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Wampum   /wˈɑmpəm/   Listen
noun
Wampum  n.  Beads made of shells, used by the North American Indians as money, and also wrought into belts, etc., as an ornament. "Round his waist his belt of wampum." "Girded with his wampum braid." Note: These beads were of two kinds, one white, and the other black or dark purple. The term wampum is properly applied only to the white; the dark purple ones are called suckanhock. See Seawan. "It (wampum) consisted of cylindrical pieces of the shells of testaceous fishes, a quarter of an inch long, and in diameter less than a pipestem, drilled... so as to be strung upon a thread. The beads of a white color, rated at half the value of the black or violet, passed each as the equivalent of a farthing in transactions between the natives and the planters."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wampum" Quotes from Famous Books



... United States was flying. Captain Lewis delivered a speech, with the usual advice and counsel for their future conduct. We then acknowledged their chiefs, by giving to the grand chief a flag, a medal, a certificate, with a string of wampum; to which we added a chief's coat; that is, a richly laced uniform of the United States artillery corps, and a cocked hat and red feather. One second chief and three inferior ones were made or recognised by medals, and a suitable present of tobacco, and articles ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... a mockingbird singing like mad from a china tree, and the woods all level before us like a floor,—no brush at all, just fine grass, with flowers in it like pinks in a garden. So we smoked the peace pipe with the Chickasaws, and I hung a wampum belt with fine words, and we went on, the next day, walking over strawberries so thick that our moccasins were stained red. At noon we overtook a party of boatmen from the Ohio,—tall men they were, with beards, and dark and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... Mexico, where the "porcelain, which are the pearls of the country," was obtained from a kind of oysters. It is an undoubted fact that a traffic was carried on with tribes as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, from whom shells used for wampum were obtained by successive interchanges of commodities with intervening tribes. They had also some vague notion of alligators, which are apparently referred to by the description, "certain aquatic animals, larger and swifter than elk," ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... o'clock, Pontiac and his thirty-six chiefs, with a train of warriors, came into the fort to their pretended council, and were received with great politeness. Pontiac made his speech, and when he came forward to present the wampum belt, the receipt of which by the Major was, as the Indian woman had informed them, to be the signal for the chiefs and warriors to commence the assault, the Major and his officers drew their swords half out of their scabbards, and the troops, with their muskets loaded and bayonets ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... uniformity; they are not scarce, as diamonds are, so that a pinch of them might measure the value of a city; nor are they as plenty as blackberries, so that a wagon-load could scarcely buy a fat goose for dinner. They cannot be washed away like a piece of soap, nor wear out like a bit of wampum, nor crumble like agate or carnelian in dividing. In short, they combine all the advantages that are needed, with few or none of the disadvantages that would be troublesome, in a substance which is used for money. They possess intrinsic utility, they are equably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various


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