478 Wampum and its History. (May, 
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 makers 
rancheria. This finished, a hole was bored through the center 
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 move- 
ment 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 fiber, 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 
themselves. ` a 
Their gold, so to speak, the w//o, is made from the shell of the $ 
abalone (Æaliotis) and chiefly from the red species (H. rufescens} i 
These shells are cut with flints into oblong, keystone-shaped piects 
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 i ar 
“Ten pieces,” wrote Powers, “generally constitute a string, a" 
the larger pieces rate at $1 apiece, $10a string ; the smaller 18 
proportion, or less if they are not pretty. Being suscep i 
AEE E PAE EAT ETTEN E E EE S OENE ENET 
PAT a a o Ei a 
TANER Ss 
ay 
Džen 
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4 
for necklaces on gala days. But as money it 1s ra 
and cumbersome,and * * * [it] may be conside 
jewelry.” 
A third sort of money, very rarely see 
cated on the islands off the southern coast and on the ee 
mainland. This was called Zol-kol, and was made by ganas 
the apex of the univalve shell of Olivella biplicata until gr : 
could be passed through. It was slightly esteemed. per 
Further south all these forms of shell-cutting disappear j bt 
capacity of money, retaining value only as ornaments ; er 
their use in trade south of California belongs under he | me 
onora 7 7 
red ratheras 
n now-a-days, Was fab i 
barter. Thus Bancroft notes of the natives of So 
turqoises, emeralds, coral, feathers and gold were as : 
part of their property, and held the place of money: regulat 
There seems to have been an immense amount of h 
money, higua, allocochick, hawok and ullo on the 
Pacific et 
