62 JACKSON, Use of Cowry-shells for Currency, Amulets,etc. 



that of other peoples, e.g., the Indian. 183 Attention has 

 already been called to the similarity of this custom to 

 that of the Togo people of West Africa. 



The money-cowry {Cyprcea nioneta) is, and has been 

 for centuries, a sacred object among the Ojibwa and 

 Menomini Indians of North America, and is employed in 

 initiation ceremonies of the Grand Medicine Society. 184 



The use of this particular cowry by these Indians is of 

 peculiar interest ; in the first place; owing to it being 

 alien to the American continent, and in the second place, 

 in view of its intimate association with so many remark- 

 able and fantastic beliefs and practices in different parts 

 of the Old World. 



The tradition among the Indians is that the original 

 sacred shell — migis, lm of the Ojibwa ; konapamik, of the 

 Menomini — was introduced by a particular hero-god, who 

 acted as an intermediary between the Great Unknown 

 and the Indians, and founded their Medicine Society. 

 Among the Menomini the sacred shell. appears always to 

 be the small white money-cowry, Cyprcea moneta™ but 

 among the Ojibwa. according to Hoffman, it consists of a 

 small white shell, of almost any species : but the one 

 believed to resemble the mythical nil' gis is similar to the 

 money-cowry. This fact would seem to imply that the 

 money-cowry is scarce among them, and those they 

 possess, doubtless handed down from generation to genera- 

 tion, are regarded with special veneration as being like 



183 Schneider, op. ctt., p. 108. 



184 W. J. Hoffman, Bureau of Ethnology (United States), 7th Annual 

 Report, 1885-6(1891), and 14th Annual Report, 1892-3 (1896), pt. i. ; also 

 J. W. Jackson, Manch. Memoirs [Lit. and Phil. Soc), vol. lx. (191 6), No. 

 4. Abstract in Nature, January 27th, 191 6. 



1S5 In the Ojibwa language, ml gis = symbolical of life. 



186 The example figured by Hoffman {op. cif., 1891, pi. xi., fig. 1) is 

 interesting, as it is perforated at one end as if for suspension ; it is of the 

 dwarf var. atava of C. vionela (see Fig. ID). 



