Fig. 572. (S. 1–2.) Copper ornament and discs from the Hopewell Group,
Ohio.
It is equally certain that other accounts refer to the native metal or to objects fashioned therefrom.
Fig. 573. (S. 7–8.) Copper axe, Harness Mound, Ohio. Professor Mills states: “This axe was taken from a mound belonging to a group eight miles south of Chillicothe. Both sides of the object are greatly corroded and covered with a finely woven fabric. Beneath the fabric there seems to have been the skin of some short-haired animal. The axe was found near the left knee of an uncremated skeleton.”
Whether the working of the copper deposits or the fabrication of copper implements in this section of the country, thought to have been begun at least several centuries before, was discontinued before the coming of the white man, or whether the industry was continued or at least to some extent resumed by the descendants of the pre-Columbian miners and artificers during and after his intrusion, is still in dispute. It is doubtful whether this matter will ever be satisfactorily settled.
The accounts of the Jesuits, as given in the “Relations,” give the impression that while the Wisconsin Indians of that period were evidently familiar with the sources of the metal, they regarded it with superstition and employed it only in a reverential way. Radisson, however, found native copper ornaments in use among the Bœuf (or Buffalo) band of Dakota, in Minnesota in 1661–62. Alexander Henry, as a result of his visit to Lake Superior in a later day, stated that the Indians there obtained copper for the manufacture of implements and ornaments. In recent times, Indian agents testified to the use of copper implements among the Wisconsin Winnebago and Chippewa. Native copper implements have also occasionally been recovered from local mounds, where they were found in association with metal kettles, glass beads, and other articles of European manufacture.
Fig. 574. (S. about 1–1.) From a mound on the banks of Black Snake River, Utah. Milwaukee Public Museum collection.
The evidence of the mounds and of the earlier village-sites is to the effect that before the coming of white man the use of copper had become quite general among the Indian tribes of the upper Mississippi Valley.