I was surprised to learn Mesoamerican theorists believe none of the minerals mentioned in the Book of Mormon can be found east of the Mississippi. John Lund said:

    “Four separate mining areas possessing gold, silver and copper are required in order to quality as the lands of the primary events in the Book of Mormon. Where are those criteria met? The answer is in Mesoamerica, southwestern United states, the northern Rockies, and Western Canada. However, there is no single place east of the Mississippi River, including all twenty six states, where one can find gold, silver, and copper together in one locate in abundance, much less four separate locations. This single fact alone is a nail in the coffin of the Great Lakes advocates.”

    My goodness, where have his studies taken him, surely not northeastern North America which has some of the richest deposit of gold and silver in the entire country, especially around the Great Lakes. The rocks along the north shore of Lake Superior date back to the early history of the earth. During the Precambrian Age, magma forced its way to the surface creating the intrusive granites of the Canadian Shield. These ancient granites can be seen on the North Shore today. It was during the Penokean orogeny, that many valuable metals were deposited. Thus the region surrounding Lake Superior has proved to be rich in minerals, with copper, iron, silver, gold and nickel the most frequently mined. With so much ore available it is not surprising that such an abundance of metal artifacts have been found in the region, especially copper.
    The copper industry around Lake Superior was in full bloom during the early years of the Jaredite era, with a number of scholars finding evidence to suggest that copper was transported to a number of Old World centers before the collapse of the Bronze Age around 1200 B.C. Professor Roy Drier of the Michigan Institute of Mining and Technology dates the abandoned mines to between 2000-1000 B.C., with a conservative estimate of around 20 to 50 million pounds of ore mined prehistorically. In their book, The Copper Mines of Lake Superior, Drier and DuTemple, suggest between 500 million and 1.5 billion pounds of copper was mined prehistorically. Although that number seems excessive, R. J. Jewell notes that 12 billion pounds of copper have been removed from the mines in just our modern age, with lots of copper left over. The mine in Silver Islet, three-quarters of a mile offshore in Lake Superior, was the world’s riches silver mine between 1879-1884. Gold mines are also found around Lake Superior and all across the state of Michigan. There are stories of lost mines and rumors that the people in the upper peninsula make a living off some secret location.
    Two thousand years ago, silver from the Cobalt area in Ontario, to the north of New York, was also discovered. In fact, this may have been what caused the population explosion of Nephites into the land northward in the first place. The Cobalt silver mines near Lake Temiskaming produced 460 million ounces of silver in the last century alone. One vein was so large, (containing as much as 10,000 tons of processed silver) that it is considered the largest single find in the world, and referred to as the silver sidewalk. Some veins had pieces of silver as big as stove lids and cannon balls.
    A little to the north were gold mines, with gold fever likely bringing still more of their people northward. By the year 2001, the Porcupine Gold Mine produced 67 million ounces of gold, making it by far the largest gold rush in terms of actual gold produced. Even the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska during the 1800's only produced 12 million ounces. Another gold mine can be found in nearby Timmins on the Mattagami River. But, it has the added advantage of having other base metals as well, such as silver, copper, zinc, and nickel. Other lucrative mines are found in Quebec, with Placer gold found in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. While silver is also found in New York, it is found in greater abundance in neighboring Michigan and around Lake Superior. Michigan’s native silver was a by product of the copper being mined mines which were often rich in silver. Tales of lost silver bonanza’s still circulate in the area. It is no wonder traders from far and wide braved the great Atlantic to take advantage of such a rich source of precious metals for their on-going building projects during the Bronze Age.
    J. R. Jochmans said:

    Lost civilization once existed on the North American continent which worked in copper and other metals; possessed art and writing; attired themselves with crowns and other clothing; knew of and perhaps domesticated several animals including the horse; utilized acids for etching in a manner that is still not understood today. [1]

    The scriptures make it clear that the Jaredites were definitely involved in the exploitation of the precious metals in the region such as copper, gold, silver and lead.

    And they did work in all manner of ore, and they did make gold, and silver, and iron, and brass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did work all manner of fine work. (Ether 10:23.)

