Shinnecock Indian Nation western Connecticut, the lower Hudson River Valley, through present-day New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Like the other Native peoples of Long Island, the Shinnecock made "wampumpeag" (wampum), shell beads strung onto threads that were used as currency, for record-keeping, for aesthetic purposes, and to symbolize a family. These shell beads have been found at Native American-inhabited sites as far west as the Rocky Mountains, showing their value in a trade. Although other New England tribes produced "wampumpeag", the Indians of Long Island are reputed to have made the best. Paumanac, one of the many names given to Long Island, means
Beadwork five centuries in the Americas. Today a wide range of beading styles flourish. Alongside the widespread popularity of glass beads, bead artists continue incorporating natural items such as dyed porcupine quills, shell such as wampum, and dendrite, and even sea urchin spines in a similar manner as beads. Wampum shell beads are ceremonially and politically important to a range of Eastern tribes, and were used to depict several important treaties between the Native peoples and the colonists, as in the case of the Two Row Wampum Treaty. In the Great Lakes, Ursuline nuns introduced floral patterns to tribes who quickly