Copper was not unknown to the native tribes on the Pacific coast, and rich supplies of the native metal appear to have been partially worked, by the tribes along the shores of Lake Superior from a remote date. The ancient mines have been disclosed, in the process of turning their resources to account by the enterprise of civilised settlers; and abundant evidence has been recovered to show that the native copper of the Keweenaw peninsula, Ontonagon, Isle Royale, and other points on Lake Superior, was worked extensively by its ancient miners, and undoubtedly formed a valuable object of traffic throughout the region watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, and along the whole eastern routes to the seaboard. But, with the imperfect resources of the native miners, it was a costly rarity, procurable only in small quantities by barter with the tribes settled on the shores of Lake Superior. Axe blades, spear heads, knives, gorgets, armlets, tubes and beads, all fashioned out of the native copper solely with the hammer, have been recovered from ancient grave mounds and ossuaries in the valleys of the St Lawrence, the Hudson, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and their tributaries; and to the west of the Rocky Mountains, copper implements again occur manufactured from metal derived from some native source on the Pacific slope. The copper was, no doubt, recognised as a malleable rock, differing from all others in its ductility, so that it could be fashioned, with the aid of a hammer-stone, to any desired form. By this means the ancient miners of Lake Superior provided themselves with the most suitable tools for their mining operations, and were probably the manufacturers of most of the widely diffused copper implements. But for general purposes, both of industry and war, American man had to be content with the more abundant chert, hornstone, and quartzite.
The source from whence the tribes on the Pacific obtained the coveted metal has not yet been ascertained; but it was obviously procured only in small quantities, insufficient to be turned to account for economic uses. Among a curious collection of objects illustrative of the arts of the Haida Indians, now in the Museum of the Geological Survey at Ottawa, is a large copper ring, or torque, which appears to have been handed down for successive generations, from chief to chief, as a prized heirloom; and, it may be assumed, as a symbol of official rank. The ring, or necklet, is composed of three twisted bars, or strands of hammered copper, each tapering at both ends, and is fashioned with remarkable skill, if due allowance be made for the imperfect tools of the native artificer. This unique relic seems to show the accumulated metallic wealth of the tribe fashioned into a symbol of official rank; not improbably with mysterious virtues ascribed to it, which passed with it to its official custodian. A block of native copper now in the National Museum at Washington is described by the Père Charlevoix as a sacred object of veneration by the Indians of Lake Superior, on which a young maiden had been offered in sacrifice.[29] But it is beyond question that throughout the region north of the Mexican Gulf the native manufacturer resorted mainly to the abundant hornstone, chert, quartzite, and the like materials of the Stone period. These were in universal demand, and must have been industriously collected in the localities where they abound, and disposed of by a regular system of exchange for furs, wampum, or other objects of barter. Mr W. H. Dall, in his report on _The Tribes of the Extreme North-West_, notes the absence in the Aleutian Islands of any stone, such as serpentine, fit for making the celts or adzes, recovered by him from the shell mounds. “They were,” he says, “probably imported from the continental Innuit at great cost, and very highly valued”; and on a subsequent page he adds: “The intertribal traffic I have referred to is universal among the Innuit.”[30]