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REPORT — 1884. 



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Antliropolog'ical Society with a stronf^er organisation tban yet exists, able to 

 arrange explorations in proniif^irig districts, to circulate questions and requirements 

 among the proper people in the proper places, and to lay a new burden on 

 the slioulders of the already hard-worked professional men, and other educated 

 settlers through the newly-opened country, by making them investigators of local 

 anthropology. The Canadian Government, which has well deserved the high repu- 

 tation it holds throughout the world for wisdom and liberality in dealing with the 

 native tribes, may reasonably be asked to support more thorough exploration, and 

 collection and publication of the results, in friendly rivalry with the United States 

 Government, which has in this way fully aclmowledged the oljligation of makinfr 

 the colonisation of new lands not only promotive of national wealth, but service- 

 able to science. It is not for me to do more here, and now, than to suggest 

 practical steps toward this end. My laying before the Section so diffusive a sketch 

 of the problems of anthropology as they present themselves in the Dominion, has 

 been with the underlying intention of calling public notice to the important scien- 

 tific work now standing ready to (,'auadian hands; the undertaking of which it is 

 to be hoped will be one outcome of this visit of the British Association to Montreal. 



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Fill DAY, AUGUST 20. 

 The following Papers and Report were read : — 

 1. Instructions Anthropomctriques Elem&ntaires. By Dr. P. Topinard. 



2. On Myths of the Modoc Indians. By J, Cl'RTIN. 



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o. On ih' Nature and Origin of Wampum. By Hohatio Hale. 



It is a notable fact that while the populous and partly-civilised Indian communities 

 of Central and South America, like the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, carried on 

 their commerce williout the aid of money, the more barbarous tribes of the region 

 now composing the United States and Canada had a real monetary currency in 

 common use. This was tiu'ir wampum, which consisted of shell-beads, in the 

 form of disks or small cylinders, perforated through the centre, and usually strung 

 upon a deer's sinew or some otlier string. Tliis currency was found by the first 

 white settlers so useful in dealing with the Indians, and so convenient in tlie 

 ■absence of silver money, that it was for a time adopted and made a legal currency 

 among the Colonists themselves. These shell-beads were fashioned by the natives 

 from various kinds of sea-shells, including several species ofcouchs and" perivinkles, 

 and also a bivalve common on the Atlantic coast, and known as the quahany, or 

 Venus mercewtria. The beads were of two colours, white and dark purple, the 

 latter usually styled black, and esteemed, from their rarity, about twice as valuable 

 as the white beads. This money, being a manufactured article, differed from the 

 East Indian cowries, or strung shells, precisely .ns coined money ditlers from bullion. 



The wampum derived its value partly from the great labour expended in making 

 it, and partly from its prominence in the social usages of the Indians. All impor- 

 tant acts of state-policy were authenticated by the exhibition of wampum in the 

 form either of strings or of Ijelts. In the making of treaties several belts were usually 

 exclumged. Each belt bad its peculiar device, woven either of white beads on a 

 dnrk ground, or of dark beads on a white ground. These devices were rude 

 pictorial emblems, resembling the earlier forms of the Chinese characters. Tlio 

 wampum was also largely employed in funeral ceremonies and in sacrifices. 



Great quantities of these shells-disks and cylinders were found in the ancient 

 mounds of the Mississippi valley, and there seems no reason to doubt that they 



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