We also visited the National Museum of the American Indian, a relatively new Smithsonian museum that I had visited after it first opened. I remember not liking it much then, and still am not enamored with it, although some of the displays are interesting.

Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of American Indians. It includes white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from quahog, or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. Wampum was used by the northeastern Indian tribes as a form of gift exchange, and the colonists adopted it as currency in trading with them.

‘Antique Vehicle,’ posted earlier.