Raising one of the heavy stones, he struck it against the exposed metal and broke off a small corner. Pure copper is a comparatively soft metal, and heating and dashing with cold water anneals or softens it still more. With a heavy stone maul and, part of the time, with the aid of a wedge-shaped piece of hard rock used as a chisel, Nangotook hammered and split off pieces of the metal. The boys would gladly have helped him with his laborious mining, but he would not let them take part in the actual operations. They might carry water from the stream, gather fuel for the fire, find and hand him another stone sledge when he splintered the one he was using, but the actual processes of fire making, rock splitting and beating off copper, he would not permit them to share. Evidently by Ojibwa tradition, this peculiar mining had something of a sacred or mysterious character, and, to his mind, must be performed by one of his own medicine clan, duly appointed, initiated and trained for the work. The boys knew enough of Indian customs to understand this, so they did not urge their help upon him, but merely obeyed orders.
Such mining was slow work. The rock had to be heated and cooled several times, and the wielding of the stone maul was heavy labor, but at last Nangotook obtained copper enough for his immediate purpose. As they were returning down the cove, he told the boys that the pit where they had been working was the same he and his companions had taken metal from on his previous visit to the island, and the only one he knew of that had been worked in recent years. Jean had picked up a stone hammer with a groove around it, and he showed it to the Indian and asked him what the groove was for. Nangotook answered that a handle of some sort had been attached to the boulder. One of the party he had come to the island with had used such a hammer, he remembered, with a withe twisted about it to hold it by, but he had broken the stone and had thrown it aside. Nangotook thought this might be the very stone. It was not customary to use handles, he said, but he did not know why. Ronald asked how the copper mass came to be in the bottom of the pit. Had it been split off from the side, or was it found by digging down? Nangotook could not answer the question. The rock had been in the same place when he was there before, though then it was well covered with moss and earth, as if it had not been disturbed for a number of years. The tree trunk wedged behind it had been there too, but he and his companions had made the ladder.