The cowrie shells' influence reached across continents and oceans, taking on a symbolism as deep and diverse as the cultures and peoples they touched.
Originating from a humble sea snail, the shell can represent fortune and wealth, femininity and fertility, ancestral remembrance and resistance to oppression and enslavement.
“This one, little tiny shell had such a big impact on so many different people,” said Will Pell from the Hampton History Museum.
Pell will give a presentation at the museum on Monday exploring the meanings ingrained in cowries and the routes they took to reach the coast of Virginia from West African nations, drawing scholarship from historians such as Barbara Heath, Bin Yang and Akinwumi Ogundiran.
The power of the cowrie wasn’t just symbolic. The shell was currency for various groups and nations stretching further than 1000 B.C.E. in China, being traded to Egypt as early as the Bronze Age. Its use lasted until the 20th century.
Harvested from the Indian Ocean, primarily from the Maldive Islands and the coast of Zanzibar, the “cowrie money zone” at times stretched east to Bengal and southern China and west to the African empires of Mali and Oyo.
“African kingdoms were lending legitimacy to the currency by taking taxes in it or giving gifts in it; it was still an economy where gift giving was very important,” Pell said. In turn, that did “legitimize” those kingdoms’ authority.
The shell continues to appear in decorations on the Central Bank of West African States building in Benin and minted onto Ghanaian coins. Ghana’s currency, the cedi, comes from the Akan word for cowrie.
The exchange of cowries reached its peak when European merchants and enslavers got involved, leveraging the currency to gain and maintain economic advantages as European nations vied for trade monopolies in the African continent.
“West African economies were growing at this time and so there was a lot of money to be made there,” Pell said. “Europeans were trying to get that profit, exploit the economy, but they don’t get their dominance until later on after sort of pillaging the New World.”
The shells made their way to Virginia in the hands of European traders of enslaved people, used as blood money in the trafficking of Africans. But some were also brought by African people taken to English North America in bondage. They’ve been found in commercial centers and homes of powerful colonizers in settlements such as Yorktown, as well as in archaeological sites associated with Colonial-era African population centers.
“They were stripped of everything while being brought over, but something small like this that they might have had already in their hair or on their person, in their pocket, that’s something that you can hold on to and bring with you – if nothing else,” Pell said.
Primary sources are sparse on how cowries were used in Virginia at that time. Pell said it’s unconfirmed, but it's possible that cowries continued to be used as currency in North America.
“There wasn’t a lot of coinage in Colonial Virginia; a lot of things were done on credit,” Pell said. “So there is that niche in the market for potentially something like a shell to be functionally like a small currency, but we just don’t know for sure.”
What is more clear is that the shells retained symbolic significance. They have been found in areas used for burials or religious purposes, pointing toward a continued view of the shells as spiritually important to early Virginians of African descent.
Cowries continue to be used in religious contexts, including to decorate head shrines or ile ori by African people of the Yoruba Orisha tradition and in diasporic spiritualities such as Vodou or Candomblé. Ori shrines in Yoruba culture are dedicated to a personalized deity embodying one’s destiny and fortune.
“What better way to decorate it than with something that symbolizes fortune, with money — with cowries,” Pell said.
The significance of the shells continues into modern African American communities. For some, they still symbolize wealth and fertility, having also come to represent ancestral connection, cultural resilience and survivance.
“There’s a lot of symbolic meaning in holding on to that one little thing that you have the ability to hold on to from your homeland,” Pell said.
Pell’s presentation is at 7 p.m. at the Hampton History Museum. It is free for museum members and $5 for non-members to attend.
