Nature Bulletin No. 452-A   April 8, 1972
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:USES OF MUSSELS

The wampum of the early American Indians was beads made from the 
shells of freshwater mussels or saltwater clams. Each bead, highly 
polished and cylindrical in shape, was about a quarter of an inch long 
and either purple or white in color. Strung on strings or woven into 
patterns on a belt, wampum was used as money, as a symbol of 
authority, or as a sort of shorthand historical record which only certain 
interpreters could translate.

Each Mussel or Freshwater Clam has a soft oyster-like body enclosed 
between a pair of shells lined with mother-of-pearl. The mussel family 
reaches its greatest abundance and variety of kinds in the waters that 
drain into the Mississippi River. In Illinois streams and lakes, alone, 
there are several dozen species ranging in size from the little inch-long 
Peanut Shell up to the heavy 8 or 10 inch shell of a Washboard or 
Elephant Ear. Each kind has its own distinctive shape, color, and 
sculpturing on the outside -- some ridged, some warty and some 
smooth. Each spends its life on the bottom of some river, creek or lake 
where it feeds on the microscopic life and debris that it strains out of 
the water. Mussels are slow-moving, but as infants they hitch rides by 
spending two or three weeks as parasites attached to the gills or fins of 
a fish.

Since 1891, the pearl button industry has been centered at Muscatine, 
Iowa, close to the large rivers that yield the best button shells. To make 
good quality buttons, the nacre or mother-of-pearl should be white, 
preferably iridescent, and neither brittle nor chalky. The shell should be 
large enough to furnish several button blanks and the thicker the better. 
Those found in lakes and ponds, called Papershells or Floaters, have 
shells that are too thin. Some of the preferred kinds for buttons are the 
Mucket, Pocketbook, Three-ridge, Pimpleback, Heelsplitter and 
Buckhorn.

At the factories, the shells are sorted according to kind and size, then 
soaked in water for a week. The blanks are cut by high speed tubular 
saws cooled by a stream of water. After grinding both sides of a blank, 
a finishing machine rounds the edges, carves out the center and drills 
the 2 or 4 holes. Between these operations they are smoothed by 
tumbling in barrels with water and pumice. Finally, they are polished in 
acid, washed, and fastened on cards.

Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the mussel beds in our rivers and 
the increased use of other materials for buttons, "clamming" has 
become less and less profitable. Clamming is usually a part-time job for 
a riverman, commercial fisherman or farmer working alone. Mostly, he 
uses clam bars dragged down the river behind a small boat, each bar 
with about two dozen strings of 4-pronged hooks. When a prong of a 
hook falls between the halves of a partly open mussel, it instantly closes 
on the hook and hangs on until lifted into the boat. At the end of the day 
he steams the catch in a tank to remove the bodies from the shells. Each 
soft body is always looked over hopefully. It just might happen to hide 
the pearl he has been dreaming about -- a pearl so fine and so big that it 
would be worth thousands of dollars.

And that aint wampum.