wooden bowls, some of which were preserved by water in the mines. Mr. S. W. Hill communicated to Dr. Foster in 1872 the discovery of mining pits in Isle Royal, measuring fifty feet in depth.[72] In the Ontonagon region for thirty miles traces of the ancient miners abound. The idea that the Indians formerly worked these mines was abandoned shortly after their discovery. They possess no tradition of copper mines, nor did their ancestors visited by the Jesuit Fathers in the early part of the seventeenth century obtain any intelligence of mines, though they penetrated this region in 1660. They often mention the occurrence of loose masses of copper found in the shape of boulders, but could learn nothing from the Indians as to their origin. It is quite certain that no traditions were current among them on the subject. “Instead,” says Col. Whittlesey, “of viewing copper as an object of every day use, they regarded it as a sacred Manitou, and carefully preserved pieces of it wrapped up in skin in their lodges for many years; and this custom has been continued to modern times.”[73] Father Allouez, in his _Relation_, has described this custom.[74] Father Dablon, who shortly afterward visited the Lake Superior tribes, has described their superstitions concerning an island where the missionaries first met with copper.[75] That the Mound-builders were these ancient miners, there is abundant evidence. Col. Whittlesey has described a collection of copper implements from Carp River containing pieces of native silver, such as have often been found in the Ohio mounds.[76] We have already referred to this peculiarity of the Lake Superior copper. The use of copper by the Mound-builders was very general all the way from Wisconsin to the Gulf, and the labor involved in a journey of a thousand miles from the Ohio Valley to the copper regions, the toil of the summer’s mining, and the tedious transportation of the metal to their homes upon their backs, and by means of an imperfect system of navigation, indicates either industry and resolution such as no savage Indian ever possessed, or a condition of servitude in which thousands occupied a position of abject slavery. [Illustration: Aboriginal Stone Axes. Surface Finds.] [Illustration: Stone Mauls and Hammers. Surface Finds.] [Illustration: Copper Celts—the smaller from a Mound near Savannah, Tennessee. (Nat. Mus.)]