Rock of Ages – Story of the Ontonagon Boulder

A True Tale

Prehistory

Ever since Europeans heard of the giant piece of copper that the Native Americans worshipped as a gift from the Great Spirit, there was a fervor akin to gold fever to acquire it. The level of effort undertaken to remove the boulder only expresses the extreme to which men will go for greed. This is the beginning, the start of the “copper boom.”

First, before I get too deep into this subject, The Native Americans of the Ontonagon were well aware of copper and its uses. Prehistoric copper mines abound throughout the north-western Upper Peninsula. The Ojibwa used it for many things including arrowheads, spear points, jewelry, and trade. They have mined it for thousands of years. Many of the major mining operations we think about today were built on top of prehistoric mine locations. Millions of tons of copper were removed from Isle Royale, the Keweenaw Peninsula and the Ontonagon region long before recorded Europeans set foot on the continent.

The local Ojibwa believed that the rock had been sent to them by the morning star. It was very powerful in their eyes and was said to speak to them when they blew smoke from a calumet (ceremonial pipe) over the copper. The Natives believed that a voice “full of thunder” would speak to them and demand a human sacrifice. They would normally pick a prisoner of war and burn him at the base of the giant boulder. Sometimes, if the need was great, they would pick a woman.

Father Charlevoix

The earliest written account of the boulder was made by Father Pierre Francois de Charlevoix on his expedition in 1721. He claimed to have witnessed one of these sacrifices.

“After having a lodge appointed for her use, attendants to meet her every wish, and her neck, arms, and ankles covered with bracelets of silver and copper, she was led to believe that she was to be the bride of the son of the head chief. The time appointed was the end of winter, and she felt rejoiced as the time rolled on, waiting for the season of her happiness. The day fixed upon for the sacrifice having dawned, she passed through all of the preparatory ceremonies and was dressed in her best attire, being covered with all the ornaments the settlement could command, after which she was placed in the midst of a circle of warriors, dressed in their war suits, who seemed to escort her for the purpose of showing their deference. Besides their usual arms, each one carried several pieces of wood, which he had received from the girl. She had carried wood to the rock on the preceding day which she had helped to gather in the forest. Believing that she was to be elevated to a high rank, her ideas being of the most pleasing character, the poor girl advanced to the altar with rapturous feelings of joy and timidity, which would be naturally raised in the bosom of a young female her age. As the procession proceeded, which occupied some time, savage music accompanied them, and chants, invoking that the Great Spirit would prosper their enterprise. Being excited by the music and dancing, the deceitful delusion under which she had been kept remained until the last moment.”

“But as soon as they had reached the place of sacrifice, where nothing was to be seen but fires, torches and instruments of torture, her eyes were opened, her fate was revealed to her, and she became aware of her terrible destiny, as she had often heard of the mysterious sacrifices of the copper rock. Her cries resounded through the forest, but neither tears nor entreaties prevailed. She conjured the stern warriors who surrounded her to have pity on her youth and innocence, but all in vain, as the Indian priests coolly proceeded with the horrid ceremonies. Nothing could prevail against their superstition and the horrid demands of the copper monster, which called for a human sacrifice. She was tied with withes (willow branch) to the top of the rock. The fire was gradually applied to her with torches made of wood she had with her own hands distributed to the warriors. When exhausted with her cries and about expiring, her tormentors opened the circle that had surrounded her, and the great chief shot an arrow into her heart, which was followed by the spears and arrows of his followers, and the blood poured down the sides of the glistening rock in streams. Their weapons were sprinkled with her blood to make them invincible, and all retired to their cabins, cheered and encouraged with the hope of a glorious victory.”

Father Charlevoix would go on to explore much of the region, eventually reaching as far south as the mouth of the Mississippi. He kept a journal the entire trip, which is what the preceding was recorded in. Alexander Henry arrived a few years later, in 1771.

