Finding Wampum in North Carolina

Well, I didn’t really find wampum in North Carolina. I did, however, stumble across the home of John Lawson who offered a curious description of wampum in 1709.

I didn’t go out looking for John Lawson. My wife and I took a trip to the Outer Banks on our first weekend in North Carolina last September and, following the scenic route, we passed through historic Bath. Every other lot in this hamlet seemed to have a historic signpost, and we soon we came upon this one.

“Hey, this guy wrote about wampum,” I said.

As a settler in North Carolina, however, Lawson is an outlier when it comes to wampum descriptions. Wampum country was centered around the Five Nations Iroquois, far to the north, so it’s unusual to find descriptions of wampum in the sources of the southern colonies.

It’s possible he was not reporting on what he saw, but what he heard or read elsewhere. Or, it’s possible that by the time he was writing, wampum production had expanded from Long Island Sound to southern shores. It’s not insignificant, however, that he was killed by Tuscaroras, Iroquoian speakers who later migrated north and joined the people of the Long House to become the Six Nations. His vocabulary of the Tuscarora people included words for wampum. It’s a piece the needs further investigation.

Lawson wrote that wampum “is made out of a vast great Shell, of which that Country affords Plenty; where it is ground smaller than the small End of a Tobacco-Pipe, or a large Wheat-Straw.”