The Penokee-Gogebic Iron Range
by
Herbert Wagner
herbswoods@yahoo.com
January 24, 2012
Part 2: Ancient Mines of Northwest Wisconsin,
Heroes of Civilization, and the Discovery of Magnetic Iron Ore
"There are not only copper mines but also steel contained in the rocks"
-- Gabriel Sagard, 1632
--Summary--
The Penokee-Gogebic Iron Range was discovered by European-Americans in the year 1847, which is one year earlier than history books say. The discovery was made near modern Upson, Wisconsin, and not far from where the GTAC taconite mine is now being planned. Previous to that time, however, the Indians or Native Americans may have procured minerals from the region on a small scale. These are little known chapters in the pre-settlement history of Northwest Wisconsin.
The Great Seal of Wisconsin Territory
"Civilization replaces Native People"
****
Ancient Mines
Iron ore first peeks out of the historical record in the time
of the early French, when Lake Superior was part of Upper Canada or New France. In
Sagard's 1632 account of the uppermost great lake he states: "There are not
only copper mines but also steel contained in the rocks, which when melted out might
make excellent knives." (1)
Like most other information known to the early French, Sagard probably learned these
things from the indigenous people or Indians of Lake Superior. Careful observers
of natural phenomena in ways that Christian-European man did not fully understand,
these first people also procured minerals in Northwest Wisconsin on a small scale.
It may be that the place of red pipestone described as the "mountain of the
prairie" in Longfellow's poem: "The Song of Hiawatha" (more correctly
Manabozho, Winneboujou, etc.), is not a reference to Minnesota pipestone as generally
believed, but to ancient pipestone diggings in the Blue Hills of Barron County, Wis.
(2)
Lake Superior's early claim to fame was native copper. The upper lake being the only
place on earth known to contain great amounts of the red metal in pure elemental
form. This copper was also utilized by native peoples to some degree. In 1845, a
correspondent at La Pointe on Madeline Island, reported that the Ojibwe or Chippewa
(Anishinabe) people there had articles in their possession beaten out of native copper,
showing, he said, their special knowledge of minerals and where to find them. Early
accounts of Lake Superior tell that in the traditional Ojibwe worldview copper held
some manner of divine or "spirit" power. (3)
Portal Between Worlds
Sometimes this metal was found as "float" copper, loose pieces torn from the bedrock by glacial ice and deposited in riverbeds and on beaches. Up until the 18th century an immense boulder of float copper lay on the Lake Superior shoreline near the mouth of Iron (i.e. "Metal") River in Bayfield County. This landmark was held in high esteem by native people who considered it a great mystery of existence and portal between worlds. This natural wonder was known to the French as La Roche ("the rock"), but with the typical disregard shown for native traditions by Europeans (and later Euro-Americans), they hacked it up and carted off the pieces until by 1740 or so this unique natural divinity was lost forever. The only other known large copper mass that was venerated by the Indians--the so-called Ontonagon Copper Rock--was removed to Washington, D.C. in 1843, and today resides at the Smithsonian National Museum.
Forks of Totogatic-Ounce
Ancient Indian peoples themselves, however, may have quarried
or chipped copper out of the bedrock where metalliferous veins were exposed at the
surface. Scientific studies show at least one place in Northwest Wisconsin where
this ancient digging took place. Copper used to make prehistoric artifacts recovered
from widely distributed archeological sites from Minnesota to Maine originally came
from a native copper deposit in the Upper St. Croix River basin on the remote forks
of Totogatic-Ounce River. Some of these archeological sites have been dated as far
back as 5,000 years ago. (4)
This belt of Keweenawan-age lava flows or basalt rock that crosses parts of Washburn,
Douglas and Bayfield counties is known to geologists as the Minong Copper Range.
Old timers and Indians, however, called it the "Smoky Hill" country, which
is a possible reference to the "madji manitou," the black or smoky god,
who was said to dwell there. This copper-bearing formation extends northest into
Ashland and Iron counties where it is known simply as the "copper range,"
and then continues into Upper Michigan to the depleted copper mining district on
Keweenaw Point.
Old legends also tell of a rich silver vein known to the Indians in the interior
of Northwest Wisconsin to the south or southwest of Chequamegon Bay. Extreme versions
of the story mention gold. The object of this very old tradition has never been found
or satisfactorily explained. (5)
Marquette Iron Range
The first iron ore discovery on Lake Superior also had a strong
Native American connection. According to one version of the story, in 1845 a party
of whites came up the lake in search of mineral deposits. At Sault Ste. Marie they
met an Indian woman who told them of a peculiar "bright and shiny rock"
she had seen while on a trapping expedition with her father. Concluding that this
rock might be native silver or galena (lead) ore, they pressed for more information,
whereupon she directed them to her brother, Man-je-ki-jik, who might lead them to
the exact location.
