Pearls - Pearls of the Midwest

The Pearls of Ancient Peoples
During the time of classical Greece and the early Roman Empire, a less celebrated but extraordinary culture flourished in the Ohio River Valley. Called the Hopewell, these people seem to have considered pearls as valuable and collectible as we do today.

The burial mounds and ceremonial sites they left were excavated in the 19th century by archaeologists who found, to their amazement, vast quantities of pearls—as many as several quarts in a single mound! And all of these pearls came from freshwater mussels found in the tributaries of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. In fact, no ancient region anywhere in the world has yielded more than a fraction of this quantity of pearls.

Pearl Collecting: No one knows for sure exactly how the Hopewell gathered or fished for pearl-producing mussels. However, the obviously high demand for these gems must have placed severe stress—not only on the mussel population, but also on the people who were coerced to gather such a large number of pearls.

Pearl Significance: Some archaeologists speculate that pearls may have had a special, sacred meaning for the Hopewell, but others believe pearls were used purely for personal decoration.

The Field Museum possesses a large number of drilled pearls and objects made with pearl inlays that were found in the original Hopewell mounds near Chillicothe, Ohio. Most were found in rich ceremonial deposits, not burials, and many objects had been burned, presumably during a sacrificial rite.

“In the age of the mound-builders there were as many pearls in the possession of a single tribe of Indians as existed in any European court.”

Kunz and Stevenson, 1908

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