Scholars have long debated the origin of wampum development and use. Anthropologist Lynn Ceci theorized that marine shell beads made their appearance as early as 2500 BC, but the finished product of tubular wampum did not appear until about 200-1510 AD.
Iroquois tradition and myth link the appearance of original wampum to the period of formation of their confederacy, the Five Nations, sometime between 1400 and 1600 AD.
It seems unlikely that these particular shells originated in the New York area. Instead, their presence indicates the existence of a well established trade network between the Algonquian tribes of northern and southern New England, the Iroquois, and even more distant tribes.
For the land, people, and animals of pre-colonial New England, the seventeenth century was a tumultuous one. They suffered the total rearrangement of the social and ecological balance achieved in previous centuries.
The environment had been gradually and sometimes deliberately shaped into an abundantly productive ecosystem by indigenous people who had learned to live as part of their surroundings, adapting themselves to it and its seasons.
The ability of people living on the land to move in accordance with its offerings was the key to a system of balance. These people recognized the necessity of balance in both the use of resources and in human relationships.
An integral part of native life, and one that fostered reciprocity was an item of multifarious value and use. In the Algonquian Language it was called “wampum”.
Wampum was a collection of small white or dark purple/black beads, meticulously fashioned from the shells found in abundance along the coast of Southern Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island. and the northern shore of Long Island.
These shells were found on the mud or just below the surface of the water. Wampum was the name applied without distinction to all varieties of beads, of which there were two main classes:
Wampi or white in color, sliced from the inner whirls of the Busycon Canaliculatum and B. Carica, more commonly called periwinkle (or Meteauhock, in Algonquian).
Purple or black, Mercenaria, gleaned from purple segments of the hard shell clam or quahog, Suckauhock or Mowhakes.
The dark shells were regarded at twice the value of the white, and the meaning attached to each color differed as well.
White beads expressed light and brightness, while dark connoted solemnity, war, grieving and death.
Genuine shell beads were distinguished by three traits: species, shape, and size. The purple shell also had a special exterior area at the point of muscular attachment called the black eyes or Suckauaskeesaquash.
Wampum manufacture was not a monopoly of any single tribe. The shells were gathered during the summer months by native people of the Long Island Sound, primarily the Narragansett, Montauk, Niantic, and Quinnepiac, and artistically crafted during the winter. It was rare to find the genuine shell north of Cape Cod.
As Roger Williams observed, “They that live upon the seaside generally make of it, and many make of it as will.”
The manufacturing process involved precise grinding and polishing of the shells into small, cylindrical tubes approximately 6.7mm in length and 4.7mm in diameter with the center drilled through by means of a stone drill of Indian manufacture called Puckwhegonnautick.
The wampum could then be used loose or strung “upon fibers of hemp or other tendons of wild beasts”. These strings of white beads, called wampumpeag, were used alone or in conjunction with purple beads, woven into belts, aprons, girdles, capes, earrings, headpieces. necklaces, or various other items. The numerous types of finished products were as varied as the designated application.
Historians Russell Bourne and Howard Russell have suggested that it was the women who crafted wampum strings and belts after the raw shells were gathered by the men.
Trudy Lamb Richmond of the Institute of American Indian Studies in Washington, Connecticut, finds this incongruent with the typical division of labor as practiced by native people of Southern New England.
Richmond believes it was the men who were in charge of wampum manufacture as well as tobacco cultivation, activities that were of sacred significance in native culture. The women had the important job of raising children, cultivating crops and caring for home and household articles.
Scholars have long debated the origin of wampum development and use. Anthropologist Lynn Ceci theorized that marine shell beads made their appearance as early as 2500 BC, but the finished product of tubular wampum did not appear until about 200-1510 AD.
Iroquois tradition and myth link the appearance of original wampum to the period of formation of their confederacy, the Five Nations, sometime between 1400 and 1600 AD.
It seems unlikely that these particular shells originated in the New York area. Instead, their presence indicates the existence of a well established trade network between the Algonquian tribes of northern and southern New England, the Iroquois, and even more distant tribes.
Trade existed from tribe to tribe in a leapfrog manner so that wampum found its way to the Dakota’s, while Minnesota copper turned up in Algonquian graves. Unquestionably, wampum as exchange was well established when Europeans arrived in southern New England.
The cultural uses and meaning of wampum to native people were wide and varied, encompassing every aspect of native life.
Wampum was defined by Roger Williams and other non-native historians as Indian “money”, but this definition seems inaccurate and incomplete.
Wampum exchange embodied a medium of gift-giving whose value was widely accepted among Northeastern Indians, and had a certain value in both use and exchange.
