Wampum at the Onondaga Longhouse Six Nations Reserve in New York. These belts dated to the late 18th century and are sacred to the Longhouse religion. They had been away from their tribes for over a century. The Seneca Nation commissioned replicas of five historic wampum belts completed in 2008. Artists continue to weave belts of a historical nature, as well as designing new belts based on their own concepts. 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
Puka shell Puka shell Puka shells originally were naturally occurring bead-like objects which can be found on some beaches in Hawaii. Each one was the beach-worn apex of a cone snail shell, a kind of seashell from a sea snail. "Puka" is the Hawaiian word for "hole" and refers to the naturally occurring hole in the middle of these rounded and worn shell fragments. These natural beads were made into necklaces. Numerous inexpensive imitations are now widely sold as puka shell necklaces. The majority of these are not made from cone shells, but from other shells, or even from plastic. In addition,