Arrangements were made, and the Indian man took them to a place on Carp (i.e. sucker-fish)
River eastwards of the Huron Mountains in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Although
it is said that Man-je-ki-jik himself would not approach the spot out of respect
or fear of the resident spirit guardian or manitou of the place, the white men had
no such prohibition and found what later became known as the Marquette Iron Range.
Instead of silver, the shiny rock turned out to be specular hematite, a rich form
of iron ore. Soon a mining company was formed and for his services Man-je-ki-jik
was promised a share in the enterprise. But the transaction was never fulfilled and
the Indian man and his relatives died in poverty while Marquette Range iron went
on to make others fabulously rich. (6)
Indian Treaties & Mineral Explorers
By that time (1845) the mineral rush on Lake Superior was already
two years old, having begun after Congress ratified the Treaty of 1842 early the
following year. Under that treaty the Lake Superior band of Ojibwe gave up their
remaining territory along the south shore of Lake Superior--a cession brought about
by the influence of mining interests in Washington, D.C. and that included the area
we know today as the Penokee-Gogebic Iron Range. But as they had done in the Treaty
of 1837 (when ownership of the pineries of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota had been
relinquished to the U.S. government), the Lake Superior Ojibwe again reserved their
right "to hunting, fishing and gathering the wild rice" in the Treaty of
1842. (7)
With the original inhabitants more or less out of the way, a wave of Euro-American
explorers swept along the southern shore of Lake Superior. Some came up the lakes
from Detroit and Sault Ste. Marie, while others left the lead mines of southwestern
Wisconsin and traveled by way of the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Bois Brule rivers
to Lake Superior at its western end, then known as Fond du Lac. One of these parties
in 1843 mistook the Kettle River for the main channel of the St. Croix and after
forcing their boat over boiling whirlpools and rapids overturned in the frigid water
and lost their entire kit down to the last tin pail. Cold and hungry, they were discovered
wandering in the woods by a group of Indians, but instead of the scalpings they expected
to receive, the native people fed them maple sugar and politely informed them that
they were going the wrong way!
In their explorations these groups of early mineral explorers of 1843-'46 ranged across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Northwest Wisconsin. Most likely they tramped over the Penokee-Gogebic Range too, but if so, they left no known record of it. This is not surprising, for iron ore was then regarded by most early prospectors with contempt, who were madly intent on finding deposits of copper, lead, silver and gold.
Lost in the Chippewa Land District
Through a careful reading of period documents, we can date the
original discovery of magnetic iron ore (taconite) on the Penokee Range to the summer
of 1847. This is one year earlier than history books and authorities normally state,
but this descrepency is easily explained. All previous writers going back to the
1850s have adopted (wrongly) the 1848 publication date of a preliminary geological
report in which the discovery was first noted, instead of giving the correct year
of 1847 in which the actual discovery was made. (8)
The facts are these. On June 2, 1847, a sub-corps of David Dale Owen's federal geological
survey with B.C. Macy in charge left "Prairie a la Crosse" on the Mississippi
and headed north to examine a portion of the Chippewa Land District near Lake Superior.
The goal of this exploration was to accurately examine the topography and resources
of these former Indian lands, including any potential mineral deposits found there.
Assistant to Macy was Dr. Andrew Randall, and with them two French-Indian (metis)
voyaguer guides who also served as boatmen and packers.
Macy and Andrew's formal instructions were to follow and overtake a party of federal
lineal surveyors who were then at work extending the Fourth Principal Meridian line
across Wisconsin to Lake Superior. This survey baseline starts at the Illinois border
and runs up along the western boundary of Iowa County and thence roughly along a
line north past modern Tomah, Curtis, Fifield, Upson and strikes Lake Superior on
Oronto Bay just west of the mouth of the Montreal River.
