THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY DAVIDSON. 189 



1G41, owing to a greater scarcity of coin, wampum was made 

 legal tender up to 10, though in 1643 the limit was reduced to 

 2. The decline of the beaver trade drove it out of circulation. 

 When it could no longer be exchanged in large amounts for 

 beaver skins, an article of international trade, the basis of its 

 value was gone, although its use was continued in the frontier, 

 districts well down into the eighteenth century.* 



Shell money is still used by North American Indians. The 

 tribes of California, according to Mr. Powers, make use for 

 money not only of the red scalps of woodpeckers, but also " of 

 the dentalium shell, of which they grind off the top and string it 

 on strings ; the shortest pieces are worth twenty-five cents, the 

 longest about two dollars, the value rising rapidly with the 

 length. The strings are usually about as long as a man's arm." 

 When these Indians became familiar with the silver coinage of 

 the United States, the use to which they put the dimes and 

 quarters shows how the new money, as well as the old, derived 

 its value as a medium of exchange, because it was prized as an 

 adornment of the person. " Some of the young bloods array 

 their Dulcineas for the dance with lavish adornments, hanging 

 on their dress 30, 40, or 50 dollars worth of dimes, quarter dol- 

 lars, and half dollars, arranged in strings."^ The same aboriginal 

 instinct appears sometimes among semi-civilized aldermen. The 

 Bowery saloon, which was paved with silver dollars, used to be, 

 and perhaps still is, one of the sights of New York ; and it 

 would not have been inappropriate had Silver Dollar Smith, the 

 owner, been a member of Tammany, which in the day of its 

 political power, still tricks its members out in paint and feathers 

 on gala days and sends them down Third Avenue under their 

 Sachems, brandishing tobacco store tomahawks. 



Other articles which have been desired for purposes of orna- 

 ment have also been used as money. The Californian Indians 

 use not only shells, but the red scalps of woodpeckers for their 



*White : Money and Banking, Chap. 1. 



tQuoted Ridgeway, op. cit., p. 15. Conversely solid brass buttons with the eye ham- 

 mered flat were extensively used half a century ago in St. John, New Brunswick, for 

 small change. 



