DECEMBER 21, 1916] 
of these Old World materials dates the grave as later 
than 1492. 
In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the 
*‘porcelain shell,’ or cowrie, was the trade medium 
for both the Orient and Africa, for which purpose it 
was strung. 
In a recent statement to the present writer, Dr. 
William H. Dall, the foremost of ethno-conchologists, 
so expressed himself :—‘I think the presence of C. 
moneta in a mound is evidence that the deposit is post- 
Columbian. Columbus believed that he was on a 
voyage to the (East) Indies, and no voyager of his day 
would have fitted out a ship for that goal without 
including the money-cowrie in his trade goods. That 
the records make no mention of them is probably due 
to their being considered too much a matter of course.” 
Moreover, strings of cowries were a part of the 
trappings of a gentleman’s mount, and, in this capa- 
city, some are likely to have reached the southern 
United States in the days of its earliest exploration. 
The C. moneta which Mr. Wilfrid Jackson errone- 
‘ously states was found in the Serpent Mound, Ontario, 
is recorded by Mr. Montgomery as among the objects 
“*which were found in the same locality, some of them 
last year, and others previous to that time. 
‘Some of these were discovered upon the mounds 
‘or mear them; others were either found upon 
the surface of the ground or ploughed up 
in the neighbouring fields. A few were obtained about 
four miles distant from the mounds”’ (Trans. Canadian 
Institute, ix., 1910, p. 6). Mr. Montgomery himself 
says of the artifacts in this enumeration :—‘‘ Nothing 
‘can be positively stated as to who their manufacturer 
was.’’ The shell was unpierced, and there is nothing 
in the record, so far as published, to prove that it was 
ever in the possession of an aboriginal American. 
As for the Cree dress, decorated with cowries, col- 
lected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, and described 
by Mr. Willoughby (American Anthropologist, 1905, 
p. 640), does Mr, Wilfrid Jackson maintain that the 
blue glass beads and brass buttons which adorned the 
opposite side of this shirt are also of pre-Columbian 
date? In sooth, it proves nothing. In 1804-5 the 
‘Cree were in close trade relations with the Hudson 
Bay Company, and had been in touch with the white 
man for more than a century and a quarter. 
The modern use of the cowrie in the ancient cere- 
monies of the Ojibwa and Menomini tribes, cited by 
Mr. Jackson, is likewise wholly inconclusive of the 
antiquity of C. moneta as a culture object. Hoffman, 
describing ‘‘The Midéwiwin, or ‘Grand Medicine 
Society ’ of the Ojibwa” (Bureau of American Ethno- 
logy, vii., Ann. Rept., 1885-6), states :—‘‘The migis 
is considered the sacred symbol of the Midéwigan, 
and may consist of any small white shell, though the 
‘one believed to be similar to the one mentioned in 
the above tradition resembles the cowrie. .. . It is 
admitted by all the Midé priests whom I have con- 
sulted that much of the information has been lost 
through the death of their aged predecessors ”’ (p. 167). 
On p. 191 Hoffman again refers to “the migis, a 
small white shell (C. moneta, L.),’’ and on p. 220 he 
further states :—‘t The migis referred to in this descrip- 
tion of the initiation consists of a small white shell, of 
almost any species, but the one believed to resemble 
the form of the mythical migis is similar to the cowrie, 
C. moneta, L. . . . Nearly all of the shells employed 
for this purpose are foreign species, and have no doubt 
been obtained from the,traders. The shells found in 
the country of the Ojibwa are of rather delicate struc- 
ture, and it is probable that the salt-water shells are 
employed as a substitute, chiefly because of their less 
frangible character.” 
The related Menomini, in their corresponding cere- 
mony, were undoubtedly using the money-cowrie as a 
No. 2460, VoL. 98] 
NATURE 
309 
culture object in 1890 (Hoffman, ‘‘The Menomini 
Indians"; Bureau of American Ethnology, xiv., Ann. 
Rept., p. tor), but the earliest. records of the doings of 
this medicine society are not so convincing of the 
identity of the shell employed (e.g. Schoolcraft, 
“Indian Tribes,” iii, p. 287). Dr. Dall has 
kindly permitted me to quote his private communica- ~ 
tion as follows :—‘‘I believe the cowrie to be a com- 
paratively late substitution, in the ceremonies of the. 
Ojibwa and associated tribes, for some native American 
shell formerly used by them, just as, after the coming: 
of the traders, the exotic Dentalium tarentinum rapidly. 
replaced the smaller and more fragile D. indianorum, 
which was so highly esteemed by the West. Coast 
tribes. The marine shell, Marginella apicina, which 
was traded up from the Gulf Coast in large quantities, 
in pre-Columbian and early post-Columbian times, is 
likely to have been the object, ‘in shape and colour 
like a small bean,’ which was thrown at the novice 
in the Black Dance ceremony of the Dakota, accord- 
ing to the earlier narrative used by Jonathan Carver. 
in 1778 (Bureau Amer. Ethnol., Ann. Rept., xiv., 
p. 112). Fletcher’s report of the corresponding cere- 
mony of the Winnebago, where they used ‘a small 
white seashell about the size of a bean’ (ibid., p. 110), 
exactly fits the Marginella.” : 
The case thus rests entirely on Mr. Moore’s find, 
and in the face of perhaps a hundred thousand 
aboriginal graves innocent of cowries, to construe the 
single instance of Roden Mounds as evidence of pre- 
historic acculturation is to sire the concept by a wish. 
H. NEWELL WaRDLE. 
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 
THE question of the pre-Columbian use of the money- 
cowrie in America is fully discussed by me in an ex- 
haustive memoir, dealing with the use of cowries 
as cult objects in the Old and New Worlds, which is 
on the eve of publication by the Manchester Literary 
and Philosophical Society. (It will probably be pub- 
lished by the time this letter appears in print.) The 
whole subject is too vast to be discussed in a short 
letter, but the following remarks may be offered on 
the criticism levelled by Mr. H. Newell Wardle at my 
letter in Nature of September 21. 
The evidence provided by the remarkable discovery 
by Mr. C. B. Moore of shells of the money-cowrie, 
C, moneta, in the Roden Mound, where they were 
associated with a human skull, forms merely one link 
in the remarkably complete chain of cultural connection 
between the Old World and the New in pre-Columbian 
times. There are other equally suggestive facts, which 
point conclusively in the same direction, including the 
significant use of large stone cists for burial purposes 
in the immediate neighbourhood of the place where 
the cowries were found, as well as elsewhere in 
America. 
The custom of placing money-cowries in graves with 
the dead is a widespread Old World practice, which 
has a definite and wholly arbitrary significance; and 
it ranges in time from pre-dynastic Egypt to the pre- 
sent day. 
As for the Cree dress decorated with cowries, I do 
not pretend to claim that the actual dress, with its 
blue glass beads and brass buttons, is of pre-Colum- 
bian date; but the idea of using cowries to decorate 
such a dress, which again has a very precise meaning 
in Africa and southern and eastern Asia, was certainly 
not so. recent .as) the brass buttons suggest. To 
imagine that the Hudson Bay Company introduced 
such Oriental customs, or even *knew of their exist- 
ence, is surely crediting these traders with an extent of 
ethnological’ knowledge and enthusiasm ‘for disseminat- 
ing exotic beliefs, with a strong Indonesian colour, 
which I am not sufficiently imaginative to admit. 
