WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 359 
tanus said in 1671, “ The clothing of the New Netherlanders is 
most sumptuous. . . All wear around the waist a girdle made 
of the fin of the whale or of seawant. . . The women wear a 
petticoat down midway the leg, very richly ornamented with 
seawant, so that the garment sometimes costs 300 guilders. 
The women bind their hair behind in a plait, over which they draw 
a square cap thickly interwoven with seawant. They decorate the 
ornaments for the forehead with the same stuff. Around the neck 
and arms they wear bracelets of seawant, and some around the 
waist.”—O’Callaghan, 4:125-28 
Prisoners were sometimes treated with the greatest kindness and 
distinction before being tortured, and this was done at times by 
both Hurons and Iroquois. Some Andastes were brought in tri- 
umph to Onondaga in 1670, and had this honor. For a while 
before their torture “they crowned these poor victims, according 
to custom, with the rarest feathers and the most beautiful porce- 
lain that could be found.” In the curious account of the kind 
treament of an Iroquois prisoner by the Hurons, preliminary to 
his torture, Relation of 1637, p. 110, we are told that “he «was 
clothed in a beautiful beaver robe, he had a collar of porcelain about 
his neck, and another in the form of a crown about his head.” 
Thus clad, Brébeuf added, “ Even to the hour of his torture, we 
saw exercised on his part nothing but traits of humanity.” 
Such observations on mere adornment might be indefinitely ex- 
tended, but it will suffice to refer to the wampum pipes and small 
round shells included in the presents of 1702. The pipes were the 
long tubular shell beads so often found, and the round shells prob- 
ably the ornamented and perforated disks, or runtees. They were 
tasteful as well as showy, and both were then in use. 
In 1605 Champlain found the Indians on the New England coast 
wearing shell beads. He observed, 10 years later, that the Hurons 
wore bands of porcupine quills dyed scarlet. Beside these, shell 
beads were also much worn, but apparently of a large size. The 
French always called these porcelain. When Jacques Cartier 
visited Hochelaga, now Montreal, in 1535, he told a strange story 
of the esurgny, which was white and their most precious possession. 