Alexander Henry

He landed at the mouth of the Ontonagon River at the Ojibwa village there. Henry and several other men had been sailing around Lake Superior looking for enough ore of something to make them rich. But stories had found their way to him and he was determined to find the great copper boulder of the Ontonagon River. He was able to hire a couple of Ojibwa men to take him up the river to see the legendary rock. Henry hoped that where there was copper, there might be silver.

Henry estimated that they went 20 miles upriver. His guides pointed out the massive piece of copper. Alexander Henry tells the story: “I camped at the mouth of the Ontonagon River and took the opportunity of going up the river with Indian guides. The object which I expressly went to see, and to which I had the satisfaction of being led, was a mass of copper, which according to my estimate, weighed no less than five tons. Such was its pure and malleable state that with an axe I was able to cut off a portion weighing one hundred pounds. On viewing the surrounding surface, I conjectured that the mass at some period or other had rolled from the side of a lofty hill which rises at its back.”

Henry was so impressed by this that he had his men erect a cabin and they decided to begin mining. This was the first non-native copper mining operation. The men dug, finding some pieces of nice float copper, some weighing more than a pound, but overall, they weren’t having much luck. Alexander Henry decided that they would need more supplies and better equipment, so he sailed off to Sault Ste. Marie. His mining operation should be fine until he returned.

When Henry returned, he found his men back at the Ontonagon’s mouth waiting for him. Much of the banks of the Ontonagon River is made up of clay. The mine’s surrounding clay got wet and the entire operation caved in. It was the end of their venture. They loaded up and went back to Sault Ste. Marie. When Henry published his memoirs a few years later, the legend of the boulder became very well known.

Governor Lewis Cass and Henry Schoolcraft

Fifty years later, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, along with then territorial Governor, Gen. Lewis Cass, saw the boulder on the expedition of Lake Superior in 1819. The expedition was to determine an estimate of the mineral wealth of Lake Superior. At the time the Michigan Territory extended all the way to the Mississippi River. The now rampant rumors of the region’s mineral possibilities had piqued Cass’ interest. Henry Schoolcraft was appointed as geologist of the expedition and recorded his impressions of the boulder.

“The rock was found on the edge of a lofty clay bluff, the face of which appears at a former time to have slipped into the river. The shape of the rock is irregular. Its greatest length is three feet, eight inches. Its greatest breadth is three feet, four inches. Altogether it may contain eleven cubic feet. Henry who visited it in 1766 estimated its weight at five tons, but after examining it with scrupulous attention, I do not think the weight of the metallic copper exceeds 2200 pounds. The quantity, however, may have been much diminished since its first discovery, and the marks of chisels and axes upon it, with the broken tools lying around prove that portions have been cut off and carried away.”

Cass, McKenny and a Treaty

The expedition went on to explore the Lake Superior basin, but the Boulder left a lasting impression on Lewis Cass. A few years later, 1823, Gen. Thomas McKenny and he negotiated a land treaty with the Ojibwa natives. Mineral rights, and specifically the Ontonagon Boulder, were discussed in it. The chief of the Ontonagon tribe, Plover, spoke of the sacred rock like this, “There is a rock there. This, fathers, is the property of no one man. It belongs to all of us. It was put there by the Great Spirit, and it is ours. In the life of my father the British were busy working it. It was then big, like that table. They tried to raise it to the top of the hill but failed. They then said the copper was not in the rock but in the banks of the river. They dug for it by a light, working underground. The earth fell in, killing three men. It was then left until now.”

Once the treaty was signed, an immediate attempt was made to recover the boulder and bring it out of the Ontonagon River to the mouth. A company of men was detached to the Ontonagon country to begin immediate recovery of the legendary copper mass. Underestimating what it would take to perform such an operation, the wilderness of Ontonagon would show how formidable it could be. George Porter, one of men on the expedition, describes the journey.

