MINING, METALLURGY, AND SCIENCE
Mining operations were carried on in different parts of the continent,
but in a primitive, limited way. Some of the most extensive was the
mining for flint with which to make stone implements, mentioned before.
The mining was done by means of fire and cold water alternately
applied, and this was the method used in all mining operations on the
continent, so far as is now known, except in the steatite or soapstone
mining. But, even in Europe, until the invention of gunpowder, the fire
method was employed, and in one or two localities where fuel is plenty
it is said to be still considered an economical manner of extracting
ore. In the Far West, where the rocks and ledges were more exposed,
veins were discovered where the calcedony, or jasper, or other stone
desired for stone implements could be easily knocked out. It was then
carried away to some comfortable site and wrought into shapes. Along
Western rivers one occasionally comes upon a spot where the ground is
littered with “chips,” rejects, broken arrow-heads, and also perfect
ones, the latter probably having been dropped and lost; or possibly in
some way not being satisfactory to the arrow-makers.
In working out soapstone vessels of the larger kind, the mining and
rough shaping were frequently, if not always, accomplished at one and
the same time.[253] Holmes describes the methods employed as follows:
“When a sufficient area of the solid stone had been uncovered, the
workmen proceeded with pick and chisel to detach such portions as
were desired. If this surface happened to be uneven, the projections
or convexities were utilized, and the cutting was not difficult; if
the rock was massive and the surface flat, a circular groove was cut,
outlining the mass to be removed, and the cutting was continued until
a depth was reached corresponding to the height of the utensil to be
made; then, by undercutting, the nucleus was detached or so far severed
that it could be broken off by means of sledges or levers. If the
stone happened to be laminated, a circular groove was cut through at
right angles to the bedding, and the discoid mass was removed without
the need of undercutting.... A notable feature of the cutting out of
these masses of stone is the attendant shaping of the mass which was
rudely sculptured as the work went on, the contour of the vessel being
approximately developed. Although I have seen no good examples of this
class, it is confidently stated by others that rude nodes were carved
at opposite ends of the mass as incipient handles, and that excavation
of the bowl was begun, so that when severed from the stem the vessel
was already well under way.”[254] These vessels were usually, in their
largest size, about two feet long, one foot or more in width, and about
seven or eight inches deep. Some are nearly circular. The tools used
were of stone, wood, bone, and horn, but chiefly of stone in the form
of chisels and picks. Some of the trenches formed in cutting out this
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]
It must not be forgotten that before the arrival of white men, and even
to this day in certain localities, copper appeared about as valuable
as gold. If the Lake Superior mines had been gold instead of copper it
would not greatly have enhanced the value of the product in the opinion
of the Amerinds of the locality and their customers. They worked their
way down into the rock which carried native copper and broke off
nodules and fragments as they proceeded. Some of the pits were eighteen
or twenty feet deep, and in one case a huge bowlder of copper was found
lying on oak supports several feet from the bottom. This mass had
been denuded of every projection, and the supposition generally has
been that it was being elevated to the surface by means of the wood
underpinning. This may have been the case, but it is possible that the
underpinning was inserted as the miners went down on the vein, because
the bowlder was too large to cut or handle. They therefore _left it
where found_ and proceeded to mine under and around for the smaller
pieces. The large one was ten feet long, three feet wide, nearly two
feet thick, and weighed over six tons. Other bowlders of greater weight
have been found, moved, as is supposed, a considerable distance from
the original bed, but the same hypothesis might apply to these that is
suggested above. The famous Ontonagon bowlder,[257] which was found
on the river of that name, is a copper mass weighing somewhere near
five tons and has been the cause of much speculation as to how it
came there. The probability is that it was left by glacial action on
the surface, not far from, if not on, the spot where found. It is not
likely that the Amerinds would take the trouble to move so large a mass
far. If they had possessed the power of cutting it up, they would have
done it near its source, and the same remark applies to the bowlders
of copper that it has been supposed they were trying to lift to the
surface. Furthermore, if the Ontonagon bowlder were transported by them
to its position, and if the large bowlders in the mines were destined
for the surface and transportation in bulk, we ought to find somewhere
else records or evidences of the presence of great bowlders, but
nothing of the kind has been found; no such large copper mass has been
discovered in any ruined Amerind town, or on any Amerind village or
town site. It seems that the Ontonagon bowlder was a natural deposit.
