It is unnecessary to refer in detail to the origin of pearling in each of the States. The general interest in this industry from 1889 to the present time has resulted in the examination of most of the rivers and creeks, and in few has the search been entirely unrewarded, although the finds have been relatively much greater in some waters than in others. As a rule, pearl-bearing Unios are most numerous in clear, swift streams, with sandy or gravelly bottoms and which flow through calcareous rocks. With pearlers as with miners, there is a stampede to the places where a good find is reported, since the rivers are free for all; consequently, there is much variation from year to year in the amount of attention which the individual streams and localities receive.
While many of the pearlers operating in the Mississippi River are professional fishermen or rivermen, most of those in the smaller streams have had no previous experience in similar work. Frequently whole families come twenty or thirty miles, and even greater distances, and camp on the river bank. In many instances farm-hands are there who have abandoned their crops, mechanics who have left steady jobs, railway men who have taken a lay-off, teachers, merchants, all eager and expecting to find a fortune. In some localities, pearl fishing has been used as an attraction in big picnic advertisements, and has drawn larger crowds than a public orator.
The mollusks are removed from the river bottoms in various ways and by many forms of apparatus. In the shallow streams the fishermen simply wade out in the water and pick up the shells by hand. If not readily visible from the surface, the shells may be located with the bare feet or by the use of a water-telescope. Where the water is too deep for wading, the fishermen work from small boats, and use garden rakes or other convenient inplements.
Where pearling has developed into more of an industry, special forms of rakes and drags are employed. A shoulder rake, with a handle twelve to twenty feet in length, is used extensively under the ice in frozen rivers, and in lakes and other places where the water is still and from eight to fifteen feet in depth. This is simply an overgrown or enlarged garden rake, armed with twelve or fifteen iron teeth about five inches in length. A wire scoop or basket is attached to receive the catch as it is pulled from the bottom by the teeth, and when this scoop is well filled it is lifted and the contents dumped on the ice or into the skiff. This method is laborious, and is employed only where the water is shallow and the mollusks are abundant. Scissor tongs—similar to those used by oystermen on the Atlantic coast—are also employed in some localities, especially in Arkansas, where it is estimated that 1700 pairs were manufactured and sold in 1899 and 1900, at about $7 each.
In the large streams of the Mississippi Valley, with their slow and steady currents, and where the Unios are taken largely for their shells to be used in button manufacture, the most popular form of apparatus since 1896 has been the crowfoot drag. This ingenious contrivance consists of a cross-bar of hollow iron tubing or common gas-pipe, six or eight feet long, to which are attached, at intervals of five or six inches, stout twine or chain snoods or stagings, each about eighteen inches in length. To each of these are attached three or four prongs or “hooks,” about six inches apart. These “hooks” are four-pronged, and are made of two pieces of stout wire bent at right angles to each other. According to the depth of the water, from twenty-five to seventy-five feet of three quarter inch rope is attached to the drag for the purpose of towing it behind the boat, which is permitted to drift down the stream with the current. This contrivance costs about $3, and each fisherman generally has at least two of them, as well as a wide flat-bottom boat costing $5 or $10.
Sometimes, when the current is light, the fisherman prepares a “mule” to assist the boat in towing the resisting drag. This “mule” consists of a wooden frame, hinged in V-shape, and is fastened several feet in advance of the boat with the V end pointed down the stream. It sinks low in the water, and the current pressing against the angle carries it along, and thus tows the skiff and the resisting drag at a uniform rate of speed. When there is not sufficient current even for this contrivance, as in the wide reaches and in the lakes, oars, sails, and even power engines may be used for propelling the boat.
As the crowfoot drag is slowly drawn along the bottom, it comes in contact with the mollusks feeding with open shells. When a hook or other part of the drag enters an open shell, the mollusk immediately closes firmly upon the intruding object and clings thereto long enough to be drawn up into the boat. In this way, where the Unios are thick, nearly every hook becomes freighted, and some may have two or three shells clinging thereto. It is easy to collect fifty mollusks in passing over a length of two hundred feet. Two drags are carried by each fisherman, and the second one is put overboard as soon as the first one is ready to be raised. This is suspended with the bar across two upright forks on either side of the boat with the prongs swinging freely, and the mussels are removed therefrom. When this operation is completed, the drag is put overboard and the other one is ready for lifting. This apparatus is very effective, and as much as a ton of shells has been taken by one man in twelve hours, but the average is very much less, probably not over four or five hundred pounds. Objection is made to this manner of fishing, since many mollusks not brought to the surface are so injured that they die.
A cruder implement of similar type has long been employed on many logging streams. The weighted branch of a tree is dragged on the bottom behind a raft of logs, and the mussels attach themselves to the twigs in the same manner as on the crowfoot hooks.
During the pearling excitement in Arkansas, a considerable portion of the choice pearls were found, not in the mussels, but lying loosely in the mud of the shores, indicating that under some circumstances, as agitation by freshets or floods, the loose pearls are shaken out from the Unios. In some instances, indeed, the pearls were found upon or in the soil at some distance from streams or lakes. It is reported that in October, 1897, Mr. J. W. McIntosh, of the northern part of Lonoke County, while digging post-holes in the old bed of Cypress Bayou, found a number of pearls, some “as large as a 44–caliber Winchester ball,” lying within the shells at a depth of a foot and a half below the surface. This peculiar occurrence is partly explained by the wide extension of the waters in flood times over the low region, and by the shifting of streams and the isolation of cut-offs.
Stray pearls have been found in many other odd places, as in the viscera of chickens and ducks, in the stomachs of fish, and even within a pig’s mouth. It is not an uncommon scene in the pearling region to see men raking over the muck in hog-pens along the river banks, hoping there to find a stray pearl lost from the mussels with which the animals had been fed by persons who had indeed “cast pearls before swine.” It is related that a Negro near Marley, Illinois, in this way secured a pearl weighing 118 grains, for which he received $2000 from a St. Louis buyer, and which was ultimately sold to a New York dealer for $5000.