294 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
who at once pronounced them to be Cypraa moneta, or the cowry shell of Africa 
and the East. 
As the discovery of these shells had never before, we believe, been recorded 
as having been found in an aboriginal mound or grave in the United States 
(we have made but few inquiries as to the records of other regions), and as our 
most careful investigation of the Roden mounds indicated that these had been 
built before their makers had any intercourse with white persons, except for 
the presence of these cowries, their discovery became an interesting matter 
and they were sent to Dr. W. H. Dall, at the United States National Museum. 
We quote by permission a letter from Doctor Dall on the subject: 
“T should incline to the belief that the cowries were imported in or about 
the time of Columbus’ voyages. Bound, as they supposed, for the Indies, 
where the cowry was formerly (like our wampum) a staple article of barter, 
the exploring vessels would undoubtedly have carried cowries as well as the 
other articles of trade we know they carried. It would not have taken them 
long to find out that cowries did not pass as currency with American natives 
and reporting this on their return to Spain later traders would not have carried 
them for barter. The necklace or bracelet you obtained may have passed from 
hand to hand as a curiosity (as I have known such things to do) until it reached 
a people who knew nothing of the whites ’till much later. In fact your cowries 
may have come off one of Columbus’ own vessels!" 
From Mr. Charles C. Willoughby we have the information that in the Peabody 
Museum, Cambridge, Mass., is a dress of a Cree woman, collected by the Lewis 
and Clark expedition in 1804-1805. On this dress are four dozen cowry shells, 
perforated. Mr. Willoughby has described the dress and figured it,’ but the 
cowry shells in question are on the side of the dress not shown in the photograph 
and take the place of the upper row of brass buttons on the dress. 
The shells found by us differ from those on the Cree dress, which are of a 
larger variety and much more distinctly humped than are our shells, ours being 
of the variety atava as described by Rochebrune,” who says they come from the 
Cape Verde Islands. It must be borne in mind, however, that in our present 
state of knowledge as to the cowry shell, Cyprwa moneta of Africa and the East, 
one cannot give exact distribution as to special forms. Hence neither our shells 
nor those on the Cree dress can now be proved to have come from the same 
or from different regions. 
Mr. Willoughby believes that cowry shells were sold to the Indians by the 
Hudson’s Bay Company late in the eighteenth or early in the nineteenth century. 
Our attention has been called by Mr. W. J. Wintemberg to a paper by Prof. 
Henry Montgomery’ wherein is noted the superficial discovery of a cowry shell 
! * American Anthropologist,” 1905. 
? Bulletins de la Société Malacologique de France, Vol. I, 1884, p. 83, plate 1, fig. 4. 
3 “Recent Archeological Investigations in Ontario," Transactions of the Canadian Institute, 
Toronto, 1910, Vol. IX, Part I, No. 20, p. 7, Fig. 6, Pl. IV. 
