Wampum

Only the coastal tribes had sufficient access to the basic shells to make wampum These factors increased its scarcity and consequent value among the early European traders, who understood it as a currency and adopted it as such in trading with them.

Eventually, the colonists applied their technologies to more efficiently produce wampum, which caused inflation and ultimately its obsolescence as currency.

[6] The term wampum is a shortening of wampumpeag, which is derived from the Massachusett or Narragansett word meaning "white strings of shell beads".

[1] Women artisans traditionally made wampum beads by rounding small pieces of whelk shells, then piercing them with a hole before stringing them.

The beads would be strung or woven on deer hide thongs, sinew, milkweed bast, or basswood fibers.

[12] Dutch colonists discovered the importance of wampum as a means of exchange between tribes, and they began mass-producing it in workshops.

[citation needed] As William James Sidis wrote in his 1935 history: The weaving of wampum belts is a sort of writing by means of belts of colored beads, in which the various designs of beads denoted different ideas according to a definitely accepted system, which could be read by anyone acquainted with wampum language, irrespective of what the spoken language is.

[13]Wampum belts were used as a memory aid in oral tradition, and were sometimes used as badges of office or as ceremonial devices in Indigenous cultures, such as the Iroquois.

For example, the 1820 New Monthly Magazine reports on a speech given by the late chief Tecumseh in which he vehemently gesticulated to a belt as he pointed out treaties made 20 years earlier and battles fought since then.

[18] As a method of recording and an aid in narrating, Iroquois warriors with exceptional skills were provided training in interpreting the wampum belts.

He added that these polished shells with drilled holes were made from the cunk (conch), while another currency of lesser value called roenoke was fashioned from the cockleshell.

[22] Wampum briefly became legal tender in North Carolina in 1710, but its use as common currency died out in New York by the early 18th century.

However, the conversion of wampum to European currencies and the introduction of a monetary system was not something that the indigenous people had a desire to take part in, thus increasing tensions as trades held different economic value to each contributing party.