“With two boats and twenty men, including our Indian guide, we proceeded up the river. About twenty-eight miles from its mouth, the river divided into two branches of equal magnitude. We continued up the right branch for about two miles further, where we found it necessary to leave our boats and proceed by land. After travelling about five miles on foot over points of mountains from one to three hundred feet high, all separated by deep ravines, the bottoms of which were bogs and which by thick underbrush were rendered impervious to the rays of the sun, we came to the object of our search, long known as the ‘Copper Rock’ of Lake Superior. This remarkable specimen of virgin copper lies a little above the low water mark on the west bank of the river about thirty-five miles from its mouth. Having ascertained that with our means and time it was impossible to remove by hand a body weighing more than a ton, we proceeded to examine the channel of the river. We found it to be intercepted by ridges of sandstone, forming cataracts, with a descent in all of about seventy feet over which it was impossible to pass, while high perpendicular banks of sandstone rendered passage around them impracticable. Finding our plans completely frustrated by unforeseen difficulties, we were obliged to abandon our attempt.”

Douglass Houghton

In the late 1830s, Douglass Houghton came into the region. He had been named State Geologist for the budding new State of Michigan. No longer a territory, Michigan had been awarded the Upper Peninsula as compensation for a strip of land that included Toledo that was awarded to Ohio in what was known as the Toledo War, also called the Michigan/ Ohio War. Houghton set off on an expedition of his own to specifically assess the mineral wealth that could be found in the U.P. This was the first real geological survey of the Lake Superior region. It set into motion what is now known as the “Copper Boom,” one of the biggest mineral rushes of all time. Houghton addressed the famed boulder in his final mineralogical report in 1841. “I have thus far not alluded particularly to the large mass of native copper which has long been known to exist in the bed of the Ontonagon River. While this mass of native copper cannot fail to excite much interest for its size and purity, it must be borne in mind that it is a perfectly isolated mass having no connection with any other; nor does the character of the country lead to the inference that any veins of the metal occur in the immediate vicinity, though the mineral district crosses the country at a distance of a few miles.”

Two things occurred in 1841-43. that led to one of the greatest mineral rushes in history: Houghton’s report and the retrieval of the “Copper Boulder.” Though rumored to have existed for many years and having been seen by only a few, the Ontonagon Boulder was finally revealed to the world, removing it from the realm of mythology into fact. It is rare in history when one moment can be pinpointed that changes everything, but the Copper Boom begins with the Ontonagon Boulder.

Sorting Out the Story

How it was retrieved is a bit murky. Two men claimed to have pulled it from its resting place along the river. There is no doubt there is some braggadocio involved with the retelling, but through multiple sources some semblance of the story can be pieced together. One thing is sure, both men were involved in pulling the stone free from the Ontonagon River.

The two men are James K. Paul and Julius Eldred. Both claimed to have retrieved the boulder, but one of their stories simply doesn’t hold up. The real accomplishment was done by James K. Paul. Born in Virginia, he was a veteran of the Blackhawk war where he served under Abraham Lincoln.

He had heard of the boulder from a Nicholas Minclergue, who told him the tale of the boulder that lay on the west branch of the Ontonagon River. In 1842, he decided to go look for and sell the Ontonagon Boulder. With Minclergue, who worked as an interpreter throughout the expedition, the pair mounted an expedition from Wisconsin into the depths of the Ontonagon country. It was a hard-fought expedition, as the pair soon realized that the mules they had purchased wouldn’t be able to make the journey. They sold them and then proceeded with canoes down the Wisconsin River, portaged to the Montreal River to Lake Superior. They then followed the coast to the mouth of the Ontonagon River. Here they built a small cabin on the north side of the river. This became his base of operations as well as the beginning of Ontonagon as a village. J.K. Paul was the founder of Ontonagon.

Julius Eldred

1842 was the year that the Ojibwas signed a treaty with the Federal Government, ceding the region to the U.S., but since it wasn’t yet ratified the local Natives were very suspicious of Paul when he and Minclergue began asking questions about the boulder and its location. Most refused to answer him. There is evidence that Julius Eldred, a businessman from Detroit, had traveled there the previous year with Samuel Ashmun from Sault Ste. Marie and purchased the boulder from the Ojibwa. Having made a deal with Eldred, they were unwilling to talk. Eldred had then returned to Detroit, expecting to come back later and extract the boulder.