Uses included: ornamentations, tribute, ransom for captives, compensation for crimes, presents between friends, prizes for victory in games or sport, fines, incentives to maintain peace or to wage war, payments for services of shamanism, marriage proposals and, possibly, bribes and rewards for murder. It was also used in burials, and as the insignia of sachems.
Daniel Gookin, a Massachusetts missionary of the Wamponoag stated, “it answers all occasions, as gold and silver doth with us”. It did that and much more.
Probably the most visible indigenous use of wampum to Europeans in the early days of tentative relationships and colonial establishment was adornment or ornamentation. Adornment may also have been the earliest developed use of beads among native people.
Wampum was usually reserved for persons of high rank or prestige, including their wives and children.
Roger Williams recorded in his Key to the Indian Language, “Yea, the princes make rich caps and aprons, or small breeches of these Beads, thus curiously strung into many forms and figures, their blacke and white finely mixed together, Girdles were made one, two, three, four and five inches thick and worn about the middle as a scarf about the shoulders and breasts”.
Alternate white and purple strings were attached in rows to a deerskin base to form these belts or scarves. The number of beads and the thickness of rows increased according to the social importance of the wearer.
The beads were also woven into the borders of garments, cloaks, and moccasins. Female beaded headdresses consisted of “beads twined about the head and gathered up in abundant tresses”.
As many as ten-thousand beads could be woven into a four-inch belt. According to tradition, persons of lesser importance dared not accumulate too much wampum unless they were willing to challenge those with higher prestige.
New England Indians were great lovers of games and sport and had developed many of them by pre-colonial times. A soccer-like sport was played in which the “goal-posts” were decorated with strings of wampum, beaver and other valuable skins which were given as trophies to the winner.
Another type of game was Puttuckquaquoch or arbor playing. A framework of poles, sixteen to twenty feet tail, was constructed to form an arbor upon which rival groups and their supporters would hang long strings of wampum and other valuables to go to the winner.
Wampum served other purposes as well. When an Indian man wished to propose marriage, he presented his intended with presents crafted of wampum. If she accepted the gifts, the couple was considered engaged.
The suitor would also present his future in-laws with a certain measurement of wampum. When consent was granted by the sachem, the couple’s hands were joined together, and they became man and wife.
Intra-tribal tensions gave rise to other uses of wampum. Weaker tribes often paid tribute in wampum to stronger ones for their protection.
Such was the relanonship between the potent Narragansett and their allies and tributaries, the Pawtuxet, the Shawomet, and the Coweeset. And when war resulted, wampum played a crucial role.
War dress included painted faces of diverse colors and designs. intending disguise or intimidation, and rich jewels, pendants and wampumpeag were used to put the warriors in mind that “they fight not only for children, wives and lives, but likewise for goods, lands and liberties.”
Reciprocity, i.e., the giving and taking of wampum among tribes and members of tribes, helped to maintain social and political equilibrium. If appropriate methods of reciprocity were not followed, the system could break down, but being so fully developed, this seemed inconceivable to the native people.
Sachems and other ofticials lived by the consent and support of their people, whose tribute of wampum and other goods afforded them a rich lifestyle.
The people, in turn, were rewarded on a regular basis with material favor. Wisely, native people realized that potential resentments could develop in a society where unequal distribution of wealth existed.
Ceremonies, rituals, and games were developed and structured to redistribute the wealth. Anyone could win the pelts or wampumpeag draped around goal posts, including the sachems, who played and lost with the rest, validating the interdependence of all tribal members.
Wampum had the power to equalize feelings of resentment and humility. A gift of wampum from a murderer, if accepted, freed him from the vengeance of the dead man’s family and friends, forestalling additional bloodshed.
A gift of wampum could prevent a threatened war or make reparations to the victors from the vanquished, in case of war.
An integral and intriguing aspect of wampum use was the sending and receiving of wampum as means of communication.
Most Indian groups were able to hand down a rich oral tradition of poetry, oratory, and drama by means of pictographs or other mnemonic devices for recalling important events. Wampum was such a memory device.
Designs woven into belts with contrasting color beads, recorded treaties, agreements, important events, and public accounts through figures or geometric patterns.
Wampum recorded the words and gave them the pledge of sincerity, for without this pledge the talk was just casual.
Figures lent energy to the language, conveying meaning through symbolism. A designated person would be responsible for a belt’s keeping and meaning, and for passing it on to the next generation.
The color white symbolized peace, while black signified war or mourning, and when a communication evoked anger, the belt was kicked around in contempt.
Even after European intervention, the New England Indian tribes continued the ceremonial use of wampum when forging treaties, agreements and relationships.
