d of
twenty stivers, and eight beads were reckoned equal to one stiver. As
heretofore there was little or no certain coin in circulation and wampum
passed for current payment in all cases. Indeed the country was so
drained of even this currency by the Indian trade, that there was
difficulty in obtaining a sufficiency. To remedy this state of affairs,
the governor and council of New York were in 1673 constrained to issue
their proclamation which was published at Albany, Esopus, Delaware, Long
Island and the adjacent parts, commanding that "instead of eight white
and four black (beads), six white and three black should pass for a
stiver; and three times so much the value of silver."[56]

The contributions in the churches were for many years made in wampum,
and the first church on the Jersey shore was built with funds
contributed in this way from Sabbath to Sabbath. As late as 1683, "the
schoolmaster in Flatbush was paid his salary in wheat, wampum value: He
was bound to provide a basin of water for the purpose of baptism, for
which he received from the parents or sponsors twelve stivers in
wampum."[57] Nor ten years later had the money of the aborigines become
wholly supplanted by gold and silver, for we learn that "in 1693, the
ferriage of each single person from New York to Brooklyn was eight
stivers in wampum, or a silver two-pence."[58] Further than this we are
unable to trace, though we have good reason to believe that it
circulated, to a limited extent, for some time thereafter.

Thus while the Indian declined in power his simple coinage passed from
hand to hand, among his conquerors, in the haunts where unnumbered
generations of his ancestors had trafficked it in rude barter, or
offered it with solemn ceremonial, their costliest offering, to their
country's gods. It was for about a quarter of a century a legal tender
in New England, while among the Dutch it was during half a century often
the only circulating medium, and among both Dutch and English it filled
a more or less important part in the currency for nearly an entire
century.

When at length the increasing wealth of the people drove wampum out of
common use, it still remained an important article in commerce. It was
manufactured at New York until the commencement of the present century
to be used in traffic with the Indians, for whom it had lost none of its
charms, and to be carried by our whalers into the northern seas.

Treaties and compacts between t