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

Wampum Belt Archive

 

St Regis Treaty Wampum Belt 1796

belt

Heye Foundation

belt

 

Original Size:

Rows: 6. Width: 2.25 inches.

Reproduction:

Beaded Length: 75.5 inches. Width: 3.0 inches. W/ Fringe: 95.5 inches

Beads:

Rows: 6. Columns: 475.Total beads: 2,850 beads.

Materials:

Warp: Deer Leather. Weft: Artificial Sinew. Beads: Polymer.

Description:

Beauchamp (1901) illustrated this belt (Plate 20; Fig. 238) described the belt as an Onondaga belt woven on twine thongs.

Originally there were five diagonal bars representing braces to buttress up the house so that it would not fall. Made when the St. Regis were taken-in so that the St Regis was a brace to the Five Nations, and the Five Nations to the St. Regis.

Carrington's belt illustration had four black diagonals, whereas when Beauchamp viewed the belt it had five which he wrote it was then "perfect and probably relating to the Five Nations." The removal of a diagonal changed the belt meaning. Donaldson explained as "treaty where but four of the Six Ntions were represent." (in Beauchamp. 1901).

Beauchamp commented "in 1886 Webster said that this and some others represent the submission of each tribe when they joined the confederacy and were turned over to the wampum keepers."

 

Reference:

Beauchamp, William M. 1901. Wampum and Shell Articles Used By The New York Indians. New York State Museum Bulletin No. 41, Vol. 8.

Donaldson, Thomas. 1894. The Six Nation of New York. Report of Indians Taxed and not Taxes. Washington.

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

Webster, Thomas. 1888. In Beauchamp (1901). Wampum and Shell Articles Used by the New York Indians. NYS Mus. Bull. 41.