WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 379 
which they had.” These were picked up anywhere, and were 
. naturally sharp enough for most purposes, but occasionally some 
alteration. may be detected. A few such examples are in the 
Toronto collection, which seem to be scrapers. 
But one article directly suggesting a shell knife has come to the 
writer’s notice in New York, and this is in Mr Hildburgh’s collec- 
Hom tie .eg represetts this. The perforated Unio rosaceus 
from the Waterburg fort, shown in fig. 11, may have been either 
knife or ornament. The same may be said of the perforated 
Ciro .complanatus, if, 13, from a site near the Mohawk 
river. Bivalves were also used as tweezers, in extracting hair; and 
large shells were employed as hoes. 
Gorgets. After speaking of the runtees or small disks, Beverley 
(p. 196) describes a larger article, saying: “Of this shell they also 
make round tablets, of about 4 inches in diameter, which they polish 
as smooth as the other, and sometimes they etch or grave thereon 
circles, stars; a half moon, or any other figure suitable to. their 
fancy. These they wear instead of medals before and behind their 
neck.” About the beginning of the 18th century the English began 
giving silver medals to the Indians of New York, and the shell 
gorgets almost disappeared. The southern Indians, being of less 
account, got no medals for a long time. 
Lafitau, in his Moeurs des sauvages Ameriquains, p. 61, said: “ The 
collars which the savages sometimes wear around the neck are 
about a foot in diameter, and are not different from those which one 
now sees on some antiques, or the necks of statues of barbarians. 
The northen savages wear on the breast a plate of hollow shell, 
as long as the hand, which has the same effect as that which was 
called bulla among the Romans.” Kalm, in his Travels into North 
America, 1772, 2:320, after describing the shell beads of the Hurons 
near Quebec, adds that some “have a large shell on the breast, of a 
fine white color, which they value very high and is very dear.” It 
is possible that the shells, mentioned with the wampum pipes and 
round small shells as English presents for the Dionondadies in 1702, 
may have been something of this kind, as shell gorgets were then 
used in New York, and a few survive. 