These huge masses of copper were troublesome to modern miners with the
most approved machinery.
It must not be supposed that all the Amerinds of that region were
miners, any more than that all the Amerinds of any other region were
equally developed or skilful, or all did the same things. The Navajos
of the South-west are some of them expert silver-workers, yet their
neighbours, for the most part, can do little or nothing in that line.
But that is no reason for supposing the Navajos to be a race distinct
and apart from the rest. No more were the workers of the Lake Superior
copper mines any different from their neighbours in general. They had a
knack of working the native copper out of the ground, and they worked
it just as others mined for flint. When they ceased it was probably
because they had worked out all the easy places they could find, or
that their trade fell off owing to the introduction by the Europeans of
manufactured articles of copper and iron.
[Illustration: ESKIMO STONE MAUL.]
In one of the ancient pits a hemlock with 395 annular rings was
growing, and this has led to the supposition that the mines were worked
before the time of Columbus. The excavations undoubtedly extended over
a long period; from before Columbus to after Champlain. But it was over
three hundred years after Columbus before the first explorations of the
Lake Superior region were made by General Cass, and hence the tree had
time to grow since that date. On the whole, there seems to be no reason
for supposing that anyone but Amerinds worked these mines; Amerinds
lastly of Algonquin stock, though other stocks probably worked them
also.
The method of utilising this copper in the Northern regions, that is,
north of Mexico, was as primitive as the method of extracting it from
the ground. It seems often, perhaps generally, to have been hammered
into shape cold and then finished by grinding. Doubtless they knew how
to melt it out of the rock on a small scale, allowing it to drop or run
into a mould scraped into the surface of a flat stone, somewhat the
shape of the article to be made, which would afterward be finished with
hammering and grinding.
The objects found in the Mississippi valley, formed of copper, which
are probably the unaided work of the Amerinds, are chisels, arrow-
and spear-heads, knives, and perhaps certain thin plates wrought with
designs in the repoussé method. No camp utensils or other objects
have been found demanding a knowledge of the properties of the metal
sufficient to work it into articles requiring a quantity of copper to
be manipulated at once. Cushing maintains[258] that the production of
thin plates was an easy matter and he shows how the Zuñis made them,
but admitting that the Amerinds of the Mississippi valley could make
these plates, it does not prove that they did, for as copper in various
forms was very early an article of trade, it is possible that they used
the imported article. Cushing explains how the Zuñis, by a process of
alternate hammering and annealing and then grinding, produced thin
plates, which being pressed with a sharp tool would receive a design.
This pressed-out portion could be ground down with a flat slab to sever
it from the ragged edges of the sheet, and also to make any desired
perforations. The resulting turned-up edges could be hammered flat and
they then would be as if cut by a shear.
Cushing explains how in the South-west ore was quarried and roasted in
an open fire, and then smelted in a sort of oven, the copper or other
metal appearing finally at the bottom. Primitive furnaces of this kind
he found in the Salt River valley. The singular thing about it is the
almost total absence of metal objects in the ruins of the South-west.
Aside from several small copper “hawk” bells found in the Salado and
other Arizona ruins, I have not heard of any metal object that was not
positively European being found in any mound or ruin of the South-west,
with one exception.[259] In 1875 a man in my employ in southern Utah
told me that several years before that time his uncle either had found
in a mound in southern Nevada or northern Arizona, or had obtained from
some natives who found it, a small gold image, which he had melted
down for the value of the metal it contained. At the time I thought
this tale belonged with that of the “lost mine,” but I am now inclined
to see a fact in it. It is quite within bounds that one of the small
Mexican or Chiriquian figures may have found its way up into this
region.
