108 THE JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA ANTHROPOLOGY Counterfeiters and Shell tme Indian fashion. Powers (1872:535) ob­ serves that marriage payment among the Currency Manipulators Karok in the early 1870s was still being demanded in dentalium "shell-money," but Among California Indians that since this commodity was scarce "the honorable estate of matrimony has faUen ROBERT F. HEIZER sadly into desuetude" because "the old Indi­ ans prefer that in exchange for their daugh­ One of the features of native hfe in ters." Here may be another instance of the California which persisted well into the time maintenance of traditional practices among after the native societies had been practically older Native Cahfornians in terms of the destroyed by the successive occupations by aboriginal currency standards. Spain and the United States was the manufac­ In the latter half of the nineteenth cen­ ture and use of shell bead money. Perhaps tury, the Pomo apparently became the chief Indians continued to preserve these old cus­ manufacturers and purveyors for central Cali­ toms because they were largely deprived of fornia tribes of clam shell disc beads and the opportunities for gainful employment, and tubular magnesite beads. Access to Bodega through being largely excluded from the new Bay where the clam shells were collected by economic system, they continued to value the Pomo was probably possible only after their old currency because it was still valu­ the Coast Miwok, who owned this area, were able. Hudson (1897) tehs us that older native reduced in numbers by contact with the individuals in the latter half of the nineteenth Russians and missionization. Kniffen (1939) century in central California bought shell reports that Pomo clamshell gathering expedi­ beads made by the Pomo for American cash tions to Bodega Bay were made only in and saved it for their funerals. Stephen historic times. With the introduction of the Powers (1877:336) in the early 1870s noted pump drill by the agency of a "Spaniard" in the continued interest by older people in the 1870s and the foot-powered grindstone, acquiring shell bead money, and wrote, "This the Pomo were able to produce huge quanti­ money has a certain religious value in their ties of shell beads which found a ready mind, as being alone worthy to be offered up market among surviving Indian groups in the on the funeral pyre of departed friends or Sacramento Valley and probably beyond to famous chiefs of their tribe." The extraordi­ the east in the Sierra Nevadas (Hudson 1897, nary amount of sheU beads and ornaments 1900). So, to some appreciable extent, the cohected by one man can be seen in the list Pomo preeminence as shell bead suppliers in provided by Powers (1877:337-338) for a Central California appears to have come about through change in the aboriginal situation re­ Maidu man. Captain Tom, at Auburn. Thus, sulting from the presence of Anglo-Europeans. the persistence, and perhaps even the amplifi­ cation, of shell bead making in the late 1800s The Russians who had established a fort can be attributed to the effort by the survi­ at Ross on the Mendocino County Coast in vors of the decimated Native Cahfornians who 1812 are said to have manufactured counter­ had experienced the pre-contact way of life feit disc beads of dull-lustered glass for and who were excluded from entering socially distribution to the resident Pomo, according and economically the new culture to make to Hudson (1897:108) who writes: one last affirmation of their "nativeness" by Counterfeits [of Pomo beads] appeared as being buried and sent into the afterlife in the early as 1816 when the Russian explorer SHELL CURRENCY MANIPULATORS 109 Kuskoff ordered made and sent to him a Sound on Vancouver Island. The Fillings certain pattern of glass beads to trade with (1970:101, 112-113) provide a review of the wild tribes in New Albion. A number of native reports of the routes along which these these beads were exhumed from a very old grave not long ago, and prove to be good valuable shells travehed south in aboriginal imitations, both in form and color, but quite times. They present data (1970:101-103) on lacking in luster. It is recorded that the wild the importation of dentaha by white traders tribes soon detected the cheat and cast them in the last quarter of the nineteenth century out with abhorrence. Tradition confirms the for distribution to Indians as well as informa­ record with added details of how three Russian traders of charlil kol (devil's beads) tion on the importing of other items of value were taken unawares and their heads burnt to the native peoples (obsidian, red-headed with their beads. woodpecker scalps, and a white deerskin) from outside the northwestern California area. I do not know of any other record of Russian The extensive trade in abalone shells counterfeit disc beads, but presume that taken by Spanish