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118 our opinion is that they did. At Sandy Lake in Minnesota are constantly being unearthed copper specimens. Before the advent of the white man and the establishment of a trading post at that point by the Northwestern Fur company that locality was unfrequented by the indians and all these specimens are the droppings as it were of the visiting Ojibway. it is by no means likely at all that all of them had been found or unearthed by the Ojibway. they in our mind made them. The specimens which we show in chapter IX from the "Wakefield collection" were found near the surface and certainly had been dropped by indians visiting Sandy Lake since the white man went there. These deductions we draw not to uphold a theory but simply from the facts presented to us and the logical analogy following therefrom The Ojibway in former days before the white man brought them knives and steel weapons preserved and used copper implements and weapons from whence had they they if they did not fashion them? Our opinion is that the Ojibway or Algic indians were the successor of the "Mound builders" and that the "Mound Builders" descended from the ancient Druids [?] but no one not prepared to admit that all the copper implements that are being frequently discovered on the surface and beneath it in Wisconsin and elsewhere are all extremely ancient and belong to a race prehistoric. That the Mound Builders did live and form copper implements centuries ago. we do not dispute but it does not by any means follow that knives and other articles found at the present day upon the surface (or near it) of the ground are the production of "Mound Builders." although they are similar to specimens exhumed from mounds assuming that the Algic and Ojibway indians are descendants of the "Mound Builders" it is safe to say that their arts and skill has been handed down. and that the great number of "coppers" found throughout the country noted are the work of the recent race rather than the former but the limit of our space will not permit our going deeper into this subject and we reluctantly leave it with this comment Rev. W. W. Hanes seems to be of the opinion that the Ojibway indians did not work the copper mines of Lake Superior and other regions and that the implements being from time to time discarded in that region are the remnants of the[?] former race his reasoning is good but the question naturally arises if it be true that the ancient Ojibway did not mine and work copper from whence did the indians procure the great number of copper implements as knives, spear and arrow points which are found constantly in different pats of their country upon turning over the ground not buried deeply but as it were upon the surface and in places where it has only been since the Ojibway history commenced here have visited by them Our opinion is that when the necessity for it existed the Ojibway did work the copper mines.