SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 483 



scarce make one length of wampum. The Indians are a people that never value 

 their time, so that they can afford to make them, and never need to fear the 

 English will take the trade out of their hands. This is the money with which 

 you may buy skins, furs, slaves, or any thing the Indians have; it being the 

 mammon (as our money is to us) that entices and persuades them to do any 

 thing, and part with every thing they possess, except their children for slaves. 

 As for their wives, they are often sold, and their daughters violated for it. 

 With this they buy off murders ; and whatsoever a man can do that is ill, this 

 wampum will quit him of, and make him in their opinion, good and virtuous, 

 though never so black before. (Lawson, 1860, pp. 315-317.) 



These writers agree with each other as to the relative value of white 

 and purple wampum, and are supporetd by most other writers, but 

 Beverley has strangely inverted the meaning of "wampum peak," in 

 applying it to the black variety. There is suggested difference also 

 regarding the relative value of peak and roanoke. 



Michel has a few words to say regarding shell money in use in 

 1701-2 at Monacantown on the James: 



They do not esteem silver or gold, and do not want to take it. Their money 

 is like the material they hang around them, but small, of white and pearly 

 color, like small corals, strung on a string. It is sold by the yard so to speak. 

 They measure from the index finger to the elbow, which length costs half an 

 English crown. (Michel, 1916, p. 134.) 



We know that both Dutch and English afterward imitated wam- 

 pum so successfully as to flood the greater part of the Indian country 

 from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and far beyond and ultimately 

 to break the market and put an end to the use of beads as media of 

 exchange. 



But if we turn back to the writings of Hariot, Smith, and Strachey 

 we find a very limited use of shell beads, which seem to have been 

 less in favor with the coast tribes originally than beads made of 

 copper and bone and pearls. So far as wampum itself is concerned, 

 we know that its manufacture and use were not native to Virginia 

 or Carolina, but that it was introduced from New York, and the 

 district of Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay, the name 

 being derived from the last-mentioned region. The Indians about 

 Long Island Sound called it sewan. At a later time the name wam- 

 pum was extended over shell beads of various descriptions, even 

 retrospectively over beads of a type wholly distinct from that of the 

 classical wampum of the traders. 



Roanoke was the name, or a name, given to a type of bead which 

 had attained currency in the Sound section of North Carolina and 

 about Chesapeake Bay before white contact, but in this case also 

 it is doubtful whether the name belonged properly to one special 

 kind of bead or was extended over several. In the descriptions given 

 by Beverley and Lawson it will be noted that there seems to be lack 

 of agreement since the former says that it was lightly esteemed while 



