lying either upon the
mud, or just beneath the surface, and were wrought in the following
manner. The desirable portions of the shells were first broken out into
small pieces of the form of a parallelopiped; these were then drilled
and afterwards ground and polished. Possessing no better tools, the
Indians made shift to bore them with stone drills,[4] implements which
hardly correspond with the delicacy and exactness exhibited by the
specimens of original wampum that have come down to us. The process of
polishing and shaping was equally painful and laborious, for rubbing
with the hand over a smooth stony surface, was the only method which the
rudeness of the Aborigines could devise. Yet the finished beads, whether
attached in thick masses to garments, or strung in long flexible rows,
were very comely and without a trace of the tawdriness, which is so
characteristic of uncivilized peoples. The suckauhock with its varying
shades of purple was particularly beautiful. Its value was double that
of the white and the darker its color, the more highly it was prized.
But the laborious method of production imparted no trivial value to both
varieties.

It seems almost incredible that the Indian could produce so clever an
article with his rude implements. Some have conjectured that the
specimens produced before the natives obtained awl blades from the
colonists were very inferior to their later productions. One writer[5]
even goes so far as to suggest, that, before the advent of Europeans,
Indian beads consisted mostly of small pieces of wood, stained white or
black. The fact is, however, that the manufacture of wampum dates back
at least to the time of the mound builders, for quantities of beads
similar in form to the more modern article, and proved by chemical
tests and structural peculiarities to be similar in material, have been
exhumed from the ancient mounds of the west.[6]

Other species besides the wampum and suckauhock crept into local use
among the different tribes. The Iroquois in their civil and religious
ceremonies employed a variety named _otekoa_, and made from spiral fresh
water shells of the genus _unio_. This as may be inferred from its uses
was held in the highest esteem, and no other could be employed in the
different stages of the ceremonial.[7] In New England and perhaps
elsewhere, an inferior kind made evidently from shells too small and
thin to be wrought into the cylindrical beads, circulated to a limited