380 ANCIENT ABORIGINAL TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



they highly esteemed, but tliey manufactured them very rarely, because 

 this labor required much time for want of the proper tools ; and the 

 beads, moreover, were of a rude and clumsy appearance. Soon after 

 their arrival in America, the Europeans began to manufacture wampum 

 from shells, very neatly and in abundance, exchanging it to the Indiausfor 

 other commodities, thus carrying on a very profitable trade. The Indians 

 now abandoned their wooden belts and strings, and substituted those 

 of shell. The latter, of course, gradually declined in value, but, never- 

 theless, were and still are much prized."* 



I have little faith in Loskiel's statement that the Indians chiefly used 

 wood for the above-meutioned purpose, before they had intercourse with 

 the whites. Loskiel never visited America ; he composed, as he observes 

 in the preface, his work from the journals and reports of Protestant 

 missionaries, and probably W9S totally unacquainted with the early 

 writings relating to North America, in which wampum is mentioned. 

 Eoger Williams, for example, who emigrated to North America in 1631, 

 is quite explicit on that point. He states that the Indians manufactfired 

 white and dark wampum-beads, and that six of the former and three of 

 the latter were equivalent to an English penny. Yet it appears that even 

 at his time the colonists imitated the wampum, and used it in their trade 

 with the natives. " The Indians," he says, " bring downe all their sorts 

 of Furs, which they take in the countrey, both to the Indians and to the 

 English for this Indian Money : this Money the English, French, and 

 Dutch, trade to the Indians, six hundred miles in severall parts (North 

 and South from New-England) for their Furres, and whatsoever they 

 stand in need of from them : as Corne, Venison, &c."t Similar statements 

 are contained in the writings and records of various persons who lived 

 in North America contemporaneously with the liberal-minded founder 

 of Rhode Island. Even in the intercourse of the English colonists 

 among themselves, wampum served at certain periods instead of the 

 common currency, and the courts of New England issued from time to 

 time regulations for fixing the money-value of the wampum. In trans- 

 actions of some importance it was measured by the fathom, the dark or 

 blue kind generally being double the value of the white.| According 

 to Roger Williams, the Indians of New England — he chiefly refers to 

 the Narragansetts — denoted by tiie term ti-ompam (which signifies w'/iite) 

 the white beads, while they called the dark kind suckauJiock (from sdcM^ 

 hlaclc).% The great value attached to wampum as an ornament is well 

 illustrated by the following passage from the same author : '• They 

 hang these strings of money about their necks and wrists ; as also upon 



* Loskiel, Mission der evangelischeu Briider, &c., p. 34. 



t Roger Williams, A Key, &c., p. 128. 



X Interesting details concerning wampum are given by Mr. Stevens in " Flint Chips," 

 London, 1870, pp. 454-64, 



^ Roger Williams, 1. c. p. 130. In another place (p. 154) he gives the vrord wdmjn for 

 white. Wam^umpeage, i)cak, seawant, roanoJc, -were othe names to signify wampum. 



