TWEEZERS.
A rather novel use of shells by the ancient Indians is mentioned by early writers. The two valves of small mussels or clams were made to do service as tweezers for pulling out their hair.
Adair, speaking of the Choctaws, says that "both sexes pluck all the hair off their bodies with a kind of tweezers, made formerly of clam shells."[51] Strachey states that shells were used by the Virginian Indians for cutting hair. Beverly says of the Virginia Indians that they "pull their Beards up by the Roots with Muscle-shells, and both Men and Women do the same by the other Parts of their Body for Cleanliness sake."[52] Heckewelder states that "Before the Europeans came into the country their apparatus for performing this work consisted of a pair of mussel-shells, sharpened on a gritty stone, which answered the purpose very well, being somewhat like pincers."[53]
Fig. 5, Plate XXVII, reproduced from a plate in the Necropolis of Ancon[54] represents two small Mytilus shells pierced at the beak and bound together with a cord. They were found in one of the ancient graves of Peru, and may have been used for a similar purpose.