California Indian Shell Beads

                                    Beach in Southern California where Indians freely fished

                                       and gathered shells before the advent of the European

                                                        Pomo girl wearing her shell beads

            While hardly any area in North America lacks some quantity of prehistoric Indian shell beads, California is definitely the best source for these beads.  Some clamshell beads, notably the larger-sized discs, were used as money in central California.  No record survives of their fixed value.  The best known of this shell ‘money’ is a curving tubular shell known as dentalium. 

                               Dentalium shells, first 'found beads' strung by the earliest Indians

            It was found mostly in the Pacific Northwest and made its way through the trade routes southward, out onto the Great Plains. Because its tube is hollow, it became the first bead strung by aboriginal people. 

            Its use was purely ornamental in the areas it was traded into and eventually came to be used as true money in Northwestern California.  Beyond the size of two to three inches in length, these shells are rare.  It became customary to measure the value of these beads in length, the longer became the most valuable. 

Hupa woman wearing her pearl, clam shell and abalone beads

            The Yurok, Hupa, Kaxok and Wyot tribes engaged heavily in the exchange of these beads, often tattooing a set of marks on their wrists to measure dentalia.  The individual length and the length of the strings developed a very precise worth related to the trade or purchase of canoes, bows, slaves, woodpecker scalps, and deerskins.  This shell money was stored in purses made by digging out the interior of sections of deer and elk antlers.

Sierra Miwok necklace of shell, glass trade beads and found objects

             Most beads that were worked were made into discs or tubes, but the found object or imaginative natural shape always intrigued the creative mind and were often incorporated in their natural form with merely a hole drilled for stringing purposes.  California Indians were masters of ‘found bead art’ and everything from teeth, foot bones, hollow bird bones, ivory, fruit pits, fossils and pearls will turn up on necklaces and ritual objects.

            The most common of the Indian shell beads of the Pacific Coast was a shell called olivella.  In its natural state it has a lustrous, slightly iridescent dove-grey color.  The old beads excavated have lost this outer coating and have a chalky-white surface.  These beads are found in abundance in Indian graves of central California.

Pomo wampum beads

            The simplest way of preparing this shell for use was to grind off the tip. The shell could then be strung lengthwise as a bead. As this form evolved, the cup or tip was cut off and a hole drilled through, creating a more sophisticated bead. Further artistic development shaped this fragment into a rectangle with a drilled hole that created the appearance of a sequin. In addition to their use as in necklaces, they were also fastened to objects as ornamentation or, as seen in Pomo basketry, used to create a border or dangle freely with abalone pendants.

Pomo basket with feathers, clam shell, and dangling abalone ornaments

             The Canalino and Gabrielino Indians of Southern California used these shells extensively in their costuming.  Pelecypod (bi-valves), olive shell, clam and columella were also used. These ornaments do not have the cut-out or engraved decoration characteristic of Eastern shell ornament. The shapes are often irregular and suggest that they followed the natural form of the broken shell as it washes ashore. Highly imaginative shapes occur as these shells break on the rocks and are continually polished by the push and pull of the tide. This is the most common type of ornamental shell.

                                      Abalone pieces washed ashore at Bolinas, California. 
                         Such shell fragments were favored by the California Indians for pendants

            The most easily definable of the man-carved ornaments is one resembling a banjo with its keys exaggerated. There has been much theorizing among anthropologists as to what this rather involved form symbolically represents, but there remains still no absolutely supportable thesis in this area. Another shape of shell ornament is that of the bowl of a spoon, having a short neck culminating at the base with incurving, crescent-like horns or stylized patterns of cut-out work. Spoon-shaped shell ornaments almost always have a hole drilled in what would appear to be the tip of the spoon. This puzzled the non-Indian anthropologists who kept relating to the shape as a spoon which would place the tip down, but for Indians this obviously was not the case, because of their position on the bodies as excavated. The pendant was worn ‘spoon’ tip up. The most common position of these ornaments was in pairs, one on either side of the head where ears would have been. They appear to have been fastened to a leather headband or possibly a hat that could have decomposed while the shells remained. Many pieces of large size lay on the chest, indicating their use in necklace and as gorgets. They were also found on the back of the head and are speculated to have been used in the company of ear-flaps.

