By OBBM Network Editorial Staff

Derived from an episode of The Buried Archive.

Imagine a civilization so advanced that it could extract nearly 2 billion pounds of copper from the earth, leaving behind only hints of its existence. This is the story of the ancient copper miners of Lake Superior, a mystery that has puzzled researchers for centuries. The Ojibwe people have long spoken of a civilization that came before them, a people who were skilled in the art of copper mining and left behind only remnants of their existence.

The Copper Deposits of Lake Superior

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is home to one of the most extraordinary mineral deposits in the world. Native copper, pure and metallic, can be found in the region, sometimes in nuggets, sometimes in sheets, and sometimes in masses weighing thousands of pounds. Geologists estimate that there were originally between 1.5 and 2 billion pounds of accessible native copper in the region.

The modern world discovered the extent of this deposit in the 1840s, when American mining companies moved in and began what they called the Copper Rush. However, they quickly ran into a problem: the copper was already gone. Not all of it, but vast quantities of it. The mining engineers of the 1840s found it difficult to explain the ancient mine workings, which included pits dug into the earth, some of them 40, 50, 60 feet deep, tunnels, drainage systems, wooden platforms, mauls, and stone hammers.

The Ojibwe Oral Tradition

The Ojibwe people have a rich oral tradition that speaks of a civilization that came before them. The elders described a people who arrived from the east, from across the great water, and were skilled in the art of copper mining. They were described as having lighter complexions and being organized and purposeful. The Ojibwe oral tradition explicitly describes the extraction of copper on a massive scale, and then the people’s departure, loading the copper onto vessels and leaving.

As one Ojibwe elder described, ‘They came for the copper. They did not establish permanent settlements in the way that an agricultural society plants itself in a landscape. They came, worked, and disappeared.’ The question of where they went and what happened to the copper remains a mystery.

The Search for Answers

Researchers have been searching for answers to this question for decades. The archaeological record of Native American copper use in the pre-Columbian period is real and documented, but it is nowhere near 2 billion pounds. The copper mining at Lake Superior is a problem that European archaeometallurgists have been quietly circling for decades. The isotopic fingerprinting of Bronze Age copper has become a significant area of research, and some of the isotopic analyses conducted on Bronze Age European artifacts have returned signatures that match Lake Superior copper with an uncomfortable precision.

As researchers continue to delve deeper into the history of the region, they are faced with a daunting question: what happened to the copper and the people who mined it? The answer to this question has the potential to rewrite the history of the region and challenge our current understanding of the ancient world.

In conclusion, the story of the ancient copper miners of Lake Superior is a mystery that continues to puzzle researchers. The Ojibwe oral tradition and the archaeological record provide clues, but the answer to the question of what happened to the copper and the people who mined it remains elusive. Further research is needed to uncover the secrets of this ancient civilization and to shed light on the history of the region.

The full episode of The Buried Archive is available on OBBM Network TV.

Watch The Buried Archive on OBBM Network TV: https://www.obbmnetwork.tv/series/the-buried-archive-208380