Identity Help : Need Help Identifying. Is It Silver Ore

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Identity HelpNeed help identifying. Is it silver ore

12th Aug 2020 09:54 UTCLewis Elser OP

It's taken years of exploring and researching but I am pretty sure that this is part of an ancient Indian mine. There is evidence of smelting from around 1910's and several hundred years before tthat.This ties into time wise and geographically of an written story of an ancient Indian silver mine that has been supposedly been found and worked a few times since the Civil war through 1920's. I  didn't start out trying to find this but it is the only thing that makes sense of the smelters and porcelain dishes and clay pots that started my curiosity years ago. Location Tennessee, Cumberland plateau. The rocks are heavy in a conglomerate that I haven't seen anywhere else around here. They have oval holes in them and when I break the rocks the holes are filled with a soft gray to brown to almost red thinly layered something in it easily scratches grey pasty. There is also a gold looking pasty stuff on these rocks for a while after cleaning in water. The ovals sometimes have thin plate/wire stuff in them. When clean before they change color the rocks look like acanthite, Cerargyrite, and native silver. Been trying to do tests on them but wife put her foot down on me getting nitric acid. Afraid I will kill myself or burn the place down. Sending samples off tomorrow to be assayed but should I be looking at different parts of the conglomerate. Thanks Lewis    PS : Have found some what appears to be defaced Indian paintings. 

12th Aug 2020 16:16 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Lewis, try looking at the localities on Mindat that are close to your location.  Cumberland Plateau is a big place so we can't really give you any specific information from such a vague description.An assay will definitely let you know if there's any silver in your specimen, but just "eye-balling" it I don't see any silver minerals. and/or Mindat.org® is an outreach project of the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Mindat® and mindat.org® are registered trademarks of the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy. Copyright © mindat.org and the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy 1993-2026, except where stated. Most political location boundaries are © OpenStreetMap contributors. Mindat.org relies on the contributions of thousands of members and supporters. Founded in 2000 by Jolyon Ralph and Ida Chau. To cite: Ralph, J., Von Bargen, D., Martynov, P., Zhang, J., Que, X., Prabhu, A., Morrison, S. M., Li, W., Chen, W., & Ma, X. (2025). Mindat.org: The open access mineralogy database to accelerate data-intensive geoscience research. American Mineralogist, 110(6), 833–844. doi:10.2138/am-2024-9486.Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions - Contact Us / DMCA issues - Report a bug/vulnerability Current server date and time: February 17, 2026 09:32:44 Go to top of page