Understanding the Great Law and Wampum Belts

Scano. My name is Rick Hill. I'm the Senior Project Coordinator at Deyohahage, the Indigenous Knowledge Centre at Six Nations Polytechnic. Today we're going to take a journey back in time and take a look at the formation of the Great Law and all of the lessons that we learned from the peacemaker, all of his teachings that were... codified in a series of wampum belts. Some of them you may be familiar with and some you may be seeing for the first time. This is one of the earliest depictions of the formation of the Confederacy. We see it was done in 1853. It's kind of cartoonish like. but it shows the peacemaker and his helper, Hayawenta, confronting Taradaho's head covered with snakes. He's bringing the message of peace to him. This more modern depiction by Oren Lyons from Onondaga shows the peacemaker now all dressed in white with Hayawenta and the other Haudenosaunee chiefs as they're singing this song in order to pacify Taradaho. Oren said that he kind of altered the painting because the actual depiction of Taradaho in the oral history has his body look much more fearsome. His face quite terrible. So that is why Oren has Tododaho facing away from us so we don't see his horrific look. Originally he had actually had his hand on a skull because Tododaho was known to kill many people. But this was done for the Onondaga Savings Bank and he thought for public consumption he might want to change it. This is a painting I did in 1981 trying to show the peacemaker and Hiawanta's helper as they're actually carrying this wampum belt that was used when the Confederacy was formed. This great message of peace. As I learned from a lot of... of old people, a lot of the chiefs, a lot of our mentors that helped me understand what the Great Law is, I also had to help recover these wampum belts. So what I'm going to share with you is a combination of the stories that I heard, some of the things that I read, interviews of our people from the past, and then my own reflections of studying the teachings of the wampum belts. Wampum, which is made from clamshells, is very important to the Haudenosaunee, in fact to many of the Native nations in the Northeast. We can see these big belts that are used to commemorate history, attest to the significance of the message they had there. But every generation would create a wampum belt reader, somebody who would know how to interpret the message. They would have been taught from a very young age. But also wampum is said to have this ability to capture our words. So as you hold the belt, you're able to recover its message. And this way, our oral history has remained true throughout the years. There are many different names for the great law. Some people say it actually means this great goodness or this great movement towards goodness. It's really all about the same. thing, that there's this founding principle, this law, this way of being that enables us to head towards peace and then maintain that. So peace is supposed to be the goal in our lives, but from the creation story reaffirmed in the great law. But as we all know, it's been a very difficult way of life to maintain. Hayao Enta was suffering from the death of his daughters. Tadodaho had used his ability, power, to kill three of his daughters. He got so depressed he wandered in the woods, dejected. He's just looked at the ground. But slowly, these words came into his mind. He began to think that if I ever met somebody who was suffering from the same kind of grief, these are the kind of things that I would tell him. Magic was taking place. Somehow the earth and its power and the historic setting, the time was right for this message of condolence to come to his mind. He began to string these beads made out of wood to remember the words that he was hearing. And then along came the peacemaker and he heard him. He picked up those beads and began to recite these words that were used to restore, I want this good mind. The metaphor for that state that he was at is called At the Edge of the Woods in the Thorny Bushes. As if like this arduous journey, you know, you get all kinds of dirt and craters attached to you. You get these thorns that would pierce your moccasins and make your life quite uncomfortable. And you have to take this rest. And as you would sit there, then we would restore this mind. There are several different stories of the origin of wampum. This one here by John Arthur Gibson in 1912 talks about transformation. Originally, we used beads made out of elderberry wood. has a soft center in it, or we would use beads made out of feather quills to send messages. So the feather quill or the wood beads would be carried from a runner, carrying the message to another village or another leader. But Hayao Ento, they said, in his depression, he was wandering around the lakes south of Onondaga, the Tully Lakes. He came to this one lake, and there's a whole bunch of ducks on there. And he watched them for a long time, but then as he stepped forward, probably stepped on a twig and made a noise, all of those ducks... They flap their wings, and you can imagine they're able to lift the water up with them. And then as he looked out on the dry lake bed, he began to see this white substance kind of sparkling. He went out there, and there were wampum beads. They were already formed. They were, like, gifted to him. pick them up. In this painting then we can see what it must have been like to have the ducks or the geese flap their wings together, pick up this water, and then these beads were revealed to him. So they were already made. They came from the creator to him because he needed to take those words that he was contemplating on, the condolence, put them into these beads, and then use those beads to begin to heal the minds of everybody. There are two types of wampum beads. They're tubular beads, only about a quarter inch long. The white beads are made from this channeled whelk shell, as we can see here. The center column is broken down into pieces and then eventually cut, ground down, and drilled in order to produce the white beads. The purple beads come from the Quahog clam cell. You can see the outer ring of the shell is purple. Now, the old shells were quite large, maybe six to eight inches in diameter. Today, it's really hard to find a shell with all that purple in it. But white and purple become the two primary colors used in wampum. White generally represents peace, purity, powerful ideas. The purple would represent the opposite of that. Death, darkness. when your mind gets fallen on the ground because of death. It represents all of that. So we have both life and death, sorrow and renewal represented in these wampum beads. So in what they call the condolence ceremony, the clear-minded side, that hadn't suffered the loss, lifts the minds of the mourners, those who suffered the loss of a loved one. So what happened to Haywenta with his daughters becomes the model for our chiefs and our clan mothers and for our people, that you have to resolve the grief that death comes. You're supposed to straighten out your hands. your house, put everything in order so the people are able to do their duties in order to keep peace in the house. So through this process, we're able to restore what we call the good mind. You know, the good mind actually started in the creation story as part of the creator's mind. It was brought back to us by