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.

Chief Sachem Silverstar

Chief Sachem Silverstar
1881 - 1955

As this blog is named in his memory, we thought it most appropriate to tell you about Silverstar.
Atwood I. Williams, known as Grand Chief Sachem Silverstar (or Silver-Star, as he is named in some accounts) was born in 1881.  In the 1930s he was the leader of both the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot Indian Tribe of North Stonington, CT and the Mashantucket Western Pequot Tribe of Ledyard, CT.

Silverstar was very proud of his Native American heritage.  He held public Powwows to help educate non-Natives in the ways and beliefs of his people and of other tribes.  Silverstar also visited schools frequently to speak to children about Native American culture.

Charles "Bud" Thompson, who co-founded the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum with his wife, Nancy, was a second grader in Rhode Island when his teacher invited Chief Sachem Silverstar to speak to the class.  Silverstar arrived wearing the traditional attire of the Pequots and a full feather headdress.  He asked the children to sit in a circle on the floor, then he explained how life is viewed in Native American culture.  Silverstar told the children that everything on earth is connected in one all-encompassing circle.  The circle includes not only living beings but inanimate objects, such as mountains, rivers - even the air we breathe.  Everyone and everything in the circle is equally important, and if one does harm to one part of the circle the entire circle is affected.



Silverstar went on to say that The Creator made each of us a unique individual and gave to each of us a unique talent.  Our job is to find that talent within ourselves and use it to make a positive contribution to the world and to the circle of which each of us is a part.


Bud Thompson never saw Silverstar again, but the words Silverstar spoke in that second grade classroom have remained with Bud throughout his life.  They set Bud on his life path, the path led to the creation of the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum.


Even when MKIM was just a dream, Bud always knew that he wanted to honor Chief Sachem Silverstar of the Pequot Nation and the inspiration he gave to Bud more than 70 years ago.  Keeping in mind Silverstar's words, Bud dedicated the Museum in 1990 to "furthering an understanding of native peoples and their harmonious relationship with the earth."  As the dedication certificate hanging in the Museum's lobby says, "Who knows the timelessness and power of inspired words?".


Before Bud Thompson dedicated  the Museum to Silverstar,  he wanted to have the permission of Silverstar's descendants.  Finding how to contact the family proved to be difficult.  After many attempts Bud arrived home one evening to find a note on the kitchen table from his son, Darryl.  Darryl had also been looking for Silverstar's family and succeeded in finding them.  The note Darryl left had a name and phone number, and ended with the words "Call him today."


Bud contacted the Williams family, who were quite honored  and pleased with the idea of an Indian Museum dedicated to the memory of Chief Sachem Silverstar.  Silverstar's grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren came up from Connecticut for the dedication.  In the Museum lobby we have a picture of the Williams family in traditional Pequot attire, standing at the edge of the Medicine Woods with Bud and Nancy Thompson.

New Hampshire Commission of Native American Affairs is Created

     On July 20, 2010, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch singed into law a bill that creates a New Hampshire Commission of Native American Affairs.  The Commissions purposes are to "recognize the historic and cultural contributions of Native Americans in New Hampshire, to promote and strengthen their own heritage, and to further their needs through state policy and programs."  To do so, the Commission is charged with accomplishing these tasks:

• To review and study local, state, and federal issues common to Native Americans and persons of Native American descent living in the state.

• To develop recommendations that will assist state agencies with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-601), and

• To help Native American groups, organizations and individuals in New Hampshire:
• secure social services, education, employment opportunities, health care, housing, cultural opportunities and census information,
• establish and/or continue programs concerning Native American history, culture and affairs and
• promote and strengthen the creation, display and sale of Native American arts and crafts, and provide education information to artisans and marketing outlets promoting the legal labeling of such products as Indian or Native American.

      The Commission will have fifteen members, ten of whom will be representatives from the Native American community.  Members must be from the State of New Hampshire, and must represent diverse areas and groups, organizations and individuals knowledgeable about Native American history, culture and affairs.  The non-Native members of the commission will serve because of their professional positions - the director of NH Travel and Tourism, the director of the Native American Program at Dartmouth College, and archaeologist appointed by the director of the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, the director of the NH State Council on the Arts, and a genealogist appointed by the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.