It has been estimated that the pearl beads found in the altars of the Hopewell Group, when new and undrilled, were worth upwards of a million dollars.
Practically all shell ornaments were made from the larger unio shells and also from the busycon and pyrula shells of Florida and the Carolinas. Fig. 522 presents one of these shells as yet uncut which was found in a mound at the Hopewell Group and another which has been cut down into the form of a large dipper or drinking-vessel.
Fig. 524. (S. varying.) Shell ornaments from California. Peabody Museum collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Fig. 525. (S. 3–7.) This figure illustrates some of the shell hairpins, rather rare in Ohio, but frequently found in the South. These are from the collection of Mr. John T. Reeder, Houghton, Michigan, and were found in Alabama and Tennessee. It would be impossible to drill with these, and by common consent they are called hairpins.
The ornamentation on large shell gorgets is complicated and characteristic. I am not sufficiently familiar with California shell gorgets to state whether they are ever engraved. Fig. 529, from Professor Barr’s collection, presents as highly developed gorgets as I have seen from the Pacific Coast. It is in the mounds and stone graves of the Cumberland and Tennessee valleys that the art in engraving or decorating gorgets seems to have reached its height. In Figs. 530, 531, 532, 533. 534, and 535 are presented beautiful specimens from the collections of Mr. John T. Reeder, Colonel Young, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Fig. 526. (S. 1–2.) An engraved shell gorget found in the glacial kame burials in northern Ohio. This is shown half size and is a remarkable specimen. The material is from a large fresh-water unio.
Professor William H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution has studied shell objects more than any one else in this country. I quote from his description of Fig. 534:[[20]]