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 Shia Islam, adherents of the Ahmadiyya and Salafi sects shun them as an intolerable innovation. According to Mirza Tahir Ahmad of the Ahmadiyya community, the use of prayer beads is a form of innovation which was not practised by the early Muslim community Sikh worshipers may use "mala" (prayer beads) while reciting verses from the Guru Granth Sahib. These prayer beads may be used as a part of the Sikh attire and worn around turbans or wrists. An early use of prayer beads can be traced to Hinduism where they are called "japa mala". Japa is the repeating of the