gold have I none," and no one could be shorter than that. The North
American Indian was no better off than Peter in his gold reserve or
silver supply; but he managed to get along with the quahog clam. That
was the money substance out of which he made the wampum, and the
shell-heaps scattered over the island are mute monuments to an industry
which was blasted by the demonetization of the hard-shell clam. Wampum
was a good money in the Indian civilization. It was the product of human
labor as difficult and tedious as the labor of the gold-miner of to-day.
It had intrinsic value, for it was redeemable in anything the Indian had
to give, from his skill in the chase to his squaw. It took time,
patience, endurance and skill to make a thing of beauty out of a clam,
even in the eyes of an Indian, but when the squaws and the old men had
ground down the tough end of the shell to the size of a wheat straw, and
had bored it with a sliver of flint, and strung it upon a thew of
deerskin, and tested its smoothness on the noses, they had an article
which had as much power over an Indian mind as a grain of gold to-day
has over us. There were two kinds of wampum, the blue and the white. The
Montauks to this day know that there is a difference between the two.
The blue came from our clam. The white, which was the product of the
periwinkle, did not need so much labor to fit it for use as wampum, and
it was cheaper. The blue was the gold; the white was the silver. One
blue bead was worth two white ones. The Indians did not try to keep up
any parity of the beads. They let each kind go for just what it was
worth. The Puritans used to restring the beads and keep the blue ones.
Then the Indians strung their scalps.

Why was wampum good money in its time? The supply was limited. It took a
day to make four or five beads. It was in itself a thing of value to the
Indian for ornament. It was easily carried about from place to place. It
was practically indestructible. It was always alike. It was divisible.
The value attached to it did not vary. It was not easily counterfeited.
So it was that it became the money of the colonists; a legal tender in
Massachusetts and the tool of the primitive commerce of this continent.
The Puritan took it for firewater and gave it back for furs. Long Island
was the great mint for this pastoral coinage. It was called the "Mine of
the New Netherlands." The Indian walked the beach at Rockaway, dug his
toes in the sand, t