INDIAN WAMPUM RECORDS. 481 



INDIAN WAMPUM RECORDS. 



By IIOEATIO HALE. 



IT is a notable fact that the Indian tribes of northeastern 

 America, belonging to the Iroquoian and Algonquian fami- 

 lies, who at the first coming of the white colonists occupied the 

 eastern portions of what are now the United States and Canada, 

 and who are often styled savages, had two inventions or usages 

 which are ordinarily deemed the special concomitants of an 

 advanced civilization. These were a monetary currency and the 

 use of a form of script for conveying intelligence and recording 

 facts. These customs or inventions were connected with one 

 medium, but it is probable that the inventions themselves belong 

 to widely different periods. 



In a paper which was read before the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science at Montreal in August, 1884, and was 

 published in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1886, I 

 produced the evidence which seemed to me to show that the shell 

 money of North America was derived from the ancient tortoise- 

 shell money of China. This shell money preceded the metallic 

 coins, commonly known as cash, which are circular disks of cop- 

 per perforated in the center, and usually strung on a string. 

 These came into use more than two thousand years before the 

 Christian era. The shell money which preceded the copper cash 

 has been traced eastwardly, through the Pelew Islands and the 

 Micronesian groups of the North Pacific, to the coasts of Cali- 

 fornia and Oregon, where it is in use among the Indians to this 

 day, and whence it has apparently made its way across the conti- 

 nent to the eastern coast. As was then remarked, " The fact that 

 the Indians of the west coast of America received their monetary 

 system from eastern Asia or from the Pacific islands could not in 

 itself be regarded as affording evidence that America was first 

 peopled from that direction, just as the fact that the coinage of 

 Bactria was derived from Greece would not indicate that the 

 Bactrian population was of Grecian origin. All that we could 

 infer would be some early intercourse, such as recent experience 

 warrants us in supposing. A Chinese junk or a large Micronesian 

 prao, drifting to the Californian coast some three or four thou- 

 sand years ago, would suflBciently explain the introduction of an 

 art so easily learned as that of making and using perforated shell 

 disks for money." 



There is good evidence, from the disclosures of the ancient 

 mounds, to show that shell beads were largely used by the Indi- 

 ans of former ages as ornaments, and perhaps as valued treasures. 

 But there seems no clear proof that they were employed for mne- 



YOL. L. 36 



