Fig. 63.—Miners’ Shovels.
Fig. 63.—Miners’ Shovels.
Of the wooden implements, the most noticeable are the shovels, by means of which the soil was excavated. The accompanying woodcut represents two of them worn away to the one side, as in most of the examples found, as if used for scraping rather than digging the soil. Mr. Whittlesey gives a drawing of one which measured three and a half feet long, recovered among the loose materials thrown out from an extensive rock excavation in the side of a hill about four miles south-east of Eagle Harbour. Part of a wooden bowl used for baling water, and troughs of cedar-bark, were also found in the same débris, above which grew a birch about two feet in diameter, with its lower roots scarcely reaching through the ancient rubbish to the depth at which those relics lay. Mr. Foster describes another wooden bowl found at a depth of ten feet, in clearing out some ancient workings opened by the agent of the Forest Mine; and which, from the splintered pieces of rock and gravel imbedded in its rim, must have been employed in baling water. Similar implements have been met with in other workings, but they speedily perish on being exposed to the air. All of them appear to have been made of white cedar. The indestructible nature of this wood, when kept under water, or in a moist soil, is abundantly illustrated by the experience of settlers who, on attempting to clear and cultivate a cedar swamp, discover that the dead trunks, exhumed undecayed after centuries of immersion, rest above still older cedar-forests, seemingly unaffected by the influences which restore alike the oak and the pine to the vegetable mould of the forest soil.
Fig. 64.—Miners’ Stone Mauls.
Fig. 64.—Miners’ Stone Mauls.
The process of working the ancient mines seems to be tolerably clearly indicated by the discoveries referred to. The soil having been removed by means of wooden spades, doubtless with the aid of copper tools to break up the solid earth and clay: remains of charcoal, met with in numerous instances on the surface of the rock, show that fire was an important agent for overcoming the cohesion between the copper and its matrix. Before the introduction of gunpowder fire was universally employed in excavating rock; and where fuel abounds, as in the old Harz and Altenberg mining districts of Europe, it is even now found to be quite as economical in destroying siliceous rocks. Stone hammers or mauls were next employed to break up the metalliferous rock. These have been found in immense numbers on different mining sites. Mr. Knapp obtained in one locality upwards of ten cart-loads; and I was shown a well at Ontonagon constructed almost entirely out of stone hammers, obtained from ancient workings in the immediate vicinity. Many of these are mere water-worn boulders of greenstone or porphyry, roughly chipped at the centre, so as to admit of their being secured by a withe around them. But others are well-finished, with a single or double groove for attaching the handle by which they were wielded. They weigh from ten to forty pounds; but many are broken, and some of the specimens I saw were worn and fractured from frequent use.
The extent to which co-operation was carried on by the miners, with the imperfect means at their command, is illustrated by the objects recovered on exploring one of their trenches, on a hill to the south of the Copper Falls mines. On removing the accumulations from the excavation, stone axes of large size made of greenstone, and shaped to receive withe-handles, and some large round greenstone masses that had apparently been used for battering-rams, were found. “They had round holes bored in them to the depth of several inches, which seemed to have been designed for wooden plugs to which withe-handles might be attached, so that several men could swing them with sufficient force to break the rock and the projecting masses of copper. Some of them were broken, and some of the projecting ends of rock exhibited marks of having been battered in the manner here suggested.”[74]
But the industrious miners fully appreciated the practical utility of the metal they were in search of; and it is not to be supposed that they employed themselves thus laboriously in mining copper, and yet themselves used only stone and wooden tools. Copper axes, gads, chisels, and gouges, as well as knives and spear-heads, of considerable diversity of form, have been brought to light, all of them wrought from the virgin copper by means of the hammer, without smelting, alloy, or the use of fire. At Ontonagon, I had an opportunity of examining an interesting collection of mining relics, found a few months before. These consisted of copper tools, with solid triangular blades like bayonets, one fourteen inches, and the others about twelve inches in length; a chisel, and two singularly shaped copper gouges about fourteen inches long and two inches wide, the precise use of which it would be difficult to determine. The whole were discovered buried in a bed of clay on the banks of the river Ontonagon, about a mile above its mouth, during the process of levelling it for the purposes of a brick-field. Above the clay was an alluvial deposit of two feet of sand, and in this, and over the relics of the ancient copper workers, a pine-tree had grown to full maturity. Its gigantic roots gave proof, in the estimation of those who witnessed their removal, of more than two centuries’ growth; while the present ordinary level of the river is such that it would require a rise of forty feet to make the deposit of sand beneath which they lay.
Fig. 65.—Ontonagon Copper Implement.
Fig. 65.—Ontonagon Copper Implement.
An experienced practical miner, who had been among the first to reopen some of the ancient works at the Minnesota mine, recognised in the copper gouges implements adapted to produce the singular tool-marks which then excited his curiosity. Subjoined is a representation of a peculiar type of copper tools, sketched from one of those found at Ontonagon. The socket, formed by hammering out the lower part flat, and then turning it over partially at each side, corresponds to some primitive forms of bronze implements found in Britain and the north of Europe; but the latter are cast of a metallic compound, and prove a skill in metallurgy far in advance of the old metal-workers of Ontonagon.
Another, and in some respects more interesting discovery, was made at a point lying to the cast of Keweenaw Point, in the rich iron district of Marquette, in what appears to have been the ancient bed of the river Carp. About ten feet above the present level of its channel, various weapons and implements of copper were found. Large trees grew over this deposit also, and the evidences of antiquity seemed not less obvious than in that of Ontonagon. The relics included knives, spear or lance-heads, and arrow-heads, some of which were ornamented with silver. One of the knives, made, with its handle, out of a single piece of copper, measured altogether about seven inches long, of which the blade was nearly two-thirds, and of an oval shape. It was ornamented with pieces of silver attached to it, and was inlaid with a stripe of the same metal from point to haft. Numerous fragments and shavings of copper were also found, some of which were such as, it was assumed, could only have been cut by a fine sharp tool; and the whole sufficed to indicate, even more markedly than those at Ontonagon, that not only was the native copper wrought in ancient times in the Lake Superior regions, but that manufactories were established along its shores, and on the banks of its navigable rivers. The recognition of silver as a distinct metal by the present race of Indians is proved by the specific termshooneya, by which it is designated in Chippewa; whereas gold is only known asozahwah-shooneya, or yellow silver.
In 1856, Dr. Thomas Reynolds of Brockville exhibited to the Canadian Institute a collection of copper and other relics discovered in that neighbourhood under singular circumstances; and possessing a special interest owing to the distance of the site from Lake Superior. They included a peculiarly-shaped chisel or gouge, six inches in length, (Fig. 67), a rude spear-head, seven inches long (Fig. 68), and two small daggers or knives, one of which is shown in Fig. 66, all wrought by means of the hammer, out of native copper which had never been subjected to fire, as is proved by the silver remaining in detached crystals in the copper. They were found at the head of Les Galops Rapids, on the river St. Lawrence, about fifteen feet below the surface, along with twenty skeletons disposed in a circular space with their feet towards the centre. Dr. Reynolds remarks of them: “Some of the skeletons were of gigantic proportions. The lower jaw of one is sufficiently large to surround the corresponding bone of an adult of our present generation. The condition of the bones furnished indisputable proof of their great antiquity. The skulls were so completely reduced to their earthy constituents that they were exceedingly brittle, and fell in pieces when removed and exposed to the atmosphere. The metallic remains, however, of more enduring material, as also several stone chisels and gouges, and some flint arrow-heads, all remain in their original condition; and furnish evidence of the same rude arts which we know to be still practised by the aborigines of the far West.” After discussing the possibility of their European origin, Dr. Reynolds adds: “There is also a curious fact, which these relics appear to confirm, that the Indians possessed the art of hardening and tempering copper, so as to give it as good an edge as iron or steel. This ancient Indian art is now entirely lost.”
