American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Wampum, defined as native-made shell beads of roughly standardized size and shape, evolved early in the seventeenth century and served as an essential element in the interactions among several Native nations and various European groups. The central region of wampum production was around Long Island Sound, while the principal area of wampum belt use was up the Hudson River and into Canada. Primary use was among the Five Nations Iroquois (Six Nations after 1722) and the Huron Confederacy. The incorporation of these shell bead elements of regular size (roughly three to four millimeters in diameter and eight to ten millimeters long) into woven bands, commonly called belts by the English and colliers by the French, took place at about the same time. The relationship between the standardization of this particular shell bead form and the production of wampum belts or bands is unknown, although it remains the focus of much speculation. True wampum, or that category of shell beads of standard size also called “belt” wampum, was used primarily among the peoples of the Iroquois and the Huron confederacies, with the contiguous territories of these peoples creating a zone that Becker characterizes as the “Core Area.” Beyond this region the use of wampum beads, and particularly belts fashioned from them, was much more limited. Among the Penobscot, in Maine, one of the cultures beyond the Core Area, the chronological sequence for the use of wampum, as well as the range of functions, differed considerably from what has been described in the Core Area. The role of what George Price identifies as the “wampum-producing tribes” such as the Wampanoag and Shinnecock, as well as each of the separate cultural traditions that developed for employing wampum (cultural transformations and unique features), merits its own separate study.