Photographs (left to right): Water Moccasin, Florida; Little Dismal Swamp, South Carolina: Poke Berry, Rush New York

Wampum Belt Archive

 

French Mission or Marquette Belt

Six Nations

Beauchamp 1901

NMAI 03/1907

 

 

Original Size:	Rows: 13. Length: ?
Reproduction:	Beaded length: 80.0 inches. Width: 7.5 inches. Length with fringe: 104.0 inches.
Beads:	Columns: 500. Rows: 13. Beads: 6,500.
Materials:	Warp: Deer leather. Weave: Artificial sinew. Beads: Polymer

Description:

This belt was "carried by the great French missionary and explorer, Marquette" (Merwin I916: 131). Hill (1989) stated this 17th Century belt recorded that "number of French Mission's which would be allowed in Iroquoian territory" (p.10).

Black shell belt with four white crosses. Purchased by George G. Heye in 1907, bought by THomas R. Roddy from James Jamieson, Cayuga chief in 1899. Repatriated to the Haudenosaunee Council in 1988.

Reference:

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, 51pp.

Merwin, Bruce W. 1916. Wampum. Museum Journal, Vol. 7, pp. 125-133.

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.