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TOENA 
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474 Wampum and its History. [May, 
double sense, financial-and gastronomical. Ever since the council 
dinner of Oloffe the Dreamer, at the founding of New Amsterdam, 
at which banquet the oysters figured so conspicuously, this divine 
shell-fish had been held in a kind of superstitious reverence at 
the Manhattoes; as witness the temples erected to its cult in every 
street and lane and alley. In fact it is the standard luxury of the 
place, as is the terrapin at Philadelphia, the soft crab at Baltimore, 
or the canvas-back at Washington. 
“The seizure of Oyster bay, therefore, was an outrage not 
merely on the pockets, but the larders of the New Amsterdam- 
commenced.” 
A valiant army under Stoffel Brinkerhoff having marched to 
Oyster bay, routed the English there, “ and would have driven the 
inhabitants into the sea if they had not managed to escape across 
the sound to the mainland by the Devil’s Stepping-stones, which 
remain to this day monuments of this great Dutch victory ove 
the Yankees.” This done— - 
“ Stoffel Brinkerhoff made great spoil of oysters and clams, 
coined and uncoined, and then set out on his return to the Manr- 
hattoes. A grand triumph, after the manner of the ancients, was 
prepared for him by William the Testy. He entered New ve 
sterdam as a conqueror, mounted on a Narragansett pacer. n 
dried codfish on poles, standards taken from the enemy, 
borne before him, and an immense store of oysters and clams, 
Weathersfield onions, and Yankee ‘notions’ formed the ep : 
opima Fadel several coiners of oyster-shells were led captive ® : 
rrace the hero’s triumph. is 
"i The pao Rig —— ias by a full Per of boys and ‘ 
negroes orming on the popular instruments a : 
and clamshell, se habs < Corlear sounded his trun i 
rom the ramparts. 4 
“A great at was served in the Stadthouse from h | 
and oysters taken from the enemy ; while the governor india 
shells privately to the mint and had them coined into E i — 
money with which he paid his troops.” I 
To check the evil effects of this “inflation,” a law was P” of 
in the New Netherlands, in 1641, prohibiting the tee : 
anything but fine, polished strung wampum, except at five Berg: 
stiver, while the polished was worth four for a stiver. Th mould be l 
echoed in Connecticut by enactments that no seawant $ o 
