Photographs (left to right): Spring Creek, Mumford, New York; Bushfooted Butterfly, Rush, New York; Robert Treman State Park, Ithaca, New York

Wampum Belt Archive

Friendship Wampum Belt

John Brant (Mohawk) Belt

circa 1820

 

Museum of the American Indian Heye Foundation

 

In Beauchamp 1901 (Cat 03/1900)

Original Size:	Length: 23 inches. Width: 3.2 inches. Rows: 11.
Reproduction:	Est. Beaded Length: 90 inches by 5 inches. 114 inches with fringe.
Beads:	not reproduced at this time
Materials:

Description:

Tooker (1998) described this belt as a Mohawk Belt with the catalog No, :MAI-HF No. 9/2567. National Museum of the American Indian recorded this belt as belonging to Captain Joseph Brant. The squares on the ends represent the reservation and England. The line connection them are his trips to the British Government.

Rick Hill described the belt as belong to John Brant, the fourth son of Joseph Brant (Thay-en-da-ne-gea). His description follows:

"The two squares at either end of the belt are symbols of the council fires of the British Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy. The white line linking them is the broad white path of peace and symbolizes the proper process to follow in cases of Iroquois and British friction. It is believed that when John Brant was elected to the Provincial Legislature for Haldimand in 1823, the Confederacy Council was concerned he might want to reform the government. This belt reflects the separation of these two forms of government and was given to John Brant to continue to remind him of his responsibility to the Confederacy."

Quote Bardeau (2011)
This belt is a representation of friendship between the Six Nations and Great Britain. It ratifies that each nation, its people, and its government are connected in friendship. It is sometimes called the (John) Brant belt and was made about 1823.

Similar design to the Ojbwe-Anishinabe-Iroquois Belt by much longer.

Stolle, Nickolaus: Purchased by George G. Heyes in 1907, bought by Thomas R. Roddy from James Jamieson, Cayuga Chief in 1899. Repatriated to the Haudenosaunee Council in 1988.

This belt is a representation of friendship between the Six Nations and Great Britain. It ratifies that each nation, its people, and its government are connected in friendship.

The squares on each end symbolize the council fires of each government. They not only lost their territories, they were not told that the War of 1812 was over.

The belt was to secure peace after the War of 1812. During that war, the Three Fires Confederacy (Odawa, Ojibway, and Potawatomi) allied with the British.

The British then ceded their allies’ lands to the Americans and their allies. This action greatly angered the  Confederacy. In 1815, British Lt. Colonel McDouall  sent Chief Assigninack to present McDouall’s own wampum to “proclaim  the peace”  to nations on the Eastern side of Lake Michigan after the War of 1812 was over (Bardeau, 2010)..

 

Reference:

Bardeau, Phyllis Eileen Wms. 2011. Definitive Seneca: It's In The Word. Jaré Cardinal, editor. Seneca-Iroquois Museum Publisher, Salamanca, New York, 443pp.

Beauchamp, 1901. Wampum and Shell Articles Used by the New York Indians. NYS Mus. Bull. 41, pp. 321-480.

Hill, Rick. 1989. Council Fire. Woodland Cultural Centre, Brantford, Ontario.

Stolle, Nickolaus: Purchased by the institution in 1903, collected by Harriet M. Converse from Chief John Buck, Grand River Reserve in 1898.

Tooker, Elisabeth. 1998. A Note on the Return of Eleven Wampum Belts to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada. Ethnohistory, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Spring), pp. 219-236.