Proceeding up the river on his own, Paul began a long search for the boulder. Eventually he found it lying on the banks of the river, partly submerged in water. He built a cabin within fifty feet of the boulder, and then cleared the brush in between so he could watch his prize from the cabin.

Getting the Boulder Out

He made plans to take the boulder out of the wilderness to his other cabin at the mouth of the river. As discovered by those who had previously attempted to acquire the rock, logistics was going to be difficult at best. Between the rock and Lake Superior were several sets of rapids as well as a substantial waterfall that would make floating it downriver impossible for at least the first three miles. He devised another plan. Using a line and capstan seemed to be his only option. Pulling the rock up to the top of a several-hundred-foot-bluff was an accomplishment in itself, but the boulder was pulled nearly three miles through the woods. He then began work on a road to get the nearly two-ton boulder. He built movable tracks and a low cart to haul the boulder on. It was then that the winter of 1842-43 rolled in. He had to stop all work until the next spring. He spent the winter in his “rock” cabin.

As spring came, he renewed his work. He had just finished preparing to begin moving the boulder when he got a surprise. It was the arrival of Major Walter Cunningham and Julius Eldred, accompanied by a group of natives. Eldred was returning to claim his property. Over the winter, the treaty had been ratified and the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, had instructed Cunningham to “Secure the rock,” which had achieved the status of legend. He was ordered to bring it to Washington.

Standoff

Paul was having none of it. He pulled a pistol and claimed the rock by preemption, as he had homesteaded the property, so by rights it was his. He was willing to shoot anyone who tried to take it away. After long discussion, the stand-off was ended by coming to the agreement that Paul would move the boulder to the mouth of the Ontonagon River and then receive a reasonable compensation. Paul’s original plan had been to sell the boulder, so this was agreeable to him. Cunningham and Eldred withdrew and with the help of some of the natives was able to get the boulder far enough downriver that it was eventually able to be loaded into a large boat to be floated the rest of the way to the mouth and then placed in Paul’s cabin.

It wasn’t long before Maj. Cunningham returned with Eldred on a revenue cutter. Cunningham entered into negotiations with James Paul, but he wasn’t offering enough. Frustrated and angry, Cunningham ordered the Captain of the schooner to load the rock immediately. Again Paul wasn’t having any of it. He pulled his gun. He then promised to make a corpse of the first man who touched his boulder until he gave them permission. The crew of the cutter believed him and refused to follow the Major’s orders.

Julius Eldred stepped in and paid Paul with a check for $1800, no small sum in 1843. Eldred was figuring on getting reimbursed from the Federal Government. James Paul went on to find other large pieces of mass copper, all of them larger than the Ontonagon Boulder. It is not true that the Ontonagon Boulder is the largest piece of pure copper found, it is simply the most famous.

Journey to Detroit

The boulder was loaded aboard the revenue cutter, Algonquin. Julius Eldred had originally planned to put the boulder on display and take it on tour around the country, but Major Cunningham had been ordered to take possession of the boulder and was told to compensate whoever claimed ownership up to $700. Eldred had spent $1100 more than that trying to get it out of James Paul’s hands without the gunplay that would have surely ensued. Major Cunningham was in the midst of a dilemma. He decided to let Eldred maintain temporary possession of it.

The Algonquin sailed to Sault Ste Marie. This was a decade before there were locks at the Soo, so the boulder had to be portaged around the Sault rapids. Loaded onto a cart, the copper boulder was rolled down what is now Portage Ave. to the docks below the rapids. It was loaded onto a schooner called the Brewster, which then set sail for Detroit.

It’s Showtime!

The news of the Ontonagon copper rock spread like wildfire and by the time the ship arrived in Detroit, it was big news. Eldred, who had always had intentions of touring and displaying the rock, realized that his dream might still be realized. Since Cunningham had given him custody of the rock, he immediately made plans to display it at 25 cents a head. When they docked, with full pomp and circumstance, he had the boulder pulled through town with four black horses on an overly decorated wagon. He had the showmanship of a P.T. Barnum.