the peacemaker, and he's encouraging us to use this good mind, which means to be fair to all people. We can see in this practice set of wampum strings that are used by the Kyugas, that were collected in the 1930s by a guy named Frank Speck. And he wrote down in this chart that we can see what the main message of each is. of these strings are. There's a long speech that goes with each one of them. These are actually glass beads that were used to practice the condolence, because to actually use the real beads, that was big stuff. So as we can see, they start with wiping the tears in your eyes, to clean out your ears, to clean out your throat, straighten up your whole body. They go through this long list of rebuilding the mind, the spirit, and the body of the individual who's suffering this loss. So condolence is used within the Great Law in order to replace the chief who passes away. And then we put out... antlers on that new candidate to show that he's now become the chief, picking up where the old man left off. So it's this seamless transformation from the old chief to the new chief. He has the same title, he wears the antlers of authority, and he's also given a wampum string by the clan mother, as we can see here in this painting by Arnold Jacobs. He's placing the deer antlers on his headdress, showing that he now has the authority to act as a chief. But those first three parts of the condolence are very important. The wiping of the tears, clear the ears. clear the throat. It's like your mind can't work well when you're carrying this grief. And when you're carrying that grief, you can't see well because of the tears in your eyes. It's almost as if dust settles all over your whole body. Gets in your eyes, causes the tears. So we have to remove those tears so you can see how beautiful the world really is. We can restore the brightness of the day. And that dust also settles in your ears. And so it makes it hard of hearing. So you have to clean out your ears so that you'll hear the kind, comforting words of the people around you. You also hear the joyful noise of children. birds as they sing again. And then we would take some cold water and help you clear your throat, to restore your voice, also to encourage you to eat again. Those three things become a very important part of understanding the Great Law. And these are some other wampum strings that came from Grand River that were collected by the Smithsonian. J.M.B. Hewitt, who was a Tuscarora scholar, coined the term the re-quickening. That's what he calls this part of the ceremony, where all of these things that we're talking about were taking place. You can see here then the tears, the... the ears, the throat. But he also continues on with the heart, limbs, your feet, your seat. And this became also a tradition that we would use for making treaties. The only way we could make treaties with somebody is if we were to condole them for their losses, to lift up their mind and their body and their spirit so they can hear us and see us and understand us. So what started in the Great Law of a way of helping people get ready to receive the message of the Great Law became the mechanism by which we would engage the newcomers to extend the rafters of our longhouse to ensure that peace would be maintained. would exist. So when a man is made a chief through this condolence ceremony, he's given a short string of wampum beads, white wampum. That represents his title, and this is what they call the horns. So placing the horns on the chief means that you're actually giving him this wampum string. But as we can see in this old photograph of a Tuskegee chief, Isaac Patterson, his wampum strings were a bundle of strings, many multicolored. So things change through time, different chiefs, different positions might have a different set of strings, but generally all of the original 50 chiefs would have a string of one Like the one shown here. One of the first wampums that was made was this circle wampum. It said it circles the people. Think of it this way. All Haudenosaunee people are born inside this circle. And we have a birthright then to all of the laws, the traditions, the beliefs, the way of life of our ancestors. ancestors. There are 50 strings hanging down here that represent each of the 50 titles of the chiefs. There's a double row of beads that go around the outside there, and they're twisted together. And they used to say this represents the great law and the great peace that would result from the great law. each string, they said there's a clan mother, and there's a chief standing there together in a circle. So think of it, it's almost like a circle of trees standing there, all of the same height. And for some unknown reason, there was a different number of chiefs. Son of Dagus have 14, Seneca's have 8, Mohawks have 9, Cougars have 10, the Onitas have 9. Now in the narrative of the great law, it kind of talks about the peacemaker going to these villages. He's wanted to meet the most evil-minded men in every community. And he wants to transform their thinking, turn them from men who were advocating for war into men who were advocating for war. men advocating for peace. So with these 50 titles, you could assume there are 50 villages, 50 main leaders that he confronted throughout our time. So it's hard to say exactly why we have these different numbers, but there's also a story of how these nations relate to one another. In that circle wampum, as you can see here, there is one string that's a little longer than the rest. A lot of people are confused about that. They think it represents Taradaho, but when you look at the names around the circle, you realize it's not him. There's a different way of recording which chief... goes along with which title. It's almost like a seeding plan. This is the way the nations are supposed to sit in council. The Onondagas at one end, the Senecas and the Mohawks at one side, what's called the elder brothers or the three brothers, and then the Oneidas and the Cugas on the opposite side. So when council, it's kind of a male-oriented system. It's male chiefs talking to other male chiefs. But behind every chief is this clan mother. So it's a balance between the women and the men and how we govern. Ironically, the Canada chose the the symbol of the circle wampum, to represent a submarine that they commissioned in 1965 called the Onondaga. So you can see how that wampum is replicated behind the back. So it's kind of amazing for us. It represents peace. For them, they use it as a symbol to defend them. At the same time, look at the title. In Latin, Invicta means the unconquered. Maybe unintentionally, but it turned out to be true. We still are the unconquered Haudenosaunee people. A condolence cane was developed, a long wooden stick with graphics for each. one of the titles as we can see here and this stick is used to help to keep track of the sequence of names and the ceremonies but also a little indicates about a story behind each one of the titles so there's 50 titles they're divided into the five nations and on the cane they're shown on opposite sides with the Mohawks the Onondagas and Senecas on one side of the cane and the Oneidas and the Kugas on the other this is a set of wampum strings that are attached to a single piece that represent the nine Mohawk chief titles, three for each of the clans. So there's three turtle clans, three wolf clans, three bear