THE TECHNOLOGIST. [March 1, 1865. 



356 OX THE DENTALIUM SHELL 



as to the value of these shorter shells. He states that forty dentalia 

 go to the fathom as the standard number, which, he adds, is equal in 

 value to one heaver's skin ; that if thirty -nine shells measure the fathom, 

 it is then worth two beavers' skins, and so on increasing in value one 

 beaver's skin for every shell less than the standard number. 



Among the Chinooks and other Indians of the Northern Pacific 

 coast, dentalia, called by them " ioqua," serve for ornamental purposes, 

 as well as for money ; they are formed into necklaces, and the robes of 

 the natives are fringed with them. Curiously enough, dentalia were 

 used for a necklace by some long-forgotten Celtic chieftain, who found 

 his last resting place on this side of the Atlantic, upon that large tract 

 of bleak down-land known as Salisbury Plain. The smooth grass-clad 

 knoll -which marked the spot at Winterborne Stoke, near Salisbury, 

 when opened by the late Sir Richard C. Hoare, disclosed the moulder- 

 ing remains of the warrior, with his highly-prized bronze dagger-blade 

 and his rude ornaments, which consisted of some imperfectly-burnt clay 

 beads, two joints of a fossil encrinite, and a necklace of dentalium 

 shells. From this and similar examples it appears that necklaces and 

 such ornaments were worn by the male sex in the British Isles during 

 the period that stone and bronze weapons were in use ; thus, to give 

 but one corroborative example, two male skeletons were found in a 

 tumulus in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1838, and each had been buried 

 with a necklace of shells (Nerita littoralis) around the neck. In this 

 instance no trace of metal Avas found in the interment ; the brooch 

 (Jibula) was of bone, the arrow point merely chipped from a flint. How 

 exactly does this practice agree with what is known to exist among the 

 aborigines of North America ; it is not so much the squaw as the 

 warrior who is loaded with ornaments and decorations. 



Whilst the dentalium constitutes the circulating medium of North- 

 western America, shells in another form represented money among the 

 tribes which inhabited the south-eastern districts of that continent. 

 This shell-money is known as wampum, an Iroquois word meaning a 

 mussel. Wampum was made from shells cut into pieces from half an 

 inch to one inch in length ; these pieces were perforated and strung on 

 deer's sinews. An old writer (John Josselyn) asserted that the Indians 

 made wampum so cunningly, that neither Jew nor devil could counter- 

 feit it. As events have turned out, this was an idle boast, for a spurious 

 imitation, very closely resembling real wampum, was introduced by the 

 fur traders at so low a price, that the whole Indian country was soon 

 flooded with it, destroying at once the value and meaning of real 

 wampum. 



Wampum is of two colours, dark purple and white ; the former is 

 made from the Venus mercatorius, the latter from the columella of 

 various shells. Not only did wampum at one time form the regular 

 circulating medium in the eastern districts of North America, but the 

 wampum belt was passed as a pledge of friendship at treaties, or was 