Pomo ear sticks of wood, abalone and glass trade beads

Pomo feather basket with abalone embellishments

            Shell ornaments in California extend in size from the tiny bits of shell favored by the Canalino Indians of the Santa Barbara coast to a full-sized abalone shell (with only the crescent-like rim removed and just slightly reduced by ornamentation) predominant in the Pacific Northwest where the normal size of these shells runs from seven to eight and a half inches in length and six and a half inches in width. All parts of the shell were used, even the thick rim was developed into a curving sword-like pendant. The very simple forms of abalone were occasionally ornamented with engraved designs, the most basic being a ‘pie crust’ motif cut into the edges of a disc, oval, square or rectangle shape. Sets of dots created by drilling all or part of the way into the edge were also used to create a varied outline on shells.  

                                                      Chumash Indian shell beads

            One of the most unique Pomo forms of beadwork that evolved after contact with the Spanish Jesuits was the chastity necklace. A length of dark wood trade cloth was made into a choker necklace about an inch and a half wide. It tied in the back with silk ribbons and the necklace was often decorated with buttons. From the center a long line of shell beads, from which dangled a hand-cut abalone cross, hung to the maiden’s crotch which established her virginity.  Only two or three of this rare and esoteric item are known to still exist in private collections.

                                                          A beach in Southern California

Next post: Wampum Beads and Belts in the Eastern United States...about Dec. 1

Tomb of an Unknown Magician: The Ridge House Ruin

                                      Woods in Northern Arizona near The Ridge House Ruin                                     

            Ridge Ruin was a small and seemingly insignificant masonry house of approximately twenty-five rooms located at the edge of a wooded valley, twenty-five miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona.  The ruin dates to the Pueblo III time frame and the actual burial dates to the first quarter of the 12^th century.  Until 1941, this area was disregarded by archaeologists with more research centered on the larger, more spectacular sites such as Pueblo Bonito or Mesa Verde.  Then the discovery of the burial of a significant personage, probably a magician, established the importance of this neglected ruin.  The man’s burial was accompanied by an amazing collection of ceremonial paraphernalia, including some of the best turquoise beads ever unearthed, stone and shell beads, ornaments and pottery of the highest quality, ceremonial pigments, and ritual sticks.

                                      Drawing of ceremonial sticks found buried with the magician

           

            The vast wealth of objects that accompanied this lone man on his journey to the afterlife made this burial fascinating and unusual.  Pueblo religious concepts do not encourage the accumulation of great personal wealth.  It was immediately obvious that here was a man of great ceremonial status. He was garbed ritually from head to toe with beads of turquoise, shell and stone, although only small fragments of his garments remained.

                                  Traditional Pueblo turquoise necklace, circa 1890 AD, containing
                                  turquoise from many different sources in the Southwest.  Note the
                                  use of free form shell beads and heishi. Excellent example of the
                                  type of turquoise beads that would have been part of the magician's
                                  burial goods. 

            Hopi Indian informants were called to the site before any interpretation was attempted.  All agreed that the objects found were definitely ritualistic in purpose.  Each informant felt they were connected to a ceremony identified with ancient Hopi spiritual observances. Questioned separately, they all agreed it was the same ceremony, although referring to it by different names.  This is not conflicting testimony because each of the three Hopi mesas (and often different villages on the same mesa) has a slightly different name and variations for the timeless ceremonies that have been passed down  by their ancestors.

                                       Drawing of the magician's one-rod basket tube inlaid with
                                       1500 turquoise pieces, possibly used as an arm band


            Most conclusive in establishing the accuracy of their testimony was the fact that when an informant was shown only part of the objects, he often described with  accuracy the other items that should have been (and were) with it.  A man from the Hopi village of Shungopovi flatly stated that there should have been a club-like object with serrated edges, a double horn object and a beaded cap with a point on the top to accompany a painted ceremonial stick.  These items were later found.  The man also suggested that the fraternity which developed the ceremony was made up of people from the Spider and Bluebird Clans.

                                      People of the Bear Clan are spiritual leaders among the Hopi. 
                                            The bear fetish is a symbol of strength and courage.