The reference thus made to the popular theory of some lost art of hardening the native copper, afforded an opportunity of testing it in reference to the Brockville relics. They were accordingly submitted to my colleague, Professor Henry Croft, of University College, Toronto, with the following results: The object of the experiments was to ascertain whether the metal of which the implements are made is identical with the native copper of the Lake Superior mines; or whether it has been subjected to some manufacturing process, or mixed with any other substance, by which its hardness might have been increased. A careful examination established the following conclusions:—No perceptible difference could be observed between the hardness of the implements and that of metallic copper from Lake Superior. The knife or small dagger was cleansed as far as possible from its green coating; and its specific gravity ascertained as 8·66. A fragment, broken off the end of the broad, flat implement, described as a “copper knife of full size,” having been freed from its coating, was found to have a specific gravity of 8·58. During the cleaning of this fragment, a few brilliant white specks became visible on its surface, which appeared, from their colour and lustre, to be silver. The structure of the metal was also highly laminated, as if the instrument had been brought to its present shape by hammering out a solid mass of copper, which had either split up, or had been originally formed of several pieces. These laminæ of course contained air, and the metal was covered with rust, hence the specific gravity. The process by which a flat piece of copper has been overlapped, and wrought with the hammer into a rude spear-head, is shown in the accompanying illustration. A portion of very solid copper, from Lake Superior, of about the same weight as the fragment, was weighed in water, and its gravity found to be 8·92. The specific gravity of absolutely pure copper varies from 8·78 to 8·96, according to the greater or less degree of aggregation it has received during its manufacture. The fragment was completely dissolved by nitric acid; and the solution, on being tested for silver by hydrochloric acid, gave a scarcely perceptible opacity, indicating the presence of an exceedingly minute trace of silver. The copper having been separated by hydro-sulphuric acid, the residual liquid was tested for other metals. A very minute trace of iron was detected. The native copper from Lake Superior was tested in the same manner, and was found to contain no trace of silver, but a minute trace of iron. From this, it appears that the implements are composed of copper almost pure, differing in no material respect from the native copper of Lake Superior.
Fig. 68.—Brockville Copper Spear.
Fig. 68.—Brockville Copper Spear.
It is thus apparent that, in the case of the Brockville relics, the theory of a lost art of hardening and tempering copper was a mere reflex of the prevalent popular fallacy; and there is no reason for anticipating a different result in other cases in which the same theory is tested.
More recently a well-finished dagger of hammered copper, nine inches long, and a smaller copper gouge, have been turned up by the plough: the former at Burnhamthorpe, and the latter at Chinguacousy, in Ontario; and from time to time similar discoveries suffice to show the ancient diffusion of the native copper throughout the whole region of the great lakes. In his account of the discovery of the Brockville relics, Dr. Reynolds assumes them to pertain to the present Indian race. The evidences of antique sepulture, however, are unmistakable; and other proofs suggest a different origin. Mr. Squier, by whom they had been previously described, remarks in the Appendix to hisAboriginal Monuments of the State of New York:[75]“Some implements entirely corresponding with these have been found in Isle Royale, and at other places in and around Lake Superior.” But besides the copper implements, there lay in the same deposit a miniature mask of terra-cotta of peculiar workmanship, suggestive rather of relation to the arts of the Mound-Builders. Mr. Squier has figured it from an incorrect drawing, which indicates a minuter representation of Indian features than the original justifies. It is engraved here, the size of the original, from a photographic copy, and, as will be seen, is a rude mask, such as is by no means uncommon among the small terra-cottas of Mexico and Central America. This mingling of traces of a certain amount of artistic skill with the arts of the primitive metallurgist, entirely corresponds with the disclosures of the ancient mounds of the Mississippi; and, indeed, agrees with other partial manifestations of art in an imperfectly developed civilisation.
Fig. 69.—Terra-cotta Mask.
Fig. 69.—Terra-cotta Mask.
I was struck, when examining the rude stone mauls of the miners of Ontonagon, by their resemblance to some which I have seen, obtained from ancient copper workings of North Wales. In a communication made to the British Archæological Institute by the Hon. William Owen Stanley, in 1850, he gave an account of an ancient shaft broken into at the copper mines of Llandudno, Carnarvonshire. In this were found mining implements, consisting of chisels, or picks of bronze, and a number of rudely-fashioned stone mauls of various sizes, weighing from about 2 lbs. to 40 lbs. Their appearance suggested that they had been used for breaking, pounding, or detaching the ore from the rock; and the character both of the bronze and stone implements seems to point to a period long prior to the Roman occupation of Britain. These primitive mauls are stated to be similar to water-worn stones found on the sea-beach at Pen Mawr. Mr. Stanley also describes others, corresponding in like manner to those found on the shores of Lake Superior, which had been met with in ancient workings in Anglesea. Were we, therefore, disposed to generalise from such analogies, as ingenious speculators on the lost history of the New World have been prone to do, we might trace in this correspondence a confirmation of the supposed colonisation of America, in the twelfth century, by Madoc, the son of Owen Gwynnedd, king of North Wales. But the resemblance between the primitive Welsh and American mining tools, can be regarded only as evidence of the corresponding operations of the human mind, when placed under similar circumstances, and with the same limited means, which is illustrated in so many ways by the arts of the stone-period, whether of the most ancient or of modern date. Nor can such correspondences be regarded as altogether accidental. They confirm the idea of certain innate and instinctive operations of human ingenuity, ever present and ready to be called forth for the accomplishment of similar purposes by the same limited means.
From this review of the evidences of long-abandoned mining operations on the shores and islands of Lake Superior, it cannot admit of doubt that in them we look on the traces of an imperfectly developed yet highly interesting native civilisation, pertaining to centuries long anterior to the discovery of America in the fifteenth century. The question naturally arises: By whom were those ancient mines wrought? Was it by the ancestry of the present Indian tribes of North America, or by a distinct and long-superseded race? The tendency of opinion among American writers has been towards a unity and comprehensive isolation of the races and arts of the New World. Hence the theories alike of Morton and of Schoolcraft, though founded on diverse premises, favour the idea that the germs of all that is most noticeable even in the civilisation of Central America may be found among the native arts, and the manners and customs of the forest tribes. But neither the traditions nor the arts of the Indians of the northern lakes supply any satisfactory link connecting them with the Copper-Miners or the Mound-Builders. Of Loonsfoot, an old Chippewa chief of Lake Superior, the improbable statement is made that he could trace back his ancestry by name, as hereditary chiefs of his tribe, for upwards of four hundred years. At the request of Mr. Whittlesey he was questioned by an educated half-breed, a nephew of his own, relative to the ancient copper mines, and his answer was in substance as follows:—“A long time ago the Indians were much better off than they are now. They had copper axes, arrow-heads, and spears, and also stone axes. Until the French came here, and blasted the rocks with powder, we have no traditions of the copper mines being worked. Our forefathers used to build big canoes and cross the lake over to Isle Royale, where they found more copper than anywhere else. The stone hammers that are now found in the old diggings we know nothing about. The Indians were formerly much more numerous and happier. They had no such wars and troubles as they have now.” At La Pointe on Lake Superior, it was my good fortune to meet withBeshekee, or Buffalo, a rugged specimen of an old Chippewa chief. He retained all the wild Indian ideas, though accustomed to frequent intercourse with white men; boasted of the scalps he had taken; and held to his pagan creed as the only religion for the Indian, whatever the Great Spirit might have taught the white man. His grandson, an educated half-breed, acted as interpreter, and his reply to similar inquiries was embodied in the following sententious declaration of Indian philosophy:—“The white man thinks he is the superior of the Indian, but it is not so. The Red Indian was made by the Great Spirit, who made the forests and the game, and he needs no lessons from the white man how to live. If the same Great Spirit made the white man, he has made him of a different nature. Let him act according to his nature; it is the best for him; but for us it is not good. We had the red-iron before white men brought the black-iron amongst us; but if ever such works as you describe were carried on along these Lake shores before white men came here, then the Great Spirit must once before have made men with a different nature from his red children, such as you white men have. As for us, we live as our forefathers have always done.”