As Macy and his party headed north, disaster struck them while in the headwaters
of the Black River in Jackson County. A series of tremendous storms swept the countryside,
flooding rivers and washing out logging dams, mills and booms along with 100,000
sawlogs. Prolonged exposure to the cold damp struck Macy with acute rheumatism in
his knee joint until he could not walk. Stranded in the middle of nowhere with a
crippled man, there was nothing else to do but send one of the guides back to the
mouth of Black River where a horse was procured to carry Macy out. With that the
entire party returned to civilization, such as it was. Conditions were so terrible
on the return journey that upon reaching the river mouth, the poor heroic horse dropped
in its tracks and died! (9)
More Bad Luck
Reassigned by Dr. Owen to easier terrain, Macy's luck didn't
get any better. In 1849, while ascending the Des Moines River in Iowa, an accidental
discharge of a firearm in a boat sent wooden splinters flying that severely wounded
him in the kneecap and face. The next July while tracing the carboniferous formation
in Iowa, Macy got lost in a swampy region and wandered for days under a scorching
sun with dire results. Writing in 1852, Owen described Macy's condition as: "an
obstinate and dangerous intermittent, from the effects of which his health, even
now, after two years, has scarcely recovered." (10)
If Macy and Randall had bad luck trying to reach Lake Superior, the corps of lineal
surveyors working ahead of them fared even worse. In their effort to run out the
Fourth Pricipal Meridian, this survey party led by a Mr. Freeman was forced to wade
through endless swamps and fight dense brush while being attacked on all sides by
venomous insects. Then, a few days before reaching Lake Superior, their entire food
supply ran out. With their clothes reduced to shreds and in a starving, near hysterical
condition, they finally emerged from the wilderness forest on Oronto Bay exhausted
and nearly naked. Luckily, the trading post, mission and Indian-French-Anglo village
of La Pointe on Madeline Island wasn't far off, and there they were able to find
shelter, food and clothing. (11)
Heroes of Civilization
Although forgotten today, these men struck the first blow of
American civilization in far Northwest Wisconsin, which, depending upon your viewpoint,
was at that time either a howling wilderness wasteland largely shot out of game,
or, a pristine natural paradisiacal cornucopia of plenty. Either way, establishing
the Fourth Principal Meridian would open the far north country to land purchase and
white settlement at a time when "scarsely a stick was missing" from the
orignal forest. The meridian was the basis for all future township lines and land
surveys used to establish property boundaries, homesteads, townsites, timber purchases,
dams, flowages, railways, and mineral claims.
This was the beginning of the modern infrastucture and society as we know it today.
Now, when in a few minutes we can zoom effortlessly over the same landscape on a
smooth highway that it took the early guys days or weeks to traverse--sometimes with
dire results--it is difficult to fathom the hardships they endured. Imagine our northern
realm but with no roads, no motels, no burger joints, no cellphone service or internet.
For that matter no automobiles or Deepwoods Off!
That last problem may have been the worst of all. In his final report, Dr. Owen singled
out insects as perhaps the most serious detriment to future settlement of the northwoods.
During "fly time" he said, which occured (and still does) between June
and August, venomous insects were present in such "insufferable numbers"
that they "destroyed all comfort or quiet both by day and by night." Without
head-nets (apparently not supplied at first), conditions were so bad that his men
had their ears swollen two or three times their normal size and with the line of
their hats ringed all around by trickling blood caused by insect bites. This gave
rise to inflamation and fevers of the brain, which could only be allayed to some
degree by getting up several times in the night and immersing one's forehead in cold
water. The chief culprits, Owen wrote, were "the buffalo-gnat, the brulot [French-Canadian
lingo from bruler, to burn, the sting causing a burning sensation], and the sand-fly,
to say nothing of myriads of gigantic musquitoes [that] carry on incessant war against
the...unfortunate traveller." (12)
Randall Takes Charge
With Macy unable to continue towards Lake Superior, Randall
now took charge of the exploration party. By August (1847), we find him on the lower
St. Croix River collecting statistics about the lumber industry. (13) At St. Croix
Falls, he joined Dr. Owen and other sub-agents where they studied the gorge of the
St. Croix River at modern Interstate Park. This place, Dr. Owen explained to them,
was key to understanding the great Lake Superior system of geology they would encounter
farther north. The same primordial trap-rock formation, with its firey volcanic origin
and richly endowed with veins of native copper and silver on Keweenaw Point and Isle
Royale, was also present in the towering cliffs and ledges at St. Croix Falls, where
mining prospects had also been made. At St. Croix Falls the basaltic lava formation
abruptly transitioned to much younger fossiliferous sedimentary rocks dominent throughout
the entire Mississippi valley. Because the region between St. Croix Falls and Lake
Superior was unknown to science, no man could say what secrets of nature or mineral
treasures might be hidden there. (14)
At St. Croix Falls the various exploratory parties were organized, areas of investigation
defined, and maps and instruments distributed. Then, on August 8, 1847, Randall,
in charge of one exploration party, ascended the St. Croix River by birch canoe to
near modern Gordon, Wis., where, near the mouth of the Eau Claire or "Green"
River, they took the relatively easy overland Indian trail (part of the so-called
"women portage"), to Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior. At La Pointe they
obtained a boat and then coasted easterly along the lakeshore where Randall examined
and measured the sandstone formation on Oronto Bay.
Reaching the Montreal River, they went up that stream and examined some copper claims
where the trap formation crosses that stream. Then, returning to the lakeshore and
similar to Macy's original instructions from earlier that year, Randall's party found
the line of the Fourth Principal Meridian and plunged into the wilderness interior
towards the south. (16)
Discovery of Magnetic Iron-Stone
Little out of the ordinary was noted in the first few miles
of Randall's investigation: tilted layers of sandstone, glacial boulders, outcrops
of slate and trap on Potato River, fine groves of sugar maple trees and lots of swamp.
