Wampum
Wampum is often thought of as Native American beadwork that acted as a precursor to paper money, but wampum is more rich and nuanced than that. As Osage author Carter Revard explains in Beads, Wampum, Money, Words--and Old English Riddles: “Wampum, as I understand it, was not necessarily beads, nor was it "just" money; it was more a historical record, in beautiful form, of matters held sacred--but because the Europeans saw that it was given such respect, they naturally took it as "money." The Encyclopoedia Britannica tells us that wampum was originally used primarily as a record of an important agreement or treaty and as an object of tribute given by subject tribes, and came to be used as money in the Western sense only after white contact."
Resources to learn more at USC Libraries:
Beads, Wampum, Money, Words--and Old English Riddles
Reading the wampum : essays on Hodinohso:ni' visual code and epistemological recovery
Wampum and the origins of American money