The shell-money here referred to is not sufficiently particularized to admit of 

 a determination of the species to which the shells belonged. In connection with 

 the treatment of the sick among the Meewocs, Mr. Powers says : " The phy- 

 sician's prerogative is, that he must always be paid in advance ; hence, a man 

 seeking his services brings his offering along— a fresh-slain deer, or so many 

 yards of shells, or something— and flings it down before him without a word, 

 thus intimating that he desires the worth of that in medicine and treatment. 

 The patient's prerogative is, that if he dies, his friends may kill the doctor."* 



Among the Moiidocs, or Modocs, " when a maiden arrives at womanhood ^ 

 her father makes a kind of a party in her honor. Her young companions as- 

 semble, and together they dance and sing wild, dithyrambic roundelays, impro- 

 vised songs of the woods and the waters : 



" ' Jumxiing echoes of tlie rock ; 

 Squirrels turning somersaults ; 

 Green leaves, dancing in the air ; 

 Fishes white as money-shells, 

 Running in the water, green, and deep, and still. 

 Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-hay ! 

 Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-hay ! ' 



This is the substance of one of the songs, as translated for me." f 



Among the Yocuts. another California tribe, whose dominion covers '• the 

 Kern and Tulare basins, and the middle San Joaquin," etc., " their money con- 

 sists of the usual shell-buttons, and a string of them reaching from the point of 

 the middle finger to the elbow is valued at twenty-five cents. A section of 

 bone, very white and polished, about two and a half inches long, is sometimes 

 strung on the string, and rates at a ' bit.' They always undervalue articles 

 which they procure from Americans. For instance, goods which cost them at 

 the store $5, they sell among themselves for ^3." J 



We have no authentic data as to whether the value of the shell-money, properly 

 so-called, among the California Indians, and those farther north, was graduated 

 by the color, or whether they generally used other thaa the hija-qua or allicoc/iick 

 [DentaUa), which are white and have a shining surface ; for though, as above, 

 " periwinkles " and " fancy marine-shells " are mentioned as used in trade, these 

 may have been regarded more as articles of ornamentation, and esteemed among 

 the interior Indians particularly as precious, the same as diamonds and fine 

 jewelry are among civilized people. In this view, the interior Indians of California 

 are probably not unlike the more southern Indians of New Mexico, for a friend 

 of ours (Dr. Edward Palmer of the Smithsonian Institution) informed us a few 

 years ago, that while traveling in that territory he was witness to a trade where- 

 in a horse was purchased of one Indian by another, the price paid being a single 

 specimen of the pearly ear-shell [Haliotis rufescens), or common California red- 

 back abalone or aulon. 



* Overland Monthly, vol. X, p. 327. 

 %Id., p. 541. 

 tid., vol. II, p. 108. 



