Pre-Columbian Use of the Money-Cowrie in America

Abstract

IN NATURE of August 10 (p. 488) there was a notice of an article by Mr. C. B. Moore (published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia, 2nd Ser., part ii., vol. xvi.) on the explorations of aboriginal sites in the Tennessee River valley, which raises the interesting question of the provenance of certain cowries found there. These are pronounced by Dr. H. A. Pilsbry, the well-known American conchologist, to be examples of the money-cowrie, Cypraea moneta, of Eastern Seas, and they have never been recorded before from an aboriginal mound in the United States. Nor has the species ever been recorded living on any of the shores of the Americas. To account for their presence in the Tennessee mound, Dr. W. H. Dall, another of America's leading conchologists, has suggested that the cowries “may have come off one of Columbus's own ships”!