La Pointe, or Chaquamegon, where this interview took place, was visited by the Jesuit Father, Claude Alloüez, in 1666, and is described by him as a beautiful bay, the shores of which were occupied by the Chippewas in such numbers that their warriors alone amounted to eight hundred. In the journal of his travels, he thus refers to the mineral resources for which the region is now most famed:—“The savages reverence the lake as a divinity, and offer sacrifices to it because of its great size, for it is two hundred leagues long and eighty broad; and also, because of the abundance of fish it supplies to them, in lieu of game, which is scarce in its environs. They often find in the lake pieces of copper weighing from ten to twenty pounds. I have seen many such pieces in the hands of the savages; and as they are superstitious, they regard them as divinities, or as gifts which the gods who dwell beneath its waters have bestowed on them to promote their welfare. Hence they preserve such pieces of copper wrapped up along with their most prized possessions. By some they have been preserved upwards of fifty years, and others have had them in their families from time immemorial, cherishing them as their household gods. There was visible for some time, near the shore, a large rock entirely of copper, with its top rising above the water, which afforded an opportunity for those passing to cut pieces from it. But when I passed in that vicinity nothing could be seen of it. I believe that the storms, which are here very frequent, and as violent as on the ocean, had covered the rock with sand. Our Indians wished to persuade me it was a divinity which had disappeared, but for what reason they would not say.”[76]
Such is the earliest notice we have of Indian ideas relative to the native copper. It accords with all later information on the same subject, and is opposed to any tradition of their ancestors having been the workers of the abandoned copper mines. A secrecy, resulting from the superstitions associated with the mineral wealth of the great Lake, appears to have thrown impediments in the way of inquirers. Father Dablon narrates a marvellous account communicated to him, of four Indians who, in old times, before the coming of the French, had lost their way in a fog, and at length effected a landing on Missipicooatong. This was believed to be a floating island, mysteriously variable in its local position and aspects. The wanderers cooked their meal in Indian fashion, by heating stones and casting them into a birch-bark pail filled with water. The stones proved to be lumps of copper, which they carried off with them; but they had hardly left the shore when a loud and angry voice, ascribed by one of them to Missibizi, the goblin spirit of the waters, was heard exclaiming, “What thieves are these that carry off my children’s cradles and playthings?” One of the Indians died immediately from fear, and two others soon after, while the fourth only survived long enough to reach home and relate what had happened, before he also died: having no doubt been poisoned by the copper used in cooking. Ever after this the Indians steered their course far off the site of the haunted island. In the same relation, Father Dablon tells that near the river Ontonagon, or Nantonagon as he calls it, is a bluff from which masses of copper frequently fall out. One of these presented to him weighed one hundred pounds; and pieces weighing twenty or thirty pounds are stated by him to be frequently met with by the squaws when digging holes for their corn. The locality thus celebrated by the earliest French missionaries for its traces of mineral wealth, is in like manner referred to by the first English explorer, Alexander Henry: a bold adventurer, who visited the island of Mackinac, at the entrance of Lake Michigan, shortly before the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and was one among the few who escaped a treacherous massacre perpetrated by the Indians on the Whites at Old Fort Mackinac. In hisTravels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories, he mentions his visiting the river Ontonagon, in 1765, and adds, “I found this river chiefly remarkable for the abundance of virgin copper which is on its banks and in its neighbourhood. The copper presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The Indians showed me one of twenty pounds. They were used to manufacture this metal into spoons and bracelets for themselves. In the perfect state in which they found it, it required nothing but to be beat into shape.”[77]In the following year, Henry again visited the same region. “On my way,” he says, “I encamped a second time at the mouth of the Ontonagon, and now took the opportunity of going ten miles up the river with Indian guides. The object which I went most expressly to see, and to which I had the satisfaction of being led, was a mass of copper, of the weight, according to my estimate, of no less than five tons. Such was its pure and malleable state that with an axe I was able to cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds.” This mass of native copper which thus attracted the adventurous European explorer upwards of a century ago, has since acquired considerable celebrity, as one of the most prominent encouragements to the mining operations projected in the Ontonagon and surrounding districts. It is now preserved at Washington, and is believed to be the same to which Charlevoix refers as a sacrificial block held in peculiar veneration by the Indians; and on which, according to their narration, a young girl had been sacrificed. The Jesuit father did not obtain access to it, as it was the belief of the Indians that if it were seen by a white man, their lands would pass away from them. Those various notices are interesting as showing to what extent the present race of Indians were accustomed to avail themselves of the mineral wealth of the copper regions. Illustrations of a like kind might be multiplied, but they are all nearly to the same effect, exhibiting the Indian gathering chance masses, or hewing off pieces from the exposed copper lodes, in full accordance with the simple arts of his first Stone Period; but affording no ground for crediting him with any traditionary memorials of connection with the race that once excavated the trenches, and laid bare the mineral treasures of the great copper region.
The evidence indicative of the great length of time which has intervened since the miners of Lake Superior abandoned its shores, receives confirmation from traces of a long protracted traffic carried on by the subsequent occupants of their deserted territory. The mineral wealth that still lay within reach of the non-industrial hunter of the forests which grew up and clothed the deserted works, in the interval between their abandonment and re-occupation, furnished him with a prized material for barter. The head-waters of the Mississippi are within easy reach of an Indian party, carrying light birch-bark canoes over the intervening portages; and, once launched on its broad waters, the whole range of the continent through twenty degrees of latitude is free before them. Through Lake Huron and the Ottawa into the St. Lawrence, and by Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, into the Hudson, other extensive areas of native exchange were commanded. Articles wrought in the brown pipe-stone of the Upper Mississippi, the red pipe-stone of the Couteau des Prairies, west of St. Peters, and the copper of Lake Superior, constituted the wealth which the old north had to offer. In return, one of the most valued exchanges appears to have been the large tropical shells of the Gulf of Florida and the West Indian seas: from which wampum-beads, pendants, gorgets, and personal ornaments of various kinds were manufactured.
