GOO HISTORY AND METHODS OP THE FISHERIES. 



not only, but between them and the whites, and, previous to the eighteenth century, in the 

 ordinary trade of both the English and the Dutch merchants. I have elsewhere given a history of 

 this shell money, which appears in a great diversity of forms on both coasts of the United States 

 and played a very important part in aboriginal economy, and shall not dwell upon the matter 

 here, further than to identify the quahaug with it. 



As I have already said, this shell was valuable to the Indians as a food resource, and they 

 taught the whites how to use it. Governor Winthrop called it " a dainty food' 1 and wrote home 

 that " the flesh eats like veal ; the English make pyes thereof." An interesting reminiscence in this 

 connection occurs in Baron Kalm's "Travels," 1748, as follows (the Baron is speaking of New 

 York) : 



" A considerable commerce is carried on in this article, with such Indians as live farther up 

 the country. When these people inhabited the coast they were able to catch their own clams, 

 which at that time made a great part of their food ; but at present this is the business of the 

 Dutch and English, who live in Long Island and other maritime provinces. As soon as the shells 

 are caught, the fish is taken out of them, drawn upon a wire, and hung up in the open air, in order 

 to dry by the heat of the sun. When this is done, the flesh is put into the proper vessels, and 

 carried to Albany upon the river Hudson ; there the Indians buy them, and reckon them one of 

 their best dishes. Besides the Europeans, many of the native Indians come annually down to the 

 sea-shore, in order to catch clams, proceeding with them afterwards in the manner I have just 

 described." 



That this practice was long continued, there is plenty of evidence. Coast tribes conquered by 

 the Six Nations were compelled to pay their tribute, or at least a portion of it, in this commodity, 

 which became a luxury in the interior. Professor Lockwood told me of an old Quaker who lived 

 near Point Pleasant, Ocean County, New Jersey, whose grandfather often saw the Indians there 

 drying clams and oysters by the sun on pieces of bark. The Chinese still do this, but Americans 

 have wholly forgotten the custom, so far as I know, with the disappearance of the Indian. I have 

 heard that some years ago a factory was started in New Jersey to preserve clams and also oysters 

 by a process of drying and granulation. It was asserted that soups and chowder could be made 

 to the best advantage from this desiccated material. The product is said to have proved of good 

 quality; but as it did not find general favor, the business was abandoned. 



The chief use of clams in early days was in summer and fall. Then it was that the Indians 

 came to the sea-shore for their greatest festival, that of the green corn. On such an occasion 

 a great assembling of sages and warriors with their families was held at the beach, and clams, 

 succulent ears and seaweed were roasted together in astonishing quantity, amid all the delights 

 of a New England mid-summer by the ocean and every savage amusement. So good a custom 

 merited perpetuation, and has, indeed, survived to the present day in the "clam-bake," that patri- 

 archial institution of New England, where the icy Puritan might permit himself to be won a little 

 from his rigor by the seductive mussel, and the prim maidens enjoyed a moment's timid relax from 

 conscientious austerity in the fun of saying "periwinkle." Nor is the custom yet extinct, although 

 it is no longer possible that the clam-bake should be a season of universal holiday as of yore. 

 But now and then some great occasion in Rhode Island or Connecticut is celebrated much after 

 the traditional fashion, and the wise and renowned joined in the festivity, as in the old days when 

 Diedrich Knickerbocker and his friends sailed over to Commuuipaw to discuss grave questions of 

 Dutch polity as they smoked their pipes beside the sunlit bay until the quahaugs were toasted 



