their graves, was naturally prominent in their minds when the strangers were inquisitive about riches, and they answered according to their light. It does not appear that copper was known to the Southern Indians except as an article of barter, as it was all along the coast, but mica held the place with them in point of production that copper occu pied with the Northern Indians.

Reviewing, now, the whole evidence-historical, mineralogical, and, to a slight extent, archæological-it appears that when this continent was revealed to Europeans the natives of the country were in the full neolithic period, but were using copper to a slight extent. They were probably mining it in a desultory way in the Keweenaw workings just as they were mining mica in the mountains of North Carolina. How long this had been going on it is impossible to say. The metal was principally used for ornamental purposes in the South, where it was scarce, but where it was plentiful, in the North, and particularly toward the center of production, it was put to a practical use. There is at present no evidence that the Indians had any knowledge of smelting, which art is necessary to a real metal age. The progress from stone, through copper, to bronze could hardly be expected on the northern and eastern parts of this continent, because there was no tin available in the northern and eastern parts of the country with which to make bronze. To be sure the Indians had distant neighbors in Mexico and Central and Southern America, some of whom possessed the rudiments of smelting and were in an incipient bronze "age," from whom a knowl edge of smelting, whereby copper could be obtained from its ores, might possibly have been acquired in the course of centuries by the slow process of aboriginal intercourse, if all native industrial development had not been interrupted by the intervention of Europeans. As it was, however, it seems clear that metallurgy was not known among the North American Indians when this continent was discovered.

THE POLYNESIAN BOW.*

By E. TREGEAR.

Perhaps one of the most puzzling problems known to anthropologists is to account for the apparent dislike shown by the fair Polynesians for the use of the bow and arrow. They found the mighty weapon of the archer in the hands of almost every Melanesian or Papuan inhabitant of the neighboring islands; they had experience of its fatal powers, and yet, except in the case of the Tongans, the weapons appeared to be viewed with disfavor and neglect.

The bows used by the Tongans in the days of Cook were slight and by no means powerful instruments. Each bow was fitted with a single arrow of reed, which was carried in a groove cut for that purpose along the side of the bow itself. By the time that mariner arrived among these islanders, in 1806, they had possessed themselves of more powerful bows and arrows, probably procured from Fiji or imitated from Fijian weapons, as constant intercourse of either warlike or pacific character was then going on between the Friendly and Fijian islands. Moreover, they had also procured guns at that epoch.

The Hawaiian weapons were spears, javelins, clubs, stone axes, knives, and slings; the use of the bow being confined to rat shooting. The Tahitians used the bow only as a sacred plaything; the bows, arrows, quiver, etc., being kept in a certain place in charge of appointed persons and brought out on stated occasions. The arrow was not aimed at a mark, but merely shot off as a test of strength and skill, one archer trying to shoot farther than another. The Samoans did not use the bow, but fought with the club and spear, the sling being the missile weapon, as it also was in the Marquesas.

In regard to New Zealand, the subject has been handled at any length only by two writers. The first was Mr. C. Phillips, whose paper appeared in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. X, p. 97. The article did not deal with the bow proper so much as with the weapon known to the Maoris as kotaha, which consists of a stick and whip with which a spear is thrown. Mr. Phillips made some incidental remarks on this paper, which provoked Mr. Colenso to reply in an article published in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. XI, p. 106.

*From The Journal of the Polynesian Society (Wellington, New Zealand), for April, 1892; Vol. 1, pp. 56-59.

"The minerall they say is Wassader which is copper, but they call by the name of wassader every mettall whatsoever; they say it is of the colour of our copper, but our copper is better than theirs, and the reason is for that it is redder and harder, whereas, that of Chaunis Temoatan is very soft and pale. Of this mettall the Man

goaks have so great store, by report of all the savages adjoining, that they beautify their houses with great plates of the same." Chaunis Temoatan, or the mineral country, was said to be twenty days' journey from the Mangoaks.

This account contains a variation of the description given the French twenty years before, of washing or panning out, but in the English account there is a distinct reference to melting or smelting. The Indi ans told Lane that after the material from the stream was caught in a bowl it was "cast into a fire, and forthwith it melteth, and doeth yield in five parts at the first melting, two parts of mettall for three parts of oare." It is impossible to understand this statement as it stands. It may possibly have referred to the use of fire in getting out the mica, or may have been a tradition of some Spanish operations obscured by time and confused by interpretation. The story survived into the next century. The English, however, did not see this operation, nor did they see any "greate plates" of copper. The only things of the kind were small, probably like those found in graves and mounds. "An hundred and fifty miles into the maine," Lane continues, "in two towns we saw divers small plates of copper, that had been made, as we understood, by the inhabitants that dwell further into the country, where, as they say, are mountains and rivers that yield also white grains of mettall which is to be deemed silver." If the Indians had possessed large plates the English would doubtless have seen them as well as the small, and some of them would have turned up before now, as the smaller ones have, in graves.

