Note 8 — MEXICAN COPPER TOOLS.

There is, indeed, one passage in Herrera (Antonio de), Hist. Gen. de los hechos de los Castellanos, Madrid, 1729, in his introductory Descripcion de las Indias, §§ Zacatula and Colima, where the working of copper mines by the indigenous people of these provinces is mentioned: “There are very abundant copper mines in this district, more towards the East, and near the port of Santiago. The Indians make marvelous vessels (vasos) of this copper, because it is sweet (dulce). They have, however, still another kind of copper, which is hard, and which they employed for tilling the ground, instead of using iron, for they were not acquainted with iron before the Spaniards entered the kingdom.” As will be seen later, there is no doubt as to the latter assertion. But we fear the former to be an anachronism and the manufacturing of vasos de cobre (copper vessels) will have to be assigned to the epoch after the Conquest, when the art of hammering was introduced and eagerly accepted and practised by the natives.