tribute, etc. The armengol women, marriages, and public festivals start it out again, and on its way back it performs many social services. It is also reasonable to suppose that, having got a footing on these islands, it spread to others by social contagion. This explains the presence of a general medium of exchange amongst people who are otherwise barely out of the stone age.331 The tales about the crimes which have been connected with the history of great pieces of the aragonite stone332 remind us of the stories about the greatest diamonds yet found.
151. Money in northwestern North America. In South America nothing served the purposes of money. There was none in Peru. Metal, if they had any, was used by all for ornament.333 Martius, however, says of the Mauhes that they used seeds of paullinia sorbilis as money. They obtained from the seeds a remedy for skin disease and diarrhœa.334 The Nishinam of California had two kinds of shell money, ullo and hawok. The former consists of pieces, one or two inches long and one third of that in width, strung on a fiber. The pieces of shell take a high polish 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 running in the thickness of the shell. They were called wampumpeag, were sewed on deer or other fine skins, and the belts thus made were used to emphasize points in negotiation or in treaties, or in speeches. Farther down the coast beads were made like flat button molds, with holes bored through them perpendicularly to the plane of the shell, and called roanoke. These beads, of both kinds, but especially of the former kind, spread by exchange into the Mississippi Valley, and in the middle of the nineteenth century they had reached the upper waters of the Missouri River.
153. Ring money; use of metal. The standpoint of the Vedic hymns is that the cow is the real measure of value, but metal, especially gold, is used for money in the payment of penalties and weregild. The objects at stake in formulæ of oaths and of duels were estimated in gold.342 There was therefore a pure gold currency. In ancient India, however, silver and copper were also used and locally some coins of lead and mixed metals occurred. In value one of gold equaled ten of silver, and one of silver forty of copper.343 The most ancient money of China consisted of shells,344 also of knives and dress patterns of silk.345 The knives had rings at the end of the handle and were gradually reduced to rings of metal as money.346 The same ancient king who established measures of length and capacity is the legendary author of money (2697 B.C.). He fixed the five objects of exchange—beads, jade, gold, knives, textiles. The sign for money was combined of the signs for "shell" and "to exchange."347 We hear that the Chinese emperor, 119 B.C., gave to his vassals squares of white deerskin, about one foot on a side, embroidered on the hem. He who had one of these could get an audience of the emperor.348 We are inclined to connect with that usage the use of a scarf of bluish-white silk in central Asia, which was used in all greetings and ceremonies. A certain quality of this scarf was used in places as the unit of value.349 Przewalsky mentions the chadak which is given to every guest in southern Mongolia, for which another must be given in return. In Chalcha chadaks are used as money, not as gifts.350 An intragroup money of copper or brass rings is also reported from Korintji on Sumatra. They are cast of three sizes, so that one hundred and twenty, three hundred and sixty, and four hundred and eighty are required to equal a Dutch gulden.351 In the Old Testament the bride price and penalties were to be paid in money.352 Gifts and fees to the sanctuary were to be paid in kind.353 If the sacrificer wished to redeem his animal, etc., he must pay twenty per cent more than the priest's assessment of it.354 Until the Exile the precious metals were paid by weight.355 The rings represented on the Egyptian monuments were of wire with a round section. Those found by Schliemann at Mykenæ are similar, or they are spirals of wire.356 In Homer cattle are the unit of value, but metals are used as media. The talent is mentioned only in reference to gold.357 Possibly Schurz is right in supposing that fluctuations in the value of cattle and sheep forced the classical nations to use metal.358 The metals were in the shape of caldrons or tripods, in which fines were imposed. They may have been accumulated because used as money, or a great man who had many clients may have needed many for meals.359 "The transition from the old simple mode of exchange to the use of currency can nowhere be better traced than amongst the Romans." Fines were set in cattle or sheep, but copper was used as well, weighed when sold. Then the state set the shape and fineness of the bars and stamped them with the mark of a sheep or
