CHAPTER V 
BEADS AND BEADWORK 
Varieties of beads: Fish-tooth (73); shell (74); seed (75); quartz, stone, glass (76). 
Methods of threading beads (77). 
Manufacture of the bead apron (78). 
73. Beads of fishes’ teeth were noted both by Bolingbroke (Bol, 
145) and by Bancroft. The latter says they [the Carib] likewise 
form the teeth of fish into small cylinders, which they perforate with 
a hole from end to end, and then cut the cylinder into short pieces, 
thus making white, smooth, shining beads which are strung and 
worn for ornament (BA, 257). 
74. Shell beads were manufactured by the Carib Islanders. They 
were made of small pieces of the lembies [or lambis, the large 
shells used as signal horns, ete.], which they rub on stones until they 
become round and about two lines in diameter and half a line in 
thickness, in a necklace of ordinary size; . . . and they could not 
make one piece to perfection and pierce it with the tools that they use 
in less than threedays . . . There are three to four thousand of 
these pieces in a necklace (PBR, 233). Among the Makusi I came 
across small marine shells threaded in their entirety into necklaces. 
In Cayenne beads were made from river shell, or species of Burgos 
ground on sandstone into rings (cercles) (PBA, 194) or cones! (figure 
dune quille) (PBA, 196), and, along our own borders, the Arekuna 
also often wear armlets of threaded pieces of shell (EU, 291). Un- 
fortunately, in both cases, the nature of the shell, whether land or 
marine, is not specified. The Caberre and many Carib women on 
the Orinoco manufactured necklaces, armlets, etc., from beads made 
of snail shell (G, 1, 125). In none of these cases is there any record 
of the method by which the perforation was effected. In the 
Makusi, etc., bell or cone ornament of the lower lip (sec. 503) and 
the disklike decoration of the forearm (sec. 540), which may be 
regarded as elongate and flattened beads, respectively, a natural 
perforation already. exists in the mammillary protuberance of the 
shell from which they are cut. 
75. I have seen dozens of different kinds of seeds, seed capsules, 
etc., threaded for necklaces, etc., but their scientific identification 
has not been possible so far. Crévaux has described the method of 
drilling chips from the seed envelope of the Omphalea into beads 
(sec. 19). 
1 From analogy with the shape of certain shell beads met with among the Carib stock of Indians, and in 
Cayenne, I am purposely translating the word quille as a cone, instead of as a skittle. 
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