Given that 7,000 years ago, Indian precursors shaped the copper into tools, fishhooks, jewelry and other implements. I always wondered why the next step bronze didn’t occur. I did a quick search on tin deposits in the Americas and there seems to be very little tin in North America particularly the eastern Woodlands. The Central Americans did some bronze work. I guess overland travel was too difficult to set up trade routes. Also, with no larger draft animals to be beasts of burden long distance was difficult and inefficient.
A reasonable and necessary intermediate step would be the smelting of copper. That would allow the use of small bits of copper to be melted and cast into larger implements.
It never happened in the Great Lake area, or, if it did, we have not found any traces of it.
One of the reasons may be they never mastered pottery making. Pottery "firing" offers a way to get to copper smelting.
The Aztecs had cast copper axes.