Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Southernese. What is a Wampum???

My Brother told me yesterday that he went to the supermarket and bought an inch thick slice of turkey breast. He cut it in cubes, opened a can of gravy and served it over mashed potatoes. He said he had that and Wampums. Huh?

He said "don't you remember Uncle Bob back in Oklahoma?" "Uncle Bob and Wampums?" I looked at him like he lost his mind. I said "what is a Wampum."

My Brother said those Pillsbury biscuits. The kind in the cardboard tube you've got to peel and smack on the counter to open.


So, why "Wampums."


He said Uncle Bob called them Wampums because that was what you had to do to get them open! Wamp um on the corner of the counter!

Was that just our house or is that a Southernese I just never heard before!

Never heard that term before used in that way,..but I know what he's talking about. Can't let them canned biscuits sit out and warm up either or you get a BIG wampum...

I've heard "wampum" used around here as another term for money. Always been told it was an injun term.

More along the lines of ssss-PA-WOMP!!

Wikipedia has a good description of what it is. The Indians didn't use it for money until the white settlers realized it's value to the Indians and introduced them to the concept of money. It was originally a religious thing and had many uses like binding agreements, paying bride prices, etc. It was strings of shell beads made from specific shellfish.

WAMPUM

Around here they are called WOP biscuits because you wop the can against the counter to get it open.

I think it's the currency system Hawkeye wants to revert back to.

We called 'em bump biscuits cause you bumped the container on the edge of the counter. Maybe he meant wop'em.

FWIW, I spent my first 24 years in Alabama and the last 33 in Texas and I've always heard canned biscuits called either U-Wop-Ums or simply Wop-Ums. I guess Whomp-Ums would work as well. The meaning is as described already that to open them you whopped them against the counter or table edge. They came out, at least in my part of the planet, when I was a kid. Guess I'm getting old. Wamp-Um was an Indian term for cash or trading material.

Wampum is what I'd like to do to catman925's head.

Indian money.

These:





Having lived in Alabama all of my adult life, I have asked every time I heard the term. I always get the same response...

"you whop'em against the counter."

when referring to biscuits, wampum has nothing to do with indians or their shell derived currency.
Jerry Clower described it best in his comedic sketch, "My Mama Made Biscuits"

The man that invented canned biscuits should be tied to a paw paw tree and shot to death with a .25 automatic.

We always called em whop biscuits.

Yup. wop biscuits. Never liked 'em.

Usually called whap buscits around my neighborhood. You whap the can on the edge of the counter and there they are.

I've heered of woompus cats around our parts. we always had cathead biscuits. and they were mixed up in the flour bin. no measuring or anything. just pour in buttermilk and a handfull of lard.

I heard them called "whomp 'ems". Like someone said, you have to "whomp 'em" on the edge of the counter to open the tube.

I first heard (read) of them from Lewis Grizzard, who called them "whomp biscuits" if I remember correctly.

Lewis Grizzard was a yankee dressed in Southern clothes. A pox on his house.