- Museum number
- Am1949,22.119
- Description
-
Wampum belt, woven on 19 warps, with in the centre a maximum of 18 rows of beads. The warps are of two-ply 'S' twist wool, of native origin?, as are the wefts. The design consists of three rectangles, the one in the middle being 19 beads long and 18 wide, with a second rectangle inside, 8 long by 6 wide. The two end rectangles are 31 beads long, by 16 beads high at one end, and 33 beads long for the rectangle at the other end: the internal rectangles of are both 10 beads long, and 6 beads high. The ground is of purple beads, with the design in white. The uprights of the rectangles are two white beads wide, and the horizontal bars only one bead high. The bottoms and tops of the rectangles run along the edges of the belt. Since the middle rectangle has two more rows, this necessitates a reduction by two warps of the belt, between 7 and 27 wefts from the white rectangle in the centre. Whether this occured pre- or post-collection is uncertain. The peculiar shape of the belt is visible in the registration drawing. At both ends, three purple beads in, are white stripes, 5 rows wide at one end, and 6 rows wide at the other. The belt is 370 beads long.
- Production date
- 1600-1800
- Dimensions
-
Height: 13 centimetres
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Length: 138 centimetres (storage box)
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Width: 26 centimetres (storage box)
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Width: 127 centimetres
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Depth: 5 centimetres (storage box)
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Depth: 0.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- This belt was acquired from Worden Hall, Lancashire, by W O Oldman in the 1940s.
Ralph T. Coe 'Sacred Circles', London, 1976 provides the following commentary, p.79: 'Wampum belt 17th century Eastern Woodlands Iroquois Shell beads 1.09 m long... A wampum belt served as a gift, also as a binding symbol of an agreement among Northeastern tribes, and they were of the highest importance as documentary evidence of such pacts. Here the ground consists of cylindrical, purple beads offset by three double rectangles of white beads. This was probably collected by Sir John Werden, 1640-1716, who was secretary to James Stuart, Duke of York...'. The association of the belt with Werden is probably erroneous and certainly highly speculative. 15-20 years ago J C King visited the descendant of the purchaser of the rest of the collection, and found an early costume, partially decorated with alternating tubular blue and white beads in the style of wampum. The costume, and other Worden Hall materials were in the collection by 1846. The costume is 18th century, and positively identified as Maliseet. It is therefore conceivable that this belt may have an association with the Maliseet, or another Algonquian people. The costume is published in Glenbow Museum: 'The Spirit Sings. Artistic Traditions of Canada's First Peoples. A Catalogue of the Exhibition' Calgary and Toronto 1987 pp 18-19.
Joe Cribb, ed, published this belt 'Money. From Cowrie Shells to Credit Cards', London: BMP, 1986, p 30: '45. Wampum: a belt of beads made from the shells of the mollusc 'Mercenaria Mercenaria' (the money clam), collected from the Iroquois people in North America. In the view of early European travellers to North America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, wampum was used by the native peoples instead of gold and silver and served them both as money and ornament. The best-known use of wampum was in the creation of pictographic belts exchanges at the making and breaking of treaties and alliances. The Europeans found the native people so ready to use wampum in payments that they adopted it as their own currency until the late eighteenth century. Like the money cowries of ancient China, the shell beads of the Iroquois were used in strings.'
Additional description, comments etc. by JCK 19/10/1995.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1976-1977 7 Oct-16 Jan, London, The Hayward Gallery, Sacred Circles: 2,000 Years of North American Indian Art
1977 16 Apr-19 Jun, Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Sacred Circles: 2,000 Years of North American Indian Art
1984 30 Mar-20 May, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, From the Four Quarters
1986 29 May-26 Oct, Museum of Mankind; Money: From Cowrie Shells to Credit Cards
1999-2005 25 Jun-Mar, BM Room 26; Gallery of North America, Case: "The Northeastern Woodlands"
2005-2007 Apr-Jan, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Art of this Land
2012 Mar-Jul, Abu Dhabi, Manarat al Saadiyat, Treasures of the World's Cultures
2012-2013 30 Nov-7 Apr, Bonn, Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Treasures of the World's Cultures
2015-2016 4 Dec - 03 Jul, National Museum of Singapore, Treasures of the World's Cultures
2021 18 May-18 Jul, Plymouth, The Box, Wampum: Stories from the Shells of Native America
2021 23 Jul-5 Sep, London, The Guildhall, Wampum: Stories from the Shells of Native America
- Acquisition date
- 1949
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Am1949,22.119