392 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
A source has recently been pointed out whence small pearls, and perhaps some fine 
ones, could have been obtained in considerable quantities by the Indians of Florida. 
In the Unios of some of the fresh-water lakes of that State there have been found 
large numbers of pearls, most of them small, but many large enough to be perforated 
and worn as beads. From one Unio there were taken 84 seed pearls; from another 
50, from a third 20, and from several 10 or 12 each. The examinations were chiefly 
confined to Lake Griffin and its vicinity. It is said that on an island in Lake Okee- 
chobee are the remains of an old pearl-fishery, and it is proposed to open the shells 
of this lake, which are large, in hopes of finding pearls of superior size and quality. 
The use of pearls as ornaments by the southern Indians, and the quantities of 
shells opened by them in various localities, make it seem strange that pearls are not 
more frequently met with in the relic beds and sepulchral tumuli of that region; but 
after exploring many shell and earth mounds, Ool. Charles C. Jones failed, except in a 
few instances, to find any. 1 A few were obtained in the extensive relic bed before 
alluded to, on the Savannah River above Augusta, the largest being four- tenths of an 
inch in diameter, but all of them blackened by fire. Many of the smaller mounds on 
the coast of Georgia do not contain pearls, because at the period of their construction 
the custom of burning the dead appears to have prevailed, hence it may bo that the 
pearls were either immediately consumed or so seriously injured as to crumble out of 
sight. This absence of pearls tends somewhat to confirm the opinion that beads and 
ornaments made from the thicker portions of shells, that were carved, perforated, and 
brilliant with their primal covering, were regarded by the imaginative Spaniards as 
pearls. More minute investigation, however, will doubtless reveal the existence of 
pearls in localities where the pearl-bearing shells were collected. Perforated pearls 
have been found in an ancient burying-ground located near the bank of the Ogeechee 
River, in Bryan County, Ga. ; and many years ago, after a heavy freshet on the Oconee 
River, which laid bare many Indian graves in the neighborhood of the large mounds 
on Poullain’s plantation, fully a hundred pearls of considerable size were gathered. 
It seems probable that what were regarded as pearls by the early Spanish voy- 
agers were, to a large extent, really such, although it is well known that shell beads 
have been found in mounds in connection with pearls. But the numbers found in 
Ohio mounds by Prof. Frederick W. Putnam, and by others, leave no room for doubt 
in this matter. That the Indians of the South also had these pearls, both drilled and 
undrilled, is beyond question. Notwithstanding the intercourse existing between 
remote Indian tribes, as shown by many authorities, and the fact that Pacific coast 
shells have been carried to Arizona, and that clam shells have been found in Zuni 
cities by Lieut. Frank H. Cushing, it is likely that these pearls came, not from the 
pearl oysters of the Pacific coast, but from the marine shells of the Atlantic coast 
and the fresh-water shells of the eastern part of the continent. It is very probable 
that the Indians opened the shells to secure the animal as an article of food; that the 
shells of some varieties, such as the common clam and conch, were made into wampum; 
and that the pearls found in the shells were used as ornaments, whether lusterless 
pearls from the common oyster or lustrous ones from the Unio. 
For a considerable period, however, after the first explorations, the pearl resources 
of North America seem to have attracted little attention. The Indian race was con- 
tending with the whites for the possession of the country; it was a time of uncertainty 
and strife for both races; and not until the great waterways of the Mississippi Valley 
1 Antiquities of Southern Indians, p. 486. 
