338 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
nor could they even pronounce it. At first, too, it referred to the — 
color of the shell beads, all varieties of which it at last embraced. 
Roger Williams said, in speaking of the aboriginal New England 
money: “Their white they call Wompam (which signifies white); 
their black Suckauhock (Sdécki, signifying blacke).” Again he said 
that, after eating the clam called the hen, “they breake out of the 
shell, about halfe an inch of a blacke part of it, of which they make 
their Suckatihock, or black money.’ Of the Meteatihock, or peri- 
winkle, “they make their Wémpam or white money, of halfe the 
value of their Suckadwhock, or blacke money.” Wood says in his 
New England’s prospect, of the industrious Narragansetts, “ These 
men are the most curious minters of their Wampompeage and Mow- 
hakes, which they forme out of the inmost wreaths of Periwinkle- 
shels. The Northerne, Easterne, and Westerne Jndians fetch all 
their Coyne from these Southerne Mintmasters. From hence they 
have most of their curious Pendants & Bracelets.” The New York 
colonists called it both sewant and peag. Holmes applies this 
latter name to the wampum of Virginia, but it is frequent in the 
colonial records of New York. Long Island has often been termed 
Sewanhacky, or the Sewant country. Its other aboriginal name of 
Mattauwack, variously spelled, according to W. W. Tooker comes 
from Meht-anaw-ack, or Land of periwinkles. 
While shell beads were probably of early manufacture along the 
seashore, being made and used by the Algonquins, they were 
very little known in the interior and west of the Hudson before the 
17th century. Accordingly we find few traditions of their origin 
among the river and shore Indians, while their use among the Iro- 
quois was so sudden and conspicuous an event as to make a great 
and lasting impression. According to them the origin of wampum 
was coeval with that of their league. Hiawatha decreed and regu: 
lated its use. As far as they were concerned this is nearly the 
truth. The most earnest antiquarians have failed to find more than 
the merest trace of shell beads on any Iroquois site which can be 
dated before the year 1600, and have found none which are like 
the beads used in belts. It may be of interest to know what some 
of the Iroquois legends are, and some use may be ‘made of them 
