Who were the ”Yam-Ko-Desh”?

After researching a little bit on North American mound builders I found this old link to The Detroit News website. It seems that the Ottawa Tribe of Native Americans spoke of a group of people that “were as thick as leaves” know as the Yam-Ko-Desh. After reading the article I really started to wonder who they were and what their connection is to the ancient civilization that built the Michigan Copper mines and its connection to the Rock lake pyramids of Wisconsin. All evidence points to a group living in North America besides the Native Americans.
Also it seems that they were an “advanced” civilization with evidence of brain surgery found in skeletal remains. Does anyone have any addition information on the subject or some other research? What other anomalies of North American archeological history are hiding out there?

info.detnews.com...
www.rocklakeresearch.com...
en.wikipedia.org...(Wisconsin)
www.lib.mtu.edu...

Originally posted by smoke screen
After researching a little bit on North American mound builders I found this old link to The Detroit News website. It seems that the Ottawa Tribe of Native Americans spoke of a group of people that “were as thick as leaves” know as the Yam-Ko-Desh. After reading the article I really started to wonder who they were and what their connection is to the ancient civilization that built the Michigan Copper mines and its connection to the Rock lake pyramids of Wisconsin. All evidence points to a group living in North America besides the Native Americans.

Why shouldn't they be Native Americans? Tribes tended to think of themselves as "The Real People" and any other tribe as being not-quite-human. The copper trade routes are fairly well known, and copper was easily worked. The artifacts are consistant with the cultures where they are found, and the burials there clearly show the people making and using them are Native Americans.

Also it seems that they were an “advanced” civilization with evidence of brain surgery found in skeletal remains.

Trepanning is a very old type of surgery... if memory serves (sorry, in a hurry here), it was also practiced by Neanderthals. There are hundreds of ancient skulls from around the world showing this kind of surgery (and that patients survived.)

I'll hunt up more later, though, and see what I can find since I'm really going "off the top of my head," here and my memory has been known to be faulty!

After doing some more digging around for research involving copper implementations used by many of the tribes of North America I can see your point. There seems to be some stigma surrounding the possibility of transcontinental travel let alone transcontinental mining in that period of history. I found a great link to some good information on the subject here. Having grown up in the area of the Lake Superior Copper mines this has been a subject that has fascinated me for years. What do you think of the possibility of Mayan or Incan contact or trading with Native American Tribes or transcontinental miners? There would have to have been a large demand for copper to have mining on such a large scale. It is a shame we do not have much recorded history of pre-columbus Native America.

copperculture.homestead.com...

Also see

www.jewellhistories.com...

Originally posted by smoke screen
After doing some more digging around for research involving copper implementations used by many of the tribes of North America I can see your point. There seems to be some stigma surrounding the possibility of transcontinental travel let alone transcontinental mining in that period of history.

Copper from each area has a chemical signature... it's not pure. So you can tell where an artifact came from by the chemical signature. However, it's a pretty common metal in some areas, so the trade routes didn't run to places where the tribes were nomadic OR to places where there was already a lot of copper.

I found a great link to some good information on the subject here. Having grown up in the area of the Lake Superior Copper mines this has been a subject that has fascinated me for years. What do you think of the possibility of Mayan or Incan contact or trading with Native American Tribes or transcontinental miners?

The Mayans and Incans appeared about 4,000 years after the copper miners appeared. So they were long gone. Mayans and Incans did have metal technology but it was from their own local mines.

There was trade from North America Pueblo cultures down to the Aztec areas -- but trade goods included parrot feathers and parrots and not copper!

copperculture.homestead.com...
www.jewellhistories.com...

those were interesting sites!

Yes, Copper Culture is one of those that I am interested in (along with the mound builders.) I haven't studied much about them, however.

The carbon date testing of the many of the ancient Great Lakes open pit copper mines shows anomalous carbon date testing, some scientists predict they are much older than previously thought.


Nuclear Event in North America

by Richard B. Firestone, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and William Topping, Consultant, Baldwin, Michigan

"Our research indicates that the entire Great Lakes region (and beyond) was subjected to particle bombardment and a catastrophic nuclear irradiation that produced secondary thermal neutrons from cosmic ray interactions. The neutrons produced unusually large quantities of 239 Pu and substantially altered the natural uranium abundance ratios (235 U/238 U) in artifacts and in other exposed materials including cherts, sediments, and the entire landscape. These neutrons necessarily transmuted residual nitrogen (14 N) in the dated charcoals to radiocarbon, thus explaining anomalous dates."