Wampum the spoken language is. Records and treaties are kept in this manner, and individuals could write letters to one another in this way. Wampum belts were used as a memory aid in oral tradition, and were sometimes used as badges of office or as ceremonial devices in Indian culture such as the Iroquois. The 1820 New Monthly Magazine reports on a speech given by chief Tecumseh in which he vehemently gesticulated to a belt, pointing out treaties made 20 years earlier and battles fought since then. The National Museum of the American Indian repatriated eleven wampum belts to "Iroquois" chiefs
Prehistoric beads in the Philippines of the shell beads found in sites were actually cut beads. This shows that there was a significant development of technique and method to be able to design these shell beads, as modification after the cutting process would have been substantially difficult. Francis discussed in his study of the Philippine shell bead collection, that the beads may have been around since the Late Neolithic period and were later replaced by glass and other inorganic beads from about 200 BCE – 1200 CE. Glover and Henderson place the date of glass bead trade in Southeast Asia at no later than 400