A history of the upper peninsula of Michigan ...

104

UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN

was beginning to cut its way through the forests of the Upper
Peninsula. Even before a white man had penetrated the wilderness of the Lake Superior region, the Indians knew of the presence of copper and had told the great Champlain of its existence
in this part of the country. To find the mines of this metal became the object of several voyages into the interior under orders
from Champlain. Brule, although it is not known definitely that
he penetrated farther than the Soo, ascertained that copper undoubtedly existed in the country to the south of Lake Superior,
and his reports to Champlain confirmed the stories of the Indians,
reports which he substantiated by displaying samples of the ore
which he had acquired from Indians at Sault Ste. Marie. But at
that early date, the French were too preoccupied with their search
for a passage to the Indies to concern themselves at length with
the evident wealth of minerals found at hand, and with the passing of the energetic Champlain, further explorations with such
a goal ceased, leaving the rich deposits of the Copper country to
be uncovered by Americans two hundred years later.
To the Indians found by the white men, the copper of the
Upper Peninsula apparently represented nothing of a salable commodity. Archaeologists have found traces of an extensive trade
between the early Lake Superior inhabitants and the Aztecs and
Mayas of Mexico whereby the Mexican and Central American
tribes traded with the Northern Indians for the copper ore. That
such a trade was carried on is substantiated by the fact that the
Mexican tribes made a wide use of copper and by the fact that
traces of old mining operations were found in the copper country
when the Americans undertook to market the mineral, for the
Aztecs and Mayas had no copper within their own reach. When
the Chippewas released to the United States in 1843 their control
of the Upper Peninsula country, they claimed that they had controlled the region for four hundred years, succeeding the Mascoutens, and that the latter tribe had been the only ones to conduct mining operations. Evidences of this early mining were
found throughout the copper country but were chiefly pronounced
at Isle Royale and in the vicinity of Ontonagon. Overland trails
traversed Wisconsin and Illinois to cross the Menominee river at
Wausaukee Bend, and it was probably over these routes and by
the rivers and lakes that the ore or copper utensils were transported for trade with the Indians of the Southwest.
The discovery of these ancient mining evidences has been attributed to Samuel O. Knapp, mine superintendent for the Minnesota Mining company in that year, 1847. Foster & Whitney,
engaged in early geological explorations in this territory, wrote
at some length in their book, "Prehistoric Races," on the discoveries of Knapp, part of which is as follows:
"The following spring, he explored some of the excavations
farther west. One artificial depression was twenty-six feet deep,
filled with clay and a matter mass of mouldering vegetable matter.
At a depth of eighteen feet he came to a mass of native copper,