Copper is obtained in its native state still farther north; and Mackenzie, in hisSecond Journey, mentions its being in common use among the tribes on the borders of the Arctic Sea; by whom it is wrought into spear and arrow-heads, and a considerable variety of personal ornaments. Mr. Henry found the Christinaux of Lake Winipagon wearing bracelets and other ornaments of copper; and most of the earlier explorers describe copper implements and personal ornaments among widely-scattered Indian tribes of the New World. But in all cases they appear to have been rudely wrought with the hammer, and sparingly mingled with the more abundant weapons and implements of stone, of a people whose sole metallurgic knowledge consisted in gathering or procuring by barter the native copper,—just as they procured the red or brown pipe-stone,—and hammering the mass into some simple useful form. Silver, procured in like manner, was not unknown to them; and pipes inlaid both with silver and lead are by no means rare. But it is only when we turn to the scenes of a native-born civilisation, in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, where metallurgic arts were developed, that we discover evidence of the use of the crucible and furnace, and find copper superseded by the more useful alloy, bronze.
But intermediately between the copper regions of Lake Superior and the ancient southern scenes of native American civilisation, the Mississippi and its great tributaries drain a country remarkable for monuments of a long forgotten past, not less interesting and mysterious than the forsaken mines of Keweenaw and Ontonagon, or Isle Royale. Those great earthworks are ascribed to an extinct race, conveniently known by the name of the Mound-Builders. Careful investigations into their structure and contents prove these builders to have been a people among whom copper was in frequent use, but by them also it was worked only by the hammer. The invaluable service of fire in reducing and smelting ores, moulding metals, and adapting them to greater usefulness by well-proportioned alloys, was unknown; and the investigation and analysis of their cold-wrought tools seem to prove that the source of their copper was the Lake Superior mines. But though the ancient Mound-Builder was thus possessed of little higher metallurgic knowledge than the Indian hunter: he manifested in other respects a capacity for extensive and combined operations, the memorials of which perpetuate his monumental skill and persevering industry in the gigantic earthworks from whence his name is derived. From these we learn that there was a period in America’s unrecorded history, when the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries were occupied by a numerous settled population. Alike in physical conformation—so far as very imperfect evidence goes,—and in some of their arts, these Mound-Builders approximated to races of Central and South America, and differed from the Red Indian occupants of their deserted seats. They were not, to all appearance, far advanced in civilisation. Compared with the people of Mexico or Central America when first seen by the Spaniards, their social and intellectual development was probably rudimentary. But they had advanced beyond that stage in which it is possible for a people to continue unprogressive. The initial steps of civilisation had been inaugurated; and the difference between them and the civilised Mexicans is less striking than the contrast which the evidences of their settled condition, and the proofs of extensive co-operation in their numerous earthworks supply, when compared with all that pertains to the tribes by whom the American forests and prairies have been exclusively occupied during the centuries since Columbus.
The Mound-Builders were greatly more in advance of the Indian hunter than behind the civilised Mexican. They had acquired habits of combined industry; were the settled occupants of specific territories; and are proved, by numerous ornaments and implements of copper deposited in their monuments and sepulchres, to have been familiar with the mineral resources of the northern lake regions, whether by personal enterprise, or by a system of exchange. What probabilities there are suggestive of a connection between the Mound-Builders and the ancient Miners will be discussed in a later chapter, along with other and allied questions; but to just such a race, with their imperfect mechanical skill, their partially developed arts, and their aptitude for continuous combined operations, may be ascribed,à priori, such mining works as are still traceable on the shores of Lake Superior, overshadowed with the forest growth of centuries. The mounds constructed by the ancient race are in like manner overgrown with the evidences of their long desertion; and the condition in which recent travellers have found the ruined cities of Central America, may serve to show what even New York, Washington, and Philadelphia: what Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec, would become after a very few centuries, if abandoned, like the desolate cities of Chichenitza or Uxmal, to the inextinguishable luxuriance of the American forest growth.
The accumulations of vegetable mould, the buried forests of older generations, and the living trees with their roots entwined among the forsaken implements of the miners, all point to the lapse of many centuries since their works were abandoned. Changes wrought on the river-courses and terraces in the Ohio valleys suggest an interval of even longer duration since the construction of the great earthworks with which that region abounds. But to whatever period the working of the ancient copper mines of Lake Superior be assigned, the aspect presented by some of them when reopened in recent years is suggestive of peculiar circumstances attending their desertion. It is inconceivable that the huge mass of copper discovered in the Minnesota mine, resting on its oaken cradle, beneath the accumulations of centuries, was abandoned merely because the workmen, who had overcome the greatest difficulties in its removal, were baffled in the subsequent stages of their operations, and contented themselves by chipping off any accessible projecting point. Well-hammered copper chisels, such as lay alongside of it, and have been repeatedly found in the works, were sufficient, with the help of stone hammers, to enable them to cut it into portable pieces. If, indeed, the ancient miners were incapable of doing more with their mass of copper, in the mine, than breaking off a few projections, to what further use could they have turned it when transported to the surface? It weighed upwards of six tons, and measured ten feet long and three feet wide. The trench at its greatest depth was twenty-six feet; while the mass was only eighteen feet from the surface; and in the estimation of the skilled engineer by whom it was first seen, it had been elevated upwards of five feet since it was placed on its oaken frame. The excavations to a depth of twenty-six feet, the dislodged copper block, and the framework prepared for elevating the solid mass to the surface, all consistently point to the same workmen. But the mere detachment of a few accessible projecting fragments is too lame and impotent a conclusion of proceedings carried thus far on so different a scale. It indicates rather such results as would follow at the present day were the Indians of the North-west to displace the modern Minnesota miners, and possess themselves of mineral treasures which they are as little capable as ever of turning to any but the most simple uses.
Such evidences, accordingly, while they serve to prove the existence, at some remote period, of a mining population in the copper regions of Lake Superior, seem also to indicate that their labours came to an abrupt termination. Whether by some devastating pestilence, like that which nearly exterminated the native population of New England immediately before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers; by the breaking out of war; or, as seems not less probable, by the invasion of the mineral region by a barbarian race, ignorant of all the arts of the ancient Mound-Builders of the Mississippi, and of the miners of Lake Superior: certain it is that the works have been abandoned, leaving the quarried metal, the laboriously wrought hammers, and the ingenious copper tools, just as they may have been left when the shadows of the evening told their long forgotten owners that the labours of the day were at an end, but for which they never returned. Nor during the centuries which have elapsed since the forest reclaimed the deserted trenches for its own, does any trace seem to indicate that a native population again sought to avail itself of their mineral treasures, beyond the manufacture of such scattered fragments as lay upon the surface.
[74]Squier’sAboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. Appendix, p. 184.
[74]
Squier’sAboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. Appendix, p. 184.
[75]Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. pp. 14, 176.
[75]
Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. pp. 14, 176.
[76]Relations des Jésuites, vol. iii. 1666et1667.
[76]
Relations des Jésuites, vol. iii. 1666et1667.
[77]Henry’sTravels and Adventures, New York, 1809, p. 194.
[77]
Henry’sTravels and Adventures, New York, 1809, p. 194.
CHAPTER IX.ALLOYS.
