Science, iii. 99; H. W. Haynes on “Copper implements of America” in Proc. Amer. Antiq. Soc., Oct., 1884, p. 335; Putnam on the copper objects of North and South America preserved in the Peabody Museum (Reports, xv. 83); Read and Whittlesey in the Final Report, Ohio Board Cent. Managers, 1877, ch. 3; and Poole’s Index, p. 300. Reynolds has recently in the Journal of the Anthropol. Soc. (Washington) claimed copper mining for the modern Indians.