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
Pamlico around 1700. Chiefs' corpses were buried in the temples as before. Commoners could purchase the right of burial in the temple precinct with enough money. Shell beads (wampum) served as money, for example, to compensate victims of crimes. Marriage restrictions that prohibited marrying first cousins made it difficult to find mates within rapidly shrinking communities. Resulting marriages into other tribes certainly strengthened intertribal bonds. The "huskenaw" rite appears to have been used as an initiation for both boys and girls. It was held around Christmas and lasted for five or six weeks, during which the adolescents were separated in a