356 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
Poor wampum would naturally sometimes be found, and allusion 
has been made to this. This was mostly in New England, where 
the material was inferior to that of Long Island. In the Winthrop 
papers, (1644) one writer complains of this. ‘As for the blew wam- 
pom there is 18s. of it, at 3 a peny, but I will not take such as 
this vnder 6 a peny. I had rather haue white wampam, then bad 
blew at 6a peny. I will kepe it, because you may redeeme it for 
white.” —Wunthrops. Letter, p. 377 : 
Though the Iroquois quite recently used wampum as money, 
our latest trace of it in this way among ourselves may be in 1693, 
when “the ferriage for each single person from New York to Brook- 
lyn was eight styvers in wampum, or a silver two-pence.’’—O’Calla- 
ghan. New Netherland, 1:61 
Poor wampum was refused in New Amsterdam in 1650, and the 
authorities then ordered “that badly strung wampum shall be cur- 
rent money, and be accepted as such by everybody without distinc- 
tion or exception, for small and necessary commodities used in the 
house, and that it shall be current up to the sum of 12 fl. and less © 
in badly strung wampum, in sums between 12 and 2g fl. in half bad, 
half well strung beads, from 25 to 50 fl. one third bad, two thirds 
good wampum. . .’—Fernow, 1:17 
Ornament 
Wampum was often used for personal decoration. The Jesuits 
said that the Hurons (1638) wore “around their necks and arms 
necklaces and bracelets of porcelain. They also suspend them 
from their ears and around their locks of hair.” In Sagard’s Grand 
voyage (1632) he speaks of shell beads among the Hurons which 
were apparently large. “These shell beads (pourceleines) are the 
bones of those great seashells which one calls vignols, similar to 
snails, which they cut in a thousand pieces, and polish them upon a 
piece of fat. They pierce these, and make collars and bracelets of 
them with great toil and labor.” These were very unlike the small 
council wampum made from the Venus mercenaria. They 
called them onocoirota, and they were valuable. For ornamental use 
“the beads are differently threaded. Some colored ones, three or 