clans, each with their own clan mother, each with their own chief's title. I imagine each nation had a set of strings similar to this. Unfortunately, some of them become lost, and even this one was removed for a long time. It's only been recovered within the last decade or so. They said when the peacemaker assembled the chiefs in that circle, like the circle wampum, he gave them their instruction, told them how to be a chief, the things that they have to think about, and how to use their good mind. to render good decisions for the sake of the people and the future generations. And he took an arrow and he broke it. So see how easy one arrow is to break? But then he took five of them, bundled them together, and showed how strong it is. If the chiefs can remain united in their thought, can remain committed to each other, they can ensure peace for many generations to come. However, if they start arguing, they start disagreeing, they stop coming to the meetings, it's almost as if they're pulling their arrow out of that bundle. And each one that gets pulled out weakens that bundle. So he placed this bundle of arrows in the center of that circle, reminding the chiefs that their job is to use the good mind to render good decisions for the sake of the future generations. Then the peacemaker planted a pine tree, a tall white pine in the center of that circle. Old white pines are really huge. I was in the woods near Rochester, New York, and I was looking at 300-year-old white pines. They were probably about 6, 7 feet in diameter. So imagine how big these trees could get to be. But the peacemaker used the white pine as a symbol of strength, that peace will come. We'll never grow old if people are tending to it. We put our minds to it. But peace often gets tested from without or even from within. It's like a big wind's going to come and try to knock that tree over. So the chief's job is to make sure that whatever trouble comes our way, they remain strong in their minds, that they remained one council using one mind to render good decisions. So the peacemaker's instructions to the chiefs to remain strong are seen in this wampum belt. On the bottom, we can see what it probably originally looked like. Unfortunately, was cut into two, as we see. On the top part, 1877, and Chief John Buck, the Skunawati, he was the wampum keeper at the time, he said this belt represents the tribe standing in a ring joined hand in hand. And the compact was so strong that even though the tree might fall in, it could never break this chain of unity. So linking their arms becomes a symbol of the chief's job. When their arms are linked and their minds are together, it's an unbreakable circle. And if that strife ever tried to push that tree over, the chiefs would keep it from touching the ground. So linking... our arms becomes an important symbol, joining our hands set together. Whenever we made treaties with other native nations or the Europeans when they arrived, we would link our arms together in a chain of unity. We would add them to this circle. They would come in and join us because we realized in order to be at peace in our land, we have to treat each other as if we're members of one family. And that was one of the founding principles of the great law, that all people are equal, all people are deserving of justice. So we have to stand. together in that unity of thought. This is a painting I did a long time ago, 1975, and I'm trying to illustrate what the first council was like. I'm working with some community elders and some traditional chiefs, and they described the swamping belt that I depicted here, a white belt with five purple diamonds. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find that belt, but they said that was the first belt. But those were the only people I ever heard that from, and so it's really hard to say. But I tried to show the chiefs gathered in a circle and the peacemaker negotiating with Tut-a-Dot. to remove the snakes from his hair so that he would join this confederacy. And when he did, the snakes fell out of his hair, his body was straightened up, his mind became good, the good mind, and he was able to form then this confederacy. So in this wampum belt here, although it's usually called the Hiawatha wampum belt, it's really this five nations union or five lands belt, five lands put together in one so that we're one people. And this is when we begin to call ourselves the Haudenosaunee, Haudenosaunee, people of the long house. It's one family living together. together. And the symbols we can see here, the tree in the center represents the Onondaga Nation. The square on the far left represents the Mohawk Nation, then the Oneida Nation, Onondagas in the middle, the Cayugas, and then the Senecas. So together we form this confederation. And the little white line represents the unity. It almost looks like a chain, the unity of thought, the path of peace. Now the reason why the belt is purple is because this was in very dark times. Our people were... They're actually hunting each other down. There's murder and warfare all over the land. It was very dangerous even to go get some water. So this belt represents that hope, that peace will sustain the people in the future. So Wampum has these symbols of memory. And it's ironic because there's been a big discussion among our people. Is it a tree or is it a heart? Depends on which way you hold the belt. Some of these belts were held up and the message read or recited. Halfway through the belt would be turned over and the rest of the message recited. So I could very well say that. see that at one point it may be start off as a heart, get halfway through the story, you turn it over, and then it's the tree being erected. When the belt was first photographed, as we can see in this picture, the belt was shown what most people would say is upside down. But when you hear what the Onondagas had to say at that time in the early 1900s, they talk about it representing the heart, that we're in union together to form one. So I would like to say it's not an argument which one it is, because it's actually both, that in our heart should be this tree of peace. That's what unites us together. One heart, one mind, one voice, one people. So the great law has these three principles then. We're supposed to use this good-mindedness. It's supposed to be fair, have justice for all people. And if we combine our thinking together, the strength, the unity of thought, it creates a great power. But it's not just a military power. It's a different kind of power. It's almost like a spiritual power. And that allows us to relate to one another the way that we're intended, and then allows peace to prevail in the land. And when peace prevails, we're very healthy people. So this is a health plan as it is a government plan. Healthy minds can make good decisions. When you have an unhealthy mind, like Tata Daho did in the beginning, you can't make a good decision. So you have to deal with the stresses, the grief, the troubles that your mind may have in order to be a good leader. I mentioned that the Peace Breaker planted a tree of peace, and the original tree is put together in Wampum Belt to symbolize that tree. You can see the details here. stylized pine tree growing tall. It's a huge belt. Now, sometimes it was called the dust fan or the council president because the story behind this belt is that one of the jobs of the chief, one of