"Gold all is not that doth golden seem."-Spenser. Wampum-"Coyne, moneâsh, from the English money."-Roger Williams. The issue was civil government or savagery, and the Puritans won it. : INDIAN MONEY AS A FACTOR IN NEW ENGLAND CIVILIZATION.1 COMMERCE abides by great waters, and the sea shore has been its natural home from very early times. New England owed much to the sea, and especially to the fish which her skilful hand drew from its deep waters; but there was a marine treasure, of the shore and already at hand, which has not received the attention due to it, in considering the development of our early history. All new communities suffer for a currency. Capital must be scarce, but a circulating medium is yet rarer. The increasing wants of a new life constantly send off the valuable medium and tend to deprive enterprise and industry of the needed stimulus of money. This marine treasure was in the Indian money-"coyne, Monèash, from the English money," as Roger Williams2 quaintly terms it. These beads made from sea shells strung, or embroidered, on belts and garments, were the coveted treasures of Indian life. Tradition gives to the Narragansetts the honor of inventing these valued articles, valuable both for use and exchange. This tribe was one of the most powerful, and it is asserted that their commercial use of wampum gave them their best opportunities of wealth. The Long Island Indians3 manufactured the beads in large This paper was presented to the Historical and Political Science Association of the J. H. U. November 9, 1883, and is an important chapter in the Economic History of New England, to which Mr. Weeden is now devoting special attention.-ED. 2R. I. Hist. Coll. I., 1827, Key, p. 128. In this and other details I have freely used Dr. Woodward's interesting essay on Wampum, Albany, 1878. |
