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Material Rhetoric:
Wampum Records

What is wampum?
"Wampum" is a contraction of the Algonquian word "wampumpeage" (phonetically
pronounced "wom pom pe ak") or "white shell beads."

Historical wampum is small (1/8 inch to 1/4 inch long by 1/4 inch wide), usually
cylindrical, white and purple beads. The beads are polished, drilled, and strung into
strings or woven into belts. Geometric figures were sometimes, not always, woven
into the design of the belts.

Early disc-shaped wampum beads were used for decoration and for barter by
natives living on coastal bays in Long Island and New England where the whelks
and clams used for making the beads were found. Similar uses and materials have
been identified on the Carolina coast and the California coast (Hewitt, l910, using
settler names for territories in which natives lived).

Settler Uses, Native Uses

After contact with North American natives in the early 1600s, European traders and
settlers used wampum beads as money. Denied (by their home governments) the
gold and silver bullion needed to make coins, colonists adopted indigenous shell
beads as currency. Colonial legislatures set legal standards of monetary value; for
example, six white beads or two purple beads to the penny. The Dutch introduced
mass production of the beads using steel awls for faster drilling and whetstones for
faster polishing. Natives reportedly rejected mass-produced beads as inferior.

The use of wampum as currency was spread through the fur trade to the inland
Iroquois in the northeast; the Creek and Cherokee in the southeast; Ohio river tribes;
and Missouri and Columbia river tribes in the west (Snyderman, l954, using settler
names for tribes and for rivers). Natives added the value "currency" to the already
otherwise-valued object, wampum, although the underlying economic concept of
"money" was alien to them. Natives also continued other uses of wampum.
"Wampum was the material object necessary for the successful functioning of
political, social, and religious life" (Snyderman, 473). Consequently, natives began
bartering with wampum while they continued bartering for it.
In towns of the Cherokee confederacy people
gathered annually to hear the tribal orator, a
priest who was sometimes called "the beloved

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man" recite the common law of the

confederacy. "When the orator spoke the law,
he was reading the meaning of history and
tradition contained in the tribal wampum. He
held the ancient and sacred wampum belts in
his hand" (Strickland, 11).

Cherokee Lawgiver by Cecil Dick.

Courtesy of Rennard Strickland.
A major use of wampum was in diplomacy. Confederacies--the Iroquois, the Creek,
the Cherokee--exchanged strings or belts of wampum as standard diplomatic
protocol. Wampum strings or belts signified official business. No wampum
exchange, no negotiation.

Confederacies were, themselves, constructs of negotiation among rival tribes;

treatying maintained the affiliations. The confederacies were also experienced in
negotiating with Dutch, Spanish, and French nations, both directly with home
governments as well as with their colonial representatives. British governments, and
later American governments, learned treaty-making procedures including wampum
diplomacy from the native confederacies.

An instance of wampum diplomacy by revolution-era American governors is shown

in orders given in 1776 by John Hancock, president of the second Continental
Congress, to George Morgan in appointing him agent for the revolutionary union's
Indian affairs. Morgan was directed to implement a policy of peace with native
confederacies. His orders were

"to provide, that the great peace belt [twenty-five hundred wampum
beads designed with 13 diamond shapes] entrusted to Guyasuta [a
Seneca chief] last fall at Pittsburgh [in the Fort Pitt treaty conference
aimed at keeping the Senecas neutral in the revolutionary war] be
forwarded with all convenient expedition to the Sachems and warriors
of the western nations; and endeavour to the utmost of your power to
convince them of the good wishes and good intentions of the Congress
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for and towards them, and to cultivate harmony and friendship between
them and the white people and to give Congress the most early
intelligence of any interruption thereof. . . ." (Hancock quoted in
Schaaf, 21; explanation added).

In summary, wampum use on the North American continent was and is culturally
configured. Settlers used it. Natives used it, and some continue to use it.
Traditionalists (including Cherokee traditionalists, as discussed below) use it now in
revivals of ancient practice. Wampum illustrates historical material rhetoric, or
communication by means of encoded objects within or between groups co-existing
on the North America continent.

