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



with the ancient Chinese belief as evidenced in the cere- 

 monial use of money-cowries in obsequies of the dead. 

 As mentioned previously, in pre-Christian and later times, 

 cowries were used in China, in association with rice, for 

 stuffing the mouth of the dead. Wild rice, it might be 

 added, also enters into the ritual of Ojibwa and Menomini 

 ceremonies. The fact that the so-called "wild rice" of 

 America is not identical with true rice cannot be raised 

 as an objection to the identity of these practices : for 

 the similarity which suggested the name "wild rice" to 

 European immigrants in America no doubt appealed with 

 equal force to the earlier Asiatic rice-using immigrants. 



The apparent identity in the spitting out of cowries 

 by the Togo priests of West Africa and by the medicine 

 men of the Ojibwa and Menomini Indians has been noted 

 already. The association of the money-cowry with the 

 medicine bags used by the Sierra Leone cannibals at 

 initiation ceremonies is a further remarkable parallel. 



Some interesting evidence of the early use of the 

 money-cowry in North America is contained in an ex- 

 haustive account on " Aboriginal Sites on Tennessee 

 River," by Mr. Clarence B. Moore. 189 In his description 

 of the Roden Mounds, Marshall County, Alabama, this 

 author informs us that in Burial No. 44, well in the body 

 of mound A, were the remains of a skull, near which were 

 fragments of a large marine univalve, and five shells, some 

 much decayed, which had been pierced for stringing, like 

 beads. These are pronounced by Dr. H. A. Pilsbry, the 

 well-known American conchologist, to be examples of the 

 money-cowry, Cyprcsa meneta, of Eastern Seas. Such 

 shells have never been recorded before from an aboriginal 

 mound in the United States. The careful investigation 

 of the Roden mounds indicated that they had been built 



ls0 [ourn. Acad. Nat. Sri. Philad., 2nd Ser., xvi., pt. ii., 1915. 



