[204] All work in copper and brass was done by pounding the soft metal into shape, and cutting was probably done by scoring with a sharpened stone. Metal casting was unknown to the Wampanoags prior to the arrival of European settlers.
[205] Archer’s narrative in Howe, p. 59. A breastplate of this description was excavated in a burial at Fall River, Massachusetts; Willoughby, p. 233.
[206] It is thought, based on excavated remains, that the wood used was elder; Willoughby, pp. 233, 238-39.
[207] A burial was excavated in which a bandolier lay across the copper breastplate, possibly indicating simultaneous wearing; Willoughby, p. 233.
[208] Willoughby, pp. 240-41. These were joined by running a thread through the bead and looping it around two threads running along the ends of the beads; Ibid., p. 233. Stringing material in one case was a 2-ply twisted cord; Ibid., p. 238.
[209] Brereton, pp. 43-44, reported the wearing of this style of necklace simultaneously with a bandolier.
[210] Brereton, p. 43; Archer in Howe, p. 59. A gorget recovered archaeologically was disc-shaped, of sheet brass, with two perforations; Willoughby, pp. 238-39.
[211] A large copper necklace was placed about the neck of an important chief’s daughter in a Rhode Island burial that dates to about 1660; H. H. Wilder, “Notes on the Indians of Southern Massachusetts,” AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, ns. XXV (1923), p. 211.
[212] Wood, p. 74.
[213] Willoughby, p. 265, notes that “... the term Wampum or wampumpeage was usually applied by the New England tribes to the white beads and suckauhock, mowhackees or macheis to the purple variety, both types were generally known to the English as wampum.”