THE AGE OF BRONZE—AN INTERMEDIATE COPPER AGE—EUROPEAN COPPER IMPLEMENTS—NATIVE SILVER AND COPPER—TIN AND COPPER ORES—THE CASSITERIDES—ANCIENT SOURCES OF TIN—ARTS OF YUCATAN—ALLOYED COPPER AXE-BLADES—BRONZE SILVER-MINING TOOL—PERUVIAN BRONZES—PRIMITIVE MINING TOOLS—NATIVE METALLURGIC PROCESSES—METALLIC TREASURES OF THE INCAS—TRACES OF AN OLDER RACE—PERUVIAN HISTORY—THE TOLTECS AND MEXICANS—ADJUSTMENT OF CALENDAR—BARBARIAN EXCESSES—NATIVE GOLDSMITH’S WORK—PANAMA GOLD RELICS—MEXICAN METALLIC CURRENCY—EXPERIMENTAL PROCESSES—ANCIENT EUROPEAN BRONZES—TESTS OF CIVILISATION—ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES—THE NATIVE METALLURGIST.
The age of bronze in the archæological history of European civilisation symbolises a transitional stage of very partial development, and imperfect materials and arts, through which the Old World passed in its progress towards the maturity of true historic times; but the Bronze Period of the New World is the highest stage of its self-developed civilisation, prior to the intrusion of European arts. Whether we regard the bronze implements of Britain and the North of Europe as concomitant with the intrusion of new races, or only as proofs of the discovery or introduction of a new art pregnant with many civilising and elevating tendencies, they constitute an important element in primitive ethnology. For a time they necessarily coincide with many monuments and works of art pertaining in character to the stone-period; just as the stone implements and weapons still manufactured by the Indians and Esquimaux are contemporaneous with many products of foreign metallurgy, but nevertheless are the perpetuation of processes developed in a period when metallurgic arts were entirely unknown. The evidence that the British Bronze Period followed a simpler and ruder one of stone is such as scarcely to admit of challenge, independent of theà priorilikelihood in favour of this order of succession. The question however suggests itself whether metallurgy did not find its natural beginning there, as elsewhere, in the easy working of the virgin copper, and so intercalate a copper age between Europe’s stone, and its true Bronze Period. On this subject Dr. Latham remarks, in hisEthnology of the British Islands, “Copper is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state, no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone first; then bronze, or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get over this hiatus; cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of alloys.” It is a mistake, however, to say that no unalloyed British copper relics have been found. No very special attention was directed till recently to the distinction. Nearly all the earlier writers who refer to the metallic weapons and tools of ancient Mexico and Central America, apply the term “copper” to the mixed metal of which these were made; while among European antiquaries the corresponding relics of the Old World are no less invariably designated bronze, though in many cases thus taking for granted what analysis can alone determine. It is an error, however, that the later nomenclature of archæological periods has tended to strengthen: partly from the lack of appreciation of the importance of the argument in favour of the first use of the metals in a condition corresponding to the most primitive arts, and the discovery of scientific processes at later stages.
This peculiar interest attaches to the metallurgy of the New World, that there all the earlier stages are clearly defined: the pure native metal, wrought by the hammer without the aid of fire; the melted and moulded copper; the alloyed bronze; and then the smelting, soldering, graving, and other processes resulting from accumulating experience and matured skill. But examples of British implements of pure copper have also been noted. In a valuable paper by Mr. J. A. Phillips, on the metals and alloys known to the ancients,[78]the results of analyses of thirty-seven ancient bronzes are given. Among these are included three swords, one from the Thames, the others from Ireland; a spear-head, two celts, and two axe-heads: all of types well-known among the weapons of the “Bronze Period.” Yet of the eight articles thus selected as examples of “bronze” weapons, one, the spear-head, proved on analysis to be of impure but unalloyed copper. Its composition is given as copper, 99·71; sulphur, ·28. In 1822, Sir David Brewster described a large battle-axe of pure copper, found at a depth of twenty feet in Ratho Bog, near Edinburgh, under circumstances scarcely less remarkable than some of the discoveries of works of art in the drift. The workmen dug down through nine feet of moss and seven feet of sand, before they came to the hard black till-clay; and at a depth of four feet in the clay the axe was found. The author accordingly remarks: “It must have been deposited along with the blue clay prior to the formation of the superincumbent stratum of sand, and must have existed before the diluvial operations by which that stratum was formed. This opinion of its antiquity is strongly confirmed by the peculiarity of its shape, and the nature of its composition.”[79]In 1850, my brother, Dr. George Wilson, undertook a series of analyses of ancient British bronzes for me, and out of seven specimens selected for experiment, one Scottish axe-head, rudely cast, apparently in sand, was of nearly pure copper.[80]Of eight specimens of metal implements selected for me by Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of New York, as examples of Peruvian bronze; four of them, on analysis, proved to be of unalloyed copper. The rich collections of the Royal Irish Academy furnish interesting confirmation of this idea of a transitional copper era. Dr. Wilde remarks, in his Catalogue of Antiquities, “Upon careful examination, it has been found that thirty of the rudest, and apparently the very oldest celts, are of red, almost unalloyed copper.” In addition to those there are also two battle-axes, a sword-blade, a trumpet, several fibulæ, and some rudely formed tools, all of copper; and now that attention has been directed to the subject, further examples of the same class will doubtless accumulate.
A very important difference, however, distinguishes the mineral resources of the British and the North American copper regions. Copper, as we have seen, occurs in the trappean rocks of Keweenaw and Ontonagon, in masses of many tons weight; and detached blocks of various sizes lie scattered about in the superficial soil or exposed along the lake shore, ready for use without any preparatory skill, or the slightest knowledge of metallurgy. Nature in her own vast crucibles had carried the metal ores through all their preparatory stages, and left them there for man to shape into such forms as his convenience or simplest wants suggested. The native silver had undergone the like preparation, and is of frequent occurrence as a perfectly pure metal, being found, even when interspersed in the mass of copper, still in distinct crystals, entirely free from alloy with it. But neither tin nor zinc occurs throughout the whole northern region to suggest to the native metallurgist the production of that valuable alloy which is indissolubly associated with the civilisation of Europe’s Bronze age. In Britain it is altogether different. The tin and copper lie together, ready for alloy, but both occur in the state of impure ores, inviting and necessitating the development of metallurgy before they can be turned to economic uses. Tin is obtained in Cornwall almost entirely from its peroxide; and copper occurs there chiefly combined with sulphur and iron, forming the double sulphuret which is commonly called copper pyrites or yellow copper ore. The smelting process to which it has to be subjected is a laborious and complicated one; and if we are prepared to believe in the civilisation of Britain’s Bronze Period as a thing of native growth, the early discovery and use of alloys very slightly affects the question.
The ancient American miner of Lake Superior never learned to subject his wealth of copper to the action of fire, and transfer it from the crucible to the shapely mould. No such process was needed where it abounded in inexhaustible quantities in a pure metallic state. If, in the midst of such readily available metallic resources, he was found to have used tools of bronze or brass, to have transported the tin or zinc of other regions to his furnaces, and to have laboriously converted the whole into a preferable substitute for the simpler metal that lay ready for his use, it would be difficult indeed to conceive of such as the initial stage in his metallurgy industry. But Britain presents no analogy to this in its development of metallurgy arts. Tin, one of the least widely-diffused of metals, is found there in the greatest abundance, and easily accessible, not as a pure metal, but as an ore which is readily reduced by charcoal and a moderate degree of heat to that condition. This was the metallic wealth for which Britain was sought by the ancient traders of Massilia, and the fleets of the Mediterranean; and on it we may therefore assume her primitive metallurgists to have first tried their simple arts. But alongside of it, and even in natural combination with it, as in tin pyrites and the double sulphuret, lies the copper, also in the condition of an ore, and requiring the application of the metallurgist’s skill before it can be turned to account. We know that at the very dawn of history tin was exported from Britain. Copper also appears to have been wrought, from very early times, in North Wales as well as in Cornwall. Both metals were found rarely, and in small quantities, in the native state, but these may have sufficed to suggest the next step of supplying them in larger quantities from the ores. To seek in some unknown foreign source for the origin of metallurgic arts, which had there all the requisite elements for evoking them, seems wholly gratuitous; and, if once the native metallurgist learned to smelt the tin and copper ores, and so had been necessitated to subject them to preparatory processes of fire, the next stage in progressive metallurgy, the use of alloys, was a simple one. It might further be assumed that, with the discovery of the valuable results arising from the admixture of tin with copper, the few pure copper implements—excepting where already deposited among sepulchral offerings,—would for the most part be returned to the melting-pot, and reproduced in the more perfect and useful condition of the bronze alloy. There seems, however, greater probability in the supposition that if Britain had a copper period, or age of unalloyed metals, it was of brief duration.
