Feb. 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



NOTES ON. THE DENTALIUM SHELL. 291 



the blankets having become the money, as it were, or the means by 

 which everything is now reckoned and paid for by the savage. A slave, 

 a canoe, or a squaw, is worth in these days so many blankets ; but it 

 used to be so many strings of Dentalia. In the interior, east of the 

 Cascade Mountains, the beaver skin is the article by which everything 

 is reckoned — in fact, the money of the inland Indians. 



" The value of the Dentalium depends upon its length ; those repre- 

 senting the greater value are called when strung together, end to end, a 

 ' Hi-qua ;' but the standard by which the Dentalium is calculated to be 

 fit for a ' Hi-qua ' is, that twenty-five shells placed end to end must 

 make a fathom, or six feet in length. At one time a 'Hi-qua' would 

 purchase a male slave, equal in value to fifty blankets, or about 50f. 

 sterling. The shorter and defective shells are strung together in various 

 lengths and are called ' kop-kops.' About forty ' kop-kops ' equal a 

 ' Hi-qua ' in value. These strings of Dentalia are usually the stakes 

 gambled for. The shells are generally procured from the west side of 

 Vancouver's Island, and towards its northern end ; they live in the soft 

 sand in the snug bays and harbours that abound along the west coast of 

 the island, in water from three to five fathoms in depth. The habit of 

 the Dentalium is to bury itself in the sand, the small end of the shell 

 being invariably downwards and the large end close to the surface, thus 

 allowing the fish to protrude its feeding and breathing organs. This 

 position the wily savage has turned to good account, and has adopted a 

 most ingenious mode of capturing the much-prized shell. He arms 

 himself with a long spear, the haft made of light deal, to the end of 

 which is fastened a strip of wood placed transversely, but driven full of 

 teeth made of bone, resembling exactly a long comb with the teeth very 

 wide apart. 



" A squaw sits in the long stem of the canoe and paddles it slowly 

 along, whilst the Indian with the spear stands in the bow. He now 

 stabs the comb-like affair into the sand at the bottom of the water, and 

 after giving two or three stabs draws it up to look at it ; if he has been 

 successful, perhaps four or five Dentalia have been impaled on the teeth 

 of this spear. It is a very ingenious mode of procuring them, for it 

 would be quite impracticable either to dredge or net them out, and they 

 are never, as far as I know, found between tide-marks. 



" At one period, perhaps a remote one, in the history of the inland 

 Indians, these Dentalia were worn as ornaments. I have often found 

 them mixed with stone beads and small bits of the nacre of the 

 Haliotis, of an irregular shape, but with a small hole drilled through 

 each piece, in the old graves about Walla-walla and Colville. In all 

 probability, these ornaments were traded from the coast Indians ; but 

 as these graves were quite a thousand miles from the sea, it is pretty 

 clear the inland and coast Indians must have had some means of com- 

 munication." 



