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12 Copper

Copper Goes to Sea In the late 1700s, American shipbuilders began fitting ships with copper bottoms to prevent damage from worms and barnacles, which grew on the sides and bottoms of ships, causing massive amounts of damage. In 1794, the US Naval Act authorized the construction of six American frigates outfitted with copper bottoms. One was the USS Constitution , which is still a commissioned vessel in the US Navy, although it’s chiefly used as a museum .

USS Constitution.

The Native Americans who lived in the region took pure copper from the earth and used it to fashion tools, jewelry, and weapons. Later-day archeologists eventually found mines, smelting pits, and hammering stones that the Indians used to work the copper. These early American mines were not just pits dug into the ground, but sophisticated mining operations in which the Native peoples removed a massive amount of copper, roughly 1,000 to 1,200 tons (910–1,090 metric tons) per pit. Some estimates say the humans who lived on the Upper Peninsula mined 500,000 tons (455,000 metric tons) of copper until 1200 BCE. Archeologists also estimate that the mines produced copper for 1,000 years, although no one knows for sure. All the miners left behind were their tools. Michigan wasn’t the only hotbed of copper mining in early America. In the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, Native Americans mined and forged copper into many