COPPER, Discovery and Development. Copper in a metallic form occurs, either alone or in connection with chemical combinations of the same metal, in many parts of the earth, notably in Peru, Chile and neighboring coun tries, in Alaska, in parts of South Australia and more sparingly in Siberia, in Cornwall, in Ger many, in several of the United States and else where. In few localities has it been found in quantities as large, or under circumstances as favorable for large mining operations, as in the Lake Superior region. The attention of the early navigators to America, next to the finding of a northwest passage to Asia, was directed to the natural resources of the New World, and especially to its deposits of valuable minerals.
Of early references to copper in • North America that of Verrazzano in 1524 is among the first. He saw, on the coast of New Eng land, headstones of' that metal in the ears of the natives. In 1535 Jacques Cartier, on his second voyage to the Saint Lawrence River, was told by the Indians that native copper — cur/re rouge — by them called "caignetdaze," came from the Northwest, from the region known to them as Saguenay, and they gave to their chief, Donnacona, when he sailed for France with Cartier, a large knife of that metal.
In 1610, Champlain, on one of his excur sions up the Saint Lawrence, is said to have been given a piece of copper a foot to that was reported to have come from the bank of a river near a great lake. ((The Indians asserted that it was gathered in lumps, and, after having melted it, they spread it in sheets, smoothing it with stones.° On Champlain's map of 1632 we find in a lake northwest of Lake Huron an island marked "where there is a mine of copper.' This might have been either Michipicoten Island or Isle Royale.
Sagard, who published his 'History of Can in 1636, wrote that Brusle, one of Cham plain's interpreters, showed him a "lingot° of copper which had come from a mine 80 or 100 leagues from the Hurons.
In 1660 Pierre Esprit Radisson, probably the first white man to explore the shores of Lake Superior, was led by an Indian companion to a place near the banks of a small stream that flows into the lake east of the Pictured Rocks, where he saw 'many pieces of copper uncov ered,' and was told that a mountain near by was "nothing else.' As this spot is outside of
the area of the copper-bearing rocks the copper was either "float" or had been hidden there by the Indians. Radisson was also told that an island at the end of Keweenaw Point (Manitou Island?) was "all of copper.' In the Jesuit 'Relations) of 1659-60 it is said that an Indian reported copper from Lake Superior in pieces as large as one's fist. In the 'Relations) of 1666-68 Father Allouez reported pieces of true red copper from an island in Lake Superior, which, according to his description, was probably Isle Royale.
In the 'Relations) of 1669-71 Father Dablon reports red copper from the Ontonagon River, concerning which he says opinions differed as to where it was actually found; and also from the end of Keweenaw Point—the latter place being an islet "which appears to be six feet square, and is said to be all copper.° This sounds like the report made to Radisson, ex cept that no size was given to Radisson's islands, whose distance from the mainland cor responds with that of Manitou Island. The Jesuit Fathers were also assured by the Indians that in the intcrior to the south of Lake Su perior °mines° of copper were found in dif ferent places. This report might possibly have some significance in connection With the so called prehistoric miners, if the term mine bad been. used by the Jesuit Fathers with the mean ing usually attached to it 4o-day, as something in esse rather than in posse —a rock formation carrying a workable deposit of mineral, rather than an isolated mass, one that had been re moved to a distance from the parent bed. We know that the term was used loosely by later writers, even in the first half of the 19th cen tury. H. R. Schoolcraft in 1821, when referring to the celebrated copper mass on the Ontonagon River, speaks of it as a mine.