The Savannah morning news., 1903-10-03
WAMPUM USED FOR MONEY.
Primitive Currency That Circulated
Among the Indians.
From the New England Magazine.


From the New England Magazine
If one wished to indicate the most
obvious characteristic of the Indians
of the Atlantic seaboard at the time.
of the English settlement in New
England he could not, perhaps, make.
better selection. than their. general.
eagerness to possess and display large
Quantities of wampum. 1t meant all
to the Indian that money does to US
and infinitely more. Not merely ala
it serve as a medium of exchange and
a standard of values, but worn as an
ornament it was a badge of wealth
and position, in the hands of the
chiefs his record book and ledger, and
through the favor of the Great Spirit
it's possession became in no small de-
gree the passport to the happy hunt
ing grounds of the future world. Inc
use of wampum constituted Dond OF
union among the Indians such as was
scarcely supplied by language, religion
or racial customs.
wamnum was made from shells, US
ually clam or oyster, and it is, there
fore, not surprising that the coast
jewellers were the most prolific pro-
ducers of it. The black beads were
made from the dark "eye" of the shell,
the scar indicating the point OF muscu-
lar attachment, while the white ones
were taken from the outer parts. Black
beads were known as sacki. white ones
as wompi, and the black were usual
lv considered twice as valuable as the
white.
How Wampum Is Made.
The beads themselves were simply
little shell cylinders about one-eighth OF
an inch in diameter and one-fourth of
an inch in length. They were polish
ed smooth by being rubbed against
stones and We're bored by means or d
flint awl many of which are still 10 De
found in the shell heaps along the New
England coast. In boring the beads
the workman used a cane or reed. up
ped with this stone awl. which ne
rolled continually on his thigh with his
right hand, holding the bit of shell in
his left. After the coming of the Eng
fish iron avis were substituted, but
even the process of manufacture must
have been extremely tedious. 1t is SAID
that by a days hard labor 1t was bare
ly possible for a man TO produce ID
cents worth of wampum. Whether the
work was done by the men or women
cannot be known, but it may we'll have
been shared by both. 1t required not
only a vast amount of patience--such
as only the Indian possesses-but also
a considerable degree of skill, for the
shells must be perfect in shape, free
from cracks, Irregularities or flaw. The
Indian trader demanded that his wam-
pun be as sound and perfect as the
present-day merchant expects Uncle
Sans new minted coins to be. 1t was
the labor involved in their making that
gave the beads a purchasing power
so much in excess of that of the una
wrought fresh water shells which arch
biologists believe were used as a cur
rency i'm the remoter inland regions.
Its First Use as Money.
In 1927 De Rasieres, in command of a
Dutch trading vessel, brought $50
worth OF wampum from New Amster-
dam to Plymouth. This was the first
Indian money acquired by the English
settlers. 1t was used in trade among
the Indians of the Kennebec region
and was found so profitable means
of exchange that thereafter the thrifty
Plymouth yeomen lost no opportunity
to increase their stock of it. To the
English settlers strings and belts of
beads possessed no intrinsic value.
They We're altogether lacking In that
symbolism which rendered them pre-
cious to the Indian wholly aside from
their monetary value.
But as long as the Englishmen could
exchange them In the inland region
for furs. which met a ready market
in Europe, he was Just as willing to
employ this medium as any other Dur
ing the earlier part of the seventeenth
century the supply of beaver never
equalled the demand, and, as one
writer has put it, wampum was the
magnet which drew the beaver out Of
the interior forests-the talismanI
which kept up the equilibrium of trade
between the two people, who otherwise
had really very little in common.
The colonists never came to regard
wampum as anything more than a
convenience for the prosecution of trade
with the Indians. Nevertheless they
were forced sometimes to use 1t in