BULL. 30] 



PEA CREEK BAND PEARLS 



219 



in any other light than as wards) with 

 fair results, so far as tried, and which I 

 hope will be attended ultimately with 

 great success." 



For nearly 40 years the Board of In- 

 dian Commissioners has cooperated with 

 the Government, favoring such legisla- 

 tion and administration in Indian affairs 

 as by peaceful methods should put an end 

 to Indian discontent, make impossible In- 

 dian wars, and fit the great body of In- 

 dians to be received into the ranks of 

 American citizens. For the measures 

 which they have proposed, to effect these 

 reforms, see United States Board of Indian 

 Commissioners. The Mohonk Indian Con- 

 ference (q. v.), inaugurated and main- 

 tained by one of the present members of 

 the Peace Commission, by its marked 

 influence in guiding public opinion has 

 added a strong element of popular sup- 

 port to this Peace Policy. It is interest- 

 ing to note that the inauguration of a dis- 

 tinctive Peace Policy toward the Indians 

 is due to one of the greatest of American 

 warriors, President Ulysses S. Grant. The 

 wisdom of this plan is shown in the fact 

 that the policy advocated by the Peace 

 Commission has resulted in an entire ces- 

 sation of Indian warfare for the last scoi-e 

 of years. (m. e. g.) 



Pea Creek Band. A band of Florida 

 Seminole, part of whom shared in the 

 massacre of Maj. Dade and his command 

 on Withlacoochee r. in Dec. 1835. — 

 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, vi, 469, 1857. 



Peag. -By the Massachusetts Indians, 

 strings of white and dark purple shell 

 beads (put among animate objects) were 

 termed respectively wa^'^pa"piag, 'white 

 strings,' and sl!cka"piag, 'black strings' 

 {:=Ahnak^[ira^'ba"biagandsega"biag). The 

 English settlers, unused to French nasal 

 sounds, pronounced and wrote the first 

 of these words wampampeag. The word 

 is from wamp {wa"p), 'white,' anipi 

 {-a"pi), 'string,' and the animate plural 

 -ag. Finding the word too cumbersome, 

 the colonists divided it and formed the 

 two terms "wampum" and "piag," 

 neither of which has any meaning, since 

 the first consists of the root wamp 

 'white,' with a suffixed nasalized vowel, 

 am (=a"), belonging to and forming an 

 essential part of -ampe {a"jn) 'string,' 

 while the generic suffix a"pi 'string' has 

 no meaning without the prefix a". See 

 Wampampeag, Wampum. (w. r. g.) 



Peantias. Mentioned by Buchanan 

 (Sketches of N. Am. Ind., i, 138_, 1825) 

 as a wandering tribe on both sides of 

 the Mississippi, numbering 800 souls. 

 Probably imaginary. 



Pearls. On the arrival of Europeans in 

 Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia, pearls 

 were found to be in great favor for per- 



sonal embellishment among the natives, 

 and this gem at once became a factor of 

 importance in the avaricious schemes of 

 promoters of conquest and colonization. 

 Fabulous stories were told of the abun- 

 dance and beauty of the pearls,which were 

 eagerly sought by barter and by plunder- 

 ing the graves of the natives where they 

 had been buried with the dead. The 

 Knight of Elvas relates that De Soto 

 obtained from burial places at the town 

 of Cofitachique on Savannah r. , below the 

 present Augusta, Ga., 350 pounds of pearls, 

 and a member of the first Virginia colony 

 "gathered together from among the sav- 

 age people aboute five thousande: of 

 which number he chose so many as made 

 a fayre chaine, which for their likenesse 

 and uniformitie in roundnesse, orient- 

 nesse, and pidenesse of many excellente 

 colours, with equalitie in greatnesse, were 

 verie fayre and rare" (Harlot, Narra- 

 tive of Virginia, 18, 1893). But the sup- 

 ply was really limited, and the majority 

 of those obtained were ruined as jewels by 

 perforation for suspension or by the heat 

 employed in opening the shellfish from 

 which they were abstracted. It also 

 appears that many of the larger speci- 

 mens referred to by the early writers were 

 probably really not pearls, but polished 

 beads cut from the nacre of sea shells and 

 quite worthless as gems. It has been 

 found that the real pearls were obtained 

 from bivalve shells — from the oyster 

 along the seashore and in tidewater in- 

 lets, and from the mussel on the shores 

 of lakes and rivers. The pearls were 

 probably not especially sought and col- 

 lected by the natives, but obtained in the 

 course of food consumption, which re- 

 sulted in the accumulation of the vast 

 deposits of shells known as shell-heaps 

 (q. v.). The very general use of pearls 

 by the pre-Columbian natives is amply 

 attested by archeologists who in recent 

 years have explored the mounds of the 

 interior valleys. Professor Putnam having 

 obtained more than 60,000 pearls — nearly 

 2 pecks — drilled and undrilled, from a 

 single burial mound near Madisonville, 

 Ohio. It appears that pearls were rarely 

 used by the tribes w. of the Mississippi 

 and on the Pacific coast, although the 

 most important American pearl fisheries 

 of the present day are on the coast of 

 the Gulf of California. The primitive 

 tribes of that region were not sufficiently 

 ambitious to seek and make use of these 

 gems. 



Consult Dall in Am. Naturalist, xvii, 

 no. 7, 1883; Kunz, Gems and Precious 

 Stones, 1890; Jones, Antiq. Southern 

 Inds., 1873; Putnam in 18th Rep. Pea- 

 body Mus., 1886; Rau in Smithson. Rep. 

 1872, 1873; Stearns in Nat. Mus. Rep. 

 1887, 1889. (w. H. H.) 