and American fur traders Hudson's account has some basis in actual from Monterey to the Northwest Coast is history. another example of the influence of Cauca­ Beckham (1969:107,157) provides us with sians in distributing desirable mollusc shells the information that George Gibbs, one­ (Heizer 1940). From Monterey abalone shells time Indian Agent in Oregon, interpreter for were said to have been taken by trappers and Redick McKee on his 1851 treaty-making traders eastward "into the Sierra Nevada, and expedition to northwestern California, and even the rocky mountains" by beaver trappers goldminer on the Klamath River in 1852, and mountain traders and exchanged with the forwarded in 1852 to his brother, Frank, then Indians "for furs, horses, buffalo robes, and living in Shanghai, a few dentalium shells other valuables, at high prices" (Taylor 1857). from Puget Sound, with the fohowing instmc- From the early 1800s on there seem to tions: "I have thought that your Chinese have been some fairly substantial changes in could imitate it in porcelain with exactness, the amount, kind, and distribution of shell and if so, a very profitable operation could be beads or shell money in California Indian made, not only by selling it to miners and societies. It seems possible that much of what traders here in Oregon, but in purchasing we read about "aboriginal" uses and values of directly from Indians skins and [gold] dust." shell beads recorded by ethnographers in the Here, as in the case of the Pomo, local native first half of the twentieth century may not, in shell currency could be converted to real fact, be an accurate record of ancient prac­ money. Nothing seems to have come of tices but rather ones which had been devel­ Gibbs' scheme to manufacture counterfeit oped in response to new and different condi­ dentalia. Beckham (1969:157) records, how­ tions of availabhity resulting from the pres­ ever, that Gibbs bought dentahum shells from ence of whites. the Indians on Puget Sound "which he pack­ aged and shipped to his old friend Duperu at Archaeological Research Facility Humboldt Bay," no doubt for the purpose of University of California, Berkeley buying from the Indians "skins and dust" REFERENCES which were readily convertible to real cash. The original source of the dentalium shehs Beckham, S. D. which served as currency among the Indians 1970 George Gibbs, 1815-1873: Historian and of northwestern Califomia was Quatsino Ethnologist. Ph.D. Dissertation in History, 110 THE JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA ANTHROPOLOGY University of California, Los Angeles, 1969. University Microfilms No. 70-14, 258. The Beads of Humaliwo Heizer, R. F. 1940 The Introduction of Monterey Shells to R. O. GIBSON the Indians of the Northwest Coast. Pacif­ ic Northwest Quarterly 31:399-402. The site of Humaliwo (4-LAn-264) is located near the coastal town of Malibu, Hudson, J. W. 1897 Pomo Wampum Makers. Overland Month­ Califomia. Radiocarbon dates froin the site ly 30:101-108. indicate it was first seasonally occupied ap­ proximately 800-1000 B.C. Historically the 1900 A So-called Aboriginal Tool. American area was occupied by Santa Monica Mountain Anthropologist 2:782. Chumash, who acted as middlemen in com­ Kniffen, F. B. plex island/inland trading spheres. Baptisms 1939 Pomo Geography. University of California from Humaliwo are recorded at Mission San Publications in American Archaeology and Buenaventura from 1785 to 1816. Thus the Ethnology 36:353-400. site could contain information about cultural PiOing, A. R., and P. L. Pilling systems spanning almost 3000 years. 1970 Cloth, Clothes, Hose, and Bows: Non- This is a preliminary analysis of sheU, sedentary Merchants Among the Indians stone, and glass beads from Humaliwo. It is of Northwestern California. In Migration based on a small sample of beads recovered and Anthropology (pp. 97-119), Proceed­ during summer excavations of 1971 and 1972 ings of the Annual Spring Meeting of the by the UCLA Archaeological Survey. American Ethnological Society. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Any discussion of beads should begin with a few explicit statements about the basis of its Powers, S. units. The artifact categories discussed below 1872 The Northern California Indians, No. III. Ovedand Monthly 8:530-539. represent the correlation, within specific lim­ its, of three variables or attributes.' The three 1877 Tribes of California. Washington: Smith­ variables are form, material, and dimensions. sonian Institution, Contributions to North When the form "saucer" and the material American Ethnology 3. "wall of the Olivella shell" and the dimen­ Taylor, A. S. sions "7.0 mm. in overah diameter, 1.3 mm. 1862 The Curiosities of California. Wide West, in thickness, and 2.0 mm. in hole diameter" Jan. 1, 1857. Reprinted in California Farm­ are found together, the artifact is classed er, December 5, 1862.