Note 19 — I Conrad Weiser’s Journal of a Tour to the Ohio August 11-October 2, 1748
Reading edition
The other edition of the journal adds, that the horses were “all scalled on their backs.”
The importance of “wampum” in all Indian transactions cannot be overestimated. It was used for money, as a much-prized ornament, to enforce a request (as at this time), to accredit a messenger, to ransom a prisoner, to atone for a crime. No council could be held, no treaty drawn up, without a liberal use of wampum. It was used also to record treaties, as the one described by Weiser between the Wyandots, Iroquois, and governor of New York. Hale—“Indian Wampum Records,” Popular Science Monthly, February, 1897—thinks that it was a comparatively late invention in Indian development, and took its rise among the Iroquois. Weiser’s list of the wampum used and received in this journey is to be found in Pennsylvania Archives, ii, p. 17.—Ed.