Wampumpeag Currency.

When exploring parties penetrated to Long Island Sound, they found along its coasts tribes of Indians far more civilized than those who had been met farther north. The cause or indication of their superiority was that they had a circulating medium. This consisted of beads of two kinds, one white, made out of the end of a periwinkle shell, and the other black, made out of the black part of a clam shell. These beads were rubbed down and polished as articles of ornament, and arranged in strings or belts into jewelry, being objects of real beauty when the colors were artistically combined. These beads and belts were used by the Indians themselves as money, and were real money. They regarded one black bead as worth two white. This money was called wampumpeag or wampum, or peag.

The colonists began to use it first for exchanges with the Indians, and then amongst themselves. It was first made legal tender only for 12d. in Massachusetts, but by custom it became the prevailing currency. The white man also proved his superiority by counterfeiting it. A fathom or belt of wampum consisted of 360 beads. One fathom of white would buy furs which were valued at 5s. sterling, and one fathom of black would buy furs worth 10s. Therefore,

These were the rates at which the peag first circulated among the colonists, and its operation is in many respects worthy of study. It was, for the Indians, in their limited community, a perfect money. They divided their labors, some hunting and fishing, some, who lived on the shore, making peag. They made as much as they chose or could. It was a product of labor, and subject to demand and supply. It was valued as jewelry, and when thus made up and appropriated, it passed out of circulation. Prices must have fluctuated in it according to the active circulation which extended several hundred miles inland westward. It was subject to deterioration by wear and use.

When the colonists, who were in exchange relations with a world which used gold and silver, began to use it, other currency laws came into operation. It was not exportable, would not satisfy foreign debts, was not desired by the whites, save for the conventional purpose of money.