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, European traders plied the coasts of New England from northern Maine southward around Cape Cod to the Long Island Sound and westward to New York and the Hudson River Valley.
Native people, including those in Southern New England, greeted new exchange experience with openness and enthusiasm. They wished to discover new products, find new sources of spiritual power, and engage in social interaction while keeping the world in balance by maintaining alliances based upon reciprocity.
It was assumed that the new, though strange trading partners would do likewise.
The copious body of scholarly and popular literature, written about the early encounters between Europeans and Native Americans often provide reliable clues to wampum use.
One invaluable source, a personal journal entitled Mourt’s Relation contains an authentic account of close and sustained contact of Pilgrim and Indian.
The journal describes, among other things, outward appearances and trappings of these “tall and proper men” whose dress, food and customs seemed so vastly more vivid and colorful than their own. Especially strong was the Native’s application of ornamentation.
Passages in Mourt’s Relation describe the using or wearing of beads. For example, the account of a meeting between Pilgrim and Wampanoag representatives negotiating a peace agreement depicts Massasoit as a “King and a very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance and spare of speech.
In his attire, little or nothing differed from the rest of his followers, only in a chain of white bone beads about his neck . . .” Massasoit often wore such adornment befitting his rank and respected status of the Wampanoag.
In 1624, he came with a large group of his people to William Bradford’s wedding at Plymoth. Around his waist was draped many strings of white beads.
According to another passage in Mourt’s Relation, a Pilgrim exploration party encountered a grave while searching for corn. Uncovering the grave revealed two bundles buried with various tools and personal belongings.
The larger bundle contained an adult skeleton with “fine yellow hair still on it . . . bound up in a sailor’s canvas cassock and a pair of cloth breeches”.
The smaller bundle contained “the bones and head of a little child. About the legs and other parts of it was bound strings and bracelets of fine white beads”. There was much speculation among the party concerning the identity of the dead.
What was certain, however, was that the group coveted the buried objects and “brought sundry of the prettiest things away with them, and covered the corpse up again”.
Later in their travels, the exploration party encountered some inhabited, but momentarily vacant native dwellings. After helping themselves to various items in the homes, the members in the party seem to have reflected upon the honesty of these pilferings, for one of them wrote, ‘We intended to have brought some beads and other things to have left in the houses as a sign of peace and that we meant to truck with them”.
Instead, they decided to leave the vicinity hastily and make reparations at a more convenient time. Household articles found within included “baskets of sundry sorts, bigger and some lesser, finer and some coarser; some were curiously wrought with black and white in pretty works . . .”. The white and black “pretty works” may have been wampum.
Such encounters between colonists and natives indicate that the Pilgrims at least partially understood the meaning of the exchange of “beads”.
One passage describes elderly native men at a river encounter who “welcomed us with food as they had, and we bestowed a small bracelet of beads on them”.
At a chance rendezvous by the ocean between several Indian women and a party of English, the English were given some “roasted crab, fishes and other dried shell fish” and after eating and drinking, gave the women “a string of beads,” which, of course, could have been wampum.
In 1609, during one of his expeditions on the river that bears his name, Henry Hudson obtained wampum from local Indians, but failed to realize the importance of it to native people since the New York-Dutch trade had been developing independently from trade in New England. Then in 1622, an event which was to have far reaching effects occurred when a Dutch West Indian trader, Jacques Elekens, seized a Pequot sachem named Tatobem near House of Good Hope (Hartford), Connecticut in retaliation for Pequot raids on the trading post.
Elekens threatened to kill Tatobem unless he, Elekens, received a “heavy ransom”. The Pequots responded with a tribute of one-hundred-forty fathoms of purple and white beads. Since one fathom equals 240 to 260 beads, the total received by the Dutch trader was approximately thirty-five thousand beads.
This surprising response caused the Dutch to realize not only the value of wampum to the Pequot, but also the wealth and power of the tribe whose trade, like that of the neighboring Narragansett, was flourishing. After receiving the payment, the Dutch killed Tatobem before returning his body to the tribe.
Pequot outrage over the incident caused the Dutch to replace Elekens with the bilingual trader. Pieter Barentsen, who was popular with the Pequots and agreed to their demand of a trading monopoly.
Elekens brutal actions, however, enabled the Dutch to insinuate themselves into an already established wampum trade network.
The Dutch began to trade increased quantities of wampum with the Pequot in exchange for furs obtained at Fort Orange, their station on the Hudson River. Anthropologist Lynn Ceci’s studies indicate a sharp increase in wampum flow to the New York region by mid-seventeenth century.
