92 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



the use of steel may be a puzzle, but the Indian solves it 

 by whirling a stick with sand and water in the cavity. 



For softer stones, like soapstone for tobacco pipes and 

 slate for sinkers, a drill of harder stone is used. 



The only metal used in the arts is copper, and that very 

 sparingly in these regions ; but stone implements are sat- 

 isfactory, since nothing better is known. 



For the small amount of commerce carried on, a money 

 is used which comes from a familiar seashell. It is the 

 quahog, or, as Roger Williams spells it, poquahock.* 



It is the same species of clam ( Venus mercenarid) which 

 the glacier pushed out of Boston Harbor thousands of 

 years before in making our hills.f Williams says: "The 

 Indians wade deep and dive for it, and after they have 

 eaten the meat, in those which are good, they break out 

 about half an inch of a black part of the shell, which they 

 make into their black money." A cheaper kind of money 

 corresponding to our silver " is the wampum or white 

 money, made of a periwinkle shell," says Williams. 



Thus do the commercial and private affairs of the 

 Indian life move on from year to year. Petty jealousies 

 and noble courage, progressiveness and fogyism, romances 

 and drudgeries, all the fundamental experiences of human 

 life, are enacted yearly in this remote corner of Indian 

 habitations, without any significant changes, until one day 

 a paleface is seen — eight or nine of them in a strange, 

 broad boat, which enters the harbor with the paddles 

 sticking out horizontally on both sides, instead of going 

 straight down into the water as any sensible Indian 

 would have them. 



• Key to Language of America, p. xoif. fSee p. 39. 



