300 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ward either conquered or absorbed this semi-civilized people, we might 

 be tempted to conclude that the knowledge of this peculiar invention 

 was a bequest to these modern tribes from their more advanced prede- 

 cessors — just as some of the arts of Roman civilization were in- 

 herited by the barbarous conquerors of the empire. It is not impossi- 

 ble, nor indeed very improbable, that such may have been actually the 

 case in this instance. But further inquiry shows that this system had 

 a wider extent and probably a far remoter origin than this suggestion 

 would explain.* 



Crossing the Rocky Mountains, we find the shell-money in actual 

 use among the tribes of the Pacific coast, down almost to our own 

 day. Three kinds were known. In Northern California, in Oregon, 

 and still farther north, a rare species of cylindrical univalve, the 

 Dentalium, or tusk-shell, known in the Chinook " jargon " as the 

 hiqua, or ioqua, was strung upon a string, and used as money. Its 

 extreme rarity and its attractiveness as an ornament made, as with 

 the pearl, its only claim to value. But farther south the genuine 

 wampum, or disk-money, owing its value to the labor bestowed upon 

 it, and to its importance in the social policy of the people, was in uni- 

 versal use. Full and interesting details on this subject are given by 

 Mr. Stephen Powers in his instructive work on the " Tribes of Califor- 

 nia." Among the Nishinams and, as he believes, among all the tribes 

 of Central and Southern California, the materials chiefly used are two 

 species of sea-shell, found upon the coast. The most common is a 

 thick white shell, the Pachydesma crassatelloides, from which is 

 formed the money known as hdicoJc. This consists, he writes, "of 

 circular disks or buttons, ranging from a quarter-inch to an inch in 

 diameter, and varying in thickness with the shell. These are pierced 

 in the center, and strung on strings made of the inner bark of the 

 wild cotton, or milkweed (Asclepias), and either all the pieces on a 

 string, or all in one section of it, are of the same size." The value of 

 this money varies with the size of the disks. The larger pieces are 

 rated at about twenty-five cents ; the half-inch pieces at about half 

 that value ; and the smallest pieces at three or four cents, being usu- 

 ally rated by the string. "This," continues Mr, Powers, "may be 

 called their silver, and is the great medium of all transactions ; while 

 the money answering to gold is made from varieties of the ear-shell 

 (Haliotis) and is called ullo. They cut these shells with flints into 

 oblong strips, from an inch to two inches in length, according to the 

 curvature of the shell, and about a third as broad as they are long. 

 Two holes are drilled near the narrow end of each piece, and they are 

 thereby fastened to a string of the material above-named, hanging 

 edge to edge. Ten pieces generally constitute a string, and the larger 



* Tho-e who desire to pursue this inquiry will find ample material in the valuable 

 essay on " Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans," by Mr. W. H. Holmes, in the Second 

 Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. 



