Wampum: A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia

In 1868, a physician and historian named Ashbel Woodward stood before the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia and unfurled a singular obsession: wampum, the sacred shell beads that once functioned as currency, treaty-record, and ceremonial gift among the Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. This paper, published in full in 1878, investigates wampum's origins in the shells of quahog clams and channeled whelks, its painstaking production using stone tools, and its journey from sacred object to colonial commodity. Woodward traces how European traders, recognizing the beads' scarcity and cultural weight, adopted wampum as currency in the fur trade, fundamentally reshaping economic exchange between settlers and tribes. The essay illuminates a world where strings of purple and white beads could seal alliances, record history, and signify wealth, a currency that carried meaning far beyond its material worth.