Maidu, especially their tribes of the lower elevations, went in for elaborate feather decorations and headdresses. Valley Maidu even had feather cloaks for ceremonial use.
Chapter XVII
WEALTH
Among local tribes wealth was the direct result of skill and industry and was highly regarded by all. A person’s social status in the tribe varied directly with his wealth. Lazy persons not able to properly care for their own needs were considered as bums and looked down upon by all other members of the village. With wealth went a certain amount of power. Chiefs, although empowered by heritage, were always well to do, and the wealthiest men in smaller units acted in the capacity of head-men.
As with modern man, money among Indians was an arbitrary medium of exchange, yet it was of more practical value to the Indians than our own coins are to us. Their money was prized not only for what it would buy in material things, but as possessing important decorative value as well.
The long tooth-shell or dentalium was used whole and unmodified. It was the currency of the northwest California coast. The money of central and southern California was the clamshell disk. This was cut, smoothed into disk shapes about half an inch in diameter, and each was perforated with a central hole by means of which this money could be strung onto cords. In no case did local tribes travel the California coast to obtain these shell coins. Instead, this item found its way to Indians of the interior through progressive or step-by-step trading from coastal tribes through intermediate aboriginal traders.
As we might expect, dentalia, having a northern origin, were secured by Atsugewi not from their neighbors to the south, but from the northern Yana in exchange for buckskins, arrows, wildcat skin quivers, and woodpecker scalps. The mountain Maidu did not have dentalia at all.
Except for the central Yana custom of measuring the length of strings of clamshell disks, amounts of money were determined by counting and not by measuring length on arm tatoos as was so commonly the case in other parts of California. Skins of small mammals which had been skinned by making only one slit in the hind quarters and whose mouth openings had been tied shut, served as purses.
All of our tribes used clamshell money. Among Yana clamshell disks were not as valuable as dentalia, and they were more common also among Atsugewi, the dentalia being used more for decoration than as money. The tribes of the Lassen region generally received the finished clamshell money; almost never did they manufacture this, although they did work traded abalone shell into jewelry pieces.
Material wealth or treasure other than weapons, skins, baskets, and food also consisted largely of imported seashells. Whole olivella shells were commonly used as dress ornaments and also for paying shamans for services. Bone cylinders, columellae of shells, and especially polished cylinders of the mineral magnesite were highly prized. These might be used as the central piece of a necklace in the same manner that we might utilize a precious gem.