ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA. 375 



appears insignificant when compared with the enormous quantity of 

 objects of the same class, which they manufactured from fragments 

 of the valves of marine and fluviatile shells. These wrought beads ex- 

 hibit various forms and sizes, but, according to my experience, are 

 mostly found in the shape of more or less regular sections of cylinders, 

 pierced through the centre. They are often proj^ortionately thick, but 

 sometimes rather thin, resembling the small bone buttons of conimerce. 

 I have shell-beads from different parts of the United States. Most of 

 them are small, not exceeding six or seven millimetres in diameter ; my 

 largest specimens, however, have a diameter of no less than twenty- 

 eight millimetres. These latter, which were found, some time ago, with 

 skeletons in the now leveled " Big Mound" at St. Louis, are very flat 

 in proportion to their diameter, and may be called discs rather than 

 beads. They are evidently made from the valves of species of Unio of 

 the Mississippi valley. These and other shells, which abound in many 

 rivers of the United States, frequently may have furnished the material 

 for ornaments, especially in districts remote from the sea-coast. The 

 holes of Indian shell-beads generally are drilled from both sides, and 

 therefore mostly of a bi-conical shape.* The colored glass beads and 

 enameled beads often found in Indian graves are, of course, of Euro- 

 pean origin, the art of making them being unknown to the aboiigines, 

 and their occurrence in Indian burial-places, therefore, indicates that 

 the interment took place at a period when an intercourse with the 

 whites already had been established. Of the so-called wampum-beads 

 I shall speak at the close of this section. 



The largest and therefore the most esteemed beads and pendants, 

 however, were made by the Indians from the columellje, or, as Cabega 

 de Yaca expresses it, from the "hearts," of large conchs, among which 

 the Strombus gigas seems to have been most frequently used. These 

 beads are more or less cylindrical, or globular, and always drilled length- 

 wise. Some are tapering at both ends, resembling a cigar in shape. I 

 have seen specimens of two and one-half inches in length. The aborigines 

 also made from the columellse of large marine univalves peculiar pin- 

 shaped articles, consisting of a more or less massive stem, which termi- 

 nates in a round knob. Professor Wyman mentions, in the Third Annual 

 lieport on the Peabody Museum (1870), a specimen of this kind found 

 in Tennessee, which is five inches long, with a head an inch in diame- 

 ter. In the collection of Colonel Charles C. Jones, of Brooklyn, there 

 are quite similar specimens of this class. Their destination is yet unex- 



* Flat shell-beads are among the oldest antiquities of Europe. Lartet found them in 

 the grotto of Aurignac, which served as a burial-place at a period, when the cave-bear, 

 cave-hyena, mammoth, rhinoceros, &c., still existed. Some small flat beads in my pos- 

 session, made of Cardium, which were obtained from a dolmen in Southern France, can- 

 not be distinguished from similar productions of the North American Indians. Entire 

 sea-shells (mostly Litorina litorea), pierced for stringing, occurred in the cave of Cro- 

 Magnon, in the valley of the VeziSre. Pierced valves of fossil sea-shells were found at 

 other stations of the reindeer-period in the same valley, &c. 



