| Zusammenfassung: | Review of the records relating to the ways in which Natives stored wampum provides important insights into the numbers of belts and other wampum items held by a tribe at any one time. The records regarding "containers" for diplomatic wampum used within the Core Area, and also in the Periphery, provide a gauge of the volume of beads and belts held by each tribe and how wampum was used. Documents relating to how and where wampum bands were stored suggest that during the period of wampum diplomacy (ca. 1620-1810) tribes in the Core Area treated them as communal property. Bags, presumed to be of tanned hide, are commonly identified as wampum containers in the Core Area, while baskets appear associated with storage among the tribes in the Periphery. These data also reveal the surprisingly late origins of "wampum keepers," a role that appears in the Northeast only after 1800. The post-1840 records documenting how native peoples stored wampum reveal changes in the function and meaning of individual belts.
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