[Illustration: SMALL FIGURE OF A FROG IN BASE METAL, PLATED WITH GOLD,
CHIRIQUI]
If there had been a wide knowledge of copper and other metal-working in
the South-west in the olden time, there ought to be signs of it in the
ruins other than an oven, and even the latter has been rarely found.
Coronado and his chroniclers, Espejo, and all the list of early writers
on that region, never, so far as I have been able to note, mention
copper or any other metal articles. In fact, from the testimony of
literature, history, and actual excavation among the ruins so far as
carried at present, we should conclude that none of the people of that
region knew about metals or the manner of working them before the year
1540.[260]
New Jersey also furnished the Amerinds some copper and those living in
the Atlantic region had ornaments, arrow-heads, and pipes supposed to
have been made from it or from Lake Superior copper. Brinton attributes
the scarcity of specimens in our collections to “its being bought up
and melted by the whites, rather than to its limited employment.”[261]
A few examples have been found, but if they had been plentiful there
should be discovered many implements antedating the arrival of the
whites. On Brinton’s hypothesis it would be necessary to assume that
there were few made before the coming of the whites or they could not
have been so easily bought up. As a matter of fact, the finds in copper
articles compared with the area occupied are astonishingly few, if
the natives turned off the amount of work some writers would have us
believe.
[Illustration: COPPERS FROM THE NORTH-WEST COAST.
These are made of thin sheets of copper, and grow valuable by sale
or exchange, according to peculiar customs. Some rise as high as
$5000 or $6000
Painted design in black, representing a sea monster with bear’s head
Painted design representing a hawk
]
On the North-west coast an article of great importance and value is
the “copper.” In former days these coppers were made of native metal
obtained from the mines of that region, and they must have been made
by cold hammering in the way that Cushing describes. To-day they are
made of metal obtained from the whites. The coppers are thin plates
of a peculiar shape; the nearest common thing that they resemble is a
gauntleted glove with the fingers cut off and with the gauntlet the
top. Across the wrist runs a ridge from one side to the other, and
from the middle of this another ridge extends downward to the bottom,
thus making with the first the shape of a letter T below the flaring
part. “The top is called the face,” says Boas in his valuable and
interesting account of the Kwakiutls, “the lower part the hind end.
The front of the copper is covered with black lead, in which a face
representing the crest animal (totem) of the owner is graven. These
coppers have the same function which bank notes of high denominations
have with us. The actual value of the piece of copper is small but it
is made to represent a large number of blankets, and can always be sold
for blankets. A white blanket at fifty cents is the unit. The value
is not arbitrarily set but depends upon the amount of property given
away in the festival at which the copper is sold. The oftener a copper
is sold the higher its value.”[262] Every copper has its own special
name, representing its peerless quality, or an animal; as, the killer
whale, the bear face, beaver face, etc. As ability to destroy valuable
property amongst these people distinguishes the great and wealthy,
these valuable coppers are demolished piecemeal till only the portion
with the T upon it remains. Sometimes all the fragments are bought up
by another person, who rivets them together and the copper then has a
greater price than ever. A broken copper is a more important piece of
property than a whole one, because the possession of it shows that its
owner is rich enough to destroy property. These plates are in use from
Yakutat to Comox. Sometimes a copper is cast into the sea.
