What is does wampum mean?
Wampum is a belt of beads. Wampum was highly prized by the Native Americans who lived in and near what is now New York City. It was their art and their writing. Europeans recognized the value the Native Americans placed on wampum and often mistook the beaded belts for mere money. Indeed, the shortage of metal coins and the convertible nature of wampum into fur pelts made wampum an important component in the money supply of the Dutch colonists who settled the area. For the Lenape and Seneca people of the area, wampum was much more than money. Wampum recorded memories. It recorded contracts and treaties. It communicated the news from distant villages. It could express wishes for peace and prosperity or could summon scattered soldiers for war. Wampum was difficult to make. Belts required thousands of beads and each bead had to be individually ground and drilled from the shells of quahogs or whelks. Wampum was not for trivial or silly communication. Everything said with wampum had great va
