3. A third and less frequent type has the edges curving equally from the cutting edge to the head. Most examples are quite thin, broad and flat. The head is square and sometimes nearly as broad as the cutting edge. By reason of their broad, expanding cutting edges, some of these axes may be appropriately described as bell-shaped. Fine specimens of this type are to be seen in the Milwaukee Public Museum, and in other collections. These axes approach the modern axes in form. In the H. P. Hamilton collection is a notched copper axe which comes from the vicinity of Horicon. It is rather rude and is irregularly oval in outline. Mr. M. C. Long has in his Kansas City collection the only grooved copper axe known.
Fig. 587. (S. 1–1.) Copper spud, Island Lake, near Gagan, Oneida County, Wisconsin. Milwaukee Public Museum collection.
Copper axes were well adapted alike for peaceful and warlike pursuits. In the hands of the Wisconsin aborigines they were undoubtedly useful implements, superseding at best the clumsy stone axe or hatchet, and possibly being in their turn laid aside for the more serviceable iron axe of the fur-trader.
Employed in warfare or the chase they would be terrible weapons. As tools they were probably especially useful in the felling of trees, the shaping of log canoes, the erection of dwellings, barricades, and stockades.
They may have been employed in connection with or without fire. It has been suggested that some of the smaller implements may have served as wedges.
Chisels. (See Figs. 577, 579, 580.)
The aboriginal copper implements known as chisels are of nearly as frequent occurrence in local cabinets as the implements of the foregoing class. In the H. P. Hamilton collection there is to be seen an especially fine series of at least a dozen or more examples, ranging in size from five to fifteen inches and in weight from five ounces to five and three fourths pounds. An equally fine series is in the Field Museum.
The office of these fine implements probably included the excavating of wooden canoes, mortars, and other vessels. Their employment in connection with the mining operations of the Indians has been mentioned. Some specimens exhibit upon their heads the flattening which would result from their being used in conjunction with a wooden mallet, club, stone, or other weighty object. Others show no such marks and were probably employed without such agencies. Rev. W. M. Beauchamp states that a large proportion of the copper articles found in New York are of the celt (axe) or chisel form. Professor G. H. Perkins has described similar implements from New England. At least three distinct types of these implements are known to occur in Wisconsin:—
1. The first of these is broadest at the cutting edge. The edges taper gradually upward from the cutting edge to a pointed, rounded, or squared head. They are usually thickest at or below the middle, the flat or convex surface sloping toward the narrow extremity. Some of these have the upper surface convex and the lower surface flat. The broad or narrow sides may be either convex or flat. Fine implements of this form are to be seen in the H. P. Hamilton, State Historical Museum, and other local collections. A few approach fourteen inches in length. (See Fig. 579.)