Photographs (left to right): Butterfly Conservatory, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada; Letchworth State Park, New York; Butterfly Conservatory, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Wampum Belt Archive

 

Passamaquoddy Neck Band

NMAI Cat. No. 0012801.000

 

belt

 

R. D. Hamell Novermber 18, 2024

Original Size:

Rows: 5.

Reproduction:

Beaded length: 16.8 inches. Width: 2.0 inches . Length w/fringe: 36.8 inches.

Beads:

Columns: 83. Rows: 5. Total: 415 beads.

Materials:

Warp: Deer leather. Weft: Artifical sinew, Beads: Polymer.

Description:

Black shell beaded belt with white shell checkered inverted V's flanking symbols resembling T's'. NMAI Cat. No. 01/2801, acquired from Frank G. Speck in 1907, collected by him from Charles Mitchell, a Passamaquoddy, at Pleasant Point (Speck, 1964; Stolle, 2016).

Reference:

Becker, Marshall. 2008 Wampum on the Fringe: Explaining the Absence of a pos-1600 Native Produced Commodity in Delaware. The Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Delaware 45, N.S; p. 25.
National Museum of American Indian Cat. #01/2801.
Speck, Frank G. 1964. The function of wampum among the eastern Algonkian [1919]. New York: Kraus and Reprint Corporation, p. 25, 33, Plate 2 B.
Stolle, Nickolaus. 2016. Talking Beads. Hamburg, Germany.Plate 18 Figure 228.