8
THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
an inch in diameter and one-eighth to seven-sixteenths of an inch in
length.
Perhaps the most important use of wampum was in the symbolic re
cord belt and strings which were the stamps of authority in every inter
tribal transaction. The famous belt used in the treaty between William
Penn and the Indians is now in the rooms of the Penn Historical Soci
ety. It was given to its first white owner as a solemn token that they
would keep their pledge. Such belts had the beads arranged in symbolic
figures more or less suggestive of the transaction thus ratified. The
Penn belt shows in the center two figures clasping hands; one wears a
hat the other does not. This shows one was a white man, the other an
Indian. Others of interest are the Cherokee belts attesting peace made
with the Iroquois, before the Revolutionary war and the Iroquois belts
which are preserved in the archives of New York State at Albany.
Smaller belts for chiefs were woven with a diamond-shaped figure in
the center worked in white beads. These were called peace belts. The
women also made themselves bracelets and neck chains. The old myths
of years ago are repeated in Indian homes, and many of the stories,
like those told in the poem of Hiawatha, are familiar to little children in
Western teepees. Hiawatha the Wise we know, was an Iroquois hero
and the legend of his travels and how he was the first to make wampum
is charming. We find Hiawatha starting on his journey to the arrow-
maker—
“ F ro m th e lodge w ent H iaw atha,
D ressed for trav el arm ed for h u n tin g .
D ressed in d eersk in sh irt and leggins
R ichly w rought w ith q u ills and w a m p u m .”
It was probably due to the genuis of Hiawatha that we have the in
vention of the wampum belt as his name implies. Hay-un-watha, maker
of beits.
The Aztecs or Mexican Indians had a serpent god. The Luni Lan-
nape or Delaware Indians had stick records to tell that the country of
the Great Serpent was conquered little by little. Mounds are them
selves the unsolved record of a great people. No Indian legends or
histories have ever explained the meaning of those heaps of earth, but
the wampum belt tells its story by the pictures upon it. There is a
string of wampum, hand wrought of pure white beads, which is treas
ured and possesses an additional interest because it was given as a
pledge of love and fidelity and once belonged to the famous Chief Logan.
About twenty years ago, a little English maiden wandered away from
camp and was lost on the shores of Lake Champlain. An Indian boy
was sent in search of her and, when he found her, he threw a string of
wampum over her head and said:
“ Like my great Chief Logan, whose descendant I am, I capture you
with my Ote-Ko-a.’’
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