wampum

/wom"peuhm, wawm"-/, n.

1. Also called peag, seawan, sewan. cylindrical beads made from shells, pierced and strung, used by North American Indians as a medium of exchange, for ornaments, and for ceremonial and sometimes spiritual purposes, esp. such beads when white but also including the more valuable black or dark-purple varieties.

2. Informal. money.

[1630-40; short for WAMPUMPEAG]

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Tubular shell beads assembled into strings or woven into belts or embroidered ornaments.

The Algonquian word (short for wampumpeag) translates as "string of white (shell beads)." Before contact with white settlers, Indians used wampum primarily ceremonially or in gift exchanges. In the early 17th century it came to be used as money in trade with whites, because of a shortage of European currency.

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▪ beads

 tubular shell beads that have been assembled into strings or woven into belts or embroidered ornaments, formerly used as a medium of exchange by some North American Indians (American Indian). The terms wampum and wampumpeag were initially adopted by English settlers, who derived them from one of the eastern Algonquian languages; literally translated, wampumpeag means “strings of white (shell beads).”

      Before contact with white settlers, the Indians used wampum primarily for ceremonial purposes, as a record of an important agreement or treaty, as an object of tribute given by subject tribes, or for gift exchange (q.v.). Its value derived from its ceremonial importance and the skill involved in making it. In the early 17th century wampum came to be used as money in trade between whites and Indians because of a shortage of European currency. When machines were invented in the mid-18th century for mass production of wampum, the resulting inflation stopped its use as money in the eastern United States. Western Indians, however, continued to use it commercially until the mid-19th century.

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