Then, in an area roughly 11 to 14 miles from the lakeshore, the geological survey
party struck a series of rocky hills or low mountain belts rising some 200 to 300
feet above the level of the surrounding countryside. There, Randall noted "an
outburst of magnetic iron and trap bearing northeast and southwest...dark colored,
fine grained, and exceedingly hard." (16)
In this brief description, Randall seems to have noted both the copper (trap) and
iron ranges where they closely butt up against each other and share the same NE/SW
alignment in this part of Northwest Wisconsin. Most likely he considered them part
of the same geological formation, although today we know that this is not true as
they differ in age by over a billion years.
The exact place of the iron discovery was about one mile southwest of modern Upson
and five miles northeast of the proposed GTAC mine site. Randall's referrence to
the copper and iron formations as an "outburst" also reflects the thinking
of the day. As it was then believed that the highly tilted bedrock strata had been
pushed up or erupted in long narrow fissures through the loose sand, gravel and boulder
deposits of glacial drift. Today we know that it happened the other way around. That
is, the copper and iron ranges of Northwest Wisconsin are between about 1 and 2.2
billion years old, and were in place eons before the superficial glacial drift deposits
were laid down only about 10,000 years ago.
At the time of his discovery of the Penokee Range, Randall also observed one of the
more interesting characteristics of the iron-formation itself. This he described
as "a remarkable magnetic disturbance [of the compass], causing the poles of
the needle to turn nearly at right angles to the course of the range, and to deviate
from the true north nearly 50º." (17)
This wild and peculiar variation of Randall's compass needle was caused by large
amounts of the mineral magnetite present in a thick layer of sedimentary rock that
occurs near the crest of the ridge or mountain block system that makes up the Penokee
Range. In its pure form magnatite (Fe3O4) can contain as much as 72.4% natural iron.
(18) As the name suggests, the mineral magnetite has peculiar properties, as pieces
of it are attracted to and will adhere to an ordinary horseshoe magnet. Under certain
conditions rocks rich in magnetite themselves become magnets with the ability to
attract iron particles--a rock type known as lodestone. As Randall noted, magnetite
also affects the behavior of compass needles, a characteristic that would provide
a means of tracing beds of magnetic iron-stone beneath surface drift or glacial deposits,
but also giving rise to tall tales and myths that will be told in future installments
of this series.
It should be noted here that magnetic iron-stone (more often known today as taconite),
was not the type of ore mined in the Hurley-Ironwood area on the Penokee-Gogebic
Range between 1884 and 1965. These historic mines produced a different type of iron
ore known as hematite (Fe2O3), that was naturally enriched and needed no additional
processing. However, because the hematite deposits were soft and limited in extent,
they were usually concealed by glacial drift and not easily seen at the surface.
For that reason they would remain unknown until the 1880s. Thus, for 40 years after
Randall's initial discovery, the Penokee Range would be known for magnetic iron-stone
alone: a hard and resistent rock containing much silica that with adjacent beds of
slate and quartzite form bold outcrops and low-lying mountains. It would upon the
promise of magnetic ore that early mining men and speculators would stake their fortunes,
only to have their dreams dashed by the hard unyielding nature and low percentage
of iron in the rock. Today, some 165 years after Randall's original discovery, modern
taconite mining and processing technology will allow companies like GTAC to extract
vast profits from these same long silent and pristine Penokee hills.
As to Andrew Randall's subsequent history, it was neither long nor happy. After his
discovery of Penokee iron ore, Randall seems to have grown tired of battling mosquitoes
and deer flies and left Dr. Owen's geological survey. He settled briefly at St. Paul,
where, in 1849, he established the Minnesota Register, by some accounts that territory's
first newspaper. (19) He then moved to California where he entered politics and became
a founder of the California Academy of Sciences. But he also dabbled heavily in land
speculation and went deeply into debt. In 1856, at San Francisco, Randall was murdered
by an angry creditor, who in turn was captured, tried and hanged by the neck until
dead by the Vigilante Committee. (20)
Although Randall was the first Euro-American to recognize iron-formation on the Penokee
Range, his explorations in 1847 were confined to the line of the Fourth Principal
Meridian. He did not attempt to follow the iron belt to the northeast or to the southwest.
Nor did he name the formation. It would be left to others to follow up the full extent
of the iron mountain, see the potential for mines there, and meet the area's original
inhabitants.
Next: Col. Charles Whittlesey: Explorer, Geologist and Unlucky Name Giver!
(Reference Notes for Part 2)
+ + + +
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