336 — THE NISHINAM. 
The manufacture of large quantities of it nowadays by Americans | 
with machinery has diminished its purchasing power by increasing’ its 
amount. The younger, English-speaking Indians scarcely use it at all, 
except in a few dealings with their elders, or for gambling. One sometimes 
lays away a few strings of it, for he knows he cannot squander it at the 
stores, and is thus removed from temptation and possible bankruptcy; and 
when he wishes for a few dollars American money he can raise it by 
exchanging with some ofl Indian who happens to have gold. Americans 
also sometimes keep it for this purpose. For instance, I have known an 
American, who associated a good deal with the Indians, buy a pony for $15 
gold, and sell it to an old Indian for $40 shell-money. By converting this 
amount into gold in small sums at a time he cleared $25 in the course of a 
few months. It is singular how the old Indians cling to this currency 
when they know that it will purchase nothing from the stores; but then 
their wants are few and mostly supplied from the sources of nature; and, 
besides that, this money has a certain religious value in their minds, as 
being alone wortliy to be offered up on the funeral pyre of departed friends 
or famous chiefs of their tribe. 
It is my opinion, from its appearance, that the staple currency of all 
the tribes in Central and Southern California is made of the same material, 
but I am not positive of that material except among the Nishinam. Here 
it is a thick, white shell (Pachydesma crassatelloides), found on the coast of 
Southern California, and the money they make from it is called hd’-wok. It 
consists of circular disks or buttons, ranging from a quarter inch to an inch 
in diameter, and varying in thickness with the shell. These are pierced in 
the center, and strung on strings made of the inner bark of the wild cotton 
or milkweed (Asclepias); and either all the pieces on a string, or all in one 
section of it, are of the same size. The strings are not of an invariable 
length. The-larger pieces rate at about twenty-five cents (though when 
an Indian saw I was anxious to secure a specimen he charged me fifty 
cents); the half inch pieces at 125 cents; and the smaller ones generally 
go by the string. <A string of 177 of the smallest pieces was valued by its 
owner at $7, and sold for that. The women often select the prettiest pieces, 
