[Edward Manning Ruttenber (1872)] Gold, silver or copper coins they had none. Their standards of value were the hand or fathom of wampum, and the denotas or bags which they made themselves for measuring and pre serving corn. Such was their currency and such their only commercial transactions. To obtain wampum they made war and took captives for whom they demanded ransom, or made the weaker tribes tributaries to the stronger. 1 There were two kinds of wampum in wampum, or six of "white, were equal to a early use by the Indians, as a standard of stuyver among the Dutch, or a penny value, the purple or black and the white, among the English. Some variations, The purple was made from the interior por-however, existed in its value, according to tions of the vcnus mercenaria, or common time and place. A single string of wam-conch. The white was wrought out of the pum of one fathom, ruled at five shillings pillar of the periwinkle. Each kind was in New England, and is known in New converted into a kind of bead, by being Netherland to have reached as high as rounded and perforated, so as to admit of four guilders, or one dollar and sixty-six being strung on a fibre of deer's sinew, cents. The old wampum was made by This was replaced after the discovery, by hand and was an exceedingly rude article, linen thread.