Thecassiteron, or tin which made the British Islands famous among Phœnician and Greek mariners, long before the Roman legions ventured to cross the narrow seas, was derived, as has been noted, from the same south-western peninsula, where copper is still wrought. The name of Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, bestowed on Cornwall and the adjacent isles, seems to imply that tin was the chief export, and was transported to the Mediterranean, to be mixed with the copper of the Wady Maghara, and other Asiatic mines, to form the Egyptian, Phœnician, and Assyrian bronze. Tin, therefore, the easiest of all metals to subject to the requisite processes, first engaged the skill of the British metallurgist; and that mastered, the proximity of the copper ore in the same mineral districts, inevitably suggests all the subsequent processes of smelting, fusion, and alloy.
The practical value of the alloy of copper and tin was well-known both to the Phœnicians and the Egyptians. Tin occurs in considerable abundance, and in the purest state, in the peninsula of Malacca, and thence, probably, it was first brought to give a new impetus to early eastern civilisation. Britain is its next and its most abundant source; and since America was embraced within the world’s sisterhood of nations, Chili and Mexico have become known as productive sources of the same useful metal. But the mineral wealth of Mexico and Peru was familiar to nations of the New World long before it was made to contribute to European commerce; and to a proximity of the metals best suited for the first stages of human progress, corresponding in some degree to that to which Britain’s ancient metallurgy has been traced, the curious phases of a native and purely aboriginal civilisation may be ascribed, which revealed itself to the wondering gaze of the first European adventurers who followed in the steps of Columbus. Whatever doubts may arise relative to the native origin of British metallurgy, and the works of art of the European Bronze Period, in consequence of their most characteristic illustrations being preserved in the mixed metal, bronze, and not in pure copper: there is no room for any such doubts relative to the primitive metallurgy of the New World. The American continent appears to have had its two entirely independent centres of self-originated metallurgic arts: its greatly prolonged but slight progressive Copper Period; and apart from this, and in part at least contemporaneous with it, a separate Bronze Period, with its distinct centres of more advanced civilisation and better regulated metallurgic industry, in which the value of metallic alloys was practically understood.
The great copper region of North America lies along the shores of Lake Superior, and on its larger islands between the 46th and 48th parallels of north latitude; and from thence its metallic treasures were diffused by primitive commercial exchanges, throughout the whole vast regions watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries: including also the Atlantic states, and the shores of the great lakes. But southward and westward of this area of diffusion, the Rio Grande and its tributaries, with the Rio Colorado, drain a country modified by very diverse conditions of climate, and having a totally distinct centre of metallurgic wealth and civilising influences. In this central region of the twin continents of America, as well as independently in tropical Peru, native civilisation had advanced a considerable way, before it was arrested and destroyed by the aggressions of foreign intruders. The peculiar advantages derivable from the proximity of the distinct metals had been discovered, and metallurgy had been developed into the practical arts of a true American Bronze Age.
When Columbus, during his fourth voyage, landed on one of the Guanaja islands, before making the adjoining mainland of Honduras, it was visited by a large trading canoe, the size and freight of which equally attracted his notice. It was eight feet wide, and in magnitude like a galley, though formed of the trunk of a single tree. In the centre a raised awning covered and enclosed a cabin, in which sat a cacique with his wives and children; and twenty-five rowers propelled it swiftly through the water. The barque is believed to have come from the province of Yucatan, then about forty leagues distant, through a sea the stormy violence of which had daunted the most hardy Spanish seamen. It was freighted with a great variety of articles of manufacture, and of the natural produce of the neighbouring continent; and among them Herrara specifies “small hatchets, made of copper, small bells and plates,crucibles to melt copper, etc.” Here, at length, was the true answer to that prophetic faith which upheld the great discoverer, when, peering through the darkness, the New World revealed itself to his eye in the glimmering torch, which told him of an unseen land inhabited by man. Here was evidence of the intelligent service of fire. Well indeed might it have been for Columbus had he been obedient to the voice that thus directed his way. All the accompaniments of the voyagers furnished evidence of civilisation. They were clothed with cotton mantles. Their bread was made of Indian corn, and from it also they had brewed a beverage resembling beer. They informed Columbus that they had just arrived from a country, rich, populous, and industrious, situated to the west; and urged him to steer in that direction. But his mind was bent on the discovery of the imaginary strait that was to lead him directly into the Indian seas, and it was left to Cortez to discover the singular seats of native civilisation of Mexico and Central America.
When at length the mainland was reached, the abundance and extensive use of the metals became apparent; and as further discoveries brought to the knowledge of the Spaniards the opulent and civilised countries of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru, they were more and more astonished by the native metallic wealth. When the Spaniards first entered the province of Tuspan, they mistook the bright copper or bronze axes of the natives for gold, and were greatly mortified after having accumulated them in considerable numbers to discover the mistake they had made. Bernal Diaz narrates that “each Indian had, besides his ornaments of gold, a copper axe, which was very highly polished, with the handle curiously carved, as if to serve equally for an ornament, as for the field of battle. We first thought these axes were made of an inferior kind of gold; we therefore commenced taking them in exchange, and in the space of two days had collected more than six hundred; with which we were no less rejoiced, as long as we were ignorant of their real value, than the Indians with our glass beads.”
Ancient Mexican paintings show that the tribute due by certain provinces of the Mexican empire was paid in wedges of copper; and Dupaix describes and figures examples of a deposit of two hundred and seventy-six axe-heads, cast of alloyed copper, such as, he observes, “are much sought by the silversmiths on account of their fine alloy.” The forms of these, as well as of the chisels and other tools of bronze, are simple, and indicate no great ingenuity in adapting the moulded metal to the more perfect accomplishment of the artificer’s or the combatant’s requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade, as illustrated by Mexican paintings, are nearly all of the same rude description as are employed by the modern savage in fitting a handle to his hatchet of flint or stone; and, indeed, the whole characteristics of the metallurgic and artistic ingenuity of Mexico and Peru are suggestive of immature development; though, from the nature of Peruvian institutions, the civilisation of the latter, like that of China, may have long existed, with slight and intermittent manifestations of progress. It was indeed, in many respects, the transitional Bronze Period of the New World, in which not only the arts of an elder stone-period had been very partially modified by metallurgic influences, but in which the sword, ormahguahuitl, made of wood, with blades of obsidian inserted along its edge, the flint or obsidian arrow-head, the stone hatchet, and other weapons, were still in common use, along with those of metal.
