sh and make a fine necklace. The hawok is small money by
comparison. A string of the large kind was worth ten dollars. It
consisted of ten pieces. A string of one hundred and
seventy-seven pieces of the small kind sold for seven dollars. In
early days every Indian in California had, on an average, one
hundred dollars' worth of the shell money, the value of two women
(although they did not buy wives) or three average ponies.[335]
The Hupa of California will not sell to an American the flakes of
jasper or obsidian which they parade at their dances. They are
not knives, but jewelry and money amongst themselves. Nearly
every man has ten lines tattooed across the inside of his left
arm. A string of five shells is the standard unit. It is drawn
over the left thumb nail. If it reaches the uppermost tattooed
line it is worth five dollars per shell.[336] They also grind
down pieces of stone which looks like meershaum into cylinders
one to three inches long, which they wear as jewelry and use as
money.[337] The Eskimo of Alaska used skins as money. Here the
effect of intergroup trade has been to change the skin which was
taken as the unit. It is now the beaver. Other skins are rated as
multiples or submultiples of this.[338] In Washington Territory
dentalium and abelone shells were the money, also slaves, skins,
and blankets, until the closer contact with whites produced
changes.[339] The Karok use as money the red scalps of
woodpeckers which are rated at from $2.50 to $5.00 each, and also
dentalium shells of which they grind off the tip. The shortest
pieces are worth twenty-five cents, the longest about two
dollars. The strings are generally about the length of a man's
arm. They were worth forty or fifty dollars a string, but have
fallen in value, especially amongst the young.[340] The copper
plates which are so highly valued on the northwestern coast may
be esteemed holy on account of the ring in them. Slaves are
killed and their flesh is used as bait in catching the dentalium
snails, perhaps in order to get a mystic idea into the shells of
the snails.[341]

+152. Wampumpeag and roanoke.+ On the Atlantic coast shell money
was made on Long Island Sound and at Narragansett from the shell
of the round clam, in two colors, white and purple, the latter
from the dark spot in the shell. These were bugles, the hole
runnin