Shell money most valued by the Native American tribes of the Pacific Coast from Alaska to northwest California was "Dentalium shell", a species of long narrow marine shelled mollusk, a tusk shell or scaphopod. The tusk shell is naturally open at both ends, and can easily be strung on a thread. This shell money was valued by its length rather than the exact number of shells; the "ligua", the highest denomination in their currency, was a length of about 6 inches. Farther south, in central California and southern California, the shell of the olive snail "Olivella biplicata" was used to make beads
Two Row Wampum Treaty is, however, evidence in the form of Haudenosaunee oral tradition that wampum belts featured, if not in the original negotiations, then at least in the earliest rituals of renewal (of which there were many) between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch (later the British). According to Parmenter: While most of the earliest recorded recitations of the "kaswentha" relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch do not mention wampum belts specifically, descriptions "of wampum belts in documentary sources, particularly from the early period of contact, are notoriously vague." Moreover, as artifacts wampum belts were extremely prone to deterioration and disassembly, so there