Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1882-05-03
PREHISTORIC DELIVERS.

Important Michigan Mines Located on Workings
of Prehistoric Race-1he Implements Found
on Isle Royal.
IF. johnson, Jr., in Harper's Magazine.l
The Lake Superior mines have the adj
antage of producing metal free from
ny alloy of antimony or nickel or
rsenic. In many of the mines great
masses of native metal are found so large
hat they must be cut in place with
:hisels. All the more important mines
re situated on the ancient workings Of
prehistoric race. They seem to have
oeen ignorant of the fact that copper
could be melted, for they left behind
hem the fragments too small to use and
The masses too heavy to lift. Every
lay they subjected it to a temperature
yearly high enough, without making a
2overy which would have lifted them
It of the stone age into the bronze
age, and perhaps have enabled them to
survive the struggle in which they per-
ished. They must have been very num-
erous, and have reached the point of de-
velopment where they were capable of
organizing industry.
III Isle Royale, near the Minong Mine,
their pits excavated to depth of from
10 to 20 feet in the solid rock, cover an
area of from three to four hundred feet
wide and more than a mile and half in
length. The labor expended here can
not have been much short of that in
volved IN building a pyramid. Isle
Royale is ten mllesfrom the nearest land
and is incapable of producing food, SO
that all supplies except fish must have
been brought from some distant point.
Their excavations could of course never
go below the point at which water would
accumulate. Their hammers. frequently
to the number of several thousand, are
found In heaps where they were evil
IDENTIFY placed at the end of the season.
As no graves or evidences of habitation
are found we can hardly doubt that the
ancient miners lived south of the great
lakes and made yearly iourneyings with
fleets of canoes to the copper mines
The aggregate amount of the meta
which they carried off must have been
-ery great, and it has, [ believe. been
eaerally thought that the copper nipple
ments of the ancient Mexicans came
from this source. NJ. Charnay, in re-
cent number of the North American
seems to think that the Mexicans re.
drced copper from its ores. A chemical
analysis of their hatchets would solve
the question, for Lake Superior copper
Is SO tree from alloys as to be unmis.
taxable.
The superintendent of the old Gale
donia mine in Ontonagon County kindly
took me to the top of cliff where three
Cornish " tributers miners working
not for wages but for share of the pro-
duct-had cleared out one of the ancient
pits In the outcrop of the vein. They
had brought out quantity of copper.
and had just uncovered a large mass
which would weigh certainly not less
than seven tons. Many battered stone
hammers lay around the mouth of the
pit. The active little Englishmen, be-
longing to a race of hereditary miners
perhaps as old as mound-buiIders them
selves, had come around the world from
the east to finish the work of the de-
parted Asiatic race who reached here
from the west at time to which no date
can be assigned. Not far away another
party had cut down dead cedar to make
rops for their tunnel. AS they were
putting the log IN position, from its
centre dropped a small but perfectly
formed stone hammer which had never
been used. 1t was made from a stone
found, L believe, only on the north shore
OF the lake. This tree was not FAR fr ON
two hundred and fifty years old; but as
cedar Is almost indestructible In this
climate, it may have been dead several
hundred years. The axeman said that
he had found several hammers in the
centre of cedars. It would seem barely
possible that this hammer had been
placed in cleft of the tree, when it was
sapling, tina the wood mig bit grow
around the groove and serve as a handle.
At all events, this one, which l have,
was certainly placed where it was-about
thirty inches from the ground-by hu-
man hands, undoubtedly by the ancient
miner himself, when the tree was twig.