How were ancient beads made?

How wampum was anciently produced is controversial, and is not well described in
academic scholarly literature.

Anthropological studies published in the l930s and referring to native sources say
that native women made them. An illustrative attribution: "Shell beads were the
handiwork of the woman, whose skillful hands were accustomed to the delicate and
tedious operation of their manufacture" (Clarke, 86). At least one present-day native
commentator disagrees, saying that in ancient practice men produced the beads
(Smith, R., l997).

How were the beads woven into belts? Again, as with bead-making, whether
women or men did the belt-making is a matter of disagreement. A native reteller
says men wove them (Smith, R., l997). One present-day anthropologist says that,
after contact with the Dutch, women were the belt makers.

"Before the Dutch introduced steel drills and grindstones to coastal Algonquians
living at the source of clam and conch shells from which it was fabricated, there
was virtually no wampum in Iroquoia; but as it became more plentiful during the fur
trade, emphasis shifted from strings to broad and elaborate belts carrying pictorial
designs. . . An urgent message sent with seven strings early on might be parlayed
later to a belt of seven to twelve rows deep. . .Sometimes unstrung wampum by the
scheppel or bushel was available at Albany [the Dutch capital], where River Indian
women were employed to make up belts for a treaty" (Fenton,1971, 17).

Anthropological descriptions of the weaving process are often ambiguous as to

context and to sources, but they may tell us something about the belt-weaving
process:

The most common width was 3 fingers or the width of 7 beads, the
length ranging from 2 to 6 feet. In belt-making, which is a simple
process, eight strands or cords of bark thread are first twisted from
filaments of slippery elm, of the requisite length and size; after which
they are passed through a strip of deerskin to separate them at equal
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distances from each other in parallel lines. A splint is then sprung in the
form of a bow, to which each end of the several strings is secured, and
by which all of them are held in tension, like warp threads in a weaving
machine. Seven beads, these making the intended width of the belts, are
then run upon a thread by means of a needle, and are passed under the
cords at right angles, so as to bring one bead lengthwise between each
cord and the one next in position. The thread is then passed back along
the upper side of the cords, and again through each of the beads; so that
each bead is held firmly in its place by means of the two threads, one
passing under and one over the cords. This process is continued until
the belt reaches its intended length, when the ends of the cords are tied,
the end of the belt covered and afterwards trimmed with ribbons. In
ancient times both the cords and the threads were of sinew (Clarke,
l931, 87).

How do wampum belts function as material rhetoric?

Wampum belts functioned anciently, and function now for native traditionalists, as
mnemonic devices, communication devices, law libraries, and instruments of
spiritual and political life.

As a communication device in diplomacy, each belt represented (and still

represents) a particular event--a single talk, or a council, or a treaty. The beads
carried (and still carry) the words of a speaker. Another way to say it is that
meaning is in the beads. The next question is how this is so.

How Do Belts Mean?

Here is one ethnohistorical summary, based on present-day interviews with native

historians, of the process of fusing beads and information.

When all has been agreed upon [by the council], the men selected [as
messengers] are summoned to the council and informed of their duties.
On instruction from the chiefs, a speaker performs a speech act which
roughly translates as "reading the message into the wampum". . . In the
Iroquois view the wampum is thought literally to contain the message;
the messengers, on the other hand, are seen as relatively passive bearers
of the wampum, which nevertheless is described as being a "heavy
burden" which they bear on their backs. . . The messengers are drilled
until the chiefs are satisfied they have the message down cold, but this
repetition is believed to increase the "power" of the wampum rather
than to improve the messengers' memories. Wampum is regarded as a
kind of recording device, somewhat in the way we conceive of the
function of a tape recorder.(Foster, l995, 105)

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In this account of ancient diplomatic communication, we can learn that meaning

was read into

a string or belt [that] carried the words of a tribal council. These words
were read into [the string or belt] in the presence of an ambassador or
messenger who memorized them and repeated them at his destination,
but it was the wampum that carried them. Color and figures in the
wampum gave some indication of its general purport, as "black . . .belts
proposed war," but there was no code. Every belt's message had to be
memorized (Jennings in Jennings, l995, 122).

