Of Shell & Story: The Meaning and Memory of Wampum

by DANIELLE ALONSO-WYNNE (P’urhepecha) and co-authored by MALISSA COSTA   (Mashpee Wampanoag)

The coastal waters of New England have abounded with life for generations. It is a view that many people have come to enjoy over the years, but for the Wampanoag, it has been what has nourished and sustained them since the very beginning. As a coastal Algonquin people, they have honored the waters in their stories and seasonal rhythms, in their foodways and ceremony.

Nupee (water) represents memory and connection to the ancient ones and swimmers. Among the most striking expressions of this relationship is Wampum. Though often misunderstood as mere decoration or currency, Wampum is a vessel of knowledge. It holds history, affirms identity, and continues to be created today by the People of the Dawnland. I write this piece not as a maker of Wampum, but as someone who has listened intently to the teachings shared with me, and who is committed to ensuring they are honored with the care and respect they deserve.

Historically, wampum has played a central role in diplomacy, governance, and social structure. It was used to mark agreements, record treaties, and acknowledge significant events. Long before European arrival, wampum belts served as living records with each bead, color, and pattern carrying a specific meaning. These belts were spoken into being during public gatherings, where words and wampum together affirmed the shared memory of what had been agreed upon. The physical belt served as a document, but it was the spoken words that activated its meaning, binding people to their promises in both memory and material. For the Wampanoag and other Indigenous Nations across the Northeast, wampum carried the weight of law and the responsibilities of relationships.

The creation of wampum is both a tedious undertaking and a transformative one. It begins with quahog, a thick-shelled clam found along the shores of Long Island Sound to Narragansett Bay. Its shell bears the contrasting colors of deep purple and white, making it unique to the coastal waters of the Northeast. Wampum is also made from the inner whorls of the whelk, a spiral-shaped sea snail whose shell yields shades of white and pale pink.

The white parts of both shells symbolize the sun, renewal, peace, and purity, while the deep purple represents the unknown, the night, and the dark side of the moon. Together, these shades embody a principle of duality—light and dark, order and mystery, individual and community, that is central to Wampanoag cosmology. This duality is not oppositional but complementary. It appears in governance, kinship, and the visual language of wampum itself, where color placement conveys ideas about obligation, renewal, and truth.

The physical labor of making wampum is itself an act of reverence. Traditionally, the shells were cracked open with stone tools and ground against slate or sandstone. Beads were shaped and drilled by hand, then strung or woven together with sinew or plant fibers. Each stage of the process required an understanding of the shell’s resistance, fracture lines, and the slow, deliberate pace it demanded. Before the use of modern tools, crafting a single bead could take an entire day. In this way, wampum-making was a form of ceremony through the offering of time and attention to detail. Wampum itself traveled far beyond Wampanoag homelands, reaching Haudenosaunee and Lenape communities, and even as far west as the Great Lakes. Across these regions, its spiritual and diplomatic value was widely recognized.

However, by the 17th century, this cultural knowledge and relational use of wampum began to shift under the pressures of colonialism. European traders and settlers, particularly the Dutch and English, quickly recognized wampum’s value as a means of exchange and began mass-producing and commodifying it.

Missionaries and colonial administrators often misunderstood or ignored the ceremonial foundations of wampum, reducing it to a form of currency. The English colonies even attempted to standardize its value in their economic systems, fundamentally altering its role in Indigenous life. Primary sources from the 1600s, including missionary reports and trade records, reveal this transition. What was once a living archive of relationships was becoming subject to the extractive logic of colonial economies. The meaning behind the beads, their sacred colors, their placement in belts, their spoken power was obscured, though never entirely lost.

It is no surprise then that the process of making wampum also became a form of resistance. In a world where land, language, and spiritual practices were under assault, wampum continued to affirm identity. Even during the height of colonial expansion and forced assimilation, families held onto the knowledge of harvesting, shaping, and using shell beads in ceremonial and social life. Today, these traditions are resurging, and many Wampanoag artists are creating new belts, jewelry, and regalia that honor old designs while speaking to contemporary struggles and triumphs.

Yet continuing these practices is not without its challenges. While federally recognized tribes retain legal rights to harvest from their ancestral waters, that access is increasingly threatened. Coastal pollution, climate change, overfishing, and local restrictions pose real obstacles to gathering shellfish for food and ceremony. As Malissa Costa, my co-manager of the Historic Patuxet homesite, often explains to visitors and students, “You can’t make wampum if you don’t have clean water. You can’t honor your ancestors if the ocean is blocked from you. If we lose that, we lose a part of who we are.” These words are shaped by Malissa’s upbringing in Mashpee, where her family still continues to hunt, fish, and gather in the same place their ancestors did.

As historians and educators at Plimoth Patuxet Museums, and through our work with Juniper + Pine Indigenous Collective, we carry these teachings into public spaces with care and accountability. Whether we are guiding visitors through a recreated 17th-century wet8 (wetu) or leading community programs on Wampanoag homelands, our goal remains the same: to ensure that cultural knowledge is preserved through lived experience. We collaborate with fellow Indigenous artisans and knowledge keepers who continue to share these traditions forward for the next seven generations, and we listen deeply to the histories that each bead holds. Wampum is memory made tangible, a record written not in ink but in shell and story. Its continued presence is a reminder that we are still here, still creating, still honoring what has always mattered.

Danielle Alonso-Wynne (P’urhepecha) and Malissa Costa are site managers and historians at the Historic Patuxet Homesite at Plimoth Patuxet Museums. Together, they co-founded Juniper + Pine Indigenous Collective, which offers land-based education, cultural programming, and community advocacy rooted in Indigenous values and sovereignty. Their work focuses on centering Native voices in public history and revitalizing ancestral knowledge for future generations.