[Illustration: HOLLOW SILVER BEADS OF NAVAJO MAKE, ARIZONA]
In the South-west it is not the house-building Pueblo who is the
metal-worker _par excellence_ but the semi-pastoral Navajo, who,
besides his flocks and herds, possesses a wealth of silver ornaments
that runs up into the thousands. Silver and copper ornaments are turned
out by the native silversmith not only for his own people but for
whites also, and a considerable trade exists between the Navajos and
other Amerinds in this native jewelry as well as in blankets. If you
desire to have an article made, you give the silver it is to contain,
usually in dollar pieces, and an equal quantity as wages. The objects
manufactured are globular and semi-globular buttons; bracelets like
a letter C in form and shape, buckles, rings, plate for the bridle,
tobacco canisters, flat buttons, beads, and various discs, and other
ornamental objects. These are often engraved quite artistically, and
sometimes elaborately. Copper seems to be a valued metal for ornaments,
and I have seen copper bracelets on a Navajo woman made exactly the
same as silver ones. The Navajo silversmith is up to a trick or two
as well as his white neighbour. At Manuelito there was a white trader
who often sold Navajo bracelets to passengers from the railway trains
that ran within a hundred feet or less of his door, and he was a man
who prided himself on “square” dealing. One day a gentleman who had
purchased several silver bracelets rushed in full of ire, demanding
the return of his money for the worthless bracelets which he threw
upon the counter. They were copper. The trader took down a string
containing a number, from which the returned ones had been originally
taken, and which he had purchased for silver, and found that every one
was copper. They had been thinly washed over by the Navajo smith with
silver.
[Illustration: NAVAJO SILVER WORK, ARIZONA
Engraved button
Bracelet
Usually about 2½ inches long
]
It has sometimes been suggested that the Navajos learned their
metal-working from the Pueblos, but if so it was a lesson obtained
in quite modern times, for the Pueblos themselves, as has been
mentioned, appear to have known nothing about the working of metals
before the arrival of the Spaniards. The art of metal-working both
among the Navajos and the Pueblos is probably a modern acquisition.
Washington Matthews, writing about 1883, says: “Old white residents of
the Navajo country tell me that the art has improved greatly within
their recollection.”[263] It is likely that the Navajos, having a keen
perception of mechanical matters, had wrought copper to a limited
degree and that through their intercourse with, and absorption of,
Pueblo tribes, this tendency was developed by a certain amount of
knowledge in this line which the Pueblos acquired from Mexicans who
followed in the train of the early Spanish explorers; but this skill
was not given a real impetus till after the South-west fell into our
possession, when tools and trade rapidly developed.[264]
When in 1871 I encountered Navajos for the first time, on their way to
trade with the Mormons, I do not remember seeing them have any silver
ornaments. This was so soon after their liberation from government
confinement following their war with us that they were, naturally,
very poor. But if they had before possessed much silver they would
have concealed it, and by the time I saw the ones referred to they
would again have been wearing it and trying to trade it for horses,
which they sadly needed. The Navajo silver-work is distinguished by
an extremely artistic quality. Their tools and appliances are very
rude and simple. As their method of operation is probably similar
to that of Amerinds who have not been observed as closely, I will
condense here some of the important details as given by Washington
Matthews.[265] Only a few have attained a degree of proficiency that
enables them to make large hollow articles, like flasks and the like,
but there are many who can turn out bracelets, buttons, buckles, etc.
Their appliances consist “of a forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles,
moulds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, awls, cold chisels, matrix and
die for moulding buttons, wooden implements used in grinding buttons,
wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and materials for soldering
(blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease, wire, and borax),
materials for polishing (sandpaper, emery paper, powdered sandstone,
sand, ashes, and solid stone), and materials for whitening (a native
mineral substance—almogen—salt and water).” The forge is built up with
several old boards, an old box, or, when these cannot be procured, of
sticks. The nozzle of the bellows, being wood, is kept back from the
fire several inches and a continuation built in the mud with which the
fire-bed is constructed. The bellows is a tube of goatskin, a foot long
and ten inches in diameter, distended by two or three wooden hoops. The
back of it is a disc of wood with a valve in it. The nozzle is of four
pieces of wood tied together and having a hole an inch square through
the centre, the outside being dressed off till it is approximately
round. Any old piece of iron, like the king-bolt of a wagon, driven
into a log serves for an anvil, though in the absence of this a hard
stone is sufficient. They make their own crucibles of clay, generally
three-cornered, about two inches in every dimension, and baked hard.
“The moulds in which they cast their ingots, cut in soft sandstone with
a home-made chisel, are so easily formed that the smith leaves them
behind when he moves his residence.” “Metallic hemispheres for beads
and buttons are made in a concave matrix by means of a round-pointed
bolt.” Several matrices are made on a single bar of iron and a bolt
that will fit the smallest is sufficient to work all. They prepare
charcoal by building a large fire, and when it is “reduced to a mass of
glowing coals they smother it well with earth and leave it to cool.”
Blowpipes are made by themselves out of brass wire hammered flat and
then bent into a tube. The engraving and chasing of the objects made
are done with the sharpened end of a file, or any other suitable sharp
piece of steel. It will be seen from the foregoing that the Navajo
silversmith is dependent to a very great extent on materials and tools
obtained from the whites, and without these the practice of his art
would be difficult. Schools for mechanical processes like dyeing,
metal-working, etc., would accomplish much good among these people.
They could readily be taught to use the lathe and other tools, and
would become good metal-workers.
[Illustration: KWAKIUTL CHIEF HOLDING HIS COPPER, NORTH-WEST COAST
The value of a copper is expressed in white single blankets of
American make at 50 cents each. It is rated according to the amount
of property given away at the festival where the copper is sold,
and each sale adds to its value proportionally. He who can break a
copper and cast away the fragment is considered great.
]
Prescott says of the Mexicans: “They were as well acquainted with the
mineral as with the vegetable treasures of their kingdom. Silver, lead,
and tin they drew from the mines of Tasco; copper from the mountains
of Zacotollan. These were taken, not only from the crude masses on
the surface, but from veins wrought in the solid rock, into which
they opened extensive galleries.... Gold, found on the surface, or
gleaned from the beds of rivers, was cast into bars, or, in the form
of dust, made part of the regular tribute of the southern provinces
of the empire.”[266] Their mining was doubtless carried on by the
fire-and-water process used by the Northern people, while gold from
the river beds was possibly obtained in much the same manner as I have
been told the Amerinds of Peru get it. Selecting a river that was known
to be rich in the metal, a series of stone “riffles” would be arranged
in the best place at the very lowest stage of the water. Then when the
freshets came and swept the gravel across these rude affairs the gold
would remain lodged there and on the subsidence of the stream could be
readily taken out. There was undoubtedly a vast quantity of gold in
the possession of the Mexicans and Central Americans, but this fact
does not signify that they conducted mining operations on a large or
continuous scale, for the metal had been accumulating, in the shape of
idols and ornaments, for centuries. There was little lost or worn away,
as they did not use it as a general medium of exchange. Their plumes
in their head-dresses were often set in gold; rings of gold were worn
in their ears and on their arms, and the same metal was wrought into a
great many forms of ornament.
Cortes ordered, says Valentini, eight thousand arrow-heads of
copper and they were “made ready for delivery in a single week.” It
seems, therefore, the Aztecs were accustomed to handling copper in
considerable quantities. It is said they made a mixture of copper and
tin which they used for tools, and certain implements and objects are
found with a percentage of tin in them, but nevertheless their keenest
weapons and their most serviceable tools were made of obsidian, which
was also the case with the Mayas. Their hardened copper was useful
for some purposes, but they were unable to harden it sufficiently to
sustain an edge. For cutting stone in two they used, as the Eskimo
does to-day, a thin blade and sand. In their case the blade was copper
tempered with tin, and in the Eskimo’s case it was formerly probably a
thin blade of bone, while now it is an old steel saw. Silver as well
as gold and copper was known to the tribes of the Central regions of
America, and lead also was one of their metals, though little was done
with it. There is a tendency to exaggerate the mechanical as well as
the art skill displayed in objects that were made on this continent,
before the whites came, or that were not discovered till recently.
The reason for this seems to be that we love mystery and it is too
tame to refer the finds to the ordinary “Indian,” who in the popular
mind has no ability in any direction, so they are ascribed to that
“mysterious” race that we have tried in vain to find some evidence of
besides mystery. Daniel Wilson gives an example of how this mystery
bubble bursts on the slightest accurate investigation. Some tools
were found in the neighbourhood of Brockville, Canada, of which Dr.
