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Thoughts On Wampum Bead Making

I tried to make my own wampum bead tonight, just one. For those who don’t know (and can’t be bothered to follow the link above), wampum are beads made from a certain kind of shell found on the east coast. These shells have a white area, but a small purple area as well, and that is the part you make the purple bead from.

All I have to say, is wow…this is hard. I mean first you bust the shell up into little chunks. This part was fun, and I got to use a hammer. Then you have to drill a hole through the chunk, this was a not hard, but took a long time.

Then you have to shape the bead…holy shit (pardon my French). You need some serious zen like patience. I think I am going to give up and go outside with a dremel and see what kind of mess I can make tomorrow because after about an hour of chipping away at this thing it doesn’t even look close to what I have seen in pictures.

You can also see that in my desire to drill through this bad boy I pushed too hard and the exit hole is a little ugly. If you ever get your hands on some of these beads that was made by hand (especially if they were made in the old way) you should treasure them, as they are really really hard to make!