How do belts communicate?

Related to the question of how meaning informs the belts is the question of how the
information in the beads was (and is) disseminated. In ancient use, either in the
actual past or in present re-enactments, activating a belt's meaning requires live
public performance.

A messenger delivers the words to their intended destination. Delivery and

reception take place in a cultural event, a reading of the belt. Culture, or shared
understanding, is the operating environment for wampum belts. Belts cannot
function outside that environment. (That is why belts preserved in museums cannot
function, in native opinion.)

To illustrate, and with the cautionary note that no single pattern of improvisation
prevailed in ancient uses, here is the earliest full description of Iroquoian
diplomacy. It is from the Jesuit Relations 1644-45 concerning a treaty in l645
between the Mohawks, members of the Iroquois League, and the French along with
their allied tribes, the Algonquian and Huron. At issue was control of fur markets in
French-governed territory; Algonquins and Hurons had control and Mohawks
wanted it, according to the Jesuit record. Negotiations had begun earlier with an
invitation to exchange prisoners. The description begins at the start of the prisoner
exchange.

After a ceremonial greeting at a river's edge and several evenings of feasting, the
French governor met with the Mohawk spokesperson, Kiotsaeton.

This took place in the courtyard of the Fort (at New France, or
Quebec), over which large sails had been spread to keep off the heat of
the Sun. Their places were thus arranged: on one side was . . . the
Governor, accompanied by his people. . . The Iroquois sait at his feet,
on a great piece of hemlock bark. They had stated before the assembly
that they wished to be on his side, as a mark of the affection that they
bore to the French.

Opposite them were the Algonquins. . . the other two sides were closed
in by some French and Some Hurons. In the center was a large space,
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somewhat longer than wide, in which the Iroquois caused two poles to
be planted, and a cord to be streatched from one to the other on which
to hand and tie the words that they were to bring us, that is to say, the
presents they wished to make us, which consisted of seventeen collars
of porcelain beads, a portion of which were on their bodies. . . .When
all had assembled and had taken their places, Kiotsaeton who was high
in stature, rose and looked at the Sun, then cast his eyes over the whole
Company; he took a collar of porcelain beads in his hand and
commenced to harangue in a loud voice. "Onontio, lend me ear. I am
the mouth for the whole of my country; thou listenest to all the
Iroquois, in hearing my words. There is no evil in my heart; I have only
good songs in my mouth. We have a multitude of war songs in our
country. We have cast them all on the ground; we have no longer
anything but songs of rejoicing." Thereupon he began to sing; his
countrymen responded; he walked about that great space as if on the
stage of a theatre; he made a thousand gestures; he looked up to
Heaven; he gazed at the Sun; he rubbed his arms as if he wished to
draw from the strength that moved them in war. After he had sung
while, he said that the present that he held in his hand thanked
Monsieur the Governor for having saved the life of [an Iroquois
prisoner]. . . When he had said this, he fastened his collar in the
appointed spot.

Drawing out another, he tied it to the arm of [a French prisoner], saying

aloud: "It is this Collar that brings you back this prisoner. I would not
have said to him, while he was still in our country: 'Go, my Nephew;
take a Canoe and return to Quebec.' My mind would not have been at
rest; I would always have thought over and over again to myself, 'Is he
not lost?' In truth, I would have had no sense, had I acted in that way.
He whom you have sent back had all the difficulties in the world, on his
journey.' " He began to express them. . He took a stick, and placed it on
his head like a bundle; then he carried it from one end of the square to
the other, representing what that prisoner had done in the rapids and in
the current of the water.. . He went backward and forward, showing the
journeys, the windings, and the turnings of the prisoner. He ran against
a stone; he receded more than he advanced in his cane, because alone
he could not maintain it against the current. He lost courage, and then
regained his strength.. In a word, I have never seen anything better
done than this acting. Instead of sending the prisoner back thus,
Kiotseaeton had accompanied him back. That is what was said by the
second collar, which he tied near the first (quoted in Jennings, 137-140;
spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing preserved).

