Cape Cod Means of Exchange

Wampum is made or carved from clam or quahog shells.

"…with a dark background denoting former or potential hostility among the tribes, lightened on the margins with white borders denoting the bonds of friendship that now surround them. The alternating panels of blue and white at the ends are evidently a convention imitated from the Iroquois. The four white triangles are tribal "wigwams," the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite, and Micmac. In the center is the pipe which is the symbol of peace by which the allies re joined" (Leavitt & Francis 1990: 17-18).

Aside from beauty, wearing or presenting jewelry had many social, economic, political and religious implications for the Native Americans of the 1600's in southern New England.

White wampum is the emblem of health, peace or purity. Purple and black wampum are color variants of the same bead, and were used for serious or civic affairs, sometimes indicating dis-ea

se , distress or hostility, at least in referring to the background colors in belt patterns. The

meanings in the designs can become very complicated, for example a belt may have white designs on a

purple background but be surrounded by a white border, indicating a relationship that was once hostile is now peaceful. A wampum belt painted red (with red ochre or vermilion) was sent as a summons for

war.

Personal headbands and bracelets might combine shell with glass or metal beads. Many Native American headbands and bracelets in the 1600's in southern New England incorporated squares, triangles, diagonal lines, crosses, people, animals and other geometric shapes. Belt designs might show kinship or connection with a particular group. Belts and beads validated treaties and were used to remember oral tradition.

Ceremonies of dance, curing, personal sacrifice incorporate religious and ritual aspects of beads. Jewelry was also used to display many physical or social "rites of passage", and shows that a person has gone through a certain transformation in their life, like maturity or marriage. Wampum could be presented by the family of a prospective husband to the family of a potential wife, and if accepted, granted approval for the marriage.

"The young man, when he had settled his mind upon marrying some special girl, would appoint an uncle, or some elderly man to be his go-between. Extra dignity was lent to the occasion by having two old men for negotiators. He would then procure some wampum, if he were rich enough a collar or necklace, if not, just a string. Next he would compose a message, the main points of which would be represented by the arrangement of white and purple beads. This message, accompanied by the mnemonic wampum, would be forthwith entrusted to the go-between's care, and he would go to the home of the girl's parents carrying the wampum in a rolled-up red handkerchief or other gaudy cloth. Here his message would be delivered, and the wampum left , to be debated upon by the girl's family. The negotiator would depart for a while to allow time for deliberation. Before long he would return for an answer. Now should the girl's family have decided negatively, the wampum would be returned to the old man, who would deliver it to the sender. And the matter was dropped. But should the suitor be favorably regarded, the wampum would be retained and upon the negotiator's next visit he would be answered in the affirmative or asked to defer a little longer. The retention of the wampum was considered a sign of consent. It often happened that the husband, after the wedding, would buy back the wampum" (Speck 1976: 254-255).


Cape Cod Mercy Dollar$

Named after Mercy Otis Warren

Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) Mercy Otis Warren was a poet, dramatist, satirist, patriot propagandist, and historian at a time when women, if they wrote, were confined to belle-lettres or religious subject matter. The American Revolution and her particular place in Massachusetts society and politics, however, practically forced Warren into the limelight. She was the third child of James Otis and Mary Allyne, of Barnstable, a farming town south of Plymouth, on Cape Cod. Both families were descended from the earliest Pilgrim settlers. James Otis was a farmer, merchant, and attorney, and his successful practice won him election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1745. Not an educated man himself, Otis wanted his two sons to have an education and hired the Reverend Jonathan Russell to prepare them for college. When Joseph, the oldest son, decided not to attend college, Mercy, the youngest child, was allowed to take his place. She studied the same curriculum as her brother James, except for Latin and Greek, which she read in translation. Both James and Mercy were exceptional students. Mercy loved history—especially political history—invective, and wit; Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World (1614) became a lifelong model for her. Both of the Otis children studied literature, including Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, and became able writers and rhetoricians. It was the younger James who first uttered the phrase “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” which became the battle cry for the American Revolution. In 1754, Mercy married James Warren, a farmer from Plymouth and a Harvard classmate of her brother. They had a long, happy marriage and raised five sons. Like the Otis men, James Warren was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He served continuously from 1766 to 1778, eventually becoming speaker of the House and president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which had moved to Watertown during the British occupation of Boston. A radical and outspoken activist, he became an active leader in local revolutionary politics. Because of her family connections, no other woman, with the exception of Abigail Adams, was as intimately involved as Mercy Otis Warren with the political issues of the day. Thus, when Tory supporters brutally beat her brother James in a Boston tavern in 1769, friends in her circle urged her to step in and take his place as a revolutionary polemicist. Warren complied, although a comment by her friend and fellow patriot John Adams suggests the social conventions massed against her. “Tell your wife,” Adams wrote to James Warren, that “God Almighty (I use a bold style) has entrusted her with Powers for the good of the World, which, in the Cause of His Providence, he bestows on few of the human race. That instead of being a fault to use them, it would be criminal to neglect them.” Warren used her “Powers” for the revolutionary cause. She wrote numerous letters and poems, which she published anonymously in newspapers. Her most effective efforts at propaganda were a series of satirical plays—the first plays written by an American woman. They appeared in newspapers and as pamphlets, instead of being performed, because Puritan Boston had laws against staging plays and did not have a theater until 1794. Three political plays have been identified as hers: The Adulateur (1772), The Defeat (1773), and The Group (1775), although the only play she acknowledged authorship of was The Group. All three focus on the moral evil of the Tory administration in Massachusetts, its hypocrisy, crass ambition, warmongering, and the invidious policies of its arch villain, Governor Thomas Hutchinson. In her biting satires, Warren calls Hutchinson “Rapatio,” to contrast him to the self-sacrifice, heroism, and virtue of the patriots. The best of the three is The Group, printed in the Heath Anthology in full, a brilliant defense of the patriot cause. Instead of staging debates in this play, Warren offers a series of dialogues among Tory sympathizers and turncoats, many of whom were connected to her family, in which they drop their public masks to reveal their ignoble choices and reprehensible designs. Although her use of blank verse and allusions to Greek and Roman politics lend the plays a “tragic” tone that later critics found “grandiose,” their savage satire was an effective propaganda tool. At the end of the Revolution, both Warrens fell out with their old friends: James for supporting Daniel Shays and his rebellion; Mercy for her comments on the overly passionate nature of John Adams. In 1781, they purchased the estate of their former antagonist, Governor Hutchinson, but lived there only eight years before moving back to Plymouth, where Warren attended to her writing. In 1790, she brought out the collection Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous in her own name. It contained two more plays, The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castille. Both works dramatize historical analogues to the American Revolution and explore another important theme in Warren’s satires and poetry: the issue of women as writers and revolutionary activists. These historical plays prominently feature women—and mothers—as public orators and rebel leaders. Warren gives them the most stirring speeches; an example from The Ladies of Castille is excerpted in the Heath Anthology.. Warren’s most audacious trespass on masculine turf, however, was her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution in three volumes, which appeared in 1805. It was written over twenty-five years and represents a brilliant and important female intervention in a conventionally masculine field of literature. As Warren states in her preface, she was uniquely positioned to experience events leading up to the Revolution, and she knew well many of the leaders who took part in the various military campaigns. More importantly, she argues that “every domestic enjoyment depends on the unimpaired possession of civil and religious liberty,” so that everyone, including women, had a crucial stake in the winning and maintenance of that liberty.

Ivy Schweitzer Dartmouth College