FAMILY DENTALIIDIE Foot partially enclosed by a fleshy sheath, which is cleft into two terminal lobes; shell tusk-shaped, ribbed, strong, like ivory in texture.
The most important family in the class. It includes a single genus of about one hundred and fifty living species.
Genus DENTALIUM, Linn.
Characteristics of the family.
The Dentalium burrows into the sand of the ocean floor, until it lies, head downward, in a slanting position with the little end of its shell thrust up into clear water, and the mantle spread, 299 The Tooth Shells to act as a gill. There is no eye, nor any need of one, for the head is buried; but certain vibrating organs are believed to be ears. The captacula, or tentacles, feel around in the sand and capture the minute bivalves and Foraminifera on which the mollusk feeds.
Tooth shells have been used as money and as ornaments by tribes of Indians. The polished shells, perforated by nature as if for stringing, would suggest the possibility of a necklace to any child. They made the same appeal to Indians.
The Money Tooth Shell (D. pretiosum, Nutt.), is abun dant along the Pacific coast north of California. It is pure white and polished and somewhat over an inch in length. It looks like an elephant's tusk in miniature. The Indians used to collect these shells by combing the sandy bottom with a long fine-toothed rake. The squaw slowly paddled the canoe over the shallows while the man operated the rake. If luck was good, a few shells came up with each haul.
Strings of tooth shells formed the currency of the Indians in the days before the Hudson Bay Company came. A string of twenty-five large ones might be worth the price of a canoe, or a comely squaw. This was about equal to two hundred and fifty dollars. The industrious beach-comber soon became a man of means.
Haik-wa, hai-qua or tusk shell money of the aborigines of of the Pacific coast, was the equivalent of the wampum in use among the Indian tribes of the Atlantic coast. The California Indians had immense quantities of the "money shells" in cir culation before they came into contact with civilisation. Powers
says: From my own observations and from the statements of pioneers and the Indians themselves I hesitate little to express the belief that every Indian in the state, in early days, possessed an average of at least $ioo worth of shell money. This would represent the value of about two women, or two grizzly bear .skins, or twenty-five cinnamon bearskins, or about three average ponies.
The squaws strung the shells on a fine thread of deer sinew. The string was usually ornamented with bits of the pearly Hali otis shell and tufts of wool from the mountain goat.
The highest standard of currencywas the hai-qua,or sovereign, valued at about 5(:) sterling. It was a string of twenty-five 300 The Tooth Shells shells, one fathom long, or equal in length to the extent of a man's outstretched arms. It required shells of large size and perfect form to reach this high standard. Smaller shells were of lower value. A fathom string of forty shells would buy a slave. Small and imperfect shells were strung together on sinew cords of differ ent lengths. These formed the small change, "kop-kop," of the tribes.
The earliest white traders found that the Indians knew where and how to obtain gold from the earth, Learning that they held it in slight esteem, and that avarice with them expressed itself in a craving for strings of shell money, the traders managed to increase the quantity of shells by importing them from the east coast. These were readily exchanged for gold, to the great satisfaction of all concerned. The decline of the popularity of shell money dates from the coming of the trappers of the Hudson Bay Company. Blankets became the standard of value, and the medium of exchange among the Indians. Young men were quick to adopt the new custom, but old men held to the ways of their fathers, and became misers of shell money. In the more remote Alaskan tribes only is it found in circulation at the present day.