             

            A man from Mishongnovi, another Hopi village, said that the ceremony might be called ‘Moochiwimi’ or ‘Nasot Wimi,’ meaning to swallow sticks.  It was his theory that members were selected from the Skeleton and Coyote Clans, although as generations progressed and certain clans became decimated, others were drawn in to perpetuate the ceremony.  He described the paraphernalia in specific detail without first seeing it and said that the complete and original ceremony was probably last performed about 1890.  It was a form of witchcraft which was supposed to strengthen the magician and his clan.  Hence the war leader in a foray was usually chosen from this group.  They were represented by strong animals such as the bear and the lion. 

                                         The Mountain Lion, much revered for its stealth, cunning and

                                          prowess.  It is an important Zuni fetish.  Since antiquity

                                          Southwestern Indians have sought to harness its spirit and

                                          power for ceremonial purposes.

            A set of eight mountain lion claws and two canine teeth, painted and drilled as beads, were found with the magician.  It is believed that men from this witchcraft group could change themselves into these animals or call upon them for aid.  For this reason it was important to possess beads made from the teeth of fierce animals.  It greatly aided a man’s ceremonial power and status.  They also had songs as a significant part of their ritual which, together with the beads made from teeth and claw, called forth the power of these animals for the magician’s use.

                                           Old Hopi village where descendants of the Magician

                                           continued to practice the ceremonial life passed down

                                           to them by the ancient people of Ridge House

            An informant from Old Oraibi, a village on the Hopi’s Third Mesa and the oldest continually established town in North America, said the magician would be called ‘ka-leh-ta-ka’ since he was obviously the leader due to the richness and ceremonial significance of his burial.  He also described the objects used in the ceremony and defined it as a sort of witchcraft in which a sleight-of-hand was undertaken.  Together with all the other Hopi informants he agreed that the use for the carved and painted sticks was similar to a sword in the sword-swallowing act.  The painted end of the stick was forced down the throat so that just the ornamented end projected from the mouth.

                                       Necklace with pendant of spiny oyster shell inlaid with
                                       turquoise, jet and shell.  Made in 1960 by Anna Marie
                                       Coriz at Pueblo Santo Domingo.  Fine example of the
                                       sustaining influence of ceremonial objects found at Ridge
                                       Ruin and Pueblo  Bonito on contemporary Native American
                                       artists. 

            The man from Shungopovi voluntarily asked if the find was not located in the vicinity of Canyon Diablo.  When he was informed that it was from a very small pueblo ruin only about eighteen miles west of Canyon Diablo, he was greatly moved and insisted that people of this ceremony belonged to clans having the right to gather eagles from nests in the vicinity of the canyon.  This is probably correct because the Hopis to this day still practice some version of this ceremony and understand it quite accurately.  So many aspects of this burial point to the Hopis that it has been tentatively concluded that this magician and his people were some of the ancestors who contributed to the religious and cultural development of the Hopis.  With the excavation and study of this burial with its connecting ceremony, it’s been theorized that this ritual has the longest history (800 years with no major change in paraphernalia) of any ceremony known to have existed among Native Americans in the Southwest.

            The burial yielded 613 separately catalogued objects that were of great archaeological value because they were all in use at the same time by the same people. They illustrated not only the crafts produced in that place, but the range of trade contacts these people had.  There were six distinct pottery types different from what this culture made, but derived from geographically close cultures.  Also the appearance of Pacific Coast shell beads indicates the far-reaching trade routes these people traveled.

           

The principle objects identified in the burial are as follows:

