336 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
At that very time true wampum was largely made on Long Island 
and in New Jersey for the western trade. It was counterfeited at 
a very early day. His statement about fresh-water shell beads has 
little foundation. 
A very early account of North American shell beads will be found 
in Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, 1609, v. 6, ch. 12, in 
which he speaks of the Micmacs. He says: 
The Brazilians, Floridians and Armouchiquois make carcanets and 
bracelets (called bou-re in Brazil and matachiaz by our Indians), 
from the shells of those great seashells which are called vignols and 
are like unto snails, which they break in a thousand pieces and gather 
up, then polish them upon a grindstone, so that they make them 
very small, and when they have pierced them they make beads, like 
those which we call porcelain. Among these beads mingle alter- 
nately other beads, as black as the others I have spoken of are 
white, made of jet or of certain hard or black woods which resemble 
it, which they polish and make as small as they wish, and this has © 
a good grace. . . These collars, scarfs and bracelets of vignols, 
or porcelain, are more valuable than pearls (notwithstanding no one 
will believe me in this), for they esteem them more than pearl, gold 
or silver. As with us, so in this land do the women deck themselves 
with such things, and will make a dozen turns of it around the 
neck, hanging upon the breast, and around the wrists and below 
the elbow. They also hang long chains in their ears, which hang 
down even as low as their shoulders. 
Large shells were not found so far north, and they prized those 
of the Armouchiquois, or Kennebec Indians, but on account of the 
war. the French supplied “little tubes of glass mixed with tin or 
lead, which are ee to — by the fathom measure for want of 
an ell measure.’ 
Early shell beads 
In S. L. Frey’s article entitled “Were they mound-builders?” 
American naturalist, 1879, p. 637-44, are good descriptions of the 
shell articles he found in the stone graves at Palatine Bridge. In 
the first examined he found “a seashell, somewhat modified for a 
drinking vessel, its longest diameter being 4 inches.” Fig. 43 is 
from his drawing of this cup. This grave had a stone tube. In 
another, containing two tubes, he found a necklace of shell and cop- 
per beads. “ Many of the shell beads were also stained by copper; 
