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Wampum, or sewan, is a string or belt of beads historically used by some Aboriginal Americans, who regard it as a sacred object.
Description
The beads of wampum, generally purple (Suckáuhock) and white (Wompam) in color, are traditionally made by rounding small pieces of the shells of quahogs and whelks, then piercing them with a hole before stringing them. Wampum belts are used as a memory aid in Oral tradition, badge of office, and ceremonial device of indigenous cultures such as the Iroquois. When Europeans came to the Americas, they realized the importance of wampum to Native people, but mistook it for money. Soon, they were trading with the native peoples of New England and New York using wampum. Dutch colonists actually began to manufacture their own wampum.
Perhaps because of its origin as a memory aid, loose beads were not considered to be high in value. Rather it was the belts themselves that were wampum. A typical large belt of six feet in length might contain 6000 beads or more. More importantly, such a belt would be a great sanctity, because it contained so many memories.
With stone tools the process was labor intensive, and the shells were available only to coastal nations. These factors increased its scarcity and consequent value among the European traders, until the Dutch glutted the market they created with it. Wampum is part of the Coat of Arms of New Brunswick.
In the area of present New York Bay, the clams and whelks used for making wampum were found only along Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay. The Lenape name for Long Island was "Sewanacky", reflecting its connection to wampum. By the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the Pequots reputedly used their dominance of tribes around this area to gain control of the sources of the beads.
Post-colonization wampum
In 1609, Henry Hudson received wampum as a gift from upriver Indians. The first European credited with discovering the significance of wampum was Jacob Eelkes, a Dutch fur trader in the New Netherland colony. In early 1622, Eelkes seized a sachem of the Pequot on Long Island and threatened to cut off his head unless he received a large ransom. The sachem gave Eelkes wampum of over 840 feet in length, which Eelkes discovered would command many more pelts in trade among the Indians than European-made goods.
As a result, the two-trade system for the purchase of pelts quickly supplanted direct barter methods. The Dutch began both accepting and distributing wampum as a currency at their trading stations. They began an aggressive campaign of buying as much wampum as possible from coastal Algonquians and transporting it up the Hudson Valley, where it was scarcer, to trade for pelts among the Mahicans.
The sudden growth of wealth of Mahicans, who were considered a peaceful people by the Europeans, soon brought them into conflict with the Iroquois tribes of present-day upstate New York, resulting in the Mohawk-Mahican War.
Word of the value of wampum was spread to English settlers in Massachusetts by Isaak de Rasieres, the chief commercial agent of the Dutch West India Company, who informed Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony of --AllenYoung 02:44, 10 July 2006 (UTC)the significance of the belts.
The system of wampum trading did not survive long after the arrival of Europeans. The Europeans introduced metal tools, specifically rasps and steel drills, that greatly reduced the labor needed to manufacture wampum. Additionally, the English in the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to manufacture wampum on their own.
In 1746, John Campbell established a wampum factory in what is now Park Ridge, New Jersey. The manufacture of wampum was a seasonal occupation which arose out of the need for establishing closer trading ties to remaining Native American tribes in the Pascack Valley region.
Modern References
Musician Tori Amos composed a short song entitled "Wampum Prayer" on her Scarlet's Walk album, which is thematically very Native-oriented. The song briefly addresses the Trail of Tears, as well as the importance of prayer to the Aboriginal American peoples.
See also
- Commodity money
- Wampum was also the name of a popular shareware database management system based on dBASE III used on IBM-compatible PCs in the 1980's and 1990's.
External links
Native American culture | Pre-revolutionary history of the United States | First Nations culture
"Wampum"