Mr. Charles E. Brown, Dean of the Museum of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, has prepared for me this chapter on copper objects. Mr. Brown’s long association with the Milwaukee Public Museum, and his knowledge of copper collections throughout the United States, have made him an authority on this subject.
I have added a few concluding paragraphs to Mr. Brown’s able paper.
The Native Copper Implements of Wisconsin
The number of native copper articles already recovered from Wisconsin fields, village-sites, mounds, and graves is very large, possibly exceeding that already obtained from the balance of the United States. A careful estimate places the total number of such articles collected in the state up to the present time at not less than twenty thousand.
Although the collecting of these implements in Wisconsin has already continued for nearly forty years the supply has not yet become exhausted.
The opening to cultivation of new lands in the central and northern portions of the state, the increase in the number of collectors, and the more careful examination of old sites, cause each passing year to add its large number to the total already in collections.
In an address delivered in 1876 before the Wisconsin Historical Society, Professor James D. Butler made the statement that the Society was then the proud possessor of 109 native copper implements. The Smithsonian Institution then owned 30 specimens; the Wisconsin Natural History Society of Milwaukee, 14; Dr. Increase A. Lapham, 11; Milton College, 4; and Beloit College, 1. At the present day there are in the combined collections of the State Historical Museum, Logan Museum at Beloit, Milwaukee Public Museum, and of Mr. H. P. Hamilton and of Mr. S. D. Mitchell nearly four thousand specimens.
Fig. 568. (S. 1–4.) A group of copper nuggets and implements owned by S. D. Mitchell, Ripon, Wisconsin.
