Giving It to You Straight – Toothshell Hermit Crabs and Wampum Tuskshells
Giving it to you straight!
This was my most fun “discover” for April.
It is a Toothshell Hermit Crab within the shell of a Wampum Tuskshell. The shells have been used as foreign money by First Nations. Learn on!
THIS species of hermit crab doesn’t have curled physique to hook and maintain a snail shell dwelling (like most hermit crabs).
THIS hermit crab species’ physique is straight which implies that it may’t stay in a shell made by a marine snail. Its area of interest is to suit into the straight shells of Tuskshells or, if want be, the tube of calcareous tubeworm species* which can be straight.
Toothshell Hermit Crabs are solely as much as 0.8 cm lengthy (Orthopagurus minimus).
Wampum Tuskshells are to solely 5 cm lengthy (Antalis pretiosa). They’re molluscs belonging to the Tuskshell class (Scaphopoda).
My pleasure is about this hermit crab species’ variations and that it’s so uncommon to see a Tuskshell as a result of they’re often burrowed deep within the sandy or shell backside. The perfect probability of seeing one is as the house of a Toothshell Hermit. However then, there’s ALSO the good cultural significance of Tuskshells!
Crappy sketch is by yours actually.
Tuskshell species (often known as Dentalia and Toothshells) are of nice significance to First Nations. They have been used as foreign money and are nonetheless utilized in regalia in some areas.
The shells of those snails have been used for over 2,500 years from what’s now often called the Arctic to Baja California and throughout to the Nice Lakes. Crucial species of tuskshell is reported to have been the one I chanced upon lately, the Wampum Tuskshell.
One of the vital essential areas for harvesting these animals for his or her shells (know as hiqua / haiqua) was Quatsino Pontificate northwest Vancouver Island.
The snail’s earlier scientific identify even interprets into “invaluable tooth” = Dentalium pretiosum. Partially what made tuskshells so invaluable was that they have been tough to get. However, not solely have been they scarce, they have been additionally nice as foreign money due to their magnificence, being straightforward to move, and since they might not be counterfeited.
The snail is usually present in deeper water (between 9 to 75 m), burrowed within the sand. The Quatsino Folks engineered a means of catching them with an equipment that appears like the pinnacle of a brush. To get this right down to the shells, stick extensions have been added a size at a time to get as deep as 21 m. All this whereas working from a canoe!
I hope this little hermit crab, on this little shell, provides to a BIG world of connection for you.
Accompanying textual content: “Tooth or tusk shells generally known as #dentalium is a scaphopod mollusk. Dentalium was harvested off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada by tribes. In the present day, most industrial dentalium is harvested and offered from Asia. Within the Plains, dentalium was a extremely wanted commerce product from the Plateau Tribes. Stunning hues of easy pink and white have been prized and revered by Lakota, Dakota, and Nakoda ladies. Artists created costume capes, earrings, hair ornaments, and chokers to put on throughout occasions of ceremony and celebration.
Costume element, #Lakota Northern Plains, ca. 1885. Selvage wool, dentalium shells, glass beads, silk ribbon, cotton thread. NA.202.40.”
See beneath for extra data from the great lesson plan from the ebook edited by Gloria Snively and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams – Figuring out House: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science.
Dentalium Shell Cash Story
“For two,500 years, till the early twentieth century, North American Indigenous peoples used the dazzling white cone-shaped shell of a marine mollusk as foreign money. Dentalium pretiosum [note that the species was reclassified to Antalis pretiosa] is a . . . mollusk of the category Scaphopoda, a bunch often known as tusk shells due to their barely curved, conical form . . . Dentalia inhabit coarse, clear sand on the floor of the seabed in areas of deep water, and are sometimes present in affiliation with sand {dollars} and the purple olive snail (Olivella biplicata).
As predators, they use their streamlined form and muscular foot to maneuver surprisingly rapidly in pursuit of tiny single-celled prey known as forminifera. Aboriginal peoples used many substances as commerce items, however dentalia have been the one shells to turn out to be foreign money. Harvested from deep waters off the coast of Vancouver Island, they have been lovely, scarce, transportable, and never simply counterfeited.
