176 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



if the other end reached to the uppermost of the 

 tattoo lines, the five shells (ten years ago) were worth 

 twenty-five dollars in gold, or even more. Only one 

 in ten thousand would reach this distinction, so that 

 the ordinary worth of a string was ten dollars. 



"No shell is treated as money at all," says Mr. 

 Powers, " unless it is long enough to rate as twenty- 

 five cents. Below that ... it goes to form part of 

 a woman's necklace. Real money is ornamented 

 with little scratches or carvings, and with very narrow 

 strips of thin, fine snake-skin, wrapped spirally round 

 the shells ; and sometimes a tiny tuft of scarlet wood- 

 pecker's down is pasted on the base of the shell." 

 These marks manifestly were designed to give some sort 

 of sanction — make it represent somewhat the labour 

 put upon the beads with which it had to compete. 



For, south of Eel River, and thence throughout all 

 central and southern California, the staple currency 

 was a shell-money resembling the eastern wampum. 

 Hiqua and Alli-cochick were simply shells of some 

 rarity, ground at the tip sufficiently to admit of being 

 strung. The Hawok and ullo of California was 

 carefully manufactured, and represented a real cost of 

 labour and time, though they had no intrinsic value. 



The first-named, hawok, was of least worth, 

 standing in the place of the white wampum of the 

 east, or our silver. It consisted of circular discs or 

 buttons from a quarter of an inch to a whole inch in 

 diameter, and of the thickness of the shell from which 

 it was cut. For this purpose a heavy bivalve was 

 chosen, and broken into discoidal fragments. These 

 pieces were then ground smooth, and polished by 

 rubbing on blocks of sandstone which often had to 

 be brought from a long distance to the maker's 

 rancheria. This finished, a hole was bored through 

 the centre with a wooden, flint-tipped drill, forced 

 to revolve very rapidly by a buckskin string which 

 wound upon it, unwound and rewound itself in an 

 opposite direction, through the incessant vertical 

 movement of a loose cross-bar in the operator's hand. 

 These Hawok discs were then strung upon sinews, 

 or on cords made of milkweed fibre, but the strings 

 were not of invariable length, though beads of like 

 size must be put together. The very best of this was 

 worth twenty-five cents apiece ten years ago ; but the 

 smallest always went by the string. This white bead- 

 money was (and to a certain extent still is) the great 

 medium of Indian trading among themselves. 



Their "gold," so to speak, the Ullo, is made from 

 the shell of the abalone (Haliotis) and chiefly from 

 the red species [H. rufescens). These shells are cut 

 with flints into oblong key-stone-shaped pieces, from 

 one to two inches in length, according to the 

 curvature of the shell, and a third as broad. Two 

 holes are drilled near the narrow end of each piece, 

 and they are thus strung edge to edge. "Two 

 pieces," wrote Powers, "generally constitute a 

 string, and the large pieces rate at one dollar 

 apiece, ten dollars a string ; the smaller in propor- 



tion or less, if they are not pretty. Being susceptible 

 of a high polish this money forms a beautiful orna- 

 ment, and is worn for necklaces on gala days. But 

 as money it was rather too large and cumbersome, 

 and ... it may be considered rather as jewelry." 



A third sort of money, rarely seen nowadays, 

 was fabricated on the islands off the southern coast 

 of California, and along the adjacent mainland. 

 This was called Kol-Kol, and was made by grinding 

 off the apex of the univalve shell of Olivella 

 biplicata until a string could be passed through. It 

 was slightly esteemed. Farther south, all these 

 forms of shell-cutting disappear in their capacity of 

 money, retaining only their value as ornaments ; so 

 that their use south^of California belongs under the 

 head of barter. Thus Bancroft notes of the natives 

 of Sonora : " Pearls, torquoises, emeralds, corals, 

 feathers and gold were in former times part of their 

 property, and held the place of money." 



There seems to have been an immense amount 

 of this regular money, hiqua, allo-cochick, hawok 

 and ullo on the Pacific coast ; Powers thinks an 

 average of $100 worth to each male Indian would 

 not be too large an estimate for California at the 

 time of its discovery by the Spaniards. This portion 

 equaled the value of two grizzly-bear skins, or three 

 ponies, or the price of two wives. However it was 

 not equally distributed, any more than are riches in 

 civilised communities, a point for communists to 

 consider. 



The shore tribes were the coiners of this money, 

 and jealously guarded their privileges. With it they 

 bought skins, arms and implements from the dwellers 

 in the Coast Range, where grew animals and 

 materials not to be obtained along the beach. The 

 mountaineers in turn disseminated it far in the 

 interior, where, finally, the beads were prized and 

 worn as ornaments and ceased to circulate. More- 

 over an enormous waste and destruction was always 

 going on (a fact also true of the Atlantic coast) owing 

 to the practice of propitiatory sacrifices and the wide- 

 spread custom of burying or burning all the wealth 

 of each man (or noted woman) who died. Thus 

 the demand was always greater than the supply, and 

 a high value maintained. It is astonishing to read 

 how thrifty and shrewd the Indians were in respect 

 to this shell coinage. When the Americans grew 

 numerous, and began to manufacture large quantities 

 of the Hawok, of course its value declined ; moreover, 

 with the partial civilisation of the Indians, a new 

 sentiment crept in, and some strange changes in 

 primitive social economy followed. 



At present the younger English-speaking Indians 

 scarcely use it at all, except in a few dealings with 

 their elders, like wife-buying or for gambling. A 

 young fellow sometimes procures it as an invest- 

 ment, laying away a few strings of it, for he knows he 

 cannot squander it at the stores ; whereas if he really 

 needs a few dollars of current cash he can always 