    As to Lund’s assessment that such minerals could not be found in any of the twenty six states of eastern North America, the Peidmont gold belt, which resembles the Mother Lode gold belt in California, stretched along the east coast of America. The state of North Carolina opened the first commercial gold mining operation in the country, having a particularly large deposit of gold. Large deposits of magnetite-copper ores in Pennsylvania have produced by-product gold. Many massive deposits are interspaced between the lode gold deposits. Small deposits of gold were mined in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Other massive sulfide deposits with copper, or copper and zinc, with by-product gold are known in the central Adirondacks, near Peekshill New York, western Massachusetts, eastern Vermont, northern New Hampshire, and in Maine, although none are in production at present because of the encroachments of civilization.
   Thus, to answer the question as to whether such metals were accessible to the peoples of the Book of Mormon we would have to answer, yes, including steel. Iron ore was found throughout the Great Lakes area, including New York, with some of the ore found in a dig just to the north of the Hill Cumorah of the very quality needed to make steel. We can only wonder if this particular iron dig was the one Shule went to extract the ore he needed to make steel swords for his men in hopes of restoring his father, king Orihah, to the throne. (See Ether 7:9.) Whether or not it was, because of its close proximity to the Hill Cumorah, it is highly probable that it was used during both the Jaredite and Nephite eras to prepare their people with the various weapons of war they needed for their final battles. In more modern times, iron ore has been one of New York’s most lucrative export items.

Artifacts

    Although not confined to this region, there is perhaps no portion of the United States where ancient relics are more numerous. Commencing near Oswego River {in the land of many waters}, they extend westwardly over all the western counties {including the land of Cumorah }of the state. We clear away our forests and speak familiarly of subduing the “virgin soil,” and yet the plow upturns the skulls of those whose history is lost. Then as now the western portion of New York state had attractions and inducements to make it a favorite residence, . . . The forest invited the chase, the rivers and lakes, local commerce and fishing, and the fertile soil for agriculture. The evidence that this was one, at least of their final battlefields predominate. They are the fortifications, entrenchments, and warlike instruments of an extinct race. That here was war of extermination we may well conclude, from masses of human skeletons we find simultaneous sepulture from which age, infancy, sex and no condition was exempt. [2]

    Treasure seekers robbed the land of most of its ancient relics. Others sit quietly in the museums in the area. But others have been preserved in words letters, and documents of those who explored the region in the early years of colonization. Unfortunately, many of the ancient relics disintegrated once excavated from their burial sites, such as those made of iron leaving nothing but traces of rust behind. Yet a few survived. For instance, one burial mound investigated by a Mr. Atwater contained not only instruments made of stone, but “very well manufactured swords and knives of iron, and possibly steel.” Their antiquity was so apparent that he could only conclude that: “the primitive people of America, either discovered the use of iron themselves, as the Greeks did, or that they carried a knowledge of this ore with them at the time of their dispersion; as received by Noah’s family, who brought it from beyond the flood.”[3]
    Even an understanding of how to make brass was known by the ancients. In Josiah Priest’s American Antiquities (1838), we learn that a Mr. Halsted ploughed up seven or eight hundred pounds of brass of both husbandry and war on his farm on Salmon Creek in Scipio.[4]
    In a newspaper report entitled “New York’s Man of Brass,” first printed in The American Monthly Magazine in January of 1836, we hear of the discovery of a skeleton, found in sitting position with its head only about a foot below the ground. Once the earth around it was removed, the body was found to be wrapped in a covering of coarse bark, beneath which was another covering of course cloth made of finer bark.

    “On the breast was a plate of brass, thirteen inches long, six broad at the upper end, and five in the lower. This plate appears to have been cast, and is from one eighth to three-thirty seconds of an inch in thickness. It is so much corroded that whether or not anything was engraved upon it has not yet been ascertained. It is oval in form, the edges being irregular, apparently made so by corrosion.
    Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and half inches in length, and three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, arranged longitudinally and close together, the length of the tube being the width of the belt. The tubes are of thin brass, cast upon yellow reeds, and were fastened together by pieces of sinew.
    Near the right knee was a quiver of arrows. The arrows are of brass, thin, flat, and triangular in shape. . . .” [5]