Wampum

“ Wampum is an Indian word signifying a muscle. A number of these muscles strung together is called a string of wampum, which when a fathom long is termed a belt of wampum, but the word string is commonly used whether it be long or short. ”

“ The white, which was the product of the periwinkle, did not need so much labor to fit it for use as wampum, and it was cheaper. The blue was the gold; the white was the silver. One blue bead was worth two white ones. The Indians did not try to keep up any parity of the beads. They let each kind go for just what it was worth. The Puritans used to restring the beads and keep the blue ones. Then the Indians strung their scalps.
Why was wampum good money in its time? The supply was limited. It took a day to make four or five beads. It was in itself a thing of value to the Indian for ornament. ”

“ Indians have always been fond of beads and of shells. Wampum is shell beads of an especial shape—cylindrical, with square cut ends, and with a length one and a half times their thickness or more. This wampum was made from a thick and heavy sea-shell. ”

“ The pre-historic inhabitants of the Mississippi valley were also evidently acquainted with their manufacture, as remains of shell beads have been found in many of the mounds which survive as the only memorials of that mysterious people.
These Indian beads were known under a variety of names among the early colonists, and were called, wampum, wampom-peage, or wampeage, frequently peage or peake only, and in some localities sewan or zewand. But generally sewan prevailed among the Dutch, and wampum among the English. These names were applied without distinction to all varieties of beads. ”

“ He goes on to state that "the primitive wampum of the Iriquois consisted of strings of a small fresh-water spiral shell called in the Seneca dialect Ote ko-á, the name of which has been bestowed upon the modern wampum." [80]
Loskiel says that "before the Europeans came to North America, the Indians used to make strings of wampom chiefly of small pieces of wood of equal size, stained either black or white. Few were made of muscle, which were esteemed very valuable and difficult to make ”

“ In connection with the Cypraeas it is interesting to notice other species of shell money which have been used as money. The North American Indians used fragments of shells for money, which they called wampum. In New England wampum was in the form of beads, the manufacture of which required considerable skill. These beads were cylindrical in form, about one-fourth of an inch long and half as wide. They were of two colors and were drilled and strung on long cords. ”

“ The inland tribes were of course unable to produce their own wampum, and depended for their supply upon the coast tribes. A brisk trade thus arose between the coast and interior. Hides and furs were brought down to clothe the denser population of the shore, and wampum carried [19] back in exchange. [10] Often, however, the inland tribes were able to pounce down and wring this precious material from its carriers in the form of tribute.
Wampum is often spoken of as "Indian money." ”

“ We find plentiful evidence in the stories of the early Spanish adventurers that beads made from sea shells were held in high esteem by the Indians of the south, but, so far as I am aware, there is no statement indicating that they formed a well-regulated medium of exchange.
In regard to the manufacture of wampum by the whites, the following quotations will be instructive:
"Many people at Albany make the wampum of the Indians, which is their ornament and their money, by grinding some kinds of shells and muscles; this is a considerable profit to the inhabitants." ”

“ The Long Island Indians manufactured the beads in large quantities and then were forced to pay them away in tribute to the Mohawks and the fiercer tribes of the interior. {2209} Furs were readily exchanged for these trinkets, which carried a permanent value, through the constancy of the Indian desire for them. The holder of wampum always compelled trade to come to him. After the use of wampum was established in colonial life, contracts were made payable at will in wampum, beaver, or silver. ... The use began in New England in 1627. ”

“ Whose fingers string the stalactite,
Who counts the wampum of the night,
To see that none is due? ”

“ The eyes were bright, however, and, although the sachem’s countenance expressed harshness and cruelty, David found nothing therein suggesting meanness. He wore clothing befitting his rank: a cloak of panther-skin that shone lustrously in the light that came down through the smoke-hole, leggings of soft deer-hide much ornamented with quills and beads, several strings and anklets of wampum. His head was shaven to the scalp-lock, and that was bound with bits of red cloth until it stood upright a good eight inches, and was lavishly strung with bright feathers. ”

“ This wampum is employed in the same way as the beads, but is the favourite decoration for the noses of the men. The men also use collars made of bears’ claws, the women and children those of elks’ tusks, and both sexes are adorned with bracelets of copper, iron, or brass, in various forms. ”

“ This species of border ornament, denominated wampum on the opposite side of the continent, was found, not only all along this coast, but also on the eastern shores of Asia. On the feet they wear no covering; and if they occasionally cover their heads, it is with a species of basket resembling that which is sometimes worn by the Chinese and Tartars. In character they were cunning, bold, ferocious, and, like the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, addicted to cannibalism. ”

“ Les sauvages n'ont rien de plus précieux que leur Porcelaine: ce sont leurs bijoux, leurs pierreries. Ils en comptent jusqu' aux grains, et cela leur tient lieu de toute richesse."—Lafitau, 1720.
Catlin writes thus in 1842: "Among the numerous tribes who have formerly inhabited the Atlantic coast, wampum has been invariably manufactured and highly valued as a circulating medium (instead of coins, of which the Indians have no knowledge) , so many strings, or so many hands' breadth, being the fixed value of a horse, a gun, a robe, &c. ”

“ The belts received at treaties, councils and other assemblies were entrusted for presentation to the care of one individual, usually the sachem, who was expected to keep in mind the occasion and purport of each, which he could readily do by the aid of the devices emblematic of the event it signalized that were traced upon each. [17] Thus a belt presented to Sir Wm. Johnson by the Six Nations, had wrought upon it the sun, the emblem of light, and symbols of the Six Nations. ”

“ Wampus was wrestling with the tire.
"I have never start a private graveyard," he replied, "for reason I am afraid to hurt anyone. But I am Wampus. If Mister Algy he dance to-night, somebody mus' lead him, for he will be blind." ”

