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

  • J. Wilfrid Jackson
Date:
[1916]
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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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    % that of other peoples, £.£*., the Indian.183 Attention has already been called to the similarity of this custom to that of the Togo people of West Africa. The money-cowry (Cyprcea moneta) is, and has been for centuries, a sacred object among the Ojibwa and Menomini Indians of North America, and is employed in initiation ceremonies of the Grand Medicine Society.184 The use of this particular cowry by these Indians is of peculiar interest; in the first place; owing to it being alien to the American continent, and in the second place, in view of its intimate association with so many remark¬ able and fantastic beliefs and practices in different parts of the Old World. The tradition among the Indians is that the original sacred shell—migisf of the Ojibwa ; konapamik, of the Menomini—was introduced by a particular hero-god, who acted as an intermediary between the Great Unknown and the Indians, and founded their Medicine Society. Among the Menomini the sacred shell appears always to be the small white money-cowry, Cyprcea moneta™ but among the Ojibwa. according to Hoffman, it consists of a small white shell, of almost any species: but the one believed to resemble the mythical inf gis is similar to the money-cowry. This fact would seem to imply that the money-cowry is scarce among them, and those they possess, doubtless handed down from generation to genera¬ tion, are regarded with special veneration as being like 183 Schneider, op. cit., p. 108. 184 W. J. Hoffman, Bureati of Ethnology (United States), 7th Annual Report, 1885-6(1891), and 14th Annual Report, 1892-3 (1896), pt. i. ; also J. W. Jackson, Munch. Memoirs [Lit. and Phil. Soc.), vol. lx. (19]6), No. 4. Abstract in Nature, January 27th, 1916. 185 In the Ojibwa language, ml'gis — symbolical of life. i8C The example figured by Hoffman [op. cit., 1891, pi. xi., fig. 1) is interesting, as it is perforated at one end as if for suspension ; it is of the dwarf var. atava of C. moneta (see Fig. ID).
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