BEADS. 



By S. S. Haldeman. 



Beads have been extensively used in ancient and modern times by 

 savage and civilized nations, which gives them a value in ethnology. Upon 

 the western or Vesperian continent certain forms are spread from ocean to 

 ocean, particularly such as are made of molluscous shells, and constitute 

 wampum. Among the materials used are seeds, nuts, and other vegetable 

 productions; fossils with natural perforations, such as encrinites; worked 

 stone, burnt clay, metal, bone, claws of beasts and birds (the latter some- 

 times made into rings by inserting the points successively into the open 

 bases until the ring is closed); teeth of men, deer, bears, wildcats, peccaries, 

 monkeys, alligators, sharks, &c.;* wing-cases of beetles, and the shells of 

 mollusca, univalves of various sizes being strung entire,! the larger, together 

 with bivalves, being shaped into disks, cylinders, and irregular pieces used 

 as gorgets. Besides these, during the last three centuries, Venetian glass 

 beads have been widely spread, their varieties of color, form, and size mak- 

 ing them attractive. Even when these occur in mounds and graves, they 

 are not to be regarded as older on this continent than the Columbic dis- 

 covery, notwithstanding several of the patterns are ancient Egyptian, As- 

 syrian, and Phenician, whence the manufacture was somehow inherited by 

 modem Venice, perhaps in connection with Rhodes, where Graeco-phenician 



"The Caribs of Guiana "decorate themselves with beads made of fishes teeth." . . . Henry Bo- 

 lingbroke, A Voyage to Deinerary, 1807, p. 145. "Women [of the Indians] wear a little apron of glass 

 beads," p. 153. 



The Fingoes of S. Africa use wolf teeth as ornaments. Mrs. Harriet Ward, Five Years in Kaffir- 

 land, 1648, vol. i, p. 251. 



An Abyssinian necklace in my collection is composed of European beads, cowries (Cyprea shells), 

 a triangnlar plate of brass, two small copper coins, small spheric brass buttons, carnelian, date seeds, 

 numerous cloves pierced through the side, a fragment of wood, a bit of cane, and an Arab phylactery. 



tSee Lartet and Christy, Eeliquia; Aquitanica?, B. plates v and xi. C. C. Jones, Southern In- 

 dians, chapter xxii, pi. xxx. 



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