3 



up by the sea-coast, and on the banks of the lakes ; and now it is nothing Init 

 a kind of cylindrical beads, made of shells, white and black, which are esteemed 

 among them as silver and gold are among us. They have the art of stringing, 

 twisting, and interweaving them into their belts, collars, blankets, moccasins, etc., 

 in ten thousand different sizes, forms, and figures, so as to be ornaments for ev- 

 ery part of dress, and expressive to them of all their important transactions. 



'• They dye the wampum of various colors and shades, and mix and dispose 

 them with great ingenuity and order, so as to be significant among themselves of 

 almost everything they please ; so that by these, their words are kept and their 

 thoughts communicated to one another, as ours by writing. The belts that pass 

 from one nation to another in all treaties, declarations, and important transac- 

 tions, are very carefully preserved in the cabins of their chiefs, and serve not only 

 as a kind of record or history, but as a public treasure." 



Golden is the only author in whose writings we find any allusion to the use or 

 manufacture of money or wampum by any of the interior tribes, and the tribes 

 of the Five Nations were not remote from the Atlantic shore. 



IIow far to the south of New England this wampum money was used, we do 

 not know. The shells of which it was made are abundant in the neighborhood of 

 New York and Philadelphia, and are the common clam in the markets of those 

 cities. A closely related form [Mercennria prmparca, Say), is found on the 

 shores of Florida, and attains an exceedingly large size ; specimens collected in 

 Tampa Bay frequently weigh as much as three and a half pounds after the ani- 

 mal is removed. Explorations made by us in that State in the year 1869, in 

 the course of which many of the ancient shell-heaps and burial-mounds on both 

 shores of the peninsula were examined, resulted in the obtainment of much in- 

 teresting material, but no specimens were found of forms which suggested their 

 possible use for money. 



Crossing the continent to the north-western coast of North America, we 

 find that the sea-board aborigines had, and in a decreasing degree still use, a money 

 of their own — a species of shell, though of a widely different form from that used 

 by the natives of the Atlantic coast. The money of the West-coast Indians is 

 a species of tusk-shell {Dentalia), resembling in miniature the tusks of an ele. 

 phant, (Plate VI, fig 2). Mr. J. K. Lord, formerly connected, as naturalist, with 

 the British North American Boundary Commission, refers to the use of these 

 shells as money " by the native tribes inhabiting Vancouver's Island, Queen 

 Charlotte's Island, and the main-land coast from the Straits of Fuca to Sitka. 

 Since the introduction of blankets by the Hudson's Bay Company, the use of 

 these shells has to a great extent died out ; and the blankets have become the 

 money, as it were, by which everything is now reckoned and paid for by the 

 savage. A slave, a canoe, or a squaw, is worth in these days so many blankets ; 

 it used to be so many strings of Dentalia.'' Mr. Lord also remarks : " The 

 value of the Dentalium depends upon its length. Those representing the greater 

 value are called, when strung together end to end, a Hi-qua ; but the standard 

 by which the Dentalium is calculated to be fit for a Hi-qua is that twenty-five 

 shells placed end to end must make a fathom, or six feet in length. At one 



