232 SPELLING AND DERIVATION OF "QUAHAUG." 



Virginia " (1705), records that the riches of the Indians there consisted of 

 "Peak, Poenoke, and such-like trifles made out of the Gunk Shell. Peak 

 is of two sorts, or rather of two colors; both are made of one Shell, tho' 

 of different parts ; one is a dark Purple Cylinder, and the other a white ; 

 they are both made in size and figure alike." The same author, also 

 mentions a poorer kind of money yet, " made of the cockle shell, broke 

 into small bits with rough edges, drill'd through in the same manner as 

 Beads, and this they call Poenoke" Other authorities corroborate this, 

 and prove what I have been led to .enlarge upon — the fact that the 

 conchs were used mainly as material for the white beads — because the 

 popular idea has been that all the shell-money was made from the valves 

 of quahaug. 



Out of the quahaug was fabricated that dark-colored variety of wam- 

 pum— >-the "gold" of the red men. This bivalve is one of the commonest 

 mollusks on the shore of eastern America south of Cape Cod. It is a 

 thick, somewhat globose shell, which buries itself in the sand under pretty 

 deep salt-water. The Indians gathered it alive by wading and feeling 

 with the toes, or by diving, and ate the animal with great gusto; it 

 remains, indeed, an. article of extensive sale in all our markets, under the 

 name of "round" or "hard "clam, or "quahaug" — the scientific name 

 of which is Venus mercenaria. 



In regard to the word " quahaug," Mr. J. H. Trumbull, of Hartford, 

 Connecticut, who leads students in the etymology of the languages of 

 the native races of New England, writes me as follows : "For the spelling 

 and derivation of the common name Quahaug, in the last edition of 

 Webster, I am, I believe, responsible. The pronunciation there given is 

 that of eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island — kwaw'hog. I have occa- 

 sionally heard the name reduced to a monosyllable— qua-w'g; and farther 

 east it is often made pooquaw'. In a note to my edition of Roger Will- 

 iams's Indian Key (" Narraganset Club Publications," vol. i., p. 140) I gave 

 two or three other dialectic forms of the Indian name. As yon may not 

 have the volume within reach, I copy the note: Pequot, p'quaughhaug* 

 Gus. Stiles, MS. — Abnaki, pekwe, pi. pekwahak, 'huitres' — R&le. The 

 •signification appears to be, either ' thick shell ' or ' tightly - closed shell.' 

 The Delaware equivalent is, as Zeisberger wrote it, 'pooque-u, a muscle.' I 

 have now no doubt that the second meaning given above (tightly-closed) 



* " A piece of Poquahauges, a rare shell, and a dainty food with the Indians. The 

 flesh eats like veal ; the English make pyes thereof ; and of the shells the Indians make 

 money. "— "Winthrof (1634). A historical pamphlet gives Poquau as the name used in 

 Martha's Vineyard in 1807.— E. L 



