"01.5IES.1 ANCIENT USE OF WAMPUM. 235 



Objects and substances having a fairly uniform value, resulting from 

 their utilitarian attributes, have been employed by primitive peoples 

 as standards of value; as, for instance, cattle, in ancient Rome; salt, in 

 Assyria; tin, in Britain, and cocoa, in Mexico. But such mediums of 

 exchange are local in use. With these articles this function is only 

 accidental. The utilization of shells for money would naturally orig- 

 inate from the trade arising from their use as utensils and ornaments 

 in districts remote from the source of supply. Yielding in the worked 

 state a limited supply, and at the same time filling a constant demand, 

 they formed a natural currency, their universal employment for pur- 

 poses of ornament giving them a fixed and uniform value. They have 

 vmdoubtedly been greatly prized by the ancient peoples, but on the part 

 of the open-handed savage they were probably valued more as personal 

 ornaments than as a means of gratifying avaricious propensities. 



Lewis H. Morgan, who had access to all the sources of information on 

 the subject, says that "wampum has frequently been called the money 

 of the Indian; but there is no suflBcient reason for supposing that they 

 ever made it an exclusive currency, or a currency in any sense, more 

 than silver or other ornaments. All personal ornaments, and most 

 other articles of i)ersonal property, passed from hand to hand at a fixed 

 value; but they appear to have had no common standard of value until 

 they found it in our currency. If wampum had been their currency it 

 would have had a settled value, to which all other articles would have 

 been referred. There is no doubt that it came nearer to a currency than 

 any other species of property among them, because its uses were so 

 general, and its transit from hand to hand so easy, that everyone could 

 be said to need it." Yet he admits that " the use of wampum reaches 

 back to a remote iieriod upon this continent"; and further, that it was 

 an original Indian notion which prevailed among the Iriquois as early at 

 least as the formation of the League. lie goes on to state that " the 

 primitive wampum of the Iriquois consisted of strings of a small fresh- 

 water spiral shell called in the Seneca dialect Ofe Ao-a, the name of 

 which has been bestowed upon the modern wampum."' 



Loskiel says that "before the Europeans came to North America, the 

 Indians used to make strings of wampom chiefly of small pieces of wood 

 of equal size, stained either black or white. Few were made of muscle, 

 which were esteemed very valuable and difficult to make; for, not hav- 

 ing proper tools, they spent much time in finishing them, and yet their 

 work had a clumsy appearance."* 



Hutchinson is of the opinion that " the Indians resident northeastward 

 of the province of New York had originally no knowledge of this sort of 

 monej' or medium of trade."' 



The great body of our historical evidence goes to show, however, that 



'Morgan, in Fifth Annual Report on the New York State Cabinet of Natural His- 

 tory, pp. 71, 73. 

 'Lo8kiel: Mission of the United Brethren, Latrobe trans., p. 34. 

 •Hutchinson: History of Mass., Vol. I, p. 406. 



