242 PECULIARITIES OP SOUTHERN SHELL-MONEY. 



as the other, and sometimes they etch or grave thereon Circles, Stars, and 

 a Half-Moon, or any other figure suitable to their fancy. These they wear 

 instead of Medals before or behind their Neck, and use the Peak, Puntees, 

 and Pipes for Coronets, Bracelets, Belts or long Strings, hanging down 

 before the Breast, or else they lace their Garments with them, and adorn 

 their Tomahawks and every other thing that they value. 



" They have also another sort which is as current among them, but of 

 far less value ; and this is made of the Cockle shell, broke into small bits 

 with rough edges, drill'd through in the same manner as Beads, and this 

 they call Roenohe, and use it as the Peak. 



"These. sorts of Money have their rates set upon them as unalterable, 

 and current as the values of our Money are." 



The " Westover Papers " say of the conch : " The extremities of these 

 shells are blue, the rest being white, so that Peak of both these colours 

 are drilled out of the same shell, serving the natives [of the Virginia 

 coast] both for ornament and money, and are esteemed by them beyond 

 gold and silver." 



"The money of the Carolina Indians," says Lawson ("History of Caro- 

 lina" — Ealeigh reprint, 1860, p. 315), " is of different sorts, but all made of 

 shells which are found on the coast of Carolina, which are very large and 

 hard so that they are very difficult to cut. Some English smiths have 

 tried to drill this sort of shell-money, and thereby thought to get an ad- 

 vantage, but it proved so hard that nothing could be gained." Lawson 

 then describes the valuable shell "gorges, which they wear about their 

 neck in a string," and which seem also to have served as coin in certain 

 cases ; " but," he adds, " the general and current species of all the Indians 

 in Carolina, and, I believe, all over the continent as far a*s the Bay of 

 Mexico, is that which we call Peak and Ronoak ; but Peak more espe- 

 cially." He says that peak is the same as the New York wampum or 

 porcelan, that five cubits of it will purchase a dressed doe-skin, and seven 

 •or eight a dressed buck-skin. He continues: 



"An Englishman could not afford to make so much of this wampum 

 for five or ten times the value; for it is made out of a vast, great shell, 

 of which that country affords plenty; where it is ground smaller than 

 the small end of a tobacco-pipe or a large wheat straw. Four or five of 

 these make an inch, and every one is to be drilled through, and made as 

 smooth as glass, and so strung as beads are ; and a cubit of the Indian 

 measure contains as much in length as will reach from the elbow to the 

 end of the little finger. They never stand to question whether it is a tall 

 man or a short man that measures it; but if this wampum peak be black 



