Photographs (left to right): Wyoming

Wampum Belt Photographs Archive

 

Six Nations

Council In Session, Ohsweken 1871

Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (961-c-1)

 

Description:

Iroquois Belts given in trust to the New York State Museum in 1898.

Heye Foundation Publication:

The wampums of the Iroquois Confederacy.

By virtue of the action of the Onondaga Nation in 1898 in electing the University of the State of New York the wampum keeper of the "Five Nations and Six Nations, and each of them" and by the purchase of these wampums at that time through the Onondaga Nation as keeper of all the wampums of the Iroquois Confederacy from the funds of the State Museum, these invaluable archives of the Confederacy have come into the custodianship of the Director of the State Museum, to whom, by the action of the President of the Onondaga Nation, has been transmitted the historic title Ho-san-na-ga-da, Keeper of the Name. Although complete records of these wampums have been kept in the manuscript files of the museum it seems well to make the record more permanent and decisive by introducing in this place photographic copies of each piece of wampum received at that time from the chiefs of the Onondaga Nation. (Heye Foundation).

Reference:

Heye Foundation. Iroquois Wampum Belts in the New York State Museum.

Muller, Kathryn. 2008. Holding Hands With Wampum: Haudenosaunee Council Fires from the Great Law of Peace to Contemporary Relationships wi the Canadian State. PhD Thesis, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.