Photographs (left to right): All Mohave Desert, California/Nevada

Wampum Belt Archive

 

Iroquois ? Delaware? Belt

Am1949.22.136

1600-1820

Original Size:	Rows: 8. Columns: 145. Beaded length: 21.5 inches. Width: 2 inches.
Reproduction:	Beaded length: 23.0 inches. Width: 4.0 inches. Length w/fringe: 43.0 inches
Beads:	Rows: 8. Columns: 145. Beads: 1,160
Materials:	Warp: leather. Weave: artificial sinew.

Description:

Wampum belt, woven on a bow-loom with skin thong warps and wool or vegetal fibre wefts, of shell beads. The white ground is decorated with a zigzag line, composed 7 'V's touching at the base/apex, formed of purple wampum, two in each line. There are nine warps: it is 8 rows wide, and 145 beads long, to produce a total number of 1160 beads. The apex of each 'V' if flat, and four or five purple beads long. At one end this flat edge ends in two purple beads, and at the other in three purple beads; so it is possible that complete lines of bead are missing from one or both ends. This is further suggested by regular marks on the thong warps, such as might have been left by bound wefts, now no longer present. The beads are of varied diameters and lengths.

Field Collected by William Ockelford Oldman

Reference:

British Museum: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am1931-12