296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE ORIGIN OF PRIMITIVE MONEY. 



By HOEATIO HALE. 



THE European colonists who first became acquainted with the In- 

 dian tribes of the region now composing the United States and 

 Canada were surprised and not a little interested when they found 

 that these barbarous clans had, in one respect, a marked advantage 

 over the great semi-civilized communities of Central and South Amer- 

 ica. The Mexicans and Peruvians were much addicted to traffic ; but, 

 like the Egyptians and Assyrians of early ages, they carried on their 

 commerce without the use of money. The wampum of the Northern 

 tribes was a real money, and as such it was destined to play an im- 

 portant part, for more than two centuries, in the intercourse between 

 them and their white neighbors. Lawson, the historian of Carolina, 

 writing nearly two hundred years ago, described in quaint but ex- 

 pressive terms, and with a satiric touch aimed at his own people, the 

 place which this remarkable invention held in the social policy of the 

 red-men. " This," he says, " is the money with which you may buy 

 skins, furs, slaves, or anything the Indians have ; it being the Mam- 

 mon (as our money is to us) that entices and persuades them to do 

 anything, and part with everything they jjossess, except," he adds 

 significantly, "their children for slaves. . . . With this they buy off 

 murders ; and whatsoever a man may do that is ill, their wampum 

 will quit him of, and make him, in their opinion, good and virtuous, 

 though never so black before." 



So common and wide-spread was the use of this money among the 

 Indians, that the white colonists were fain to adopt it from them, and 

 their laws for a time gave it an established value and circulation 

 throughout New England and New York. In Massachusetts, as Dr. 

 Ashbel Woodward tells us in his valuable monograph on " Wampum,'* 

 it was made by statute, as early as 1637, a legal tender for any sum 

 under twelvepence, at the rate of six beads for a penny ; and in 

 Connecticut it actually became a legal tender for any amount, being 

 receivable for taxes at four beads for a penny. In Massachusetts the 

 same valuation was adopted in 1640, four white beads or two blue 

 beads being rated at a penny. In New York, for nearly half a cent- 

 ury, owing to the scarcity of silver money, w^ampum was almost the 

 only currency in use ; and, though its circulation in ordinary traffic 

 gradually ceased, it was still employed in the Indian trade down near- 

 ly to the middle of the present century. 



The material of this aboriginal currency may be described briefly 

 as "shell-beads." It must not, however, be confounded with the 

 cowries, or small shells, which are in use for a similar purpose in some 