1. A bracelet of turquoise beads
2. Turquoise animal heads
3. Nose plug
4. Ear pendant beads
5. Large decorated bone awl
6. Shell on stick
7. Painted wood hand on stick
8. Obsidian knife blade
9. Beaded head cover
10. Sticks painted blue
11. Carved painted stick
12. Stick painted red
13. Loop of conus shell beads (possibly held in hand)
14. Loop of conus shell beads (possibly worn around the knees)
15. String of conus shell beads (possibly worn from waist, dangling down the legs)
16. Three black-on-white seed bowls
17. Rim of large shell
18. Two large knife blades
19. Two cutout shell pendant beads in seed bowls
20. Mass of fine iron crystals on shell fragments
21. Scattered mass of copper ore
22. Fragments of painted basket
23. Turquoise mosaic basket
24. Abalone shell
25. Three marine shells nested together
26. Bird-shaped bracelet ornament of shell and turquoise inlay
27. Pendant bead of shell and turquoise
28. Sunset red pitcher
29. Two Tusayan polychrome bowls
30. Walnut black-on-white bowls
31. Fragments of a painted basket
32. Coiled basket
33. Reeds filled with blue paint
34. Small skin sacks filled with red paint
35. Blue paint in a gourd
36. Fragments of hematite paint
37. Teeth and claw beads of a mountain lion
38. Mass of hair
39. Mass of string or yarn
40. Small black-on-white bowl
41. Bird-shaped mosaic
42. Ear-shaped mosaic
43. Round mosaic
44. Shell lizard
45. Horn-shaped object of shell inlay
46. Stick with turquoise inlay
47. Lignite button
48. Stick with carved deer foot end
49. Three carved sticks: carved hand, carved deer foot, carved non-objective design
50. Dogoszhi black-on-white bowl
51. Black-on-white bowl
52. Sunset red jar
53. Two stone pendant beads painted green

The mosaic pendant beads were bound together or set in lac, an exudation of the lac insect and basis for materials such as shellac or sealing wax.  This burial provides the first evidence of such material being used for inlay in prehistoric America.  This lac was derived from plants which host the lac insect such as creosote bushes (Larrea Mexicana) and the shrub, Coursetia Glandulosa, that do not grow in northern Arizona and were probably traded from people living in a canyon north of Phoenix near Camelback Mountain, where the plants abound.  Besides lac, there is evidence of the use of unidentified organic plastic and asphalt in its natural form.

                                         Drawing of the ornaments found in the magician's burial

      In this burial a large number of beads and ornaments were made totally or partially from turquoise of such a high quality and pure blue color that experts have identified it as coming from the Los Cerillos mine in New Mexico.  A pair of turquoise pendant beads used for earrings was found on either side of the head, close to the original wearing position.  They are flat, circular discs of turquoise with small shell discs attached with lac to the center of each bead.  An abundance of stone beads were present in the burial, some closely identified with the body and others apparently used for ceremonial occasions.  Many turquoise beads of the finest quality were found.  An individual group of seventy-three large turquoise beads were found worn as a bracelet and still intact on the skeleton.  Screening operations later yielded more turquoise beads.  Eventually archaeologists found a string of 107 perfectly formed turquoise beads.  There were also two unusual turquoise beads that roughly suggest the shape of Egyptian scarabs.  These were undoubtedly amulets or magic charms.

      A cap formed much like a skull cap was still intact on the skull.  The beads were made of both shell and stone with holes so minute that even the smallest beading needle could not pass through.  When strung, these beads averaged twenty-one to the inch.  They were constructed of a finely-grained grey to blackish-colored stone and number more than 3600 beads.  In the cap itself they were worked in a manner alternating dark stone and white shell.

                         Reconstruction of the magician's head based on skeletal remains

     
      Close to the magician’s hand were two bead-charm bracelets which illustrate the potency and magical powers this culture invested in beads. They are exactly alike and consist of nine charms on each bracelet bound by a cord that had disintegrated.  One of these charms is a nose formed from an unidentified plastic and another of black stone is the back of the head and base of the neck.  The rest are definitely animal heads, most resembling grasshopper.

      The shell pendant beads are of two types: those fashioned very simply and only drilled for suspension or others more elaborately cut in unusual designs.  All bear an undeniable similarity to ornaments and beads used on the Pacific Coast.  The shells were acquired through trade, but it cannot definitely be established who did the actual designing on very simple specimens.  They could have come from California already cut out or else they could have had the design work applied in Arizona.  Shells that incorporate inlay techniques were definitely made Ridge Ruin Pueblo.  

           

           

Note: Information and drawings in this blog were found in a monograph by John C. McGregor, an archaeologist at the Museum of Northern Arizona.  It was first published in the proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 86, No. 2, February 1943.   Museum of Northern Arizona is dedicated to preserving the cultures and environment of Native Americans in Northern Arizona.  It is an important resource in our community and greatly deserving of your support.

Next Blog: Navajo Silversmithing and the Origin of the Squashblossom Necklace will appear sometime after the first of October.  I'm off on a great walkabout to New Mexico and Colorado in search of more interesting bead lore. 

