THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. xvi.— MAY, 1883.—No. 5. 
WAMPUM AND ITS HISTORY. 
BY ERNEST INGERSOLL. 
E use of a circulating medium to facilitate commerce by 
Simplifying the awkward devices of barter, is supposed to 
a ee 
| indicate a considerable advance towards civilization in the people 
employing it. On this score the North American Indians ought 
to stand high in the list of barbarians, since they possessed 
an aboriginal money of recognized value, although it had no 
“auction other than common custom. This money was made 
Se or et) a eee 
syed: aarti 
fro 
m sea-shells, and was known by various names, of which one 
rvived popularly—wampum—to designate all varieties of 
l shell beads and money, 
ae Sea-shells, indeed, seem to have commended themselves for 
- Purpose to widely different peoples. The great circulation 
which the cowrie 
è -shell ( Cypræa moneta) attained in tropical Africa, 
and the South Sea islands, will occur to the reader. It was 
TRS = coin of those regions in trading with the savages to the 
X xclusion of everything else; and ships going after cargoes of 
ae Pig Palm oil, sandal wood and similar products, were obliged 
a" 8 Provide themselves with cargoes of cowries, at Zanzibar 
a. same other port where they could be bought. 
: itand = Was required to turn a cowrie into a coin was to find 
Punch a small hole in it. But the American money was a 
a Fe ee ee es eo ee 
PO et oy 
Pb advance upon this, since it was a manufactured article, 
a wea tion to the €xertion of securing the mollusk’s shell, there 
3 large expenditure of labor in fashioning the bead which 
coin. Lindstrom (in Smith’s History of New Jersey) 
’s utmost manufacture amounted only to a few 
=No, v, 33 