“ The dark color is the dearest, and distinguished by the name of wampom peak. The Englishmen that are called Indian traders, value the wampom peak at eighteen pence per yard, and the white peak at nine pence. The Indians also make pipes of this, two or three inches long, and thicker than ordinary, which are much more valuable. They also make runtees of the small shell, and grind them as smooth as peak. ”

“ FTER a cold, damp, rainy week, we have suddenly had dropped upon us a balmy, warm, summer day,—thermometer at eighty; and every thing out of doors growing so fast, that you may see and hear it grow.
The swampy belt of land in front of the house is now bursting forth in clouds of blue iris of every shade, from the palest and faintest 138 to the most vivid lapis-lazuli tint. The wild-rose-bushes there are covered with buds; and the cypress-trees are lovely with their vivid little feathers of verdure. This swamp is one of those crooks in our lot which occasions a never-ceasing conflict of spirit. ”

“ The deep-sounding roar of the waves, like the deep diapason of a hundred organs, plays over a gamut, whose rising or falling scale tells him, immediately, whether he can put his frail canoe before the wind, or must remain prisoner on the sand, in the sheltering nook where night overtakes him. ”

“ Curious sounds reach you as you thread the mazes of the swamp. The water boils up from the oozy bottom, and the bubbles break at the surface with a faint lisping sound: the reeds softly rattle against one another like the rustle of heavy silks, and you can hear the lily-pads and deeply-anchored stems of the water-weeds rubbing against one another. ”

“ We will now take a view of the vampire. As there was a free entrance and exit to the vampire in the loft where I slept, I had many a fine opportunity of paying attention to this nocturnal surgeon. He does not always live on blood. When the moon shone bright, and the fruit of the banana-tree was ripe, I could see him approach and eat it. He would also bring into the loft, from the forest, a green round fruit something like the wild guava and about the size of a nutmeg. ”

“ But if we value trees according to their capacity for cavities,—the naturalist has a right to such a scale of valuation,—then these gums rank first. The deliberate purpose of a swamp-gum, through its hundred years of life, is to grow as big as possible, that it may hollow out accordingly. ”

“ Pools of water sparkled here and there; babbling brooks winding capriciously in and out in wayward circles; at times, the sudden gleam of a waterfall, threading downwards in white streaks from a giant rock; and again, the miasma of a swamp, black and evil-looking, in whose waters rolled the trunks of fallen trees. Everywhere flowers bursting into bloom; everywhere new leaves swelling into being; everywhere the exuberant life of a tropic climate. ”

“ From the moment when his attention had been first attracted to her, she seemed to become illuminated; her ungainly body appeared assuming the lines of beauty; her mean, harsh features, softened, as the gnarled shrub assumes, in slow unfolding, the graceful mellowed drapery of spring. The coarse, elfin locks, grew tamed and smooth; a dark blue, in soft and gradual displacement, entered the sharp, greenish, animal eyes. The low, ape-like forehead, swelled above meekly-curved brows that had lost their hirsute squareness. ”

“ And in the final cutting and editing, that sequence of scenes dropped out of the film altogether. So that nobody ever knew, except possibly Summerlad and Jacques....
To the best of her observation her rôle was that of an involuntary vamp. Not vampire: vamp. No other term will serve so well. Originally a derisive diminutive, the usage of the studios has endowed this monosyllable with a significance all its own, not readily definable. A vamp no longer means of necessity a vampire, a scarlet-mouthed seductress of strong men's souls. ”

“ From that black, damp, mouldy earth which had swallowed whole so many sorely-tried, ill-treated, put-upon and harassed generations of living beings and into which life after life had sunk as into a bottomless, all-consuming swamp—from that mildewed ground, I say, rose a pungent aroma of decomposition more suffocating than the stench that emanates from the unburied carcass of a beached whale, sufficiently funereal as an odour to cancel out completely all the sunlight and the pleasant scents exuded by both flowers and spring breezes. ”

“ At length a shout proclaimed success, and presently a man of gigantic mould broke out of the tangled labyrinth of a small swamp, emerging into an opening that appeared to have been formed partly by the ravages of the wind, and partly by those of fire. ”

“ Shame to the turbid, murky swamp, which never receives and never reflects this image! Millions of plants drink from the four elements of nature; a magazine of supplies is open for all: but they mix their sap in a thousand different ways, and return it in a thousand new forms. ”

“ With their vivid colors, their premature baldness, their usually smaller size, and a generally devil-may-care air which, perhaps, is only seeming because of these facts, the swamp maples always appear to me like swashbucklers, roistering young blades in whom riots the wine of life, whose red faces early in the morning of the autumn and whose premature baldness both hint of dissipation. Their roots are deep in the richest of mold dissolved in the{92} water of copious springs. The most bounteous of banquets and the warmest of wine is continually at their lips. ”

“ The damp, straight locks hanging in one's eyes, and the long, fluffy strands, that aren't fluffy at all but as unwavy as a shower bouquet of macaroni, and the tag ends and whisps sprouting out here and there like a box full of paint brushes six ways for Sundays—well, one is always mentally thankful at such times that one's "dearest and best" isn't anywhere around to behold the horrible sight. But after awhile the long, damp tresses are patted and fussed over until they are dry, and then they're combed out and curled up and kinked and twisted, and, oh, my countrymen, what a change is there! ”

“ They are very lovely (continued the Vampire) , as I see them with the eye of clear-seeing. What beautiful hair! it hangs down like the tail of the cow of Tartary, or like the thatch of a house; it is shining as oil, dark as the clouds, black as blackness itself. What charming faces! likest to water-lilies, with eyes as the stones in unripe mangos, noses resembling the beaks of parrots, teeth like pearls set in corals, ears like those of the red-throated vulture, and mouths like the water of life. ”