42 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



which their money was made, would at once give to the latter superior 

 commercial advantages, and it is quite likely that they were liberal pur- 

 chasers from the interior communities.'' 



On the northwestern coast of North America it appears that a very 

 different form of shell has been used as money, and is still so used to 

 some extent, though its use has rapidly diminished since the introduction 

 of blankets by the Hudson Bay Company, as blankets while on hand, 

 would not be dead capital, but could be used. 



Tills shell is the Dentalium, and Mr. J. K. Lord, formerly connected 

 with the British North American Boundary Commission, states that the 

 current value of the shell depends much upon its length, the longest 

 representing the greatest value, and when strung together end to end, 

 twenty-five shells should form a string one fathom, i. e., six feet in length. 

 Such a string was called a Hi-qua. It is stated in the Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society of London, 1864, that at one time a hi-qua would pur- 

 chase a male slave, equal in value to fifty blankets or £50. 



" It would seem as if there might be some mistake about this length of 

 shell," says Mr. Stearns, " as they are seldom found even as much as 

 two inches in length." Foreign species of this genus have been largely 

 imported, and are sometimes displayed for sale in the fancy stores of 

 San Francisco. 



Mr. Stephen Powers, in a valuable article in the Overland Monthly, 

 states that the Cahrocs, a tribe of Northern California Indians, make use 

 of the red scalps of wood-peckers, which are valued at $5 each (and 

 surely these have no intrinsic value). They also use the Dentalium, 

 which they polish and arrange on strings, the shortest being valued at 

 twenty-five cents, and the longest at $2, the value increasing in geomet- 

 rical ratio with the length, or as the square of the length. When the 

 Americans (meaning the whites), first arrived there, an Indian would 

 give from $40 to $50 for a string of the length of a man's arm, contain- 

 ing a certain number of the longer shells below the elbow, and of the 

 shorter ones above. "Among the interior Indians," he says, "all the 

 dwellers on the plains, and as far up on the mountains as the cedar line, 

 bought all their bows and the most of their arrows, from the upper 

 mountaineers. An Indian is about ten days in making a bow, and it 

 costs from $3 to $5, according to the workmanship, and an arrow 12* 

 cents." Three kinds of money were employed in this traffic, viz : white 

 shell beads or buttons, pierced in the middle, $5 a yard ; the Periwin- 

 kles, $1, and fancy marine shells at various prices, from $3 to $10, or 

 even $15, according to their beauty. 



The Yocuts, another tribe of Californians, use the usual shell buttons, 

 a string, reaching from the point of the middle finger to the elbow, being 

 valued at twenty-five cents. A section of bone, v^ry white and polished, 

 about two and a half inches long, is sometimes on the string, and rates 

 at a " bit" (twelve and a half cents). 



Dr. Edward Palmer states that some years since he was witness to a 

 trade where a horse was purchased of one Indian by another, the price 

 paid being a single Haliotis rufescens (" Aulone shell"). 



