TFfE CLAM FISHERIES. 599 



another of shell-fish. In Alaska it is the mussel ; at Puget Sound it is the Schizotlicerus, which, 

 they smoke for winter stores ; in California, the oyster and other bivalves; in the Gulf of Mexico, 

 the Gnathodon, of which the shell-roads around New Orleans and Mobile are made; on the 

 Atlantic shores, the oyster, common and horse mussels, razor-shell, cockle, scallop, and two clams 

 besides the fresh-water unios and anodous. To what an extent these various mollusks furnished 

 sustenance to the wild tribes of the coast and of the Mississippi Valley is shown by the vast banks 

 of cast-away shells that remain to mark the points of aboriginal habitation. The Gulf coast and 

 some parts of the interior of Florida are so full of mounds composed of broken shells of nearly 

 every species, large and small, found in the adjacent sea, and of wide fields strewn with unios 

 not only, but also with the smaller gasteropods, Ampullaria and Paludina, that the fact is commonly 

 known to the people living there ; while the savannas of Georgia, the banks of the Mississippi 

 and its tributaries particularly along the Ohio of the Susquehauna and Delaware, and even of 

 the Merrimac and Concord Rivers, in Massachusetts, are dotted with heaps of the mussels exist- 

 ing in those rivers, the animals of which have been consumed by the Indians. The same sort 

 of remains are found on the Pacific slope and in South America. 



As for shell heaps upon ocean coasts, they are world-wide in their distribution, and often 

 prominent in appearance. On certain points of the shores of Denmark and Norway there were 

 disclosed, many years ago, banks of marine shells, sometimes 1,000 feet in length, 200 feet in 

 breadth, and 10 feet in depth. At first these were taken for natural deposits, but it was observed 

 that here only adult specimens of the littoral fauna were present, and closer examination revealed 

 calcined shells, circles of blackened stones indicating fire-places, fragments of the bones of edible 

 animals, and remains of rude utensils and implements. Thus it came finally to be proved that 

 they were the kitchen-refuse of ancient mollusk eaters, and were called " kjoekken moeddings." This 

 discovery prompted research, and similar deposits were soon found in various other parts of the 

 world. Our own coast is lined with them, from the piles which grew up around the doorways of 

 fishers on the low Florida shores, until their huts stood on hillocks above the reach of the highest 

 tides, to the layers of oyster .shells exposed on the clifl's of Maine, where " mine oyster" is no 

 longer to be found. Most of our refuse heaps are buried under a foot or more of soil, and have 

 long nourished the roots of a (so-called) primeval forest, but there are others which did not cease 

 to be increased until the Indians were driven back from the coast by white settlers. At these 

 places they spent a portion of each year, probably the winter months, when the climate of the 

 shore is warmer than that of the interior, in feasting, while some perhaps lived there permanently, 

 raising in the cast-away shells unconscious monuments of their sea-shore life. At such times 

 the two clams, but mainly the qnahaug, formed the chief comestible. 



How greatly the quahaug was prized by the early New England settlers appears from the 

 many allusions to it in their writings, particularly in those of Roger Williams. Not only the 

 meat, but the shell was utilized by them, in the making of various utensils and implements, such 

 as arrow points, scrapers, paint-holders and spoons.* 



It was from the purple " eye " and edge of the quahaug that the Indians fashioned their famous 

 wampum, or dark shell beads with which they ornamented their clothing and furniture, adorned 

 their hair and necks, or made their ceremonial peace and war belts and their insignia of author- 

 ity. Wampum, combined with the white beads, made chiefly from the central column of the 

 couch or periwinkles (Busycon and Fulgur), also passed as money among the Indians themselves 



* " The dainty Indian maize 

 Was eat with clamp shells out of wooden trays." 