That extensive mines really existed in the region indicated by the Indians, which produced a peculiar mineral in abundance, will appear when we put together the Spanish, French, and English accounts of the rumored mineral wealth and the region from which it came, and compare them with the results of modern discovery. The Spaniards were after gold, and learned, as they believed, that it was to be found in the Appalachians, because when they asked after a country rich in mineral they were referred there. Laudonnière speaks of a singular mineral which was sent to him, which occurred in plates and was found in the Appalachians, together with "christal" and slate stone; and Ralph Lane hears of a "marveilous and strange" mineral which occurred in large plates with which the Indians adorned their houses. The mine, he says, was "notorious" in the whole country, and was in the mountains to the west of Roanoke. This mineral, which was not copper or any ore of copper, occurring in large plates which were paler and softer in copper, was undoubtedly mica, and the ancient mines which were

the cause of the early mining excitement were re-discovered in the mountains of North Carolina in 1868. Prof. Kerr, who was State geologist of North Carolina, thus describes them: "There is one point of great interest connected with the history of mica-mining in this State which it is worth while to refer to in this connection. This industry is not really new here; it is only revived. The present shafts and tunnels are continually cutting into ancient shafts and tunnels, and hundreds of the spurs and ridges of the mountains, (all over Mitchell County especially), are found to be honeycombed with ancient workings of great extent, of which no one knows the date or history. In 1868 my attention was first called to the existence of old mine holes, as they are called in the region. Being invited to visit some old Spanish silver mines a few miles south of Bakersville, I found a dozen or more open pits, 40 to 50 feet wide by 75 to 100 feet long, filled up to 15 or 20 of depth, disposed along the sloping crest of a long terminal ridge or spur of a neighboring mountain. The excavated earth was piled in huge heaps about the margins of the pits, and the whole overgrown with the heaviest forest trees, oaks, and chestnuts, some of them 3 feet or more in diameter and some of the largest belonging to a former generation of forest growth, fallen and decayed, facts which indicate a minimum of not less than three hundred years. There is no appearance of a mineral vein and no clew to the object of these extensive works, unless it was to obtain the large plates of mica, or crystals of kyanite, both of which abound in the coarse granite rock. Since the development of mica-mining on a large scale in Mitchell and the adjoining counties it has been ascertained that there are hundreds of old pits and connecting tunnels among the spurs and knobs and ridges of this rugged region, and there remains no doubt that mining was carried on here for ages and in a very systematic and skillful way; for among all the scores of mines recently opened, I am informed that scarcely one has turned out profitably which did not follow the old workings and strike the ledges wrought by those ancient miners. The pits are always open 'diggings,' never regular shafts; and the earth and debris often amount to enormous heaps."

This description would apply almost word for word to the Lake Superior copper diggings. The mineral is taken out in large lumps, 30 or 50 up to several hundred pounds in weight, which split readily into plates or sheets, sometimes 3 feet in diameter, and would cut 16 by 20 inches. The common forms are 2 or 3 by 4 or 6 inches. All this confirms and explains very fully the statements of the Spanish, French, and English explorers and colonists of the sixteenth century. Now that we know what the mineral or "mettall" was, we understand and can explain away the confusion which arose in the inquiry after copper. The thing which was valuable to the Indians, so valuable that they adorned their dwellings with it and placed it, with other valuables, in

*Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina, vol. I, 1875, p. 300.

Mr. Colenso's argument, briefly summarized. refers to the subject as follows. He considers—

First. That the bows and arrows found in the hands of Maori children were probably imitated from models shown to them by Tupaea, the Tahitian interpreter brought to New Zealand by Capt. Cook, or, per haps, from models shown by foreigners, some of whom-notably a Hindoo, a Marquesan, and a Tahitian-were resident among the Maoris when the Rev. Mr. Marsden arrived in 1814.

Second. That neither Tasman, Cook, Parkinson, Forster, Crozet, Polack, Cruise, Nicholas, Marsden, nor any other of the early visitors to New Zealand mention seeing the bow or hearing of its use. That Mr. Colenso himself, in his frequent journeys about the country (in 1834) and continual listenings to stories of war, never heard of the bow being used in combat.

Third. That there is no mention in old legends of the bow being used as a weapon, either in the stories of the destruction of monsters, the deaths of chiefs in battle, or in the lists of arms, although these lists are given with great fidelity and attention to detail.

Of these three divisions, the first is not scientifically decisive. It is possible, and even probable, that the Maoris were taught the use of the bow by early visitors, but it can not now be proven. The bow might have been kept as a childish toy, although not used as a weapon; exactly, for example, as with the modern English, with whom bows and arrows are playthings, although but a few years ago (ethnologically speaking) they were the national weapons.

The second argument is from negative evidence. There may have been bows and arrows in New Zealand, and yet they may not have been produced or spoken of in the presence of new-comers; but that such a reticence occurred is most improbable, and, although the evidence is negative, it is of great value. Few impartial people will belive that the bow was a weapon of the New Zealander during the last century if no explorer or missionary saw or heard of it.*

The third argument is an exceedingly important one. If in the lists of weapons mentioned in New Zealand tradition the bow has no place, the conviction left in the minds of most Maori scholars will be that the omission marks the absence of the bow itself from Maori knowledge.t

Time, however, has a modifying effect on opinion, and the one thing certain to come to the interested student of anthropology is a wonder ing faith in the power of Time to dissolve and form and redissolve not

*In the Auckland Weekly News of April 16, 1892, is an account of an old PakehaMaori named John Harmon, who came to New Zealand a child in 1805, and is now dead. "He told a tale of a battle between the Ngati-whatua and the Ngati-maru in the Thames Valley which was fought out with bows and arrows." It would perhaps be well if some member of this Society resident among either of these tribes would make inquiries among the old men as to what circumstance gave rise to Harmon's story.

On the other hand, I do not know of any list of weapons or legend of monsterkilling which includes the kotaha as a weapon. Yet I am informed by Mr. Percy Smith that not only was he shown an old ruined pa which was conquered by spears or darts thrown more than a quarter of a mile by means of the "whip,” but that he nows that they were in use at least two hundred years ago.