the jobs of Taradao, is to keep what they call the creepy crawly things from entering the council. That was Vidya's descent, to always have a good mind and use an even tone, not to get angry with one another. And they have to sweep away all the negativity, keep it away from the council fire, keep it away from the place where the chief sit, because that negativity can destroy the unity. So this peaceful... Ever grow old as long as we're meeting in council, using the good mind, and thinking about the future generations. So you can see how the Tree of Peace Wampum Belt's stylized version of the white pine, the ever-growing tree. The white pine was chosen. because it has these great white roots that grow. And as you can see here, they kind of grow right on the surface. They can grow over rocks, and they're huge in the woods when you see them there. And the idea was you could follow those roots to their source. It would lead you to the tree that was planted in Onondaga. over a thousand years ago. On the branches of that tree, you can see five needles coming together in each little bundle. It represents like the five fingers of our hand, the five nations, all coming together as one. So the white pine becomes the symbol of the great law, symbol of this peacefulness. But there was also a wampum belt dedicated to Taradaho and his duties. His primary responsibility is to bring the chiefs together when matters are affecting all of us. And this is a Confederacy matter, something that comes up that affects all of the people. Each nation. and each clan was supposed to deal with their local matters, but when they couldn't resolve things, sometimes it would make its way to the Grand Council, which was held at Onondaga. Tadodaho's job was to invite the chiefs to there, explain to them the nature of the matter before them, and then monitor their discussion as they go along. So this belt reminds me of the Tree of Peace belt. The white pine is unusual because the bottom branch is kind of faced down towards the ground, the top branch is kind of faced up towards the sky. And then there's this diamond pattern. pattern running up the middle. Some people thought it represented the 14 Onondaga chiefs. Some thought it represented the unity of all of our people. Whatever it is, we show that Taradaho has a primary job to make sure that our leaders gather together, make sure they use a good mind, and then they render decisions that represent justice and fairness. But sometimes they also have to defend our people and get our young men to come forward in defense of our great people. piece. This is a painting I did of the Taradao at the time. His name was Leon Shenandoah. And I have him as if he's having this conversation with the original Taradao. One thing they told me is that evil or dark thoughts, disruptive thoughts, this bad-mindedness can always invade our council. It's always constantly struggling to get the attention of the chiefs away from the great law. So chiefs have to be extraordinary people. They have to be really strong people to keep their mind focused on their task. which is to maintain the great law, maintain the great peace. So you can see here the old Tadadao is almost trying to reason with him, almost trying to talk him into forgetting his duties. And I think this is something we all have to wrestle with. It's not just our chiefs that go through this, but all of us have to do it. We are all part of the great law, and the quality of our mind determines how well the great law is going to function. They say that they made a big white mat that the chief sat on. This is a section of that mat. It's a metaphorical map. It was made on a white wampum. It was probably four, six feet long when it was first made. They laid it upon the ground, and they said that the chiefs will use this. So this is a reminder of the peace and purity of the Great Law. It's hard to see in this photograph, but the center part is white, and there's two purple rows where the purple beads run horizontally on that. It's a very unusual belt. We only have a small section of it left. They also gave this chief this wooden cane, this wooden staff. They said whenever something comes to cause harm, tries to upset the fire, they have to use this stick to flick it away from the fire. They have a wing fan to dust the mat off, but then they also have this rod. It took me a long time to realize what this was about. And it's really about the chiefs, particularly Taradao, having the authority to call the young men to come to defend the Confederacy. When people are trying to destroy the council, trying to destroy our chiefs, trying to destroy this great law, we have to have a vigorous defense of it. And so that stick, the thing that flicks that away from us, represents the young men willing to use their minds and their bodies to defend the great law. When the peacemaker gathered the chiefs together, he asked them to share a meal from this common dish. And inside that dish was a beaver tail. They said it was the most nutritious meal. They said this is what our chiefs should eat. So we can see it in this wampum belt here. We can see the dark figure in the middle representing the bowl, the white rectangle representing the beaver tail. So sometimes I wonder... This is one of our problems today because I have never seen beaver tail served at a grand council meeting. Maybe we've been eating too much chicken. We have to get back to the power of the beaver tail. Women were given a special responsibility within the great law, particularly those of the clan mothers. So we see in this belt called the women's nomination belt. It shows the clan mothers there, their arms joined together in unity. They have a responsibility to ensure that young men can be stood up who can handle the responsibility of the great law. So the clan mother is always trying to help the young men. And be good, young man. to maintain this great law. So she has to pick a candidate out of the men in her clan to become the next chief. And this Wampum Bell tells about that. It also tells about how she has a responsibility to supervise their work, to work with them, and, if necessary, to remove... them if they don't fulfill their duties. We can see this detail of this little purple square. Now one story says that that represents the council fire of the clan mothers. The clan mother is supposed to gather from time to time, renew their strength, renew their stories, and help each other do a good job. job. So we have 50 titles, 50 chiefs. We also then have 50 clan mothers. So the clan mothers function in unity and harmony with the chiefs, but they have a special authority and responsibility to ensure that the chief represents the voice of the clan. In 1907, John Arthur Gibson dictated a tradition called the female chief. He meant the clan mother. He said she has special duties. She's supposed to provide the cooking for all of those that attend the council. Now at first this sounded a little sexist, you know. which is women do the cooking and men will do the thinking. But what it says is that by the quality of the food that she provides, it will satiate the people and make them peaceful, and they will become right as to their strength and also their minds. So it's metaphorical as well as it is physical. Yes, she has to ensure that good food is there, like the beaver tail, so that the men can think well, that all the people attending the