‘hd Cty —so 7. ee eee ee 
WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 351 
receipt of 15294 fathoms and prepared to fight for the balance. In 
1650 they said 308 fathoms were still due, and vigorous measures 
followed. All arrearages were paid on the spot. Smaller amounts 
were exacted or paid elsewhere, but all show the abundance of shell 
money. Ata council at Albany in 1691, the Five Nations received 
a present of 1000 guilders in white strung wampum, equivalent to 
150,000 beads. 
Wampum as money 
When Washington Irving wrote his humorous account of shell 
money among the Dutch colonists, many persons thought it a 
stretch of fancy, while in truth wampum was long the common cur- 
rency. The New England colonists seem in a measure to have led 
the way in legal enactments, and many of these appear in the Public 
records of Connecticut. Wampum was there given an established 
value of four for a penny in 1637.—Pub. rec. Ct. 1:12. In 1640 it was 
ordained that “the late Order concerning Wampu at sixe a penny 
shalbe dissolued, and the former of fower a penny and two pence 
to be paid in the shilling shall be established.”—Pub. rec. Ct. 1:6. It 
Was again six a penny two years later. In 1648 it was ordered 
“that no peage, white or black, bee paid for or receiued, but what is 
strung, and in some measure strung sutably, and not small and 
great, vncomely and disorderly mixt, as formerly it hath beene.” 
“The Commissioners were informed that the Indyans abuse the 
English with much badd, false and unfinished peage, and that the 
English Traders, after it comes to their hands, choose out what fitts 
their marketts and occasions, and leaue the refuse to pass to and 
fro in these Colonies, w°® the Indyans, whoe best understand 
the qualities and defects: of peage will not willingly take back.’”— 
Pub. rec. Ct. 12579 
In 1648 Massachusetts ordered that wampum should be legal 
tender to the amount of 4o shillings, if good. White was to be 
eight for a penny and black four. It is also said that the use of 
wampum as money was unknown to the colonists of New England 
till 1627, when it was introduced by Isaac De Razier, secretary of 
New Netherlands, while on an embassy to the Plymouth colony. 
