Mohawk and Mahican

The Iroquois and other Native groups of the Woodlands are known for wampum necklaces like these reproductions. The beads and pendants were hand carved from the marine shells quahog and whelk. Smaller beads were tubes, ovals, barrels, circles, cones, diamonds, triangles, squares, and wavy-edge shaped beads. Larger tube beads and pendants were 2 and 8 centimeters long of animals, turtles, birds, claws, talons, and crescent shapes. Mohawk and Mahican tribes, who obtained shell beads from the coastal New England wampum makers, were major wampum suppliers to the Seneca. Although beads were probably traded as finished products, their arrangement on necklaces varied in different regions.