Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/309

Rh parts of India and Africa. It differed from them, in fact, as coined money differs from bullion. Wampum was a manufactured article. The great labor required to produce it was, indeed, the main element in its value. It was used in two forms. The least common, but apparently the earliest form, was that of disks, varying in size from that of an English sixpence, or rather, perhaps, from that of an American half-dime, to that of an English shilling, but somewhat thicker than these coins. One writer compares them, for size and thickness, to a peppermint-lozenge. These disks were perforated through the center, and commonly threaded upon a string. The other and more usual kind was of cylindrical shape, resembling the segment of a clay pipestem. These smaller beads had a diameter of about the eighth of an inch, and a length about twice or three times as great. Like the others, they were perforated, and usually strung upon a deer's sinew or a string of some description.

These disks, or cylinders, were of two colors, white and dark-purple, the latter generally styled black. They were made from seashells of several descriptions. The white beads were usually derived from various species of periwinkles or conchs. The purple sort were made chiefly from the large round clam, common on the Atlantic coast, and known by the Indian name of quahaug, and in science as Venus mercenaria. This mollusk has near the anterior end of the otherwise white inside of each valve a deep purple or brownish-black scar, indicating the point of muscular attachment, and known to fishermen as the "eye." This dark spot was broken out by the Indians to form their "black wampum," which, from its greater rarity, was always rated at a higher value than the white beads. Such, in brief, is the account given by Mr. Ernest Ingersoll, in his excellent article on "Wampum and its History," in the "American Naturalist" for May, 1883. The Indians who lived along the sea-coast were the principal manufacturers, and drove a brisk trade in this article with the tribes of the interior. Long Island, in particular, was a noted seat of this industry. It was the Potosi or California of the Northern Indians, and bore among them the name of Seawanhake, or "Land of Wampum." In traffic the money was computed sometimes by the number of beads, and sometimes by the length of the string.

The word wampum is of Algonkin origin. Its application to this money originated in a misconception of the early colonists. Properly it means simply "white." Peage or peake, we are told, was the name of the shell-beads, at least when strung. When loose, the term sewan (or, as pronounced by the Dutch colonists, zeewand) was applied to them. This term is said to mean simply "scattered," or "loose." A string of white beads, the most common currency, was called by the Indians wampum-peak; or "white strung-beads." The first portion of the compound word was caught by the settlers, and hence all money-beads became known among them as "wampum."