In 1778, Captain James Prepare dinner of the British Royal Navy visited the village of Yuquot (Pleasant Cove) on Nootka Island off the west coast of Vancouver Island, BC. The island’s fur buying and selling potential led the British East India Firm to arrange a buying and selling put up at Yuquot, which grew to become a focus for English, Spanish, and American merchants and explorers.
Commerce between Euro-People and Aboriginal peoples was initially carried out beneath the watchful eye of a robust chief named Maquinna who acted as intermediary, buying sea otter pelts utilizing dentalia as foreign money after which reselling the pelts to white merchants in trade for different items.
As soon as the white merchants realized that shells have been used as cash, they started buying and selling straight with dentalia harvesters among the many Nuu-cha-nulth and Kwakwaka‘wakw folks. The middle of the fur commerce subsequently moved to Nahwitti, a Kwakwaka‘wakw village on the northern tip of Vancouver Island (Nuytten, 2008b, p. 23), and dentalium shell cash grew to become a foreign money of cross-cultural commerce, known as Hy‘kwa in Chinook Jargon—a commerce language spoken as a lingua franca within the Pacific Northwest through the 19th and early 20th centuries. The foreign money was used all through Alaska, down the Pacific coast so far as Baja California, and throughout the prairies of the US and southern Canada to the Nice Lakes.
Along with their use as foreign money, the pearly white dentalium shells additionally served as ornamental wealth. They have been long-established into necklaces, bracelets, hair adornments, and dolls. The shells additionally embellished the clothes of each women and men.
It’s usually agreed that the most effective dentalium shells have been these harvested by the Ehattesaht and Quatsino folks from shell beds off the west coast of Vancouver Island. These beds lay deep underwater—too deep for divers to carry their breath, too darkish for them to see, and too chilly to maintain a diving operation—so the Quatsino folks designed specialised gear to reap the cash shells. Historic data point out {that a} system with a really lengthy deal with and a backside finish resembling a “nice, stiff broom” was used to pluck stay dentalia from the seabed . . . Three of those implements nonetheless exist in museums in Victoria, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington.”
4-minute video from December 2022: “Hunter Previous Elk, Assistant Curator of the Heart of the West’s Plains Indian Museum, exhibits us a Dakota costume cape adorned with 1,500 – 2,000 dentalium shells”
Please word that dentalia / tuskshells do not transfer from one shell to the opposite. Their shell grows.
From the Oregon Historic Society:
Tuskshells / Dentalia ” . . . have been of nice worth prized mark of wealth and standing, sometimes displayed as ornaments in clothes and headdresses, used as jewellery, and even utilized in some locations as a kind of foreign money.
Most dentalium coming into the indigenous commerce community of the Pacific Northwest originated off the coast of Vancouver Island. Chicklisaht, Kyuquot, and Ehattesaht communities of the Northern Nuu-chah-nulth, inhabitants of the west coast of the island, have been the first supply of the shells. Nonetheless, the Kwakwaka’wakw of Quatsino Sound and Cape Scott, on the japanese coast, have been additionally massive producers. Harvesters would work from their ocean-going canoes, extending specially-constructed lengthy poles to the dentalium beds on the ocean ground. On the finish of the lengthy poles have been massive brushes that have been pushed into the mollusk beds, ensnaring dentalium within the course of.”
Sources:
Gloria Snively and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams (2016) – Figuring out House: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science, Chapter 11 – Cash from the Sea: A Cross-cultural Indigenous Science Drawback-solving Exercise
Quartux Journal – Dentalia Shell Cash: Hello-qua, Alika-chik
Oregon Historic Society (2003) – Dentalia Shell & Bead Necklace
Coast View (2022) – Quatsino, Quatsino Sound
Plains Indian Museum on the Buffalo Invoice Heart of the West (2022) – The foreign money of dentalium shells
Nationwide Geographic Journal (1993) by way of Dentalia Harvesting
The Midden (1990) – A Curious Foreign money Half 1: Haiqua shells on the Northwest Coast within the nineteenth century
*Observe that there’s one other straight-bodied species of hermit crab within the northeast Pacific Ocean whose dwelling is sort of all the time the tubes of calcareous Tubeworms; the Tubeworm Hermit (Discorsopagurus schmitti).