The tribes of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound, tributaries of the Pequot, provided the Pequot with a steady and increasing volume of wampum as the trade volume increased.
The ceremonial exchange of goods which had previously reinforced equality developed into a source of inequality for tribes like the Montauk. who modified their seasonal migrating cycle to become specialized in the production of wampum.
The Narragansetts established a similar trading pattern in the Eastern sphere. This included the fur supplying Nipmucs in Massachusetts and central Connecticut and the bead producing Niantics.
The fledgling colony of Plymoth hoped to become solvent, even profitable by establishing a gainful trade with the New England tribes. By 1623, corn production enabled the colony to feed itself while finding a receptive market in Abenaki country.
Success there subsequently encouraged Plymoth to expand into the trading sphere of the Narragansett.
Conceivably, the Dutch felt threatened by expanding English influence and success, for in 1627, Isaac de Rasieres, secretary and chief trader at Fort Amsterdam in “ye Manhatas”, was sent by Peter Minuit to congratulate the Pilgrims on their recent “prosperous and praiseworthy undertakings” and to inquire about the possibility of trade.
The Pilgrims found de Rosieres to be of “fair and genteel behavior”. Likewise, de Rosieres found Plymoth impressive yet odd concerning its manner of worship, its use of herring to manure the “stony fields”, and its stringent laws and ordinances upon the subject of fornication and adultery.
These laws “they maintain and very strictly enforce, indeed, even among the tribes which live amongst them”.
De Rosieres had brought some items to trade: clothes, linen, white sugar, and also some wampum which the Dutch called sewan, claiming that it was in great demand among the tribes along the Hudson and would certainly be so in New England.
Scholarly accounts differ regarding Pilgrim attitudes toward incorporating wampum into their trade inventory. It seems reasonable to assume the Pilgrims would be skeptical, especially since the price was considered expensive at five shillings for a fathom of beads.
Also since wampum served a decorative purpose, falling into the class of “gay apparel”, it was not to be encouraged, even among the Indians. It is also obvious that the colony was desirous of a more profitable trade commodity.
Historian Neal Salisbury presumes that Plymoth actively pursued the wampum market and was quite eager to pay the price for fifty fathoms of wampum to enhance their northern trade. As part of the trade agreement with the Dutch, Plymoth agreed to relinquish trading in Narragansett Bay.
The increased value associated with wampum, after European involvement in the trade, also increased native demand and native people in northern regions eagerly traded their furs which were coveted in European markets for it.
Fur bearing animals were hunted out of the forests in the north, and customary lifestyles were abandoned in favor of wampum manufacture along the coast, causing native dependence on European goods and food, items which were no longer being produced by the natives for themselves.
The Indians of New England and New York had become entangled in a world trade network with expanding needs, the satisfaction of which required an accelerated trade effort by native people for which they received in return a constantly diminishing portion.
In the 1630’s, a large migration of English Puritans to Massachusetts Bay presented another complication. The colony interposed itself into the trade network creating increased competition, rivalry, and agitation.
For the period between 1630 and 1660, wampum was a prized commodity in New England spurred on by the fur trade that compelled the struggle. What followed in the next several decades leading up to King Philip’s War (1675-1676) was a complicated series of initiatives from the Bay Colony, whose ultimate goal was to control the region and resources.
Ruth Thomas of the Mashantucket Pequot put it simply, “They wanted to cut out the middleman”, and so they did, isolating, then devastating first the powerful Pequot, then the dynamic Narragansett, and then appropriating both the land and control of the wampum trade.The Bay Colony, having found small beads more portable than corn for trade and saving coin for European markets, declared wampum legal tender in 1637 valued at six beads a penny.
New European metal drills augmented production of wampum, increasing the volume and availability, while fashioning a more refined and delicate bead.
The English in Boston had discovered additional ways to channel larger quantities of wampum into their treasury. As bead makers became more dependent on European trade. they were more vulnerable to increasingly multifarious English rules and regulations and intimidated by fear of additional aggression toward them by the English.
For various offences of English law, a fine of wampum would be paid. In this way large sums of wampum would be gained without a reciprocal benefit for the Indians.
Specifically, Pequot survivors and those Indians guarding them were required to pay tribute: one fathom white beads for one Pequot man, one-half fathom for a Pequot youth and one hand length string for a male child.
The Treaty of Hartford in 1638 was the basis for the tribute which was to be paid annually for life in exchange for their lives.
The fine was eventually reduced, but records of 1634-1664 show payment for various crimes totaled twenty-one thousand fathoms or seven million beads!
