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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



and hat, is delineated as grasping hands in friendship with an Indian. 

 There are also three oblique bands of purple wampum, one on the 

 right and two on the left of the figures; in the modern wampum 

 the Indians explain these bands as " braces," the strengthening 

 power of the treaty. These special shell wampum beads, found in 

 the possession of the Iroquois Indians at the time of the Dutch 

 discovery in 1609, were used as a medium of exchange among the 

 various tribes. Shell beads, similar to these, were subsequently 

 circulated by the traders among all the Iroquois people. 



Lawson in 17 14 [History of North Carolina] speaking of the use 

 and value of wampum in New York, remarks that " an Englishman 

 could not afford to make so much of this wampum for five or ten 

 times the value; for it is made out of a vast great shell, of which 

 that country affords plenty, and is ground smaller than the small 

 end of a tobacco pipe or a large wheat straw ; the Indians grind these 

 on stones and other things until they make them current, but the 

 drilling is the most difficult to the Englishman, which the Indians 

 manage with a nail stuck in a cane or reed. Thus they roll it con- 

 tinually on their thighs with their right hand, holding the bit of 

 shell with their left; so, in time, they drill a hole quite through it 

 which is a very tedious work, but the Indians are a people that 

 never value their time, so they can afford to make them, and never 

 need to fear the English will take the trade out of their hands. 

 This, being their money, entices and persuades them to do anything 

 and part with everything they possess and with which you may 

 buy skins, furs or any other thing except their children for slaves." 



Wampum is mentioned by Captain John Smith who found the 

 young Indian women surrounding Powhatan " wearing great 

 chains of white beads over their breasts and shoulders." 



Drake the historian, wrote that " King Philip had a coat all 

 made of wampumpeag which, when in need of money, he cut in 

 pieces and distributed plentifully among the Nipmoog sachems 

 and others." 



Father Loskiel, in 1723 found the Abenaki Indians ornamented 

 with " beads made of a kind of shell, or stone, some white and 

 some purple, which they form into story figures with great exact- 

 ness." 



In a concluding reference to the Iroquois, also as an ex- 

 ample of the " talk to the wampum," in treaty exchanges 

 of belts, I quote from an account of a council held by the 

 Five Nations at Onondaga nearly two hundred years ago, 

 to which the Governor of Canada sent four representatives : 



