Pete: > On Sat, 13 Apr 2002, Ed Weick wrote: > > >I don't think that what Pete is describing in the following is wampum, > >which, I'm pretty sure is associated with the Iroquoian people of the > >upper St. Lawrence and eastern Great Lakes (e.g. Ontario, Quebec, New > >York State, etc.). > > I can't remember if the word "wampum" was specifically ascribed to > these shells, but my impression was that it was. At any rate, these > are the white shells which are seen in images of plains indians in > traditional dress, woven into plates worn on the chest, with four > columns of horizontally oriented tubes, representing wealth in some > way. I believe these were used at least all across the prairies.
If the shells originated on the west coast, this attests to extensive trading networks. According to one of the books on my shelves: "The Nez Perces were a handsome people of three thousand or less in 1850. They occupied the eastern reaches of the recently disputed Oregon Country-from the rugged, forested mountains drained by the Clearwa-ter and Salmon rivers to the high, open plateaus gashed by the Snake and Grande Ronde rivers and bounded on the west by the Great Bend of the Columbia. They formed a bridge between the powerful buffalo-hunting plainsmen to the east and the small, loosely organized fishing groups to the west, and not surprisingly, their culture partook of both. ... "In addition to hunting and gathering, trade was an important element of the Nez Perce economy. They traded constantly with neighbors and periodically gathered at popular centers to meet more distant people. An annual truce in the warfare between the Nez Perces and their southern neighbors, Shoshonis and Paiutes, permitted a short period of trade. The Nez Perces' most important trade, however, occurred at the fixed fishing villages of the Wishram, Wasco, and Wyampam Indians at The Dalles of the Columbia. Here Nez Perces met with Chinookan-speaking coastal peoples to exchange dried meat, furs, hides, roots, bear claws, and elk teeth for dried clams, fish oil, baskets, carved wooden implements, and dentalium shells. Equally significant, the barterers exchanged techniques, skills, and methods as well as legends, traditions, and lore that subtly but strongly reshaped intangible aspects of their cultures." [Robert M. Utley, "The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846 -1890, University of New Mexico Press, 1984, pp. 6-7] Ed Weick
