"Wampum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... United States was flying. Captain Lewis delivered a speech, with the usual advice and counsel for their future conduct. We then acknowledged their chiefs, by giving to the grand chief a flag, a medal, a certificate, with a string of wampum; to which we added a chief's coat; that is, a richly laced uniform of the United States artillery corps, and a cocked hat and red feather. One second chief and three inferior ones were made or recognised by medals, and a suitable present of tobacco, and articles ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... a mockingbird singing like mad from a china tree, and the woods all level before us like a floor,—no brush at all, just fine grass, with flowers in it like pinks in a garden. So we smoked the peace pipe with the Chickasaws, and I hung a wampum belt with fine words, and we went on, the next day, walking over strawberries so thick that our moccasins were stained red. At noon we overtook a party of boatmen from the Ohio,—tall men they were, with beards, and dark and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Mexico, where the "porcelain, which are the pearls of the country," was obtained from a kind of oysters. It is an undoubted fact that a traffic was carried on with tribes as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, from whom shells used for wampum were obtained by successive interchanges of commodities with intervening tribes. They had also some vague notion of alligators, which are apparently referred to by the description, "certain aquatic animals, larger and swifter than elk," ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... o'clock, Pontiac and his thirty-six chiefs, with a train of warriors, came into the fort to their pretended council, and were received with great politeness. Pontiac made his speech, and when he came forward to present the wampum belt, the receipt of which by the Major was, as the Indian woman had informed them, to be the signal for the chiefs and warriors to commence the assault, the Major and his officers drew their swords half out of their scabbards, and the troops, with their muskets loaded and bayonets ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... uniformity; they are not scarce, as diamonds are, so that a pinch of them might measure the value of a city; nor are they as plenty as blackberries, so that a wagon-load could scarcely buy a fat goose for dinner. They cannot be washed away like a piece of soap, nor wear out like a bit of wampum, nor crumble like agate or carnelian in dividing. In short, they combine all the advantages that are needed, with few or none of the disadvantages that would be troublesome, in a substance which is used for money. They possess intrinsic utility, they are equably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of the race. God is the only real appraiser, and we never get back a money-value for our soul's toil. Whether we pass wampum, or nickels, or taels, or bank-checks, we are not yet ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... states in the deed "that Choconoe for his wages, and going to marke out the Land shall have for himselfe, one coat, foure pounds of poudar, six pounds of led, one dutch hatchet, as also seventeen shillings in wampum," which, together with pay for the land, "they must send by Chockanoe." Our early settlers were always behindhand in their payments, and in this case, as evidenced by a receipt attached, pay was not received ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... Annie, sang sweetly as it sailed along. Then a gondola of lovely Venetian ladies, rowed by the handsome artist, who was the pride of the town. Next a canoe holding three dusky Indians, complete in war-paint, wampum, and tomahawks, paddled before the brilliant barge in which Cleopatra sat among red cushions, fanned by two pretty maids. Julia's black eyes sparkled as she glanced about her, feeling very queen-like with a golden crown on her head, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... nose, and a mouth shaped like a mastiff's. His face was half thrown in shade by a broad hat, with a buck's-tail in it. His gray hair hung short in his neck. He wore a hunting-frock, with Indian leggings, and moccasons, and a tomahawk in the broad wampum belt round his waist. As Dolph caught a distinct view of his person and features, he was struck with something that reminded him of the old man of the haunted house. The man before him, however, was different in his dress and age; he was more cheery, too, in his aspect, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... trembling ewes and their babies were not molested; for when the pack reached the river bank near the farthest slough, they halted to quarrel at a boulder—till the sun came up in the east again and glittered on a string of glass wampum lying beside the rock. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... for the third time. A group of Indian chiefs were located in a wigwam. A young brave entered, distinguished by the eagle plume and wampum belt, the bow and hatchet, and threw down at the feet of the eldest warrior a bundle of the scalps he had brought back from battle. A hum of approbation rose from the assembly. The curtain fell. The word trophy ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... primary art of writing: "First, there is mere gesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, then hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters,"—the last an evolution from all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of an alphabet in the sign language of the North American Indian than there is of man in ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... stone fireplace, in which pine logs, half as large as I am, were burning; a boarded floor, a round table, two rocking chairs, a carpet-covered backwoods couch; and skins, Indian bows and arrows, wampum belts, and antlers, fitly decorated the rough walls, and equally fitly, rifles were stuck up in the corners. Seven men, smoking, were lying about on the floor, a sick man lay on the couch, and a middle-aged lady sat at ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... their heads is managed in different ways: some pluck out and destroy all except a lock hanging from the crown of the head, which they interweave with wampum and feathers. But the women wear it very long, twisted down their backs, with beads, feathers, and wampum, and on their heads they carry little ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... very ridiculous manner. Their language is guttural, harsh, and polysyllabical; and their speech consists of hyperbolical metaphors and similies, which invest it with an air of dignity and heighten the expression. They manage their conferences by means of wampum, a kind of bead formed of a hard shell, either in single strings, or sewed in broad belts of different dimensions, according to the importance of the subject. Every proposition is offered, every answer made, every promise corroborated, every declaration attested, and every treaty confirmed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... began to bring in their prisoners, each chief giving up the captives of his tribe with long harangues, and many gifts of wampum, as pledges of good faith, and promises of a peace never to be broken. They said they had not merely buried the hatchet now, where it might sometime be dug up, but they had thrown it into the sky to the Great Spirit, who would never give it back again. They wished Bouquet to notice that they ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... any appeal he might make in the interests of the British to the loyalty of the Six Nations. For over a hundred years they had taken from the colonial agents who represented the crown wampum belts as a sign of treaty obligations. Treaties had been made with the king; the word of the red man had been given to the king. Promises made to them by the king's agents had always been performed. Why, therefore, should they ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... one of song and dance. The warriors preceding the chief carried what the English thought "a sceptre," but what we moderns would call a peace-pipe. The chains in their hands were probably strings of bears' claws, or something like wampum; the "crowns of feathers," plumed head-dresses; the gifts in the rush baskets borne by the women to the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut |
