Green’s Dictionary of Slang

wampum n.

[Algonquin wampumpeag, beads made from quahog shells and used as money; often abbr. to wampum itself]

(orig. US) money.

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[[UK]Smollett Humphrey Clinker (1925) I 147: Our good friends the five nations – The Toryrories, the Maccolmacks, the Out-o’-the-Ways, the Crickets, and the Kickshaws – Let ’em have plenty of blankets, and stinkubus, and wampum].
[US]Schele De Vere Americanisms 29: Wampum, an Algonquin word, meant originally nothing more than ‘white’ and served to designate only inferior shells, which were white, and [...] were held equal to silver.
[US]Watchman & Southron (Sumter, SC) 4 Oct. 1/6: For the first fifty years in this country, clam shells were used for money. Originally in New York six pieces of ‘wampum’ or clamshells were worth a Dutch ‘stiver’.
[US]Bluefield Daily Tel. (WV) 11 Mar. 4/2: In addition [...] the following [names for money] are given: Soap, Long Green, Stuff, Duff, Dust, Wherewith, Plunks, Grease, Mejum, Glue, Root, Toadskin, Shiners, Skads, Samoleons, Bones, Spon, Filthy, Needful, Rhino, Shink, Salt, Moppus, Blunt, Dirt, Means, Tar, Ready, Stivers, Hefty, Genuine, Dornes, Gilt, Desirable, Flimsy, Nuggets, Cadewy, Wampum.
[US]Wash. Times (DC) 6 Feb. 3/5: They are cutting down his wampum; / Trimming down his big, fat payroll.
[Ire]Joyce Ulysses 293: Time they were stopping up in the City Arms Pisser Burke told me there was an old one with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bézique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will.
[US]W. Winchell On Broadway 27 Sept. [synd. col.] His various wives claim the wampum.
[US]Chicago Daily News 13 Oct. 1/8: They play the machines to win what they call heap of wampum — the jackpot [DA].
[US]J.P. Donleavy Ginger Man (1958) 205: Kenneth, we all want wampum.
[US]L. Kramer Faggots 27: If a faggot bartered with his body, hadn’t he best get his wampum in order?

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