Metals and Artifacts
 

Metals

    While New York is rich in iron ore, and to a lesser degree in copper and silver, large deposits of copper, silver and gold are found around the Great Lakes. In fact Lake Superior copper is the largest copper deposit in the world. The rocks of Lake Superior's North Shore date back to the early history of the earth. During the Precambrian Age, magma forcing its way to the surface created 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. Thus, the great amounts estimated to have been extricated from the mines in the twelve centuries between 2400-1200 B.C., seems less excessive. Even so, copper continued to be mined and exploited well into the Nephite era, but on a much more local level, the overseas copper industry having supposedly come to an end about the time of the fall of Troy.
     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. Other lucrative mines are found in Quebec.
     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 most copper mines which were often rich in silver, with tales of lost silver bonanza’s still circulating in the area. The mine in Silver Islet, three-quarters of a mile offshore in Lake Superior, was the world’s riches silver mine between 1879-1884. 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.)

     While all the ores mentioned in the Book of Mormon have been noted in Michigan and the regions around the Great Lakes, few realize that 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 main, none 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, or this ancient people, assailed from the north and east, made this their refuge in a war of extermination, fortified the commanding eminences, met the shock of a final issue, were subject to its adverse results. 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 the 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.

     The discovery of such items was common place in those days, yet all too often dismissed as being European in origin, and therefore discarded. In light of so many similarities between the text of the Book of Mormon and the terrain and relics of ancient New York are present to dismiss this setting as a viable candidate for the lost lands of the Book of Mormon.
 

1- J. R. Jockman, “Strange Relics from the Depth of the Earth", Ancient American #43,
    p. 9.
2- O. Turner, Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase of Western New York, p. 83.
     From McGavin & Bean, p. 63.
3- Josiah Priest, American Antiquities, p. 265.
4- Josiah Priest, American Antiquities, p. 261.
5- New York’s Man of Brass, first printed in The American Monthly Magazine, January,
    1836, reprinted in Ancient American, #41, p. 27.