And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Link provided by Holly Zane...thanks..:) Ish http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/037.html By Lois Scozzari, Graduate Student in American Studies, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut Originally Published in The Connecticut Review. "A certain yonng native leader, 'Prince Philip' . . . had a coat on and buckskins set thick with these beads of wampum in pleasant wild works and a broad built of the same. His accoutrements were valued at twenty pounds." John Josselyn. 1663 For the land, people, and animals of pre-colonial New England, the seventeenth century was a tumultuous one. They suffered the total rearrangement of the social and ecological balance achieved in previous centuries. The environment had been gradually and sometimes deliberately shaped into an abundantly productive ecosystem by indigenous people who had learned to live as part of their surroundings, adapting themselves to it and its seasons. The ability of people living on the land to move in accordance with its offerings was the key to a system of balance. These people recognized the necessity of balance in both the use of resources and in human relationships. 1 An integral part of native life, and one that fostered reciprocity was an item of multifarious value and use. In the Algonquian Language it was called "wampum". Wampum was a collection of small white or dark purple/black beads, meticulously fashioned from the shells found in abundance along the coast of Southern Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island. and the northern shore of Long Island. These shells were found on the mud or just below the surface of the water. 2 Wampum was the name applied without distinction to all varieties of beads, of which there were two main classes: <large snip of extensive information> Traditionally, Indian people buried their dead with wampum, "wherefore it is their custom to bury them, their bows and arrows and good store of their wampumpeag, and mowbacheis; one to affright that affronting Cereberus, the other to purchase more immense prerogatives in heaven". 68 Desperate economic situations in the decades that followed the Pequot defeat, caused impudent people to ransack their ancestors' graves for some salable trade items or wampum. These deeds revealed how broken down native systems had become to necessitate the forbidden act of grave robbing. Graves of the prestigious were no longer honored by distinct markings or decoration in order to disguise them from robbers. Democratization of graves furthered the loss of Indian identity.69 Still, in spite of these breakdowns, native people clung tenaciously to whatever spirituality and tradition they could. In Natick, for example, John Eliot's first and most "successful" reservation of Christian converts, burial was encouraged in the Christian way, without personal possessions. Yet, disturbances in the late eighteenth century revealed wampum, glass beads, spoons, a bottle half full of liquor and several other Indian artifacts, obviously indicating resistance on the part of Indians to abandon their traditional burial customs for Christian ways.70 At the peak of demand, counterfeiting became such a problem that Massachusetts passed laws to regulate the trade and standardize the bead. <<end excerpt Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
