From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Seawan \Sea"wan\, Seawant \Sea"want\, n.
The name used by the Algonquin Indians for the shell beads
which passed among the Indians as money.
[1913 Webster]
Note: Seawan was of two kinds; wampum, white, and
suckanhock, black or purple, -- the former having
half the value of the latter. Many writers, however,
use the terms seawan and wampum indiscriminately.
--Bartlett.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Wampum \Wam"pum\, n. [North American Indian wampum, wompam, from
the Mass. w['o]mpi, Del. w[=a]pe, white.]
Beads made of shells, used by the North American Indians as
money, and also wrought into belts, etc., as an ornament.
[1913 Webster]
Round his waist his belt of wampum. --Longfellow.
[1913 Webster]
Girded with his wampum braid. --Whittier.
[1913 Webster]
Note: These beads were of two kinds, one white, and the other
black or dark purple. The term wampum is properly
applied only to the white; the dark purple ones are
called suckanhock. See Seawan. "It [wampum] consisted
of cylindrical pieces of the shells of testaceous
fishes, a quarter of an inch long, and in diameter less
than a pipestem, drilled . . . so as to be strung upon
a thread. The beads of a white color, rated at half the
value of the black or violet, passed each as the
equivalent of a farthing in transactions between the
natives and the planters." --Palfrey.
[1913 Webster]
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
wampum
n 1: informal terms for money [syn: boodle, bread,
cabbage, clams, dinero, dough, gelt, kale,
lettuce, lolly, lucre, loot, moolah, pelf,
scratch, shekels, simoleons, sugar, wampum]
2: small cylindrical beads made from polished shells and
fashioned into strings or belts; used by certain Native
American peoples as jewelry or currency [syn: wampum,
peag, wampumpeag]