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 Chemicals Shell Chemicals Shell Chemicals is the petrochemicals arm of Royal Dutch Shell. The name "Shell Chemicals" refers to the nearly seventy companies engaged in chemicals businesses for Shell, which together make up one of the largest petrochemical producers in the world. Shell companies first entered the chemicals industry in 1929, via a partnership with Koninklijke Nederlandsche Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken in the Netherlands called NV Mekog, which manufactured ammonia from coke-oven gas produced at the steelworks in IJmuiden. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Shell Chemical Company (founded 1929) began the world's first production of ammonia from natural gas in California