WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 351 



receipt of 1529J fathoms and prepared to fight for the balance. In 

 1650 they said 308 fathoms were still due, and vigorous measures 

 followed. AlK arrearages were paid on the spot. Smaller amounts 

 were exacted or paid elsewhere^ but all show the abundance of shell 

 money. At a council at Albany in 1691, the Five Nations received 

 a present of 1000 guilders in white strung wampum, equivalent to 

 150,000 beads. 



Wampum as money 



When Washington Irving wrote his humorous account of shell 

 money among the Dutch colonists, many persons thought it a 

 stretch of fancy, while in truth wampum was long the common cur- 

 rency. The New England colonists seem in a measure to have led 

 the way in legal enactments, and many of these appear in the Public 

 records of Connecticut. Wampum was there given an established 

 value of four for a penny in 1637. — Pub. rec. Ct. i :i2. In 1640 it was 

 ordained that "the late Order concerning Wampu at sixe a penny 

 shalbe dissolued, and the former of fower a penny and two pence 

 to be paid in the shilling shall be established." — Pub. rec. Ct. i :6. It 

 was again six a penny two years later. In 1648 it was ordered 

 "that no peage, white or black, bee paid for or receiued, but what is 

 strung^ and in some measure strung sutably, and not small and 

 great, vncomicly and disorderly mixt, as formerly it hath beene." 

 "The Commissioners were informed that the Indyans abuse the 

 English with much badd, false and unfinished peage, and that the 

 English Traders, after it comes to their hands, choose out what fitts 

 their marketts and occasions, and leaue the refuse to pass to and 

 fro in these Colonies, w^^ the Indyans, whoe best understand 

 the qualities and defects of peage will not willingly take back." — 

 Pub. rec. Ct. 1 1179 



In 1648 Massachusetts ordered that wampum should be legal 

 tender to the amount of 40 shillings, if good. White was to be 

 eight for a penny and black four. It is also said that the use of 

 wampum as money was unknown to the colonists of New England 

 till 1627, when it was introduced by Isaac De Razier, secretary of 

 New I^ptherlapds, whil^ oi| an embassy to the Plymouth colony. 



