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Read Ebook: Wampum A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia by Woodward Ashbel
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Ebook has 62 lines and 12314 words, and 2 pages
When at length the increasing wealth of the people drove wampum out of common use, it still remained an important article in commerce. It was manufactured at New York until the commencement of the present century to be used in traffic with the Indians, for whom it had lost none of its charms, and to be carried by our whalers into the northern seas.
Treaties and compacts between the different tribes and the states, and later the general government, continued to be ratified by the interchange of wampum belts. The records of the eighteenth century abound with instances of this character. The last occasion of the kind is believed to have been at Prairie du Chien in 1825.
Among the Indians of the present day wampum is unknown. The name still remains, but the trifles to which it is applied bear no resemblance to the ancient article. The glass beads now current as wampum and the original wampum are not less unlike, than the squalid Blackfoot of our western plains, and the proud and imperious Mohawk, beside his native stream.
FOOTNOTES:
In this connection the writer would acknowledge his indebtedness to Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull, a gentleman who has given much time and talent to the investigation of matters of Indian history.
The assertion that wampum is an Iroquois word, meaning a "muscle," is doubtless equally unfounded.
The otek?a of the Iroquois was the only exception of which we know.
It is interesting in this connection to notice the manner in which the chiefs affixed their names to early deeds. In the deed of New Haven given by the Quinnipiacs , may be seen as autographs, an arrow, a bow, a drawn bow, a war club, a tobacco pipe, a snake, a wolf , a wild fowl, etc., etc.
In the tomb, apparently of a chief, in the Grove Creek Mound, 1700 beads were found around the remains of a skeleton, and such deposits are frequently found in opening old graves.
Winthrop, I, 113.
Transcriber's Note:
Archaic spellings have been retained. Abbreviations have been normalised. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note, whilst more significant amendments are listed below:
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