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> they have centuries to learn just like the rest of us

This seems like a massive assumption to make. Sub Saharan Africa has tons of iron ore and it’s still debated whether or not they developed iron working on their own. Your point relies on (an approximation of) blank slatism which seems highly highly unlikely given the natural variation in all other areas of life.

Okay, I'll grant that they might not have developed iron working if it was possible. However that doesn't change the larger point that it was impossible for anyone living in that area to develop metal working as metals were not available. No matter how much ability you have, you will never develop metal working because you need a large existing industrial base to use the ores in North America. (there is/was a lot of high grade ore in North America, it just isn't near the surface)

a camp fire gets plenty hot for blacksmithing - just wait for the coals and then blow on them

Maybe if you're working with bronze or copper, but iron forging requires much higher temperatures than a campfire can provide. That's why the iron age took place after the bronze age, forges capable of making iron workable were not yet invented. It wasn't a trivial invention.

Charcoal - which you get from campfires is hot enough. It takes a lot more of it though and a lot of other effort. when bronze is available it is generally good enough and a lot easier, but historians tell me iron was used throughout the bronze age in small amounts. iron really needs steel to be signicantly better than iron and that took a while-

(I am a layman here so take this with a grain of salt) I believe you are correct, however no campfire will have enough airflow to get that hot unless you have a bellows or some other way of injecting air into it, and you'd have to have it structured in a way that it can efficiently burn the fuel. I'm not much of a blacksmith but had a friend who was into it and whose dad also was, and we did a pretty fair amount of "experimenting" as kids :-D I know from experience that elevation makes a big difference too, though I've never measured.

Would be fascinating for someone with knowledge of this to weigh in!

Charcoal is great for forging, though as you say getting airflow is tricky. Still this is manageable - clay and rocks are abundant on earth so there are options.

A lot of colonial iron came from Southern NJ. And this wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron says it was produced at spots along the coast. South Jersey had a very clean water called "cedar water" that is high in tannins from a freshwater seaweed that was well suited to storage and really set the stage for transoceanic voyages at scale. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cedar_water

Most early American ironworks extracted the iron ore from "bog iron" deposits - large nodules of quite pure iron that forms along the roots of plants in boggy areas. Bog iron could be easily scooped up from the mucky bottom with long-handled rakes into flat-bottomed boats and then dried on shore.

Is blowing on it really good enough? People don't have that much breath, and you'd have to put your face right up to the heat.

You could use a blowpipe of some sort. But better, a bellows. Was there any evidence of either?

Although the South and Central Americans worked bronze, the North Americans did not. I doubt a leap directly from nothing to iron smithing could occur.

They didn't have metal options - in north america metals are mostly found in deep mines.

I agree that blowing is not ideal - but it would work. A flat board as a fan, or even bellows are options. The larger point is none of these would leave evidence behind.

Whether or not forced air (blowing) would be necessary would depend on the coal temp, metal size, and how you want to shape the metal.

Simple forging of small enough pieces within a large enough coal bed might not even require forced air to reach a workable temp.

I am also skeptical that the iron scale was "proof positive" but the anecdote about reading from books seemed pretty convincing about the integration:

> "We have one little snippet of historical evidence from the 1700s, which describes people with blue or gray eyes who could remember people who used to be able to read from books,"

I’m not convinced either. If they assimilated into nearby native populations, wouldn’t someone have found a colonist or a descendant that could tell the story?

Oral history is not very good at long term tales. I know my grand parents stories, but even my great grand parents is something that I know little about and I have trouble passing that on to my kids (and that includes the great grandpa who was murdered and thus a more compelling story)