Trade in New England

[Pointhead]

I have long wondered about the trade networks that existed in New England, with jasper being found here. I know it was likely sourced from Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. What do you think our local Indians might’ve traded in return for jasper, which must’ve been a valued lithic? Fish? Quartz? Did they produce stone tools for trade, pendants, decoration? Clothing?

There are many pieces missing which I would love to put together someday. As a historian I truly wish we had a partially complete picture of NA history here in the United States.


long question short.. what are some examples of evidence of trade between the New England states and other states along the eastern seaboard?

ive heard stories of possible trading posts, based on the lithics and items that were found here that would’ve only been brought from other regions.

If you know of any links, or have any artifacts that show trading of Native American goods in ancient times post em up here!!!

[OnewiththewilD]

Yeah i would think dried fish and various other seafood, wampum and other types of shells,maybe some types of stone like steatite or chlorite, probably items like beads and pendants and pipes and such id imagine as well.

[CMD]

When Jay mentioned wampum, it was like bingo. There it is. The Narragansett and Pequot were huge players in the production and trade in wampum, a status item before it briefly became a medium of exchange among Dutch, Indian, and English. Has to have begun sometime pre-contact. The Mohawk generally left the Algonquin speaking Narragansett alone for that reason alone I believe. Not that other coastal people could not harvest whelk and quahog, but the Narragansett emerged as dominant in that respect. Wampum was spread throughout the Iroquois Confederacy via our local tribes. It would be interesting to know if it spread further afield. So you could look up that history, as far as it's known. Which would mostly be the historic era, because it's documented, but it must extend further back. It's several decades usage as money is another chapter as well.

The RI state mineral, Bowenite, might have been involved, but I don't believe that's actually demonstrated. It came up for discussion once because Bowenite was used to make bannerstones in the Midwest:

https://forums.arrowheads.com/forum/general-discussion-gc5/rocks-minerals-geology-gc42/232178-rhode-island-bowenite

[CMD]

This looks like an interesting read.. At the link, just a Google return using various searches, it mentions even European goods making it as far south as eastern New York by the 12-13 centuries. Some other clues came up as well. Copper was traded here from the Great Lakes, for example.

https://books.google.com/books?id=M4...ngland&f=false

[Pointhead]

Charlie thanks for the in depth response! Very cool read.

My dad found a copper adze about 10 years ago in Rhode Island while metal detecting.

[CMD]

Great find! Ben, do you figure 17th century or prehistoric? I have some 17th century iron implements from an Iroquois site I'll try to post...

[BabaORiley]

Great topic Point. That copper adze is just awesome too. I have always thought about just how much commerce went on amongst the NA people. There have been a few finds in my area that have no business whatsoever in my area of Illinois or in Illinois for that matter. Copper turns up from time to time and there have been finds in the southern part of the state that could only have come from South America and Mexico. What would have been your closest source of copper in Rhode Island Point? The Great Lakes region ?

[CMD]

It would have always been so-called native copper, so beaten into shape. Great Lakes or Nova Scotia. I imagine some copper arrived from the Old Copper culture, but I really don't know any specifics, just guessing that some must have arrived in our area. And perhaps copper arrived via the Hopewell culture at a much later date.

[Shedhunter]

Great topic pointhead. I don't have any answers for you, only more questions. I'm from southeast Mass, and have read about the extensive trade in wampum from this area. I've been wondering for some time now why we don't find any evidence of this. Most of the sites we search are coastal, and it seems that these areas would be perfect for wampum production, but we've not found a single piece. I can say that we do find plenty of discarded shell bits in the middens from quohogs, oysters, and clams, so it's always been a mystery to me why we haven't found any wampum beads or similar artifacts here. Perhaps outside the middens these items don't stand up to the acidic soils here.

[CMD]

Great topic pointhead. I don't have any answers for you, only more questions. I'm from southeast Mass, and have read about the extensive trade in wampum from this area. I've been wondering for some time now why we don't find any evidence of this. Most of the sites we search are coastal, and it seems that these areas would be perfect for wampum production, but we've not found a single piece. I can say that we do find plenty of discarded shell bits in the middens from quohogs, oysters, and clams, so it's always been a mystery to me why we haven't found any wampum beads or similar artifacts here. Perhaps outside the middens these items don't stand up to the acidic soils here.

I do know of one wampum manufacturing site. In fact, I picked up 3 whelk "skeletons" from the site the other day where someone had been digging the site and left the whelks on their dirt mound. The whelk was used for white wampum beads, the lesser valued compared to the purple quahog. This site has no middens that I know of. The wife and I used to dig there ourselves, and the fact that it was a wampum manufacturing station was soon obvious. However, we never found finished beads. I have several hundred tiny shell disc beads from Cape Cod. My wife stranded them at one time, but the strand recently came undone, unfortunetly, and she has not got around to restranding, since it is so time consuming and they are so tiny. They also are not wampum, which were tubular beads.

