Source.—Samuel Hearne's A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean. London, 1795.

After a sleep of five or six hours we once more set out, and walked eighteen or nineteen miles to the South South East, when we arrived at one of the copper mines, which lies, from the river's mouth about South South East, distant about twenty-nine or thirty miles.

This mine, if it deserve that appellation, is no more than an entire jumble of rocks and gravel, which has been rent many ways by an earthquake. Through these ruins there runs a small river; but no part of it, at the time I was there, was more than knee-deep.

The Indians who were the occasion of my undertaking this journey, represented this mine to be so rich and valuable, that if a factory were built at the river, a ship might be ballasted with the ore, instead of stone; and that with the same ease and dispatch as is done with stones at Churchill River. By their account the hills were entirely composed of that metal, all in handy lumps, like a heap of pebbles. But their account differed so much from the truth, that I and almost all my companions expended near four hours in search of some of this metal, with such poor success, that among us all only one piece of any size could be found. This, however, was remarkably good, and weighed above four pounds. I believe the copper has formerly been in much greater plenty; for in many places, both on the surface and in the cavities and crevices of the rocks, the stones are much tinged with verdigris.

It may not be unworthy the notice of the curious, or undeserving a place in my Journal, to remark that the Indians imagine that every bit of copper they find resembles some object in nature; but, by what I saw of the large piece, and some smaller ones which were found by my companions, it requires a great share of invention to make this out. I found that different people had different ideas on the subject, for the large piece of copper above mentioned had not been found long before it had twenty different names ... at last it was generally allowed to resemble an Alpine hare couchant: for my part, I must confess that I could not see it had the least resemblance to any thing to which they compared it....

Before Churchill River was settled by the Hudson's Bay Company, which was not more than fifty years previous to this journey being undertaken, the Northern Indians had no other metal but copper among them, except a small quantity of iron-work, which a party of them who visited York Fort about the year 1713 or 1714 purchased; and a few pieces of old iron found at Churchill River, which had undoubtedly been left there by Captain Monk. This being the case, numbers of them from all quarters used every summer to resort to these hills in search of copper; of which they made hatchets, ice-chisels, bayonets, knives, awls, arrow-heads, etc. The many paths that had been beaten by the Indians on these occasions, and which are yet, in many places, very perfect, especially on the dry ridges and hills, is surprising; in the valleys and marshy grounds, however, they are mostly grown over with herbage, so as not to be discerned.

The Copper Indians set a great value on their native metal even to this day; and prefer it to iron for almost every use except that of a hatchet, a knife, and an awl; for these three necessary implements copper makes but a very poor substitute.