488 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY i bull. 137 



Examples of modern beadwork among the Alabama Indians of 

 Texas are shown in plate 72, figure 1. 



PEARLS 



Pearls were objects of such high consideration among both Indians 

 and whites that we have frequent notices of them. Elvas speaks of 

 some pearls of little value found in the temple of Ucita, the very 

 first town reached by De Soto (Robertson, 1933, p. 33). When he 

 approached Cofitachequi at the head of his army the chieftainess of 

 that place came to meet him and, "drawing from over her head a 

 large string of pearls" — Biedma says "a necklace of five or six strings 

 of pearls" — threw them about his neck so that she might gain his 

 favor. In a temple, or rather ossuary, in the same town they found 

 many bodies, the breasts, bellies, necks, arms, and legs of which were 

 covered with pearls, and they took away a quantity estimated by the 

 different chroniclers to weigh from 165 to 350 pounds. Elvas adds 

 that there were figures of babies and birds made of them, perhaps as 

 ornaments to leather or textiles. When the chieftainess was forced 

 to accompany the Spaniards on their journey northward, she carried 

 along a cane box full of unbored pearls with which she subsequently 

 escaped (Bourne, 1904, vol. 2, pp. 13, 14, 99, 100; Robertson, 1933, 

 pp. 92, 94, 101). In narrating the fortunes of the Spaniards in the 

 province of Iciaha (Chiaha) on the Tennessee River a little after 

 the time when the above events took place, Garcilaso quotes the chief 

 of that country to the effect that in his temple there were also many 

 pearls, and he gives a description of the way in which they were 

 extracted from the shells. To accomplish this, the Indians set fire 

 to a quantity of wood so as to make a large bed of coals and then 

 placed upon it the mussels, which opened in consequence of the heat 

 revealing any pearls they might contain, though the fire deprived 

 them of a part of their luster (Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 140-141). Prac- 

 tically all our authorities, from Elvas on, state that the Indians 

 heated their pearls in the process of boring so that the bored pearls 

 were ruined for commercial purposes. This must mean that they 

 were bored in a different manner from the shell beads. There is no 

 subsequent mention of pearls in the De Soto narratives, but later 

 writers often allude to them. They were extensively used as orna- 

 ments by the Floridians, as we learn from the reports of Ribault, 

 Le Moyne, and Laudonniere, and also by the Indians of eastern 

 North Carolina and Virginia. Powhatan sent a chain of pearls to 

 Smith, and pearls are mentioned among the articles of tribute which 

 the Indian emperor received. Newport observed that a certain Pa- 

 munkey chief "had a Chaine of pearle about his neck thrice Double, 

 the third parte of them as bygg as pease, which I could not valew 



