A STUDY OF PRIMITIVE MONEY. 



309 



"Fig. 7. 



Fulgurcarica: Portion of basal 

 whorl, showing axis, c c, from 

 which the white peage was 

 made; J natural size. 



(See, also, Plate III.) 



" coccle," " oyster," etc., were confusingly applied to the various species 

 of shells out of which the wampum beads were made. 



In the inevitable intercourse and early traffic 

 between the white settlers and the Indians, the 

 wampum or shell money of the latter, in the 

 place of the ordinary money of civilization, 

 naturally came into use as a medium in barter- 

 ing and exchange, or in adjusting the differences 

 arising in trade between buyer and seller 5 at 

 first only to a limited extent, aiterwards grow- 

 ing into such general use that its value was 

 fixed by legal enactment. 



Col. T. W. Higginson, of Massachusetts, in 

 one of his Atlantic essays, "The Puritan Min- 

 ister," says : " In coming to the private affairs 

 of the Puritan divines, it is humiliating to find 

 that anxieties about salary are of no modern 

 origin. The highest compensation I can fiud 

 recorded is that of John Higginson, in 3071, 

 who had £160 voted him in country produce, 

 which he was glad-, however, to exchange for 

 £120 in solid cash. 'Solid cash' included beaver-skins, black and white 

 wampum, beads, and musket balls, value one farthing." 



The value of wampum, as heretofore given on the authority of Gov- 

 ernor Winthrop, was for that known as hens-po-qua-hock, three to a 

 penny ; and five shillings as the value of a fathom. 



" The fathom was a name for a count, an enumeration of beads. * * * 

 Sixty pence, the fathom of beads, was more or less, according to the 

 number of beads allowed by the statute to be equivalent to a penny. 

 If the number was six, then the fathom was 360; but if it was four, as 

 under the Massachusetts standard of 16-10, then the fathom numbered 

 240 beads. We are not to forget that this was a fluctuating standard of 

 value. The tributes of the Indian tribes to the colonists were usually 

 payable in fathoms. Contracts for the sale of land were made by the 

 Indians for considerations of all kinds — wampum, coats, guns, bullets, 

 and wares of all sorts. The island of Conanicut, in Narragansett Bay, 

 was sold to Coddington and his associates in 1657 for ' one hundred 

 pounds in wampum-peage.' 



" The unit of the fathom of wampum brought it into correlation with 

 the other currencies used in the colonies. The beads were at first worth 

 more than five shillings a fathom, the price at which they passed current 

 when Williams wrote in 1643. A few years before the fathom was worth 

 nine or ten shillings. But beaver fell in England, and that reduced the 

 price of wampum in the colonies. The wampum was virtually redeem- 

 able in beaver, as these changes of value show. As long as the natives 