Fort Ninigret, in Charlestown, RI, associated both with the Dutch and natives(it was the territory of the Eastern Niantics, closely allied with the Narragansett) is believed to have been, in part, a wampum factory in the days when wampum was used as a form of currency, and metal tools were used to manufacture the beads. Fort Ninigret can be visited and the outlines of the European style design "fortification" are still visible. There is a small park, and it sits atop a terrace overlooking Ninigret Pond, one of the strand of salt ponds lining RI's Atlantic coast.

I have two wampum beads I can photograph later from a western NY Seneca Iroquois 17th century village. One made the old way, and one made with metal implements. Wampum would have been mostly the possession of the sachems, not everybody else, so that may explain why we don't find any. It would not have seen widespread use below the elites, I believe.

The Mohegan museum located in Uncasville has a frame of part of a wampum belt that had belonged to Uncas, the most famous of 17th century Mohegan sachems and a towering figure in 17th century New England native-English politics, and passed down through the generations.

[Shedhunter]

Great information, thanks.

[clambellies]

Charlie, our friend Bill from Marthas Vineyard has found a shoreline site where the central Columns of Whelk shells were processed into beads. I believe he published a report of that somewhere. He showed me the site, and broken pieces of whelk shells were eroding out of the black soil layer of a dune. I'll have to ask him where he published the article.

[CMD]

Alan, I have found a great number of whelk shell columns in one field in particular, where they have been fashioned as little awls, or little stabbing implements. Tom had suggested once they made for good single prong forks to stab quahog meat and such when eating shellfish. I never realized they themselves were artifacts, and used to just leave them.

But, yeah, we did have a dig site where there was just too many coming up, and we we realized it had to be a wampum processing station.

Here is a necklace of shell disc beads, old photos I found before my wife's stranding came undone. She will restring them one day. They vary in thickness, all hand made, and from Cape Cod. Now, I have since read in Wilbur's The New England Indians that disc beads were also used as wampum. Not sure about that, but whatever, I appreciated getting all these local beads, several hundred all told....

[clambellies]

Imagine the work it takes to make all of those tiny beads.....

[OnewiththewilD]

Those are awesome!!! I think I know the spot your talking about too Charlie. A lot of whelk inner columns and it’s all sand out there. I read that the disk style beads where the type made before they had metal tools. The tubular kind they were able to make once they had thin metal files to bore the more delicate holes with.

[CMD]

Yeah, I think you're right. I do show one below that I thought might be pre-metal, but, the fact is, they had access to metal tools, like the thin nail described at the link I left below, long before actual Dutch and English settlement. Tools like that might even have made it down her from the Norse in Greenland, etc.

[CMD]

Those are awesome!!! I think I know the spot your talking about too Charlie. A lot of whelk inner columns and it’s all sand out there. I read that the disk style beads where the type made before they had metal tools. The tubular kind they were able to make once they had thin metal files to bore the more delicate holes with.

Yeah, Jay, I even wondered if you had left the whelk shells there, lol!! We used to actually dig on the other side of the street. I know Jeff mentioned that you and he had visited that spot one day. I also find this partially reduced whelk shells in one of the fields we hunt. Anyway, here we go:



And the stages in the production of white wampum from whelk shells:



Here are two white wampum beads, one native made for sure, and the other could be made by native or European using metal tools. These are from the Dann Site, Seneca Iroquois, Livingston Co., western NY, a village dating roughly 1655-75:

Blue and white wampum, with quahog and whelk shells:


I think it's cool to collect these whelk shells as evidence of wampum manufacturing. The funny thing is you can find whelk shells in that condition on the shore, where they are battered naturally. But at a site inland, I feel you can be certain they were used in wampum production. But, when greatly reduced, like these two, from a field, with very sharp tips, I'm also very open to Tom's suggestion, from a number of years ago, that they made nice little stabbing forks for lifting out the meat of shellfish. Just a guess, I do not know for sure, but I have seen similar in museum displays described as little shell tools:



Good resource here:

https://wampumtrail.wordpress.com/tag/wampum-beads/

[OnewiththewilD]

Honestly it probably was me,lol. I was in there a few months ago. And I leave all the shell I dig in a pile usually. If the holes were filled in nice then yeah it was me. You told me about that spot awhile back, I’ve got a few cool things from in there now, easy digging it’s all sand!

[CMD]

Hint: this was go-cart city. We used to dig on the other side of the street. That was where Helen saw the Indian brave watching her one day, and neither she nor I ever dug there again. One of her coolest stories ever, but don't blame her for heading back to the car!

[CMD]

Various size shell disc beads, Seneca Dann Site, c. 1655-75, Livingston Co., NY. I wonder if beads from that site were obtained from the Narragansett. The Seneca were the western-most tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy: