American Indian Culture and Research Journal

There’s an old chestnut that Indians traded Manhattan for beads. Considering what Indians have since made out of beads, and the Europeans out of Manhattan-that small granitic bead, set in a silver river which civilization has so poisoned that even New Yorkers know better than to drink it-I think the Indians came out ahead, though Europeans may disagree. Indians were making and using beads (from shells, for instance) long before Peter Minuit bought Manhattan and Wall Street was built, or for that matter before Jupiter raped Europa and produced a bull market. Still, it was great to have bits of colored glass poured from Italy or Czechoslovakiainto our savage palms. Now audiences at our powwows can see some of the rainbow ideas our hands have made visible, as we move around the drum at dances and ceremonies. We can make Homeric similes with foreign beads and foreign words; but I’d like to move here the previous question of what “beads”and “money”really are-and “wampum” as well, because sometimes, when that Manhattan chestnut is once more being served up (maybe at Thanksgiving), the term wampum still burbles forth-as if it were a word for “Indian money.” Wampum, as I understand it, was not necessarily beads, nor was it “just” money; it was more a historical record, in beautiful form, of matters held sacred-but because the Europeans saw that it was given such respect, they naturally took it as “money.” The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us that wampum was originally used primarily as a record of an important agreement or treaty and as an object of tribute given by subject tribes, and came to be used as money in the Western sense only after white contact.