378 NEW. YORK SPATE MUSEUM 
war party, gained from a southern tribe. The point of importance 
is that these shell pins were in use after the New York colony 
passed into English hands. One curious pin in the Toronto col- 
lection has some features of a remarkable shell article in Mr Dann’s 
collection at Honeoye Falls, but the former was evidently a pin, 
while the use of the latter is doubtful. Fig. 145 shows this, which 
is much in the form of a short-handled ladle. ‘The perforation sug- 
gests a suspended ornament. 
Knives. The shells of Unio complanatus are abundant 
on some early Iroquois sites, being the favorite species for food, 
and occasionally one has been perforated. The writer found a shell 
of Unio rectus on an Oneida site, nearly 30 miles from where 
the mollusk lived, and this might have made a good knife but 
showed no signs of use. It is certain such shells were used in this 
way, but they needed little preparation. A captive to the Iroquois 
in 1639, secretly “picked up a shell which she found on the strand, 
put it away without saying a wogd, and in the night, every body 
being asleep, she softly cut her bonds with this shell, and fled away 
by stealth into the forest.”—Relation, 1639 
The Relation of 1647 has a full account of Father Jogues, includ- 
ing his first captivity among the Mohawks in 1642. After his left 
thumb had been cut off, the missionary adds, “they used a shell or 
an oyster shell (d’vne coquille ow d’vne escalle d’huitre) to cut off the 
right thumb of the other Frenchman, in order to cause him more 
pain.” Jogues seems in doubt as to the kind, and probably gave 
little heed to this in his sufferings. An oyster shell would hardly 
have been looked for so far up the Mohawk river, and, as the river 
was less than a mile away, it was probably one brought to the village 
for food. The incident shows that the use of shells as knives was 
familiar. 
Kalm, in his Travels into North America, 1772, 1 : 341, says that the 
Indians of New Jersey used some sharp and hard stone for a knife, 
or were satisfied “with a sharp shell, or with a piece of bone which 
they had sharpened.” The Indian feast prepared far up the river 
for Henry Hudson is well known. Among other palatable things 
they “killed a fat dog, and skinned it in great haste with shells 
