Upper left: Ornamental Head Plume Sheet Copper Representing a Bird Burial. About fourteen inches long, three inches wide. Rosemound, Copper Co., Arkansas. Upper right: Gorget of Sheet Copper Showing Swastika Cross, eight inches in diameter. Burial Mound, Alabama. Lower left: Duck bill pendant of copper with Swastika Cross. About half-size. Burial Mound, Alabama. Lower right: Reel shaped ceremonial object about six inches across, one-sixteenth inch thick. Hammered copper. Burial Mound, Alabama.

flints, shell beads, stone weapons, figurines in terra cotta and fragments of decorated pottery. Again other mounds have been opened and found to contain no metal implements of any kind suggesting a possible paleolithic age, but burials in which have been found brass rings, medals, metal kettles, sheet copper, glass beads and other articles of European manufacture are regarded as post-Columbian interments. When the white men began to arrive on our shores they brought with them many objects for trade with the Indians, usullly metal articles of which the Red man was fond; and these prizes were buried with them. In opening a mound it is most important to note everything found in it, whether near the surface or deep down, and an analysis made of metal objects found so as to discover their origin and thus determine whether the burial was before intercourse with the whites or afterwards. A chemical analysis of the copper objects will decide if the metal is Lake Superior native copper so abundant in the United States; or copper of foreign origin reduced from impure ores. The American copper is remarkably pure assaying 99.90% fine with traces of Silver and Iron, whereas foreign copper rarely assayed 98% fine and always contained as impurities, nickel, cobalt, lead, arsenic, antimony, and sulphur in addition to small amounts of silver and iron. The following analysis made at the Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C., given to the writer will indicate the difference in the composition and purity of Lake Superior Native Copper and that of foreign manufacture as shown below:

The accurate analyses made by the government chemist at the Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C., of large samples of metal, show the extraordinary fineness of the native copper from the Lake Superior region, with less than 1/10 of one per cent. of impurity while imported copper objects and European copper contained at least 2% of impurity, so that the analysis of a metal object from a mound will decide at once if it was obtained from the White man or was an Indian manufacture of pre-Columbian origin. A number of assays, have been made of copper implements obtained from mounds, Indian camps and ancient village sites, and the following given here made for the writer are characteristic of pre-Columbian specimens.

No. 1. Portion of a hafted leaf shaped copper spear head, 41⁄2 in. long, broken off at the hafted part. It was found at an ancient Indian village camp site in Waupaca Co., Wisconsin, and not associated with any object of European manufacture. analysis yielded as follows:

The

Had the sample been entirely free from oxidation it would have assayed even a little higher of copper. No. 2. A spear or arrow head from an Indian burial site known as Muckwa village near New London, Wisconsin. It was broken off from the hafted end and was 45 mm. long, 15 mm. wide and 4 mm. thick, at the ridge on one side. It was covered with a thick scale of green and brown oxidation and showed the hammered marks of its manufacture.

It yielded as follows:

Copper.

Iron..

.99.52
0.48

No other foreign metals present.

No. 3. A copper awl 78 mm. long and 3 mm. thick about the middle part, tapering to a point at each end, and showed signs of

being hammered from a square shaped rod. The specimen showed some corrosion and oxidation or would have assayed a little higher per cent of copper.

The hardening of these specimens was produced by hammering the copper and not by making the alloy bronze, with tin. In fact among the great number of these copper specimens of pre-Columbian origin there is no evidence that the copper was ever melted or that a bronze alloy was known to these American Aborigines. Sir John Evans says in his work on "Bronze Implements" speaking of the objects of native copper from Wisconsin: "A part of America would seem to have entered on the Copper Age long before it was first brought into contact with European civilization towards the middle of the 16th century." It is only within very recent years that the knowledge of how extensive this primitive copper industry was, has become known and fully recognized.

In summing up then the evidence of a pre-Columbian copper industry for the American aborigines, it is based on the widespread use of copper and variety of objects made of it as displayed in our Museum collections. This extensive manufacture of copper implements of similar shape to take the place of the stone and bone articles formerly used indicating a familiarity with the metal and an appreciation of its advantages would seem to justify the claim of a primitive copper culture for the AmericanIndians, suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the Spaniards and the knowledge of the greater advantages of the use of iron and the terribly destructive weapons made of it.