The delivery continued through the seventeen belts. On the next day, the French
governor responded with an equal number of presents; the Relation does not specify
what they were (Jennings, l45).

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Later reports of treaties describe protocols both for delivering and for receiving
wampum. A pattern derived from the treaty literature, cognizant that variants were
many, includes these gestures:

a belt drawn from a pouch is held by the speaker, passed over the fire, and
racked up; to touch is to accept
a belt held by the middle blocks the path
custom: return string for string; belt for belt
custom: listen without interrupting, acknowledge, retire and consider, reply
next day (or when ready)
cries of approbation. . .
war belts are thrown
to kick aside is to reject
no wampum=no word (Fenton, l995, 29-30)

Kiotseaeton, the Mohawk messenger and spokesperson, was, in native terms, the
remembrancer. In terms used by academic interpreters of symbolic interaction, he
was the animator of the beads' information but not its originator. The originators
were Mohawk leaders in council.

As Kiotseaeton's performance shows, dissemination of the bead's information

required interpretation and might be improvisational. An historian of Iroquois
protocol says

Recital of a belt's meaning was not verbatim transmission but rather

narrative reenactment . . . To "read" a belt was not primarily to explain
the significance of [its design], though this was sometimes done, but
rather to associate a particular belt with a speech or set of speeches
(Foster, l995, 104).

As with other forms of objectified talk, belts' significations "were not discrete units
of meaning but rather traces of oral tradition associated with them" (Druke, 89-90).
Improvisional performance applied the belt's meaning in the here and now of a
particular situation.

Wampum to writing
Wampum diplomacy largely ended by the 1790s (except for traditionalist revivals
of the practice, as noted above).

Native diplomats in the l790s and early 1800s, although they recognized the
pragmatic utility of written documentation in dealing with settler nations, did not
welcome a changeover to writing.

In Iroquois culture, the word, the essence of oral tradition and of

wampum, had a life to it by virtue of interaction that paper (written
documents) just did not have, regardless of its assumed durability. It
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was also the case that, for most Iroquois, treaty relationships were not
frozen to words written on a page at one point in time, but were active,
living relationships, ideally frequently renewed" (Druke, 92).

Nonetheless, written documents gradually supplanted wampum belts.

Soon, for the Cherokees, writing was being used for internal governance as well as
for international diplomacy. By 1808, new Cherokee laws were first handwritten in
English, then translated into handwritten or printed Cherokee using a syllabary
developed by George Gess. Sequoyah (mixed-blood Gess's Cherokee name) did not
read or write English. He adapted English characters to the sounds of Cherokee oral
speech to create an 86-character Cherokee syllabary, which effected a written
Cherokee language. Speakers of varying Cherokee dialects quickly became literate
in this written Cherokee language.

In the ninety years between the adoption of the first written law (l808)
and the abolition of tribal courts (1898) wampum was supplanted by
more than a million pages of legal transcripts and printed material. By
1896 the Redbird Smith-Keetoowah movement of the Cherokees
acknowledged that understanding of the wampum had been lost, and
recovery of these ancient laws became one of the cornerstones of
[traditionalist] revival" (Strickland, 103)

The Kee-too-wah Cherokees continue to read their ancient laws from many of the
same belts used by the beloved men, according to reports (Strickland,12). A picture
made in l916, below, is among the most recent records of the practice. Photographs
of the practice or of the belts are not now permitted.

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Keetoowah (Nighthawk) Society members with the historic wampum of the

Cherokees near Gore, Oklahoma, in 1916.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society

This commentary adapts Smith, C., l997

Contents

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