Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1882-05-10
Prehistoric Mining in Michigan.

The Lake Superior mines have the ad-
vantage of producing metal free from any
alloy of antimony or nickel or arsenic.
In many of the mines great masses of
the native metal are found so large that
they must be cut in place with chisels.
All the more important mines are stu
ated on the ancient workings Of prehis-
toric race. They seem to have been igno-
rant of the fact that copper could be
molted, for they left behind them the
fragments too small to use and the masses
too heavy to lift. Every day they sub
jected it to q temperature nearly high
enough without making discovery which
would have lifted them out of the Stone
Age into the Bronze Age, and perhaps
have enabled them to survive tho struggle
in which they persisted. They must have
been very numerous, and have reached the
point of development where they were
capable of organizing industry.
In Isle Royal, near the Mlnong mine,
their pits, excavatcd to a dopth Of from
ten TO twenty feet in the solid rock, cover
cd an area Of from three hundred to four
hundred feet wide and more than q mile
and a half in length. The labor expended
here cannot have been much short of that
involved in building pyramid.
Isle Royal is ten miles from 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 evidently
placed at the end Of the season. As no
graves or evidences of habitations are
found, we can hardly doubt that the miners
lived south of the great lakes and made
yearly journeyings with fleets of canoes
to the copper mines. The aggregate
amount of the metal which they carried
of must have been very great, and it has,
believe, been generally thought that the
copper implements of the ancient Mexi-
cans came from this source. NJ. Charnav
in recent number of the North Amcri-
can seems TO think that the MeNicans
reduced copper from its ores. A chemical
analysis of their hatchets would solve the
question, for Lake Superior copper is SO
free from alloys as to be unmistakable.
The superintendent OF the old Caledonia
mino in Ontonagon county kindly took me
TO the top of a cliff where three Cornish
"tributers'-miners working not for wages
but for share of the product-had cleared
out one of the ancient pits in the outcrop
of the vein. They had brought out
quantity of copper, andhad Just uncovered
Il 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 the mound builders
themselves, had come around the world
departed Asiatic race who reached here
from the west at time to which no date
can he assigned. Not far away another
party had cut down dead cedar to make
props for their tunnel. AS they were
putting the log in position, from its center
dropped n small but perfectly formed stone
hammer which had never been used, 1t
was made from stone found, believe.
only on the north side Of the lake. This
tree was not far from two hundred and
fifty years old; but as cedar is almost in
dCstructible in this climate, it may have
been dead several hundred years. The AK
man said that he had found several ham
mers in the center. of cedars. 1t would
seem barely possible that this hammer had
been placed in cleft of the tree, when it
it was n saplng, that the wood might
grow around the groove and serve as a
handle. At all events, this one, which !
have, was certainly placed where it was
about thirty inches from the ground-by
human hands, undoubtedly by the ancient
miner himself, when the tree was twig.
r. JolnSon, J,, in Ha1pcr's Magazine