114 
stone tools, that the output was limited, and only a very few reached 
the interior tribes and Canada. The introduction of iron increased 
the output a liundredfold, and as their markets expanded the coast 
natives floofled with their products all the interior country as far 
west as the ^Mississippi river, and northward beyond the lowlands 
of eastern Canada. Then, about the bej2;innin^’ of the nineteenth 
century, the fur-traders substituted a cheaper porcelain bead for 
the original bead of shell, and the currency became worthless.^ The 
history of wampum thus offers a striking and in many ways unusual 
example of the economic revolutions brought about by the introduc- 
tion of iron into primitive communities that had hitherto not 
knowm its use. 
A similar phenomenon occurred on the Pacific coast of America, 
where beads made from dentalia and serjmla sliells, multiplied 
through the introduction of iron tools, became a definite currency 
in at least two areas, among the California Indians in the south and 
the Kutchin Indians of the Yukon district in the far north. The 
coast tribes of British Columbia, who either gathered the shells 
themselves or \vere in close contact with tribes who did, prized them 
mainly for trading purposes, preferring for their own use ornaments 
of the iridescent haliotis shell. The interior and northern natives 
preferred the beads: “Beads are the riches of the Kutchin and also 
the medium of exchange throughout the country lying between the 
Mackenzie and the west coast, other articles being valued by the 
number of strings of beads they can procure To be accounted 
a chief among the Kutchin, a man must possess beads to the amount 
of two hundrefl beavers.”- 
Even in ju’e-European times, when the production of shell beads 
and ornaments was more restricted, the Indians of the Pacific coast 
had developed commerce into a high art. aial become the most 
enterprising tradei's on the continent. Tlie stream of shell ornaments 
flowing nortliward met a stream of copper flowing soutli. Other 
streams of shell flowed inland, up the Fraser, Skeena, and Stikine 
rivers to the interior tribes, and across Bella Coola mountains into 
the territory of the Carriers. The oil of the oolakan or candle fish 
1 Cf. Ufaiiclianip. W. M.: '‘Wanipuiii atul Shell Articles Used b>' the New York Indians”; Bull. 
New York State Mus., No. 41, vol. viii (Albany, IfWl). 
2 Richardson, Sir J. ; “ .4rt,ie Searchiim Expedition, A .Tonrnal of a Boat Voyage tlirough Rupert’s 
Land and the Arctic Sea”; vol. i, p. 391 (London, 1S51). Cf. Journal of Simon Fraser, Masson: 
Op. cit., ser. i, p. 221. 