Yet such traces of primitive arts are accompanied with remarkable evidence of progress in some directions. Humboldt remarks, in hisVues des Cordillères, on the surprising dexterity shown by the Peruvians in cutting the hardest stones; and, after reference to the observations of other travellers, he adds:—“I conjectured that the Peruvians had tools of copper, which, mixed with a certain proportion of tin, acquires great hardness. This conjecture has been justified by the discovery of an ancient Peruvian chisel, found at Vilcabamba, near Cuzco, in a silver mine worked in the time of the Incas. This valuable instrument, for which I am indebted to the friendship of the Padre Narcisse Gilbar, is four and seven-tenth inches long, and four-fifths of an inch broad. The metal of which it is composed has been analysed by M. Vauquelin, who found in it 0·94 of copper, and 0·06 of tin.” Unfortunately, the composition of Mexican and Peruvian bronzes has hitherto attracted so little attention, that it is impossible to obtain many accurate records of analyses, or to procure specimens to submit to chemical tests. Dr. J. H. Gibbon, of the United States Mint, favoured me with the analysis of another chisel or crowbar, brought from the neighbourhood of Cuzco by his son, Lieutenant Lardner Gibbon, who formed one of the members of the Amazon Expedition. Through the kind services of Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of the American Ethnological Society, I also obtained, in addition to results determined by himself, eight specimens of such Peruvian implements, though only a portion of them proved to be of metallic alloys. They were submitted to careful analysis by my colleague, Professor Henry Croft, and the results in reference to the bronzes are given on a subsequent page. Mr. Squier, in the Appendix to hisAboriginal Monuments of the State of New York, engraves an implement found with various Peruvian knives and chisels, about the person of a mummy, taken by Mr. J. H. Blake, of Boston, from an ancient cemetery near Arica. On analysis, it proved to contain about four per cent. of tin. More recently I inspected a valuable collection of antiquities brought by Mr. Blake from Peru, including a variety of bronze implements; and he has favoured me with the following results:—“Many years ago, I made a series of analyses of bronze instruments, knives, chisels, hoes, etc., which I found in ancient cemeteries in Peru in connection with embalmed bodies. I have not been able to find my notes made at the time; but I know that they consisted of copper and tin only, and that the proportion of the latter varied from upwards of two to four per cent. After receiving your last letter, I made an analysis of a small knife found by me, with many other articles, with the body of a man, in the ancient cemetery near Arica, in South Peru. The handle is of the same metal as the blade, and at right angles with it, being joined at the middle. The end is fashioned to represent the head of a llama. On analysis, the composition proves to be: Copper, 97·87; tin, 2·13.” Dr. C. T. Jackson communicated another analysis of a “Chilian bronze instrument, probably a crowbar,” to the Boston Natural History Society. It contained 7·615 parts of tin, and is described by him as a bronze, well adapted for such instruments as were to be hammer-hardened.[81]The general results indicate a variable range of the tin alloy, from 2·130 to 7·615 per cent.; which, in so far as any general inference can be drawn from so small a number of examples, shows a more indeterminate and partially developed metallurgy than the analyses of primitive European bronzes disclose.
Such is all the evidence I have been able to obtain relative to the composition of Peruvian alloys, and the progress indicated thereby in scientific metallurgy. It accords with other evidence of their mining operations. During a recent visit to Peru Mr. James Douglas obtained for me a set of primitive stone mining implements recovered from an ancient shaft, exposed in working the Brillador mine, in the Province of Coquimbo, Chili. They consist of a maul of granite, eight inches long, with a groove wrought round the centre and over the thicker end; one of diorite, also with a groove about one-third from the thicker end; a conical hammer of granite; and another implement made of diorite, apparently designed for pounding the copper ore. It has indentations worked in the sides for the fingers and thumb; and when found was covered at one end with green oxide of copper, as if from use in pounding the ore. Near the mine are ancient graves indicated by circles of stones; within which the skeletons are disposed in a sitting posture, accompanied by conical bones and rude pottery. Such mining implements were, no doubt, supplemented with others of metal; but so far as they illustrate the progress of the ancient miners of Chili, the evidence fully accords with the ideas otherwise formed of the Peruvians as a people who had discovered for themselves the rudiments of civilisation, but who had as yet very partially attained to any mastery of the arts which have been matured in modern centuries for Europe. This agrees with the description furnished by Dr. Tschudi of some of the metallurgic processes still practised in Peru. “The Cordillera, in the neighbourhood of Yauli,” he remarks, “is exceedingly rich in lead ore containing silver. Within the circuit of a few miles above eight hundred shafts have been made, but they have not been found sufficiently productive to encourage extensive mining works. The difficulties which impede mine-working in these parts are caused chiefly by the dearness of labour and the scarcity of fuel. There being a total want of wood, the only fuel that can be obtained consists of the dried dung of sheep, llamas, and huanacos. This fuel is calledtaquia. It produces a very brisk and intense flame, and most of the mine-owners prefer it to coal. The process of smelting, as practised by the Indians, though extremely rude and imperfect, is adapted to local circumstances. All European attempts to improve the system of smelting in these districts have either totally failed, or in their results have proved less effective than the simple Indian method. The Indian furnaces can, moreover, be easily erected in the vicinity of the mines, and when the metal is not very abundant the furnaces may be abandoned without any great sacrifice. For the price of one European furnace the Indians may build more than a dozen, in each of which, notwithstanding the paucity of fuel, a considerably greater quantity of metal may be smelted than in one of European construction.” At the village of Yauli, near the mines referred to, situated at an elevation of 13,100 feet above the sea, from twelve to fourteen thousand Indians are congregated together, chiefly engaged in mining, after the fashion handed down to them from generations before the Conquest. Their processes correspond with the imperfect results disclosed by the analysis of native alloys; as well as by other proofs that the Peruvians were also accustomed to work the native copper into tools and personal ornaments for common use, very much in the same fashion as the ancient metallurgists of the Ohio valley.
The contrast which the civilisation alike of Mexico and Peru presents, when compared with the highest arts pertaining to any of the tribes of North America, is well calculated to excite admiration. But the wonder of the Spanish conquerors at their gems and gold, the ready credulity of the missionary priests in their anxiety to magnify the gorgeous paganism which they had overthrown, and the patriotic exaggeration of later chroniclers of native descent, have all tended to overdraw the picture of the beneficent despotism of the Incas of Peru; or the crueller but not less magnificent rule of the Caciques of Mexico. With a willing credulity Spanish historians perpetuated what the Peruvian Garcilasso and the Mexican Ixtlilxochitl related, in their adaptations of native history and traditions to European conceptions. Religious, political, and social analogies to European ideas and institutions, accordingly, strike the modern student with wonder and admiration; nor has the gifted author of theConquests of Mexico and Perualways sufficiently discriminated between the glowing romances begot by an alliance between the barbarous magnificence of a rude native despotism and the associated ideas of European institutions. The metallic treasures of the Incas of Peru are probably not exaggerated; and if so, the precious metals with which their palaces and temples were adorned would have been the index, in any European capital, of a wealth sufficient to employ the merchant-navies of Venice, Holland, or England in the commerce of the world. But in Peru this was the mere evidence of the abundance of the precious metals in a country where they were as little the representatives of a commercial currency as the feathers of the coraquenque, which were reserved exclusively for the decoration of royalty.