In 1651, records reveal that several native leaders gathered in Boston to pay their annual tribute: Ninegret (Niantic), 91 fathoms; Long Island Pequots, 32; Robin Cassasinamon (Mashantucket), 56: and Hermon Garret (Eastern Pequot), 54 with promise to deliver another 30, due within the month. If native people were short on wampum they could always sell some of their land.
Thus, wampum, it appears, helped to underwrite English colonization.
The spiritual significance of and status created by wampum was important to native people, but the English regarded wampum as money, as a commodity whose value was different at any given time, depending on the market.
Roger Williams lamented, “This one fathom of their stringed money now worth of the English but five shillings per fathome: the fall is occasioned by the fall of the Beaver in England: the Natives are very impatient, when for English commodities they pay so much more of their money and not understanding the cause of it; and many say the English cheat and deceive them, though I have laboured to make them understand the reason of it.”
Native people tended to regard the exchange of goods as establishing friendships and alliances, not to gain exclusive possession or profit. This may be the reason land was “sold” at such low prices.
In 1640, the Norwalk Indians sold a large part of their territory to Roger Ludlow of Fairfield, Connecticut.
“Its depth into the country was afar as a man could walk from the sea in a days span”; its price; “8 fathoms wampum, 6 coats, 10 hoes. 10 hatchets, 10 scissors, 10 jewsharps. 10 pounds tobacco, three kettles and 10 looking glasses . . . ” This transaction was signed by Mahachemo and four of his tribe.”
Despite the threat to their culture, however, native people steadfastly used wampum in the traditional way; sending communication, declaring war, procuring peace, and so on, and the English appeared to take the native lead in this, abiding by and following native custom and ceremony.
When Narragansett sachem Miantinamo was captured by the Mohegans under Uncas. in 1643, the Narragansetts quickly sealed a ransom of “several packages of wampum” requesting that he be delivered to his friends, the English, to decide his fate. The English, howeven for political reasons decided to execute the Sachem.
Traditionally, Indian people buried their dead with wampum, “wherefore it is their custom to bury them, their bows and arrows and good store of their wampumpeag, and mowbacheis; one to affright that affronting Cereberus, the other to purchase more immense prerogatives in heaven”.
Desperate economic situations in the decades that followed the Pequot defeat, caused impudent people to ransack their ancestors’ graves for some salable trade items or wampum.
These deeds revealed how broken down native systems had become to necessitate the forbidden act of grave robbing. Graves of the prestigious were no longer honored by distinct markings or decoration in order to disguise them from robbers.
Democratization of graves furthered the loss of Indian identity.
Still, in spite of these breakdowns, native people clung tenaciously to whatever spirituality and tradition they could.
In Natick, for example, John Eliot’s first and most “successful” reservation of Christian converts, burial was encouraged in the Christian way, without personal possessions.
Yet, disturbances in the late eighteenth century revealed wampum, glass beads, spoons, a bottle half full of liquor and several other Indian artifacts, obviously indicating resistance on the part of Indians to abandon their traditional burial customs for Christian ways.
At the peak of demand, counterfeiting became such a problem that Massachusetts passed laws to regulate the trade and standardize the bead. “All wampum was to be strung in uniform units of one, three, and twelve pence in white and blacke at values of a pence 6 pence, 2 shillings 6, and 10 shillings”.
Connecticut ordered that “no peaque, white or blacke, be paid or received but what is strung in some measure, suitably, and not small. great. uncomely. or disorderly mixt, as formerly it hath been”.
By 1660, Wampum had decreased in value for the English and was discontinued as legal tender in Massachusetts with Connecticut and Rhode Island following a year later. However it remained in the native economy and in rural colonial areas until the Revolutionary War.
As late as 1693, one could ride the Brooklyn, Connecticut ferry for 8 stevers of wampum or a silver 9-pence.
The Indians had responded to the demand for wampum by flooding the market with it, and the possession of wampum became common in the New England region.
When the demand for wampum fell, Indians on the Southern Coast found themselves isolated from markets on which they had come to rely. Indians for whom pelts had been their main access to trade had comparable experiences when supplies ran out.
Native economy. politics and obligations shifted from within the particular group or band to a widened economic sphere which placed natives in a dependent position.
They were left with little to exchange except land and services. Tension rose between Indian groups and they took sides against each other and against the colonies.
Beloved leaders were killed. Sedentary and close living encouraged spread of disease and famine.
By the 1660’s, the colonial economy was thriving, and silver coins were circulating from the West Indies or minted locally. The colonies had markets to fall back on; the Indians did not.
The original purpose of wampum had been altered from reciprocal exchange to capitalistic exchange, and the balance of power had shifted in favor of the colonists.
Source: Originally Published in The Connecticut Review
