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
Shell money central California used the marine bivalve "Saxidomus" sp. to make shell money. On the east coast of North America, the members of the Iroquois Confederacy and Algonquian tribes, such as the Shinnecock tribe, ground beads called wampum, which were cut from the purple part of the shell of the marine bivalve "Mercenaria mercenaria", more commonly known as the hard clam or quahog. White beads were cut from the white part of the quahog or whelk shells. Iroquois peoples wove these shells in belts. In parts of West Asia, "Cypraea annulus", the ring cowry, so-called because of the bright orange-colored ring