SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 155 



by fixing its value and making it a legal tender for any sum 

 under twelve pence, at the rate of six beads for a penny. In 

 those days (1637) money had a much greater purchasing ca- 

 pacity than it has at present. 



In New York, for nearly half a century, wampum was almost 

 the only currency in use, and was employed in the Indian trade 

 down to nearly the middle of the nineteenth centurj^* Con- 

 necticut at one time made it a legal tender for any amount 

 and receivable for taxes at four beads for a penny. This 

 ''wampum" of the Atlantic Coast was the exact counterpart 

 of some of the "shell money" of the Pacific Coast, although 

 made from different species of shells. 



While cowries and other shells which were used entire, were 

 rated by their beauty and their convenient form and size, the 

 value of the individual piece of shell forming the beads of 

 which the string of wampum Avas composed rested on the 

 amount of labor it represented. The cowrie was the lazy 

 man's coin, for when found on the sea shore it was ready 

 coined by nature ; but. in other cases, the shell was first broken 

 into pieces of suitable size, then rubbed on a stone to give the 

 proper shape, then pierced with a drill point of stone, when it 

 was ready to string, after which the final finish was given by 

 rubbing between flat stones. The fragments were sometimes 

 used without being strung, when they were called "sewan." 



Strings of white shell beads were most commonly used, and 

 they were valued according to the number of beads or the 

 length of the string. It was not to its purchasing power alone 

 that wampum owed its valuation. The social system of the 

 aborigines required that on all state occasions, great public 

 acts should be accompanied by a display of wampum. A string 

 of wampum was the emblem of the authority by which a mes- 

 senger summoned the members of the tribe to council; a string 

 of wampum was laid down at the end of each clause of a treaty 

 betAveen ambassadors of different powers ; treaties were rati- 

 fied by exchange of wampum; war was declared by the formal 

 delivery to the offending party of a belt of black wampum. A 

 string of black wampum borne by a messenger announced the 

 death of a chief, and at his burial large quantities of it were 

 placed in the grave with the body, or burned with it if the 

 body were cremated; the object in either case being to supplj^ 

 the deceased with funds for his journey. 



Major Rodgers, in writing of North America, in 1765, says 

 of the wampum used by the Indians of that time : 



' ' They have the art of stringing, twisting and interweaving them 

 into belts, collars, blankets, moccasins, etc., in ten thousand different 



