[Footnote 9: The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a marten, worth one shilling and sixpence. If you went to a canteen for a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.]
At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The natives smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets. It was so absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten into shape. In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds. He conjectured that this huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it. Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and others the shapes of animals.
In these journeys he collected some of the native traditions, amongst others that of the Great Hare, Naniboju, who was represented to him as the founder or creator of the Amerindian peoples. An island in Lake Superior was called Naniboju's burial place. Henry landed there, and "found on the projecting rocks a quantity of tobacco, rotting in the rain; together with kettles, broken guns, and a variety of other articles. His spirit is supposed to make this its constant residence; and here to preside over the lake, and over the Indians, in their navigation and fishing."
In the spring of the following year (1768), whilst the snow still lay many feet thick on the ground, he and his men made sugar from the maple trees on a mountain, and for nearly three weeks none of them ate anything but maple sugar, consuming a pound a day, desiring no other food, and waxing fat and strong on this diet. Then they returned to the banks of the Ontonagan River, where the wild fowl appeared in such abundance that one man, with a muzzle-loading gun, could kill in a day sufficient birds for the sustenance of fifty men. As soon as the ice and snow had melted, parties of Indians came in from their winter's hunt, bringing to Henry furs to pay him for all the goods he had advanced. In this way the whole of his outstanding credit was satisfied, with the exception of thirty skins, which represented the contribution due from one Indian who had died. In this case even, the man's family had sent all the skins they could gather together, and gradually acquitted themselves of the amount due, in order that the spirit of the dead man might rest in peace, which it could not do if his debts were not acquitted.