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 Was it by the ancestry of the present Indian tribes of North America, or by a distinct and long-superseded race?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 with _Beshekee_, 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.