material were twenty-five feet wide, sixteen feet deep, and seventy feet long. One described by Fowke near Culpeper, Va., is one hundred and fifty feet in diameter and of considerable depth, being filled with water and débris. Pits of varying depth and size from which steatite, jasper, rhyolite, and other materials have been extracted by the Amerinds are found in different parts of the continent. In Yucatan there are numerous well-like holes in the ground that were “pockets” of zahcab, and when this valued material was taken out the cavity was either left or transformed into the strange, well-like affairs, carefully walled up and covered over, called chultunes, the object of which is often a mystery.[255] [Illustration: AMERINDIAN METHOD OF MINING STEATITE FOR UTENSILS] Native metals, when discovered by the Amerinds, were mined in much the same way as the flint, the largest workings known being those at the Lake Superior copper mines, where copper of remarkable purity continues to furnish this continent and the world with an abundant supply. Doubtless most of the copper used on the North American continent prior to the Discovery was derived from these mines and distributed through the channels of Amerind trade. Bowlders or nuggets of this pure copper were treasured in the homes of the tribes of the northern lake region when first encountered by the whites, and the location of the outcrops, both on the mainland and on the islands, appears to have been well known to the Amerinds of that time. An Algonquin chief presented Champlain with a piece of copper a foot long and told him there were “large quantities” where he had obtained this. He also said “that they gathered it in lumps, and, having melted it, spread it in sheets, smoothing it with stones.”[256] The mining operations in the Michigan-Minnesota copper region were evidently carried on for a very long period in the laborious Amerind way, and in consequence at the time they were first noticed had the appearance of extensive operations by a few miners, leading to the erroneous supposition that they had been worked by some other race. [Illustration: CHIPPED SPADE]