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
Prayer beads can also be used for repetitive prayer. While there are liturgical churches using prayer beads in prayer, non-liturgical Christian churches do not use them. In Islam, prayer beads are referred to as Misbaha (Arabic: مسبحة "mas'baha" ), Tasbih or Sibha and contain 99 normal-sized beads, (corresponding to the Names of God in Islam) and two smaller or mini beads separating every 33 beads. Sometimes only 33 beads are used, in which case one would cycle through them three times. The beads are traditionally used to keep count while saying the prayer. The prayer is considered a form of dhikr that