Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/310

298 To break from the shell the fragment suitable for a bead, to rasp it on a stone to the proper circular or cylindrical shape, to polish it to an ivory smoothness, and then to pierce it with a drill-point of flint, was a tedious labor. It was this labor which, in great part, gave the wampum its value. This alone, however, would not have been sufficient, if the article had not held, in the social system of the Indians, a position which kept it always in demand. By their custom, handed down from time immemorial, it was essential that all great acts of state policy should be accompanied by the exhibition of wampum in some form. The messenger who summoned the chiefs of a tribe to a public meeting bore a string of wampum to authenticate his errand. The embassador, in proposing a treaty, laid down a string or belt of wampum at the close of every clause of his address. When the treaty was concluded, several belts were usually exchanged, by way of ratification. A belt of black wampum, formally delivered, was a declaration of war. A string of black wampum, borne by a runner, announced to all the villages of an Indian nation the death of a high chief; and, at his burial, belts and strings of wampum were deposited in his grave. At the great religious festival of the Iroquois, the "Sacrifice of the White Dog," the dead animal was enveloped in strings of wampum, which were burned with him. The belts and strings which accompanied the making of treaties and the framing of laws were kept as tribal records, and were brought forth on great occasions to be exhibited and explained to the people. The belts which commemorated the conclusion of the famous League of the Iroquois, framed by Hiawatha, Atotarho, and their associate chiefs, four hundred years ago, are still preserved on the Onondaga Reservation in the State of New York.

The belts, it should be added, were composed of short strings of wampum, containing from six to twenty-four beads each, laid side by side, and closely knotted together. The length of the string made the width of the belt, which varied from two to nine or ten inches, while its length varied from two to eight feet. The wider and longer the belt, the greater, of course, was its value, and the higher its significance as a pledge or memorial. Each belt usually had its special device, whose meaning was well understood. This device was wrought sometimes in white beads on a dark ground, sometimes in purple beads on a white ground. These symbols were genuine hieroglyphics, resembling the ancient pictorial figures in which the modern Chinese characters had their origin. In the Chinese script a parallelogram signifies an inclosure; it is the fence of a field. On an Iroquois belt a parallelogram denotes a town; for with them, in ancient times, the town was inclosed in a rectangular palisade. A lozenge-shaped figure represents a council; it is the Indian hearth, around which the councilors assembled. Oblique marks across a belt are the stamp and token of the Iroquois confederacy. They represent the rafters of the "longhouse," to which the confederacy was likened. Others of these