Reynolds, who exhibited them, stated: “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.”[267]
When these Brockville relics were submitted to careful examination it
appeared that they were not “different in any material respect from
the native copper of Lake Superior.”[268] This was all very well, but
Wilson was not satisfied with Reynolds’s ascribing these relics to the
“present Indian race” and goes on to say: “The evidences of antique
sepulture, however, are unmistakable; and other proofs suggest a
different origin,” and he proceeds to call in Squier’s aid and ascribes
them forthwith to our fabulous friends, the “Moundbuilders.” One of
his proofs was a terra-cotta mask found with the articles, in which
he saw a skill beyond that of the “Indians,” but which in reality,
judging by the illustration he gives of it, is nothing remarkable. Yet
Wilson continues: “It cannot admit of doubt that in them [the mining
operations] 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,”[269]
etc. This conclusion he is assisted to by certain quotations from
some of the old natives and from Claude Allouez. These convince him;
but a little later on he quotes Alexander Henry’s mention of his visit
to the Ontonagon, who says: “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.”[270] If they made bracelets and spoons, they probably
made other articles, “melting the lumps and spreading it in sheets” to
smooth it with stones, as the chief described to Champlain.
The Chiriquians seem to have possessed a skill in metallurgical
operations unsurpassed by any other people on the continent. Whether
they used gold dust in quills, and T shapes of tin or copper for
currency as did the Mexicans, does not appear, but they were skilled
in metal-working. They understood smelting, alloying, and plating,
and apparently were extremely skilful at casting. As before noted, no
weapons or implements have been found of metal, all the metal objects
being ornaments, and “almost exclusively,” says Holmes, “pendent
ornaments.” “They were, for the most part, cast in moulds, and in nine
cases out of ten represent animal forms. A few bells are found, all of
which are bronze. Pieces formed of alloyed metal are usually washed
or plated with gold.”[271] Many of these valuable relics of the past
have been disposed of for their money value and duly melted up to be
made into something modern. The gold is usually alloyed with copper
in varying proportions, though pure metals were also used. From the
fact that the alloy is so variable it would seem that the combination
already existed before it came into the Chiriquian hands; that is, it
was perhaps a natural combination.
Holmes believes almost all these metal objects were cast in moulds,
as noted, but he mentions other processes by which they may have
been made. They have the appearance of having been modelled in some
plastic material, and then coated with clay, when by the action of
heat the wax runs away, leaving the hollow clay as a mould to receive
the metal. This is the _cire perdue_ process. Small figures of
resin, in all respects modelled like those found in metal, have been
discovered in the graves. This seems to add to the probability of a
Chiriqui acquaintance with the _cire perdue_ process. Another method
suggested is that the various metallic parts of a figure were enclosed
in a clay matrix and then heated till the parts melted and joined,
but this appears to be too uncertain and difficult to have warranted
its practice. Still another method advanced is the coating of a wax
figure with sheet gold and melting the wax, when a hollow gold figure
would be the result. This is possible but not probable. Yet one more
suggestion is that the gold was reduced to an amalgam with mercury,
and thus modelled, when the mercury being driven off by heat the gold
figure would remain. One difficulty with this theory seems to be that
there is no evidence that the Chiriquians knew mercury. As many of the
objects are washed or plated with pure gold, it would seem that the
pure gold was the most difficult to obtain, and that, as before stated,
the gold-copper alloy was a natural one. There is neither engraving nor
carving on these objects; and the objects themselves are the same crude
productions that are indicative of pure Amerind art everywhere on the
continent. Some are more crude than others, but all Amerind sculpture,
modelling, and carving are essentially rude and primitive. In the form
and artistic execution of the Chiriqui objects of gold and copper we
may be positive that there is no European influence, whatever there
may be in the method of production. It is probable that the objects
are entirely native, and they offer another lesson that the tribes of
North America were everywhere working and inventing, and gradually
conquering the secrets of nature just as our ancestors did and just as
we are still doing to-day; some doing more, others less; some being
quick, and others clumsy, ignorant, and dull. The bells are usually of
bronze, having the shape of our common sleigh-bell, and are frequently
gold-plated. The bells found in Arizona are of this description but not
plated.
