On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:49 AM, Sunshine49 wrote:

> I never realized there was copper in VA. in any great quantity.
That was the biggest part of the problem. There wasn't a great  
quantity, at least not enough to be particularly economically viable.

> I thought it was all traded down from the Great Lakes area. I know  
> it was highly prized by the natives. It would be interesting to  
> speculate why they traded it away in Va, and didn't keep the bulk  
> of it.
The Virgilina District copper has scant mention of copper nodules.  
Raw pure copper was what the NA's worked with, as they did not smelt  
the ores. It may be that the scant surface amounts had already been  
picked clean prior to European involvement. Then European settlers  
with mineral experience saw the ores and went after them.

> Did they carry it away and hide it elsewhere for safekeeping from  
> the whites?
By Indian traders I meant colonists who traded with Indians. The  
nearest and biggest trading center was at Occanneechee where the  
great trades routes converged. Byrd sent pack trains with 80 animals  
down there at the height of it. He got furs and skins back.

> Did they have to trade it to other tribes for items they were short  
> of, once the English interrupted their old ways and patterns?
That's a slight misapplication of intent. NA trade was astounding in  
its reach. A paper presented at a recent conference showed 4000BC  
trade in obsidian between PA, NY and another eastern state where the  
nearest obsidian source was Wyoming. That opened a few eyes. The  
English didn't disrupt old ways and patterns in the frontier as much  
as they used and augmented them for their own enrichment. Byrd made  
his fortune in the Indian trade. Granted, it declined over time due  
to European encroachment on NA territories but west of the Fall Line  
was still largely frontier for a good deal of the 18th century.

> So much we don't know about native cultures! Well, maybe there's  
> still hope of finding an old copper mine, last year they did find  
> that old mine in Stafford County that the natives had worked and  
> that they think John Smith visited. Just a few steps ahead of the  
> developers...
Whoa now, take that with a grain of salt. You have a hole in the  
ground that may have been a mine, but what came out of it is not  
definitely NA, and conjoining that with a site that Smith may have  
visited is pure speculation. The number of people running around  
looking at mineral veins in the 19th century in VA was astounding.  
You'd have to look at the geology, where it was in relation to the  
mine and see if NA's used any of the minerals in the mine, look at  
the toolmarks (there are no known NA mines as they simply did not dig  
tunnels; although they did exploit gravel deposits that outcropped on  
the surface for several feet back into the slopes so whatever was in  
Stafford was not a NA mine).

Lyle Browning, RPA
>
> Nancy
>
> -------
> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>
> --Daniel Boone
>
>
>
> On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:27 AM, Lyle E. Browning wrote:
>
>> The Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin has excellent info on the  
>> copper deposits. The general area is known and in one of the  
>> accounts there was a story of a set of miners in the 1880's  
>> breaking into an "old works" with antique tools. That must have  
>> been one contemporaneous with Byrd as it had passed out of living  
>> memory. That is the only one that is locatable. Some of the others  
>> are in the empoundments of the Roanoke River.
>>
>> The folks doing the mining were all big-time Indian traders.  
>> Getting smelted copper to a port for shipment (the preferred  
>> alternative for the Crown) was 80 miles to Petersburg by pack  
>> mule. There are no records of exports that I've found yet. So,  
>> given that they were Indian traders, and that copper was a prized  
>> commodity, it might be we're looking in the wrong places. We  
>> should be looking in NC, TN, and Alabama for VA copper objects  
>> traded down the pipeline. Copper in the Dept. of Historic  
>> Resources collection from Late Woodland villages has been tested  
>> and has been found to be Native Copper from Minnesota or European  
>> in origin. None from VA was identified. So, no exports, no VA  
>> copper in VA, and everyone Mine Mad according to Byrd. Vast effort  
>> to chase ore veins suggests an economically viable enterprise of  
>> some antiquity. My conclusion would be that they were either  
>> unproductive or else it was traded. Now all we need is one smelter  
>> site to test, and to talk with the SHPO offices in the southern  
>> states to see what they have.
>>
>> Lyle Browning, RPA
>>
>>
>
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