What is Wampum?

Wampum bracelet from MKIM's Northeast Woodlands Gallery

Wampum are traditional, sacred shell beads of Eastern Woodlands tribes.  Woven belts of wampum have been created to commemorate treaties or historical events, and for exchange in personal social transactions, such as marriages.

The term originally referred to only the white beads, which are made of the inner spiral of the Channeled whelk shell.   Sewant or suckauhock beads are the black or purple shell beads made from the quahog or poquahock clamshell.  Common terms for the dark and white beads, often confused, are wampi (white) and saki (dark).

In the area of present New York Bay, the clams and whelks used for making wampum are found only along Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay. The Lenape name for Long Island is Sewanacky, reflecting its connection to the dark wampum.

Typically wampum beads are tubular in shape, often a quarter of an inch long and an eighth inch wide. One 17th-century Seneca wampum belt featured beads almost 2.5 " long.  Women traditionally made wampum beads by rounding small pieces of the shells of whelks, then piercing them with a hole before stringing them.

Wooden pump drills with quartz drill bits and stone weights were used to drill the shells. The unfinished beads would be strung together and rolled on a grinding stone with water and sand, until they were smooth. The beads would be strung or woven on deer hide thongs, sinew, milkweed bast, or basswood fibers.

The term "wampum" may come from the Wampanoag word, Wampumpeag, which means white shell beads. Variations of the word include the Maliseet word, Wapapiyik,the Ojibwe word, Waabaabiinyag, the Proto-Algonquian word *wa·p-a·py-aki, all of which mean "white-strings [of beads]."

Wampum is made from the purple and white shell of the quahog, or round clam.  The shellfish that Rhode Islanders call a quahog is also known by many other names.  Even the word "quahog" has an alternate spelling, "quahaug," and a number of pronunciations: KO-hog, KWO-hog, and KWA-hog.

The word "wampum" comes from the Narragansett word for "white shell beads". Wampum beads are made in two colors: white ("Wòmpi") beads ("Wompam") from the Whelk shell ("Meteaûhock"), and purple-black ("Súki") beads ("Suckáuhock") from the growth rings of the Quahog shell ("Suckauanaûsuck")

Shell beads have had cultural significance to the Native Americans of southern New England for many years.  Shell beads in the Northeast have been found which are 4500 years old. These shell beads were larger and relatively uncommon because drilling the material was difficult with stone drill bits. This earlier bead, proto-wampum, was traded within ceremonial contexts, in part for the connections of shell with water and its life giving properties.

Wampum from Middle and Late Woodland periods (beginning around AD 200) was about 3" in length and 2" in diameter.  The hard shell material had stone­bored holes of more than 2mm. Wampum beads of the mid-1600's average 3/8" in length and 1/4" in diameter. The tiny holes in wampum from this era were bored with European metal awls about 1mm in diameter.

The native people of the northeast never used wampum as currency.  However, after European settlement there was a scarcity of metal coins in New England.  Wampum quickly evolved into a formal currency among the colonists.  Its production was greatly facilitated by the availability of slender European metal drill bits. Wampum was mass produced in coastal southern New England. The Narragansetts and Pequots monopolized the manufacture and exchange of wampum in this area.

The Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum has fine examples of wampum in its Northeast Woodlands gallery and for sale in the Dream Catcher Gift Shop.