HOW WHITE WAMPUM WAS MADE. 231 



A great variety of names for one or the other or both of these beads 

 appears in the books of the early voyagers and historians, and it is very 

 difficult for us now to come at the true significance of the terms in most 

 cases. 



Northward of New York seawan was the usual name applied, and it 

 seems to have been used generically for all sorts of shell-money. Simi- 

 larly " wampum " (which Loskiel spells wompom, and defines as an Iro- 

 quois word "meaning a muscle"), in its numberless spellings and deriva- 

 tives, came to be used generically, and thus has descended to our popular 

 vocabulary. But this has occurred, apparently, through defiance of its 

 proper restriction ; for as well as I can make out, the word originally, 

 and etymologically, belonged only to the white beads. 



The white variety was most plentiful and of inferior value. It was 

 commonly made from the large univalves, Sycotypus canalioulatus and 

 Fvlgur carica, whose pear-shaped, coiled shells I have described in a 

 previous chapter. Yet sometimes other material was. used. Thus the 

 "New England's Earities Discovered," by John Josselyn, gent., reads: "A 

 kind of coccle, of whose shell the Indians make their, beads called wam- 

 pumpeage* and mohaicks. The first are white," etc. This is an excep- 

 tion, or an error. Roger Williams wrote in his "Key :" " The New Eng- 

 land Indians are ignorant of Europe's coyne. . . . Their owne is of two 

 sorts ; one white, which they make of the stem or stock of the Peri/win- 

 cle, which they call Meteauhok, when all the shell is broken off." Again 

 he says : " Their white they call Wampam (which signifies white)." The 

 wampum made from the periwinkle was distinguished in law as late as 

 1663 in Rhode Island ; and in 1679 Wooley, describing New York, says 

 of it: "They [the Indians] make their White Wampum or Silver of a 

 kind of Horn, which is beyond Oyster-bay" — a phrase that certainly 

 would not apply to a bivalve. 



It appears certain, then, that the coiled, univalve, "periwinkle" shells 

 were largely used for this inferior grade of currency. It was only neces- 

 sary to take out one or two small sections- of the central column of the 

 spire and smooth the edges; the hollow core made them natural beads. 



Smith's "History of New Jersey" informs us that this was precisely 

 the plan followed, for it relates that "the white wampum was worked 

 out of the inside of the great conques into the form of a bead, and per- 

 forated to string on leather." Still earlier testimony comes from the 

 southern coast. Thus Beverly, in his "History and Present State of 



* Wampampeege.— Winthrop (1634). 



