Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 August 20

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 20

How much more work was making enough wampum to make a living?

Compared to making the living directly? It had to be less work to make the living directly, right? So was it like Step 1: someone who hates making food for some reason becomes a professional wampum maker. Step 2: Go around saying "Yo, I got some ill beadwork here, how much food will you give for it?" Step 3: Free food!? (Step 4: Yo, my moccasin broke, I need like a new shoe man, how much bead do you want for it? Step 5: My wife is like 8 months preggers, yo. Can you make baby clothes for me? Thanks man. I pay in bead. Step 6: My man artisan! My child is now old enough to use a spoon, how much bead do you want for one? Aw screw that, I'll just carve it myself.) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:52, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Just wait for the Dutch to come along, and go to work in one of their wampum factories. Fun for a few years, until the flood the market, devalue the currency, and crash the local economy. See the article titled Wampum. This book has a pretty decent chapter on Wampum, as does This article. --Jayron32 01:32, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

When I first heard of wampum in school that's exactly what I thought happened to it. Because, you know, it's just beads. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:50, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

And coins are just discs of metal. Really, money is just stuff that we declare to be worth something, and everyone accepts it. Beads as a medium exchange is no inherently better or worse than any other random, standardized trinket. --Jayron32 01:53, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

It's easier to make even with 1600s/1700s European tech, though. The Europeans thought they were buying Manhattan for trinkets. The Native Americans thought they were getting fair value for it (though at least they thought they were just letting them live there and not selling and leaving). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's a matter of an unsophisticated understanding of economics, probably on both sides. If there is an effective government control of the money supply, including both effective counterfeit controls, such as identifying markings, and an effective government monopoly on the production of the currency medium, there is no inherent reason why clamshell beads couldn't have been a successful form of currency. The reason it tanked isn't because the Europeans didn't value it (indeed, the Dutch understood its importance and conducted trade in Wampum as a currency very early on). It tanked for the same reason that Spain had to declare state Bankruptcy multiple times in the 16th century, a massive influx of currency (in Spain in the form of New World silver and gold, in the Northeaster North America, cheap and efficient Wampum manufacturing techniques) caused the currency value to plummet. Massive changes to the money supply leads to hyperinflation, which is basically what happened to Wampum as a currency medium. There's nothing inherent about the actual physical bead itself which makes it unsuitable for use as a currency, rather there was a problem with the lack of institutional control over its supply that led to its downfall. --Jayron32 10:29, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

As for any medium of exchange, there is a huge benefit in being free of the coincidence of wants. In addition, there probably is a benefit from division of labor. One person making wampum, two hunting, one preparing food, another making clothing and housing is probably more efficient than 5 people trying to be good at all of these tasks. — Sebastian 02:30, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Though of course all the visible easy gold being harvested a long time ago and having no one who does nothing but make money after that is even more efficient. And there would be little new gold until modern mining technique but if the wampum maker continues for millennia it should get more and more common unless some is destroyed. The same wampum is paying for the harvests that people buy year after year while the wampum maker is still making new wampum. Even if the string rots the wampum should survive cause the shells are still good and re-stringing is easy compared to making a new one. The European tech just caused that to happen quicker. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Do we know if there were dedicated wampum craftsmen? In pre-industrial societies, division of labor was much less pronounced. Certainly there was some specialization, but frequently you didn't have highly specialized hunters and farmers - most everyone hunted or farmed a little bit. There wasn't a specialized shoe-maker class, instead most everyone knew the rudiments of basic clothes and shoe making, even if it was well-known that certain people were much better at it than others. I'd expect the same from wampum manufacture. Likely, each family would spend some amount of their "free time" manufacturing wampum for trade purposes. Some would be poor at it (lots of cracked shells), and decide to focus more on hunting or clothes making, and some would be better at it and focus more on making wampum and get other necessities through trade. I'm not confident of it, but I somehow doubt that there was a dedicated "wampum maker" in the tribe in the same sense we think of professions today, unless it was considered a ceremonial role. (In which case it would be similar to the priest/medicine man/shaman/leader/headman roles regarding how they made a living.) -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 18:36, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Philome Obin

Can you tell me more about Philome Obin? He was a famous painter from Haiti, and also my long-lost grandfather. This is Philip Robert Obin, his grandson. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.52.105.40 (talk) 15:28, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Your previous question was answered yesterday. Please see above. --Thomprod (talk) 18:39, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Native Hawaiian suffrage

Was it ever considered to withhold native Hawaiian male suffrage in the Territory of Hawaii after annexation much like it was during the Republic of Hawaii?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 16:36, 20 August 2015 (UTC)