Photographs (left to right): All Niobara County, Wyoming

Wampum Belt Archive

 

Treaty/Document agreement NYS and Onondaga Nation in 1788

 

Original Size:	Rows: 6. est. beaded length: 36 inches. Width: 3.0 inches
Reproduction:	Columns: 295. Rows: 6. Beaded length: 37 inches. Width: 3.5 inches. Length w/fringe: 61.o inches.
Beads:	Polymer; 1,770 beads.
Materials:	Warp: Deer leather. Weft: artificial sinew.

Description:

Wampum belt – one of the few identifiable examples of the “wampum patrimony” of the State of New York was the wampum belt, shown here in part, that was attached to a parchment “treaty” or agreement between the State of New York and the Onondaga Iroquois Nation in 1788.  [It had been mistakenly associated with an Oneida treaty of the same year due to a misreading of the sequence of the two treaties in the compilation of New York Indian treaties that was bound, transcribed, and published in 1860].  At the conclusion of the meeting the State Indian Commissioners physically tied a copy of the treaty to a wampum belt which they presented to the Onondaga representatives.  In reciprocation the Onondaga representatives tied a wampum belt to the State’s copy of the agreement, requesting that the State preserve the two together in their office.  The wampum belt with its attached “treaty” survived for over a century in the New York State’s Secretary of State Office.  Originally thought missing, the Reverend William A. Beauchamp, then researching his State Museum bulletin on wampum, discovered that the belt and its attached treaty had been transferred to the New York State where he saw and drew it late in the 19th century.  Since the wampum belt was then still attached to the treaty, the Rev. Beauchamp could not take the full measurement of the belt or draw it in its entirety.  He later learned that the wampum belt and the treaty had been separated with the treaty retained by the State Library with other Indian treaties and the wampum belt sent to the State Capitol to be displayed in a curiosity cabinet.  Unfortunately, both were destroyed in the State Capitol fire of 1911 – on March 29th, 1911.

 

Reference:

Hamell, George R. 2011. Wampum Facts from the other side of the fire. 11th Annual Algonquian Peoples Seminar. Aprl 39th, 20 pp.