points; and doubtless there are multitudes of such heaps
that have never been observed. They are known as far north as Idaho, as
communicated by Dr. Robert N. Bell, State mineralogist, and they
extend still farther north, as noted by Dr. Harlan I. Smith, in his
"Preliminary Notes on the Archaeology of the Yakima Valtey."1
He says: "Small heaps of fresh-water clam-shells were examined, but
these being only about five feet in diameter and as many inches in
depth, are hardly to be compared to the immense shell-heaps of the
coast."
These
Unio shell-heaps are frequent in the South, and some of the Spanish
chroniclers of De Soto's expedition in 1540-1541, describe the
gathering and cooking of the mussels, and the finding of occasional
pearls therein. The same writers also give glowing accounts of the
pearls possessed by the natives. Some of these accounts may be
exaggerated, but they cannot be wholly so. It would seem that some of
the pearls may have come from marine shells, and others from those of
the rivers and streams ; but there are few pearl-producing shells on
our own coasts, and it is not very likely that there was any trade or
intercourse with the West Indian Islands, where marine pearls occur
freely.
Albert
H. Pickett, in his "History of Alabama," refers to the accounts of De
Soto's historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, and holds that the pearls
which he noted were evidently from the Unios of Alabama. "Heaps of
mussel shells," he says, "are now to be seen on our river banks
wherever Indians used to live. They were much used by the ancient
Indians for some purpose, and old warriors have informed me that their
ancestors once used the shells to temper the clay with which they made
their vessels. But as thousands of the shells lie banked up, some deep
in the ground, we may also suppose that the Indians in De Soto's time,
everywhere in Alabama, obtained pearls from them. There can be no doubt
about the quantity of pearls found in this State and Georgia in 1540,
but they were of a coarser and more valueless kind than the .Spaniards
supposed. The Indians used to perforate them and string them around their necks and arms like beads."2
The
use of fragments of these shells in tempering the clay for pottery,
alluded to in the preceding paragraph, is well known. Prof. Daniel S.
Martin describes an old village site in South Carolina, near the
Congaree River, a few miles south of the city of Columbia, where the
ground had been plowed, and along the furrows the soil was gleaming
with brilliant pearly fragments of Unio shells, intermingled with bits
of pottery.
Mr. Clarence B. Moore discovered pearls pierced for stringing in
1 "Science," April 6, 1906, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 "History of Alabama," Charlestown,
588.
1851, Vol. ί, p. 12.