The Peruvians occupied a long extent of sea-coast, but no commercial enterprise tempted them to launch their navies on the Pacific, excepting for the most partial coasting transit. The great mass of the people patiently wrought to produce from their varied tropical climates and fertile soil the agricultural produce on which the entire community depended; resembling in this, as well as in the vast structures wrought by a patiently submissive people at the will of their absolute rulers, the great oriental despotisms when in their earliest and least licentious forms. Their own traditions traced the dawn of their government no further back than the twelfth century; and the characteristics of their imperfect and unequally developed civilisation confirm the inference that they have not in this respect departed from the invariable tendency of historic myth and tradition to exaggerate the national age. Extensive ruins still existing on the shores of Lake Titicaca are affirmed by the Peruvians to have existed before the Incas arrived. But slight importance can be attached to the traditions of an unlettered people concerning events of any kind dating four or five centuries back. The authority of Bede is of little value relative to Jute or Anglo-Saxon colonisation less than three centuries before his time; and the modern New Englander, with deeds and parchments, as well as abundance of printed history to help his tradition, cannot make up his mind as to whether the famous Newport Round Tower was built by a Norse viking of the eleventh, or a New England miller of the seventeenth century. “No account,” says Prescott, “assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes before the Conquest. But this number is altogether too small to have spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations of the monarchy, on any probable computation, beyond two centuries and a half—an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico.” Humboldt, in hisVues des Cordillères, indicates the borders of Lake Titicaca, the district of Callao, and the high plains of Tiahuanaco, as the theatre of ancient American civilisation; and Prescott, in view of the apparently recent origin of the Incas, assumes that they were preceded in Peru by another civilised race, which, in conformity with native traditions, he would derive from this same cradle-land of South American arts. Beyond this, however, he does not attempt to penetrate into that unchronicled past. Who this people were, and whence they came, may afford a tempting theme for inquiry to the speculative ethnologist; but it is a land of darkness lying beyond the domain of history. The same mists that hang round the origin of the Incas continue to settle on their subsequent annals; and so imperfect were the records employed by the Peruvians, and so confused and contradictory their traditions, that the historian finds no firm footing on which to stand till within a century of the Spanish conquest.
In reality only a very small portion of what is called Peruvian history prior to that conquest can be regarded as anything but a historical romance; and the exaggerated conceptions relative to the completeness and consistent development alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation, are based on the old axiom which has so often misled the archæologist,ex pede Herculem.
Viewed, however, without exaggeration, the progress in mechanical skill and artistic ingenuity attained by both of the semi-civilised American nations, is very remarkable; and seems to find its nearest analogy among the modern Chinese and Japanese. Small mirrors of polished bronze now in use in Japan exactly reproduce some of those found in the royal tombs of Peru. These tombs of the Incas, and also their royal and other depositories of treasure, have disclosed many specimens of curious and elaborate metallurgic skill: bracelets, collars, and other personal ornaments of gold, vases of the same abundant precious metal, and also of silver; mirrors of burnished silver and bronze, as well as of obsidian; polished masks, rings, and cups of the same intractable material; finely adjusted balances made in silver; bells both of silver and bronze; and numerous commoner articles of copper, or of the more useful alloy of copper and tin, of which their tools were chiefly made.
But while the arts of civilisation were being fostered on those southern plateaux of the Andes, another seat of native American civilisation had been founded on the corresponding plateaux of the northern continent, and the Aztecs were building up an empire even more marvellous than that of the Incas. The site of the latter is among the most remarkable of all the scenes consecrated to such memories. On the lofty table-land which lies between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet, the valley of Mexico lies engirdled by its ramparts of porphyritic rock, like a vast fortress provided by nature for guarding the infancy of American civilisation. Here was the scene of the heroic age of Toltec Art, where the foundations of all later progress were laid, and architecture achieved its earliest triumphs in the New World on the temples and towers of Tula, the ruined remains of which attracted the attention of the Spaniards at the time of the Conquest. But the history of the Toltecs and their ruined edifices stands on the border lines of romance and fable, like that of the Druid builders of Carnac and Avebury. To them, according to tradition and such historical evidence as is accessible, succeeded their Aztec or Mexican supplanters, along with the Acolhuans, or Tezcucans, as they were latterly called from their capital Tezcuco. Mr. Edward B. Tylor describes an ancient arch which still stands there. It is a skew-bridge of twenty feet span, built with slabs of stone set on edge in the form of a roof resting on two buttresses; and is an ingenious approximation to the true arch.[82]On the opposite shores of the same Mexican lake, the largest of five inland waters that diversified the surface of that great table-land valley, stood Tezcuco and Mexico, the capitals of the two most important states within which the native civilisation of the North American continent developed itself. From the older Toltecans, the encroaching Tezcucans are believed to have derived the germs of that progress, which is best known to us in connection with the true Aztec or Mexican state. Legends of the golden age and heroic races of Anahuac abound, and have been rendered into their least extravagant forms by the patriotic zeal of Ixtlilxochitl, a lineal descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco. But the true Mexicans are acknowledged to be of recent origin, and the founding of Mexico is assigned toa.d.1326. Among the special evidences of their civilisation is their calendar. By the unaided results of native science the dwellers on the Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time, so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning, according to the unreformed Julian calendar, was nearly eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilisation they so speedily effaced. But the difference thus noted represented in the European calendar the accumulated error of upwards of sixteen centuries; so that the approximation of Mexican computation to true solar time is probably only a proof of the recent adjustment of their calendar; and so confirms the probability of the founding of the Mexican capital within two centuries of its overthrow. But the founders of Tenochtitlan, as the new capital was called, were a vigorous, enterprising, and ferocious race. The later name of Mexico was derived from the Aztec war-god Mexitli, whose favours to his votaries enabled them to form a powerful state by conquest, to enrich themselves with spoil, and to replace the rude structures of their city’s founders with substantial and ornate buildings of stone.
Whatever gloze of mild paternal absolutism may linger around our conceptions of the prehistoric chronicles of Peru, a clearer light illuminates the harsh realities of Mexican sovereignty. The god of war was the supreme deity of the Aztecs, worshipped with hideous rites of blood. Their civil and military codes, according to the narrative of their conquerors, were alike cruel as that of Draco; and their religious worship was a system of austere fanaticism and loathsome butchery, which seemed to refine the cruelties of the Red Indian savage into a ritual service fit only for the devil. But besides their hideous war-god, the Mexican mythology was graced by a beneficent divinity, named Quetzalcoatl, the instructor of the Aztecs in the use of metals, in agriculture, and in the arts of government. This and similar elements of Mexican mythology have been regarded as traces of a milder faith inherited from their Toltecan predecessors. The idea is one supported by many probabilities, as well as by some evidence. The early history of the Northmen, however, in which we witness the blending of a rich poetic fancy, wherein lay the germ of later Norman romance and chivalry, with cruelties pertaining to a creed little less bloody than that of the Mexican warrior, shows that no such theory is needed to account for the incongruities of the religious system of the Aztecs. In truth, the ferocity of a semi-barbarous people is often nothing more than its perverted excess of energy; and, as has been already noted in reference to the Caribs, is more easily dealt with, and turned into healthful and beneficent action, than the cowardly craft of the slave. It is only when such hideous rites are consciously engrafted on the usages of a people already far in advance of such a semi-barbarous childhood, as in the adoption of the Inquisition by Spain at the commencement of its modern history, that they prove utterly baneful; because the nation is already past that stage of progress in which it can naturally outgrow them.