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



with the shell ornaments of the Gulf Coast. ... So 

 mayhap the five little shells were bestowed, by Colum- 

 bus's own hands, upon a native of the isles, were 

 carried across to the mainland on some trip of trade 

 or of pleasure, and thence, from hand to hand, as 

 curios, journeyed northward with an ever-growing 

 wonder-tale of the great white chiefs from the East. . ." 

 " If not thus, then they had journeyed in dangling 

 from the trappings of one of those noble steeds that 

 shared the perils of the early explorers of the main- 

 land. . . ." 



" Certain it is that they date from the close of the 

 fifteenth or the early days of the sixteenth century." 

 But Mr. Wardle omits the most wonderful episode of 

 his wonder-tale — I refer to the fact that after all these 

 imaginary wanderings and episodes on sea and land, the 

 cowries should eventually have come to rest in the heart 

 of the American continent, and, " of course purely by 

 accident," have become linked up with the identical beliefs 

 and fantastic practices with which they are associated in 

 Africa, India and Eastern Asia ! 



To such lengths does the American ethnologist go 

 rather than admit the patent fact that these shells 

 and the associated beliefs and practices were taken 

 from Eastern Asia to America long before the time of 

 Columbus ! 



According to Mr. Charles C. Willoughby, the Peabody 

 Museum, Cambridge, Mass., contains a dress of a Cree 

 woman, collected by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 

 1804-5, on vvhich are four dozen cowries (see American 

 Anthropologist, 1905, for picture of the dress). 



The shells from the Roden mound, Moore informs us, 

 "differ from those on the Cree dress, which are of a larger 

 variety and much more distinctly humped than are our 



