Distribution of Pearls and Pearl-shell. 1 19 



Montezuma used to pray at night, is said to have had walls 

 of beaten silver and gold, decorated with pearls and precious 

 stones."' Humboldt refers to a statue of a Mexican 

 priestess in basalt, whose head-dress is ornamented with 

 pearls"'^ Bateman ^^ likewise mentions an ancient Mexi- 

 can horned head-dress, inlaid in mosaic with turquoise, 

 malachite, coral (?), and mother-of-pearl. Pearl-shell also 

 appears to have been used as an inlay in the Mexican 

 mosaic masks in the British Museum, which are pre-, 

 Columbian in origin. One of these, a plain mask, is of 

 special interest as the eyes are of mother-of-pearl.™ 



Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, in a letter to Kunz and Steven-. 

 son,"" writes " that pearls are not mentioned either as 

 articles of tribute or of decoration in ancient Mexican 

 codices ; possibly a lack of fine, hard instruments with 

 which to drill holes in pearls may have caused them to be 

 comparatively little used in personal adornment. Neither 

 do they appear to have been found incrusted in prehis- 

 toric objects, and we have no written evidence of their 

 having been used in this way. We do not know of any 

 instances of the wearing of pearls by the Indian women; 

 but the women of the higher classes used to wear them 

 profusely, more especially drop-earrings and pendants." 



W. H. Holmes,"' quoting from Davis' " Spanish Con- 

 quest of New Mexico," says: "In travelling north along 

 the west coast of Mexico, the Friar Niza encountered 

 Indians who wore many large shells of mother-of-pearl 

 about their necks, and farther up towards Cibola, the 



' '- Streeter, op. cit., p. 45 ; Kunz and Stevenson, op. cit., p. 23. 



^•''" Humboldt, op. cit., i., p. 191. 



^''' Bateman, "Catalogue of Antiquities." Bakevvell, 1S55, P- 236. 



'''" Kunz and Stevenson, op. cit., p. 510. 



"« /&•«'., p. 433. 



I'" W. H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans." Second 



Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1883, p. 256. 



