HA WOK AND ULLO DESCRIBED. 245 



spirally around the shells; and sometimes a tiny tuft of scarlet wood- 

 pecker's down is pasted on the base of the shell." These marks manifestly 

 were designed to give the money some sort of sanction — make it represent 

 somewhat the labor put upon the beads with which it had to compete. 



For south of the Eel Eiver, and thence throughout all central and 

 southern California, the staple currency was a shell -money resembling 

 the eastern wampum. Hiqua and allocochick were simply shells of some 

 rarity, ground at the tip sufficiently to admit of being strung, but the 

 hawoh and vllo of California were carefully manufactured, and repre- 

 sented a real cost of labor and time, though they had no intrinsic value. 

 These Californian coins were of different, shape and value. 



The first-named (hawok) was of least worth, standing in the place of. 

 the white wampum of the East, or our silver. It consisted of circular 

 disks or buttons from a quarter of an inch to a whole inch in diameter, 

 and of the thickness of the shell from which it was cut. For this purpose 

 a heavy bivalve was chosen — usually the Saxidomus auratus of Gould — 

 and broken into discoidal fragments. These pieces were then ground 

 smooth and polished by rubbing on blocks of sandstone, which often had 

 to be brought from a long distance to the maker's rancheria. This 

 finished, a hole was bored through the centre with a wooden flint-tipped 

 drill, forced to revolve very rapidly by a buckskin string which wound 

 upon it, unwound and rewound itself in an opposite direction, through 

 the incessant vertical movement of a loose cross-bar in the operator's 

 hand. These hawok-disks were then strung upon sinews, or on cords 

 made of milk-weed fibre, but the strings were not of invariable length, 

 though beads of like size must be put together. The very best of this 

 was worth twenty-five cents apiece ten years ago ; but the smallest always 

 went by the string. This white-bead money was (and to a certain extent 

 still is) the great medium of Indian trading among themselves. 



Their gold, so to speak (the iillo), is made from the shell of the abalone 

 (HaUotis), and chiefly from the red species {II. rufescens). These shells 

 are cut with flints into oblong, key-stone-shaped pieces from one to two 

 inches in length, according to the curvature of the shell, and a third as 

 broad. Two holes are drilled near the narrow end of each piece, and 

 they are thus strung edge to edge. " Ten pieces," wrote Powers, " gener- 

 ally constitute a string, and the larger pieces rate at $1 apiece, $10 a 

 string; the smaller in proportion, or less if they are not pretty. Being 

 susceptible of a high polish, this money forms a beautiful ornament, and 

 is worn for necklaces on gala-days. But' as money it is rather too large 

 and cumbersome, and . . . may be considered rather as jewelry." 



