www.fws.gov/midwest/mussel/harvest.html
Great photo archive on the history of the button trade.

www.mikimoto.com
History of the cultured pearl industry

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pearl/freshwater.html
Discussion of China’s entry into the pearl industry

www.amnh.org/exhibitions/pearls/fresh/index.html

The American Museum of Natural History’s site concerning their pearl exhibit

www.greatriver.com/pearls.html
History of Muscatine, Iowa

www.muscatinemercantile.com/page/981558.html
Photos of early Muscatine and J.F. Boepple

www.museum.state.il.us
Harvesting the river, life of the clammers

Great River: an Environmental History of the Upper Mississippi, 1890 – 1950
Phillip V. Scarpino
University of Missouri Press, 1985

Gems and Precious Stones of North America
George Fredrick Kunz
Chicago Scientific Publishing 1893

Water: A Natural History
Alice Outwater
Basic Books, 1996

The Indians of the Southeastern United States
John R. Swanton
The Smithsonian Institution
Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 137, 1942

Freshwater Mussels as a Prehistoric Food Resource
Paul W. Parmalee and Walter E. Klippel
American Antiquity, 39:421 – 434, 1974

Prehistoric Decline in Freshwater Mussels Coincident with the Advent of Maize Agriculture
Evan Peacock, Wendell R. Haag, Melvin L. Warren, Jr.
Conservation Biology, 547 – 551, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2005