council will be in their right mind. But it also said everything is put on her shoulders. The decisions for her family rest in her hands. She has to nominate the male leader. She has to work with that man. If the chief wavers away, she has to kind of bring him back in line. She's always thinking about what's good for her family and what's good for the Haudenosaunee generally. It's a big responsibility that the clan mothers have. This is a very unusual set of wampum strings that was in a museum collection. It talks about when they do stand up this candidate. You actually stand up five people. You see the nominated chief. represented by the white string. The one with white and purple beads, that represents his assistant. And then there's some other strings. One would represent that of the clan mother. And then the two purple strings represent what was called the female cook and the male cook. Now this is based upon the note attached to this wampum string that was collected for this Cougar title. Today people may say the female cook and the male cook are the faith keepers. But there is this metaphor about cooking, about providing good food in order to come to a good mind. Just as the chief wampum string to be his antlers or his horns of authority. There's also a purple string attached when that chief passes away. They would send this string around to notify everybody that this man passed away when they were going to have his funeral, and then hopefully soon after that, they would find a way to put a new person in his place. Another important wampum was the Confederacy Ember, as we called it, or the Council Fire. And as we can see here, it's five strings, long strings of wampum that's tied together at one end. One scholar wrote that when he attended a grand council, they laid it out. so it would be like spokes of a wheel all coming together in the center. Taradaho or Onondaga would give the Thanksgiving address holding these strings. They would talk about what the meeting is about. They would lay these strings out during the council, and at the end they would pick them up. So it represents what we call the fire, the council fire. Almost like five logs put together attached at one end. When the Tuscaroras joined, a string was added to it, and sometimes that string is all purple or sometimes half white and half purple. What it said was when the Tuscaroras came, Basically, a lot of them were Christians because they had a big battle going on in North Carolina. And what the other chief said is, you can join us, you can take a seat among the younger brothers, and then once you restore your traditional ceremonies, we'll transform that string and produce it all white. The Tuscarora Nation is very active at restoring their ceremonies, trying to retain their language. So maybe in the near future, we'll see this council fire become six strings of all-white wampum. In 1924, the RCMP moved in at Grand River. had ousted the chiefs and tried to establish an elective system. A lot of people believe they confiscated all the wampum belts, but these are the only things I could find that they actually confiscated. A string of beads, it's either purple and white, that was used as the council fire in the old council house in the village, and a bag of loose beads. That's all they were able to acquire. They tried to acquire the others because they understood who holds the wampum holds the authority. And they kept this for a long time. Basically, it was returned. to the chiefs, I think it was about 1986, when the Electoral Council returned this wampum back to the Confederacy Council. Whenever a council was called, Taradaho would have a runner send wampum beads to all of the delegate chiefs. It's a notch stick. Each notch would represent a knight and how many knights before the Grand Council would be convened. Now today it's usually just one string of white beads attached to it, but in the past, depends on the nature of the message, you could have many different strings like this one. From 1714 ...to about 1722, the Tuscarora nation joins the Haudenosaunee, enters into this confederation. These two wampum belts acknowledge that. The one on top where you can see it almost looks like steps, those are considered rafters to the longhouse. So we can see... five of these rafters strengthening the old longhouse the grand council and then we see a sixth rafter it's not quite as the same being added to that and you'll notice down in the lower right corner of the belt on the top there's one little segment of that rafter The story attached to this belt also explains, now that the non-natives are in our backyard and they were causing the Tuscaroras a lot of problems, we had to find a way to bring them within the longhouse once again. How do we extend the rafters to these people who are building their villages next to ours? The belt on the bottom acknowledges then that we're going to be called the Six Nations. I think it was first mentioned in 1722, and we've been known that ever since. Now, some people argue that the Tuscaroras weren't included in the Great Law because there's only 50 titles and 50 chiefs, but at this time, 1714 to 1722, our Grand Council made a decision that the Tuscaroras are going to be the sixth nation of the Confederacy. The United Nations also has a wampum bell that relates to the Great Law, but also talks about the recovery or the restoration of our alliance after the American Revolutionary War, where our nations fought against each other in many ways. The Great Law was severely tested during the French and Indian Wars, during the American Revolutionary War. War during the War of 1812. The Oneidas and the Tuscaroras allied with the Americans, other nations allied with the British, and we actually fought one another. We spilled our blood on the battlefield, in many ways betraying the underlying message of the Great Law. But, like all things, we had to restore that. We had to use our good mind to be fair to everybody, bring them back in, so that we can say that we're Haudenosaunee, one people living under one law, and this Wampum Belt attests to that. Whenever we wanted to invite another nation to come to the Grand Council, we would send them this wampum belt. Or if we wanted to admit them in, there's many different ways people can get admitted into the Confederacy. There could be a full adoption, or they could come in as a member nation like the Tuscaroras, and many variations in between. But we would invite people to come. But they also say that this belt serves as a memory of the Klan law that was established in the Great Law, which means Klans are the primary political unit within the Haudenosaunee, and the Jinnahsbo. supposed to intermarry between our clans. So we have a unity of clans. All members of the bear clan are related, no matter whether they're Onondaga, Seneca, or Mohawk. We also recognize that people in the same clan will not marry one another because that will create some disunity and harm in the future. When other nations came to the Grand Council, we would offer them this hospitality or welcome belt. The diagonal lines represent what we call rafters or their braces. Metaphorically, they're supporting our confederacy, supporting our house, because they are coming to join in a discussion. of peace. A lot of our council meetings with other Native nations were a way of forming treaties, forming an alliance, creating unity, joining our