Wampum

Wampum are traditional shell beads of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of the indigenous people of North America. Wampum include 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 were used by the northeastern Native Americans as a form of gift exchange. Early historians and colonists mistook wampum as a form of money. The colonists then adopted wampum as their own currency; however, the Europeans' more efficient production of wampum caused inflation and ultimately the obsolescence of wampum as currency.

Wampum was often kept on strings like Chinese cash. Before European contact, strings of wampum were used for storytelling, ceremonial gifts, and the recording of important treaties and historical events, such as the Two Row Wampum Treaty.

Description and manufacture

This term initially referred to only 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, often confused, are wampi (white and yellowish) and saki (dark).