wampum

How To Use wampum In A Sentence

• In our own time such words as papoose, sachem, tepee, wigwam and wampum have begun to drop out of everyday use; 11 at an earlier period the language sloughed off ocelot, manitee, calumet, supawn, samp and quahaug, or began to degrade them to the estate of provincialisms. Chapter 2. The Beginnings of American. 2. Sources of Early Americanisms
• From the early 1620s, coastal Indians supplied wampum (sacred shell beads, polished and strung in strands, belts, or sashes) to Dutch traders who exchanged it with inland natives for beaver pelts.
• The Indians had a sort of money called wampum, which was made of clam-shells, and this strange sort of specie was likewise taken in payment of debts by the English settlers. Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 4
• The taxonomic Latin for ‘quahog’ is Mercenaria mercenaria - a tautonym that pays tribute to the use of quahog shells as wampum.
• Wampum was prized by the Indians and used by the Europeans as currency in exchange for beaver pelts.
• The wampum was her family record, badge of her office; speech made while holding it was tantamount to testimony made upon the Bible. Drums of Autumn
• He had old-fashioned notions in favor of gold and silver, which he considered the true standards of wealth and mediums of commerce, and one of his first edicts was that all duties to government should be paid in those precious metals, and that seawant, or wampum, should no longer be a legal tender. Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete
• He doesn't know much about it, if he calls a wigwam a wampum," interposed Miss Smith, with still greater pertness. A Fair Barbarian
• Public confessions were made, and penitents touched a wampum belt as a pledge of reform.
• It should be said, in justice to the New Haven colonists, though they were the most opulent of the New England planters, save the wealthy settlers of Narragansett, that money of all kinds was scarce, and that the Indian money, wampum-peag, being made of a comparatively frail sea-shell, was more easily disfigured and broken than was metal coin; and that there was little transferable wealth in the community anyway, even in "Country Pay. Sabbath in Puritan New England