Counterfeit Wampum

Before the lawyers and treaties and the Court of International Trade, Manhattan and the surrounding area had a very different set of diplomatic rituals.

For centuries before the arrival of Europeans, the Lenape and surrounding indigenous groups used wampum to strengthen ties between groups.

Wampum is mostly made from the shells of Quahog and Whelk, a type of clam that used to be abundant along the Eastern Seaboard.

Wampum quahog are carefully selected with preference given to those with a thick inner purple band, which will create brilliant contrast with the white beads of the outer shell.

After the quahog are harvested, opened, and eaten, the shells are gently chipped, ground, and polished, before being drilled with a tiny bow drill made of stone, bone, or wood. (Process and materials varied.)

Think about this for a minute.

Human work creates value. Sometimes time will create value for us, but we still have to work to unlock that value. We have to dive for the pearls, drill and refine the oil, make the medicine and administer it. Value = Work.

You and I live in a world of manufactured abundance. Far away machines crank out endless copies of products with seemingly little effort.

What is the value of such a thing? Does its value equal the work done to extract, refine, ship, and burn the fuel it required? Or does it potentially have negative value because more work went into it than utility will come out of it?

Because of our material abundance and the massive subsidization of work created by burning fossil fuels, you and are disconnected from the real metabolic value of work.

But the Lenape lived in a more sustainable world, largely unaided by fuels extracted from the earth. The relationship between work and value was much more intuitively understood.

The work of making wampum begins to make perfect sense.

A single strand could take up to a year, making this a very real expression of the wealth of a group. The production of wampum says we have enough abundance to spend time and energy creating beauty. And when wampum is given to other groups, it says very loudly we are willing to share our abundance with you.

This symbolic act of treaty and collaboration was understood and valued by peoples far inland, who never saw the sea, but saw the work and the value and the symbolism.

Even early European visitors understood the value of wampum, and used it as a trade good themselves.

But then the wetiko got involved.

Almost immediately, Europeans began looking for ways to counterfeit wampum. By the end of the 1620s, Europeans were using cowrie shells from East Africa and Asia to create 'wampum-like' trade goods. These shells were lighter and less durable, but made a ready alternative as they were often used as ballast in the holds of ships.

Europeans also used glass and clay beads manufactured in Europe to create other wampum-like trade goods, and tinkered with purple dyes and other purple shells, and of course experimented with forced labor by coercing the Lenape and other indigenous groups to make wampum for them.

In short, the Europeans did all kinds of work to avoid the work of actually making wampum, and in so doing, completely missed the point of it. It's a material expression of work and care and community. But Europeans just wanted as much of it as fast as they could get it.

As a result of the influx of wampum-like material, the value of wampum itself began to collapse, as Europeans took more and more land and goods from the First Peoples.

Of course this was just a small part of the genocide, and as the surviving indigenous peoples of the new world were swept west in the 18th and 19th centuries, wampum ceased to be used as a basis for trade, treaty, and connection.

Eventually, the dollar would take over as the material that binds us together. Some dollars are real - made by machines - but most of them are just fictitious numbers on a server. Unlike wampum, their value is no longer directly linked to work.

And as we watch the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, and people getting kidnapped on Canal Street, and the pathetic and laughable lies these idiots tell each other, so they can get more dollars with out doing the actual work, it's easy to be upset. I'm fucking upset.

But I don't want to pretend like this is anything new. We in the hegemony are just used to this shit happening further out of sight. And I'd argue that this ship of fools in Washington has gotten as far as they have because you and I and every one else doesn't want to think about the fact that our whole fucking system is built on counterfeit wampum.

Do the fucking work.

Dan Flag

Cover Image: Keith Haring at Martos Gallery, May 2025.