arms together with them so that we can coexist. This belt, again, we can see the rafters. It represents when Akwesasne was admitted into the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in 1888. What it really means is that after the American Revolution, the Mohawk nation became split. Some people came to Grand River, some went to Tyendinaga. Earlier, some went up towards Montreal. Anahuagay and Gunasatagay are those that were allied with the Catholic religion and their French allies. But after the American Revolutionary War, we had to reassess, how are we going to coexist? And the Confederacy kept meeting, but sometimes the Mohawks weren't attending those meetings. So in 1888, the Grand Council that meets at Onondaga decided that the Mohawk fire of the council that meets there will be represented by Akwasasi. And that's what the Swamp and Belt talks about. Today there's a great movement to recover the understanding of the Mohawk. of our ancestors and recover the hidden story of these wampum belts or the teachings are there these are two of our leaders jock hill and sid hill who are involved in this recitation of the great law were able to actually have the wampum belts in our possession for a hundred years they disappeared taken away by collectors anthropologists museums and it was a century-long struggle to recover them here's a very unusual belt that we just received back from the smithsonian there was a painting done of it and in the story attached to the painting, says that the belt was cut in two during the American Revolutionary War because our people couldn't decide what side to support. And that's why it has these six star-like figures between these two rafters. But I've since found another report, another part of the belt was still intact. So it's really hard to say. You can't always trust what's written. Sometimes the historians got it wrong, sometimes anthropologists didn't understand, and then sometimes our people told them things to kind of distract them. them away from the real truth. To recover the knowledge of the wampum belts, you have to become like a cultural detective. Try to weed through all of the evidence, try to determine what is the real story of this belt. And unfortunately, there are several belts where we don't know the story. But look at the imagery of this big belt on top. It's a huge belt. with five white squares, most likely representing the five nations, or the other belt with the five diamonds representing their nations and their fire. A lot of times these belts would be used in treaties. It'd send messages back and forth. They could be reassigned to stories several times, and sometimes the message would be sent back and forth. messages just get lost in history. There's also some wampum belts that are attached to condolence. These are very unusual. This is one that was identified with corn planter. It's a purple belt, which represents condolence, but there were five spaces in the belt where beads were intentionally left out, representing the five nations. This is a wolfclient condolence belt associated with a Seneca chief. It was last used when Edie Parker passed away. They had this wampum belt on his casket. You see it's got these five hexagons representing five nations. there's these white lines at either end, which were interpreted to be that they're the doorkeepers. So this was associated with the function of the Seneca Nation to be the doorkeepers of the Haudenosaunee. There was a very similar belt, almost the exact duplicate of it, that came from Gunasatake. So it made me wonder, if the one belt represents the Senecas as doorkeepers, does this belt represent the Mohawks as doorkeepers? But there are two other belts that specifically talk about that. The one on the top is the Seneca doorkeeper belt, where the Senecas are going to be be like guards to the longhouse, almost like dogs or wolves who will announce when danger is approaching, and will step forward and gather the young men to defend the Confederacy. There's another belt on the bottom. It's called the Mohawk Wolf Belt. You see these two figures holding hands, and then these two animals, dogs or wolves, at either end. And then we can see these lines going off the end. Now, there's seven lines there, so some people have thought this belt represents the seven nations of Canada. There's various interpretations about that belt. This could be the case. The Condolence Council Summons Belt was collected at Gunasatage. They said it was used to invite delegates to ensure that they send leaders when we're going to install a new leader. They said this belt was used to remind other chiefs to send their delegates to the Condolence Council. Make sure that you have people there to help install the new leaders. There are many, many other wampum belts. Some of them are directly related to the Great Law. A lot of them are premised by the principles of the Great Law. This was a photograph taken here at Grand River in about 1870 when Horatio Hale, an anthropologist, came to study the wampums. Imagine we were all living back then. Imagine we would see these belts in council. We would know their stories. You can see some of them that we talked about here today. Wampum has an everlasting value to our people. It codifies the words of the peacemaker. It carries the words of our ancestors forward. It gives us some sense of hope about the path that we're supposed to follow. There's two interesting examples here, two contrasts. One is a U.S. coin that was designed in 2010 where we can see that Iowanta, that Confederacy wampum belt, wrapped around these five arrows. This was to commemorate the Haudenosaunee. The other is the grand seal of the Haudenosaunee designed by Orin Lyons. So we can see those 50 men standing in a circle, their hands held together. See the Tree of Peace in the middle. You can barely make it out, but there's the figure of the peacemaker. They're holding the five arrows as he stands on the White Roots of Peace with the weapons of war buried beneath it. And then all of the family clans born within that circle. Two very different ways of looking at what wampum means, what the Great Law means to our people. For the last several years, the chiefs have taken on the responsibility to have recitations of the great law in our various communities. They started at Oneida Nation, went to the Onondaga Nation, and next summer they're going to be at Grand River. You have to understand it's kind of a work in progress. We're all fairly young people. We're trying to recall what our ancestors said. We're trying to learn the teachings of the Wampum Bouts. We're trying to put the narrative back together as best we can so that we can make sure that at least for one more generation... the Great Law of Peace will continue. But we're lucky that we have these wampum belts back. We're able to recover them from the museums, and this is the first time in a hundred years that the wampum belts were actually there, all of the welts associated with the reading of the Great Law. So it's a great moment in time. A few more years of this, we should all become more knowledgeable about what the Great Law is. So I'd like to thank you for your time. Hopefully you'll join us for our next lecture series. It's going to be on the two-row wampum. I'm trying to take a look at what does that mean to us today. Have a great day. treaty relationship with our neighbors. Dane tu.

Scano. My name is Rick Hill. I'm the Senior Project Coordinator at Deyohahage, the Indigenous Knowledge Centre at Six Nations Polytechnic.

Today we're going to take a journey back in time and take a look at the formation of the Great Law and all of the lessons that we learned from the peacemaker, all of his teachings that were... codified in a series of wampum belts. Some of them you may be familiar with and some you may be seeing for the first time. This is one of the earliest depictions of the formation of the Confederacy. We see it was done in 1853. It's kind of cartoonish like.

but it shows the peacemaker and his helper, Hayawenta, confronting Taradaho's head covered with snakes. He's bringing the message of peace to him. This more modern depiction by Oren Lyons from Onondaga shows the peacemaker now all dressed in white with Hayawenta and the other Haudenosaunee chiefs as they're singing this song in order to pacify Taradaho.

Oren said that he kind of altered the painting because the actual depiction of Taradaho in the oral history has his body look much more fearsome. His face quite terrible. So that is why Oren has Tododaho facing away from us so we don't see his horrific look. Originally he had actually had his hand on a skull because Tododaho was known to kill many people.

But this was done for the Onondaga Savings Bank and he thought for public consumption he might want to change it. This is a painting I did in 1981 trying to show the peacemaker and Hiawanta's helper as they're actually carrying this wampum belt that was used when the Confederacy was formed. This great message of peace.

As I learned from a lot of... of old people, a lot of the chiefs, a lot of our mentors that helped me understand what the Great Law is, I also had to help recover these wampum belts. So what I'm going to share with you is a combination of the stories that I heard, some of the things that I read, interviews of our people from the past, and then my own reflections of studying the teachings of the wampum belts.

