Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in North America - Softcover

Martien, Jerry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1562790803 ISBN 13: 9781562790806

Publisher: Mercury House, 1996

Synopsis

Shell Game, a unique and revealing investigation into the nature of money and human exchange, intertwines two stories. One starts in Manhattan in 1627 with the transactions by which North America was "bought" by Europe. Martien shows how a gift relationship based on beads was replaced by monetary relations based on credit, and how ancient ways of bookkeeping, exemplified by the Iroquois wampum exchange, were replaced by a social contract based on scarcity and deficit.
Interspersed with his historical account, Martien tells a parallel story set in the present in which he attempts to negotiate a book advance, visit the wampum keeper at Onondaga, and unravel a personal tangle of love and habit in his life. Martien's search becomes a journey of remembrance and acknowledgment and an apology and condolence for cultural and monetary misappropriation. It becomes a pilgrimage in search of restitution and recovery that many readers will want to join.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Somewhere among the turkey, corn, square-toed pilgrim shoes and succotash of our early learning about pilgrims and Indians is the knowledge that Native Americans used shells as money. And that early settlers bought land for beads. In his provocative if flawed account, Martien combines a shoe-string travelogue with musings about an early and fatal misunderstanding. The carved and pierced pieces of sea-shell were not money but ran a more subtle gamut that included oath of fealty, contract, symbol of power, gift and sympathy card. So while settlers felt the exchange of beads gave them proprietary rights, Native Americans assumed, rather, that they were joined by a mutually binding agreement. This is the most fascinating part of the book and luckily the largest. Martien, a California-based poet and carpenter, who lives (and travels) with very little money, makes a bit too much of his poverty and such self-righteous proclamations as "art being just another thing the rich had to have to replace the souls they'd lost in the market," add an unfortunate sanctimonious note to his usually big-hearted book. Still, like writers who have extrapolated lessons from Native American culture on spiritual growth or environmentalism, Martien has gleaned important lessons on the difference between price and value.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

Two stories, one set in Manhattan in 1627 and the other parallel tale set in later times, explore money, human exchange, and a gift relationship based on beads which is gradually replaced by monetary credit systems. It's hard to classify this title: file it under 'economics' or 'cultural studies' considering its insights on developing economics systems and changing cultural relationships. -- Midwest Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Mercury House
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1562790803
• ISBN 13: 9781562790806
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240