PEAELS AND PEARL FISHERIES. 
389 
Indians in De Soto’s time, everywhere in Alabama, obtained pearls from them. There can be no 
doubt about the quantity of pearls found in this State and Georgia in 1540, but they were of a coarser 
and more valueless kind than the Spaniards supposed. The Indians used to perforate them with a 
heated copper spindle and string them around their necks and arms like beads. 
David Ingram, during the “ Land Travels ” of himself and others in the year 
1568-1569, from the Rio de Minas in the Gulf of Mexico to Cape Breton in Acadia, 
made the following observations : 
There is in some of those Countreys great abundance of Pearle, for in every cottage he founde 
Pearle, in some bowse a quarte, in some a pottell, in some a pecke, more or lesse, where he did see 
some as great as an acorn, and Richard Browne, one of his companions, found one of these great 
pearls in one of their canoes, or Boates, Wch Pearle he gaue to Mouns Champaine, whoe toke them 
aboarde his Shippe, and brought them to Newhaven in ffraunce. 
The English were quick to note the presence of pearls in America, being already 
acquainted with those found in the rivers of Scotland and Ireland; and hence we have 
repeated references to them from early English travelers and colonists. 
A member of the expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh collected from the natives of 
Virginia 5,000 pearls, “of which number he chose so many as made a fayre chaine, 
which for their likeness and uniformity in roundnesse, orientnesse and pidenesse of 
many excellent colors, with equalitie in greatness, were very fayre and rare.” 1 
In the plates illustrative of the “Admiranda Var ratio” and the “Brevis FTarratio,” 
the natives both of Virginia and Florida are represented in the possession of numerous 
strings of pearls of large size; and in his description of the “treasure of riches” of 
the Virginia Indians, Robert Bevery says: 
They likewise have some pearls amongst them, and formerly had many more, but where they 
got them is uncertain, except they found them in the oyster banks which are frequent in this country. 2 
Wilson asserts that he saw pearls “bigger than Rouncival pease,” and perfectly 
round, taken from oysters found on the Carolina coast. 3 
Father Louis Hennepin assures us that the Indians along the Mississippi wore 
bracelets and earrings of fine pearls, which they spoiled, having nothing to bore them 
with but fire. He adds : 
They gave us to understand that they received them in exchange for their calumets from nations 
inhabiting the coast of the great lake to the southward, which I take to be the Gulph of Florida. 
Sufficient historical evidence has been given to show that pearls were in general 
use among the southern Indians; that the choicest of them were the prized ornaments 
of the prominent personages of the tribes; that the fluviatile mussels were collected 
and opened for the purpose of procuring them; that the marine shells of the Atlantic, 
the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific, yielded tribute to the labor, skill, and taste of 
numerous pearl-divers, and that these pearls were found, not only in the possession 
of the living, but also in large quantities in the graves of chieftains and the sepulchers 
of the undistinguished dead. 
Doubtless, however, the accounts that have reached us from the historians of 
these expeditions and voyages are somewhat extravagant with regard to the quality, 
quantity, and size of the pearls in the possession of the natives. From the interviews 
between the Europeans and the latter, it appears that the Indians obtained their 
pearis both from marine shells and from fresh water mussels. Some of the true 
oysters of Georgia and Florida are margaritiferous, and many of them contain seed 
1 A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Frankfort on the Main, 1590) p. 11. 
2 Documents connected with the History of South Carolina, edited by Plowden Charles Jennett 
Weston (Loudon, 1856), p. 8. 
3 Transactions of the Philosophic Society for 1693. 
