Wampum

Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of the indigenous people of North America. Wampum includes the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell, and the white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam.

Wampum was used by the northeastern Americans Indians as a form of gift exchange, and the colonists adopted it as currency in trading with them. Eventually, the colonists developed more efficient methods of producing wampum, which caused inflation and ultimately the obsolescence of it as currency.

Wampum was often kept on strings like Chinese cash. Before European contact, strings of wampum were used for storytelling, ceremonial gifts, and recording important treaties and historical events, such as the Two Row Wampum Treaty. According to the Onondaga Nation, the wampum is a living record and has many uses. These can include inviting a person to a meeting, showing title, and showing that a speaker is truthful. At the Treaty of Niagara in 1764, at least 84 wampum belts were exchanged.

The term wampum (or wampumpeag) initially referred only to the white beads, which are made of the inner spiral or columella of the Channeled whelk shell Busycotypus canaliculatus or Busycotypus carica.Sewant or suckauhock beads are the black or purple shell beads made from the quahog or poquahock clamshell Mercenaria mercenaria. Sewant or Zeewant was the term used for this currency by the New Netherland colonists. Common terms for the dark and white beads are wampi (white and yellowish) and saki (dark).

The clams and whelks used for making wampum are found only along Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay. The Lenape name for Long Island is Sewanacky, reflecting its connection to the dark wampum.

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