Wampum Wampum Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of American Indians. It includes the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and the white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. It was used by the northeastern Indian tribes as a form of gift exchange, and the colonists adopted it as currency in trading with them. Eventually, the colonists developed more efficient methods of producing wampum, which caused inflation and ultimately its obsolescence as currency. Wampum was often kept on strings like Chinese cash. Before European
Red Horn story, "Wears Man-Heads in His Ears" puts on a pair of prosopic earpieces which come to life. Prosopic ear ornaments have been found throughout much of the S.E.C.C. culture area in archaeological excavations and are called "Long-nosed god maskettes". They are typically made of either copper or shell, which were highly valued materials. Most wampum belts, for instance, are made of shells strung together. In contemporary Hotcąk the standard word for wampum is "worušik", a word which also denotes earrings. It is a contraction of "wa-horušik", "something suspended from the ears". This shows a linguistic "memory" of a time when