Dear David,
Thanks for confirming that at the time of Patience Kershaw - i.e.
around 1840 - the Apache/Navajo were living in the South-West. It
was not my intention to get into a debate about the earlier Anasazi,
Hohokam and Mogollon cultures as I am sure that you and others
could do that much better than I.
As regards your question - Who exactly are the "tribes further north"?
I was quoting from H.R. Schoolcraft’s “Sources of the Mississippi
River” (published in 1855) who wrote of lead mines in the broad
region around Dubuque, in Iowa, into southern Michigan and north-
west Illinois. He was talking of the Mesquakie, Winnebago, Sauk
and the Illiniwek and Osage - in or around the period under
discussion (1830 to 1845):-
“The ore at these mines is now exclusively dug by the Indian women.
Old and superannuated men also partake in the mining labour, but
warriors and men hold themselves above it.”
I used Schoolcraft as background from some work (and a paper) on
“The diffusion of ore-hearth smelting techniques from Yorkshire to the
Upper Mississippi Valley Lead Region”. Local (i.e. American)
scholars appeared to be locked into the idea that Cornish miners were
responsible, but the family names (and technology) involved were not
Cornish. They were from the Pennine mining areas of northern
England - with names like Spensley, Bonson, Raw and Raisbeck.
Others came from Derbyshire. When they got to the area, around
1830, the river was the frontier - hence my comment about the
relative paucity of European people in Arizona.
If what Schoolcraft wrote has “little foundation in fact” then I happily
submit to later and more authoritative research.
Mike
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Mike Gill
President and Recorder of the NORTHERN MINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
Britain's foremost mining history society at:-
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~RBurt/MinHistNet/NMRS.html
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