[Illustration: TRIPLE BELL OR RATTLE OF GOLD FROM NEAR PANAMA]
[Illustration: BRONZE MEXICAN BELL]
Besides their sciences of mining and metallurgy, the Amerinds
understood some others, like the manufacture of glue and cement, the
production of paints and dyes, and astronomical reckonings. True, some
of these are more properly classed as arts, but requiring knowledge
that may be called scientific, they may be considered under that head.
Paints were usually obtained from clays and ochres. I once traced to
its source the red paint formerly used by the Amerinds of southern Utah
and found it in the second great bend of the Colorado River, about
three thousand feet below the surface and about two thousand feet above
the river, as the canyon is there about five thousand feet deep. The
paint was in a cave the mouth of which opened on a little gulch, and
the entrance was so small and narrow, and in such hard rock, that we
could barely wriggle our way on our bellies, along the eighteen feet
of passage, before we reached the cavern, thirty feet long, fifteen
wide, and high enough for a man to stand erect in. There were several
side passages leading farther, but this seemed to be the main cave, and
all over the walls were the marks of the sharp sticks with which the
Amerinds cut out the ochre. Our guide stated that it was customary to
send in the boys and squaws after the paint. The ochre was of a rich
red, but no match for the red lead and vermilion obtained by trade with
the whites. The remote and difficult position of this cave and its
narrow and repelling entrance show how eager the natives were to secure
paint. At the time of our visit, however, the mouth was considerably
overgrown with small brush, proving that for several years no visit
had been made. In every region there were special places for obtaining
paints, and Brinton states that in New Castle County, Delaware, the
vicinity of streams now known as White Clay and Red Clay creeks
furnished red, white, and blue clays in such abundance that they were
called by the natives _Walamink_, or Place of Paint.[272] Charcoal was
used for black.
Of dyes they had a fair assortment, but they were not able to obtain
the brilliant hues they now secure by means of the “Diamond” and other
aniline dyes. A black dye was made by the Navajos from the twigs and
leaves of the aromatic sumac, a native yellow ochre, and the gum of
the piñon.[273] These same Amerinds have three different processes for
dyeing yellow. The first produces a lemon yellow, the second an old
gold, and the third still a different shade.
[Illustration: BRONZE BELLS, PLATED OR WASHED WITH GOLD, CHIRIQUI
These were cast in moulds. The largest is 1¼ in. high and ¾ in.
diameter
]
Red dyes are also made by the Navajos; and the Mokis possess the
skill to produce several colours, one being a deep, rich blue.
These processes are all too long to admit of description here.[274]
The Lenapé and other Eastern Amerinds used the juice of the wild,
sweet-scented crab apple to fix the dyes, while among the Mokis the
liquid generally used is urine. It must have required long and careful
experiment before these people acquired their knowledge of dyeing, for
some of the preparations are rather intricately compounded, but here
is evidence once more that the Amerind was by no means a vagabond, but
was constantly at work devising and inventing. Glue they made from
fish in some localities, and in others by boiling down the skin from
the head of the bison or elk, or the hoofs of animals. Cement for
attaching arrow-heads and for other purposes was made by combining
pine gum with other substances. In all these mixtures and combinations
the proportions were either guessed at or measured, never weighed, for
there was no scale or balance in use, so far as now known, in North
America, though certain round stones from Mexico in Madrid have been
supposed to be weights.
Remarkable progress had been made in many tribes in the matter of
calculating time, and the Mayas and Mexicans had advanced so far that
they were able to calculate the length of the year with accuracy.