Pueblo Bonito, Part I: Master Bead-Makers of Prehistoric New Mexico

                  

                                                Beads and frog fetish found at Pueblo Bonito

“Turquoise beads and pendants are the diamonds, the radium, the manna from heaven for the Southwestern Indian.  I cannot think of anything that is as precious to the white man as good, sky-blue turquoise is to an Indian.  And the stones from ancient ruins exceed in beauty and quality any of those in circulation today…Bonito abounded in turquoise.  In this respect it is the richest Southwestern site ever excavated.”*

            Situated in the northwestern corner of New Mexico, Pueblo Bonito is an excellent example of the heights achieved in art and architecture during the Pueblo III period.  Beneath its foundations rest the ruins of Pueblo I and II cultures.  Basket Maker III ruins are also found in the immediate vicinity.

            The construction of Pueblo Bonito began in the ninth or early part of the tenth century on the original site of a Pueblo I pit village.  In the beginning it was merely a cluster of primitively built masonry houses.  As the population increased, the buildings expanded crescentically to the right and left.  Probably in the second quarter of the eleventh century, a new group of wandering clans arrived at Bonito.  Their original migration patterns, though unproved as yet, seemed to come from the north.

            The new people were more sophisticated than the original Bonitans and probably came in greater numbers.  Almost immediately their cultural ethic began to dominate.  They built dwellings around the core of the old village.  Later, they made changes, even to the point of razing their own houses to clear the way for architecturally advanced homes.  They twice enlarged the pueblo and greatly increased its internal and external security against marauding bands of nomadic Indians.  These newcomers (referred to by archeologists as ‘Late Bonitans’) are considered to be dynamic and progressive, while ‘Old Bonitans’ are remembered as unyielding and old-fashioned.  It was the Late Bonitans who took the pueblo to its pinnacle of material culture, making it a legend in its own time as far south as the beaches of Southern California and in the steamy jungles of Vera Cruz.

            Neil Judd, the principal excavator of Pueblo Bonito theorizes that the Old Bonitans continued in residence longer than the Late Bonitans because all of the cultural materials recovered came from Old Bonitan rooms.  Some were clearly used for living while others were obviously storerooms.  Finally, eight of them, dwellings and storerooms, were appropriated for burials by the last to inhabit this pueblo.  Both religious and secular objects stored at the time were abandoned when the first interior burials occurred.  In its heyday Bonito could have housed at least 1500 people, and undoubtedly buried its dead with a bounty of beads, pottery and baskets in a cemetery outside the village proper.  But successive generations of accumulation, blowing sand, and flooding of the dangerous Chaco arroyo that leaves tons of silt on the floor of the canyon, have combined to protect the burial treasures of these ancient ones.

Late Bonitan houses seem to have been cleared of their contents by the dwellers themselves and suggest an unhurried departure from the pueblo.  None of their rooms were used for burials, but a number came to be used as dumps for household sweepings and refuse.  These dumps, both at Bonito and elsewhere in pueblo country, have provided archeologists with a wealth of information about daily life. 

They yield up pot shards, beads, and utensils that help define the culture.  The trash heaps at Bonito tell a story of families moving around the pueblo and a gradual drifting away of much of the population.  It seems that the departure of the Late Bonitans was voluntary, as opposed to flight under enemy attack.  A population evacuated under forced circumstances leaves much of their material culture behind. Late Bonitan rooms were emptied of all their contents suggesting a leisurely departure.

The most plausible theory of this migration is a great reduction in the amount of fertile land.  Hunger spurs discontent and has continually influenced the migrations of clans in the southwest.  Several factors seem to come into play here:

1.      Late Bonitan homes stripped of all furnishings.

2.      Old Bonitans crowded into a small corner of their original village.

3.      Old Bonitan rooms transformed into tombs for one hundred dead that could not be buried outside the walled pueblo.

4.      Old Bonitan abandonment at a later date of utensils, blankets, pottery and ceremonial equipment suggests a population decimated by famine and migration, then enemy attack.

                                                Ariel view of the remains of Pueblo Bonito
                                        

*Ann Axtell Morris: Digging In The Southwest

Coming Next Week: The Beads of  Pueblo Bonito