thread! These beads were of Unequal length,
but were worked down, by the Atlantie-ooast
tribes, to very nearly the same size and thickness—
which was about that of a crow’s quill,
or a pipe stem. The article was highly prized
as an ornament, and as such constituted an object
of traffic between the sea-coast and interior
tribes. It was worn around the neck ; also^as
an edging for certain, pieeqs of their garments;
and when these strings were united, they formed
the broad wampum belts,* by which solemn
public transactions were commemorated.
The article was also called by the Manhat-
tanese,-seotaan, and Long Island^ which yielded
the crude shells abundantly, was hencqdenominated
by the sobriquet of Sea wan acky,f or land
of seawan shells.. Its permanent name, however,
appears to have-been Metöac, from the
particular type of the sea-eoast Algonquins, who
occupied it. By the more northerly- tribes who
spread over New England, this treasured article
was called peag and wampmg. The labor of
making it by hand, without the use> of iron or
* The last belt of this kind, is belièyë'3 to have been made
to conraierodrate a grand pacification of the tribes, who assembled
at Prairie du Chien, in 1825, to settle their boundary
lines, under invitations from the government of the TJoited
States. The xommissioners were the late General ^illiam
Clark, of St. Louis, a®d Gen. Cass, of Michigan.
f The termination acky, in this word, is the satne., which in
the Odjibwa of the present day, is generally written acJ(ee,
land or earth. In both the a is broad, and the sound, as well
as the sense, so far as we can judge, is identical;
stool instruments, must have made it very costly,
before the discovery. The old wampum was,
indeed, a rudb article, and the specimens disinterred,
now-a-days, from old Irraian graves, and
from the distant mounds of the west, denotes an
article which in shape and size resembles, often, a
horn-button mould, and at others, a,heart-shaped,
or an oval bead of large size. The Dutch introduced
the lathe in making wampum, polished
and perforated it with exactness, and soon had
the monopoly of the supply of this article for the
whole Indian trade.*
It appears from the Dutch records at Albany,
whiely abound in details of the Indian trade,
that three' purple beads of wampum, or seawan,
or six of white* ; wer& equal to a styver, among
the Dutch, nr a penny among the English,
gome variations, however, existed in its value,
according to time and place. A single string of
wampum of one fathom, rated at five shillings
in New England, and is known, in New Netherlands,
to have reached as high as four guilders,
or one dollar and sixty-six cents. Lands and
merchandise were alike purchased of the natives
for this oceanic^ kind of coin, which they
esteemed more valuable than the precious metals,
and i t : continued to be in vogue after the
surrender of the colony to the English. It is
stated on undoubted authority, that the first
* The prineipal place of its manufacture is still at Hackensack,
in^ew Jersey,