Whether he decided this way back in Ontonagon or something that occurred to him in Detroit, Eldred claimed he’d brought the boulder. Piecing together a tale worthy of Barnum that included details of how Paul had accomplished the feat, he developed a story of adventure and daring for his customers viewing the displayed rock. He even claimed at one point that he had leaned over a cliff where the boulder was protruding and by hand cut through six inches of solid copper until it fell to the river below. Eldred told his story so well, that there is a controversy over J.K. Paul and Julius Eldred as to who really brought the boulder out. It was just simpler for Eldred to claim credit so he could dazzle his audience as they paid their admission. Unfortunately, the inconsistency in his story makes it easier to discount him as the actual discoverer. Also claiming that he was the one who accomplished the feat would come in handy later on.

On to the Smithsonian

It is unclear as to how long Eldred was actually allowed to display the boulder, but it was not long after that the government stepped back in and reclaimed the copper mass. This time they wouldn’t be deterred. The Ontonagon boulder was loaded onto another schooner and shipped off to Buffalo, NY. Again, as it was moved from the ship, Eldred made sure that the great Copper Rock received its due attention. As the boulder was on its way to the railroad yard, it was paraded through Buffalo. Again, a huge crowd turned out and it is said that many tried to chip pieces off it as it moved through the streets. Again it was decorated aboard a four-wheel horse-drawn truck.

Eldred had been promised by Cunningham that he would be able to receive the copper rock when it arrived at Georgetown. He did, and oversaw the Ontonagon Boulder being placed in the yard of the United States War Department. It was the end of an era for Eldred.

He spent the next two years attempting to get reimbursed for his expenses from Congress. It is here that his story of pulling the boulder through the wilderness was beneficial. It certainly would have bolstered his claims of expenses far beyond the original $700. Eventually the government paid him $5664.98. The Congressional Record states that he was paid for “his time and expense in purchasing and removing the mass of copper commonly called ‘the copper rock’.”

It stayed in the yard at the War Department until the Civil War, then was moved to a corner of the National Museum. It makes sense that a large amount of copper during the civil war would have been quite a prize for the Confederacy. In its place at the national Museum, the boulder was forgotten.

Lost in the Museum

In 1902, an Ontonagon newspaper editor, Alfred Meads, found it collecting dust in a corner and completely unidentified. Mead tells the story in his own words:

“In the winter of 1880-81, I was in Washington and wanted to see the rock. Jay A. Hubbell was then our member of congress. He had never seen it and requested me to hunt it up. Two days’ search in the Navy Yard failed to locate it.

“I afterward found it in the Smithsonian Institute. No one knew of its whereabouts. Finally one of the workmen in the basement said there was a big piece of copper rock in the packing room and we found it stowed away in a dark, out of the way corner. It was described as a copper rock found on the Ontonagon River and supposed to have been used as an altar by the Indians. Mr. Hubbell and myself secured the promise of the officers in charge of the museum that it should be placed on a pedestal in the museum proper and labeled ‘Copper Rock found and taken out of the Ontonagon River, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, by James K. Paul of Ontonagon.’ Since that time, I have never seen it.”

Retrieval Efforts

Over the years there have been stories of the Smithsonian losing track of the 3708 pound rock; not an easy feat but the government seems adept at it. Ontonagon residents have tried to get the boulder returned to what is considered its rightful home. The Smithsonian’s seeming disinterest in the rock has prompted calls for its return. But as interest rises, the Smithsonian’s grip on the artifact has tightened with each inquiry.

There was an exact replica made, which was originally displayed at Michigan Tech University in Houghton. The replica now resides in the Ontonagon County Historical Society Museum. It is exact in every way, including visible chisel marks.

The Ontonagon Boulder was not the biggest piece of mass copper ever found. The mining days unearthed masses of copper that make the boulder look like a pebble. But its legend and fame alone brought about the copper boom. Without the stories it spawned, there might never have been a Copper Country.

For more information about the Ontonagon Boulder, check out the Ontonagon Historical Society.

For more stories like this, check out my book True Tales, the Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

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