The use of cowry-shells for the purposes of currency, amulets, and charms / by J. Wilfrid Jackson.

  • J. Wilfrid Jackson
Date:
[1916]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The use of cowry-shells for the purposes of currency, amulets, and charms / by J. Wilfrid Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Cyprcea moneta appears to have been current also in other islands of the Pacific, as Brenchley states:159 “At Eramango [New Hebrides] a shell called 4 Nunpuri,’ the Cyprcea moneta, passes as money, as also in New Caledonia.’ In the Bismark Archipelago, says Schneider [op. cit., p. 118), C. annulus was found as money in special cases. In Gilbert Archipelago, the Ellice and Kingsmill Islands, Cyprcea moneta and C. annulus are used as body- ornament and for decorating implements and tools.100 F. W. Christian, in his article “ On Micronesian Weapons, Dress, Implements, etc,”101 figures a cowry-shell used in the Carolines for stripping off the outer skin of the bread-fruit. The figured shell looks like a Cyprcea mauritiana. He also figures an Ovulmn ovum shell (often alluded to as the white cowry) pierced for ornamenting prows of canoes. The use of this shell • as a canoe-ornament is general throughout the Pacific. Amongst other places it is recorded from the Pelew Islands, Yap, Gilbert Archipelago, Samoa, Nine, Viti Islands, Solomon Archipelago and Torres Straits Islands. In some of these and in other islands it is also worn as an ornament for the neck, breast, or leg, and placed on the: outsides of native houses. In Tonga it is used as a grave- ornament, and in the Solomons as decoration of an idol.10'1 In Tahiti, Cypuea moneta and C. talpa are worn on the neck, and C. tigris occurs on the base of an idol from Tahiti, now in the British Museum.163 Sir C. H. Read, in his description of specimens obtained on Vancouver’s fsu Brenchley, “Cru se of the ‘Curacoa,’” 1873, P- 299, quoted byC, Hedley, Mem. Ausf. Mils., iii., pt. 7, 1899, P- 452- 100 Schneider, op. cit., p. 118. 101 J. Anthiop. Inst, 28 (1898-9), pp. 2S8 et seq., pi. xxiw, f. 5. 102 Schmeltz, “ Schnecken und Muscheln in leben der volker Indo- nesiens und Oceaniens,” Leiden, 1894. 163 Ibid.
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