What implements they employed is not known, but they were probably of
wood and stone, the latter of the form of the calendar stone, before
mentioned. Other tribes farther north made their calculations in a less
perfect way, yet they did and do keep time records. The Sun priests
of the Mokis use “what may be called a calendar stick,” says Fewkes.
“These sticks are about a foot and a half long, and are divided into
two parts, one section being round, the other flattened on one side.
The round section is girt by fifteen shallow parallel grooves, and
occupies about a third of the whole length of the stick. The remaining
two-thirds of the stick have a number of parallel grooves or notches
cut upon the flattened surface. Five of the latter grooves, which are
situated at equal distances, are deeper than the remaining, and between
each pair there are four smaller parallel grooves arranged at equal
distances. The space in which these grooves are cut occupies about
one-half of the flat portion of the stick. The remaining half, or that
more distant from the round section, is divided into two parts, which
are separated by a rectangular space, in the centre of which there is
a depression called the _nā-tā-l-tci_. On one side of the depression
there are three notches, on the other seven.”[275] The Eastern Amerinds
computed time in their own several ways, some computing twelve, others
thirteen moons to the year, usually reckoning from one planting time to
another. The Dakotas, Chipeways, and others reckoned by winters.
In the Zuñi country, still existed a few years ago, if it does not
to-day, a primitive astronomical station. It is a rude little structure
containing an erect slab of sandstone adorned with the circular face of
the sun, and it is used, as it was long ago, for determining the Zuñi
chronology.
The Aztec year had eighteen months of twenty days each and that of the
Mayas was the same. The Maya week had thirteen days, and the days were
counted from one to thirteen continuously throughout the year—that
is, each month did not begin with 1 but with whatever number happened
to fall on that day; it might be 2 or 5 or 8 or 13 or in fact any
number up to 13. The eighteen months gave them only 360 days, but
they intercalated at the end of each year the five days necessary to
round it out. At least so the early Spanish writers state, though
Thomas, who has given close attention to this subject, has said that
he felt doubtful on that point.[276] Prescott states without question,
concerning the Aztecs: “Five complementary days, as in Egypt, were
added, to make up the full number of three hundred and sixty-five. They
belonged to no month and were regarded as peculiarly unlucky. A month
was divided into four weeks of five days each.”[277]
[Illustration: SMALL METAL FIGURE, CHIRIQUI
Copper-gold alloy
]
The six hours over the 365 days which we make up in our leap year the
Aztecs allowed to run to the end of their fifty-two year cycle, when
they intercalated it all at one time, the actual period being twelve
and one half days. This brought them “within an almost inappreciable
fraction,” says Prescott, “to the exact length of the tropical year, as
established by the most accurate observations.”[278] The Aztecs had
a second calendar used by the priests for keeping their own records
and making their own calculations, and doubtless the Maya had the same
practice.
The Cakchiquel year consisted of 366 days. That of the Maya was 365.
The former, therefore, says Goodman, “could have no fixed date for its
beginning, relative to solar or terrestrial phenomena, but must revolve
regularly through the seasons.... The year might begin at the summer
or the winter solstice, at the vernal or the autumnal equinox, or any
other period.”[279]
A great Maya event, which Goodman cites, was “the observance of the
280,800th year of their era.... Nearly all the other dates in the
inscriptions of Copan and Quirigua either lead up to or recede from
it. It was the beginning of the last quarter of their grand era,
the completion of which, it is perhaps needless to say, they did
not, as a nation, live to see.”[279] But when we touch this subject
of chronology it at once opens up a vast and complicated field of
investigation. Goodman goes on to say: “How account then for such an
immense period?... The most reasonable answer that suggests itself is
that they had a juster appreciation of the antiquity of the earth than
most nations have had, and that they began their chronology with the
supposed date of its creation.... I look upon the Maya chronological
scheme as ranking among the most marvellous creations of the human
intellect.”[279]
[Illustration: SILVER PLATE WITH SPANISH COAT OF ARMS,
from a mound in Mississippi
]
[Illustration: MOKI RATTLE OF ANIMAL HOOFS.]