Wampum, which is made from clamshells, is very important to the Haudenosaunee, in fact to many of the Native nations in the Northeast. We can see these big belts that are used to commemorate history, attest to the significance of the message they had there. But every generation would create a wampum belt reader, somebody who would know how to interpret the message. They would have been taught from a very young age.

But also wampum is said to have this ability to capture our words. So as you hold the belt, you're able to recover its message. And this way, our oral history has remained true throughout the years.

There are many different names for the great law. Some people say it actually means this great goodness or this great movement towards goodness. It's really all about the same. thing, that there's this founding principle, this law, this way of being that enables us to head towards peace and then maintain that. So peace is supposed to be the goal in our lives, but from the creation story reaffirmed in the great law.

But as we all know, it's been a very difficult way of life to maintain. Hayao Enta was suffering from the death of his daughters. Tadodaho had used his ability, power, to kill three of his daughters.

He got so depressed he wandered in the woods, dejected. He's just looked at the ground. But slowly, these words came into his mind.

He began to think that if I ever met somebody who was suffering from the same kind of grief, these are the kind of things that I would tell him. Magic was taking place. Somehow the earth and its power and the historic setting, the time was right for this message of condolence to come to his mind.

He began to string these beads made out of wood to remember the words that he was hearing. And then along came the peacemaker and he heard him. He picked up those beads and began to recite these words that were used to restore, I want this good mind. The metaphor for that state that he was at is called At the Edge of the Woods in the Thorny Bushes. As if like this arduous journey, you know, you get all kinds of dirt and craters attached to you.

You get these thorns that would pierce your moccasins and make your life quite uncomfortable. And you have to take this rest. And as you would sit there, then we would restore this mind. There are several different stories of the origin of wampum.

This one here by John Arthur Gibson in 1912 talks about transformation. Originally, we used beads made out of elderberry wood. has a soft center in it, or we would use beads made out of feather quills to send messages. So the feather quill or the wood beads would be carried from a runner, carrying the message to another village or another leader.

But Hayao Ento, they said, in his depression, he was wandering around the lakes south of Onondaga, the Tully Lakes. He came to this one lake, and there's a whole bunch of ducks on there. And he watched them for a long time, but then as he stepped forward, probably stepped on a twig and made a noise, all of those ducks...

They flap their wings, and you can imagine they're able to lift the water up with them. And then as he looked out on the dry lake bed, he began to see this white substance kind of sparkling. He went out there, and there were wampum beads. They were already formed. They were, like, gifted to him.

pick them up. In this painting then we can see what it must have been like to have the ducks or the geese flap their wings together, pick up this water, and then these beads were revealed to him. So they were already made. They came from the creator to him because he needed to take those words that he was contemplating on, the condolence, put them into these beads, and then use those beads to begin to heal the minds of everybody.

There are two types of wampum beads. They're tubular beads, only about a quarter inch long. The white beads are made from this channeled whelk shell, as we can see here.

The center column is broken down into pieces and then eventually cut, ground down, and drilled in order to produce the white beads. The purple beads come from the Quahog clam cell. You can see the outer ring of the shell is purple. Now, the old shells were quite large, maybe six to eight inches in diameter. Today, it's really hard to find a shell with all that purple in it.

But white and purple become the two primary colors used in wampum. White generally represents peace, purity, powerful ideas. The purple would represent the opposite of that. Death, darkness.

when your mind gets fallen on the ground because of death. It represents all of that. So we have both life and death, sorrow and renewal represented in these wampum beads. So in what they call the condolence ceremony, the clear-minded side, that hadn't suffered the loss, lifts the minds of the mourners, those who suffered the loss of a loved one. So what happened to Haywenta with his daughters becomes the model for our chiefs and our clan mothers and for our people, that you have to resolve the grief that death comes.

You're supposed to straighten out your hands. your house, put everything in order so the people are able to do their duties in order to keep peace in the house. So through this process, we're able to restore what we call the good mind.

You know, the good mind actually started in the creation story as part of the creator's mind. It was brought back to us by the peacemaker, and he's encouraging us to use this good mind, which means to be fair to all people. We can see in this practice set of wampum strings that are used by the Kyugas, that were collected in the 1930s by a guy named Frank Speck.

And he wrote down in this chart that we can see what the main message of each is. of these strings are. There's a long speech that goes with each one of them. These are actually glass beads that were used to practice the condolence, because to actually use the real beads, that was big stuff. So as we can see, they start with wiping the tears in your eyes, to clean out your ears, to clean out your throat, straighten up your whole body. They go through this long list of rebuilding the mind, the spirit, and the body of the individual who's suffering this loss.

So condolence is used within the Great Law in order to replace the chief who passes away. And then we put out... antlers on that new candidate to show that he's now become the chief, picking up where the old man left off. So it's this seamless transformation from the old chief to the new chief. He has the same title, he wears the antlers of authority, and he's also given a wampum string by the clan mother, as we can see here in this painting by Arnold Jacobs.

He's placing the deer antlers on his headdress, showing that he now has the authority to act as a chief. But those first three parts of the condolence are very important. The wiping of the tears, clear the ears. clear the throat.

It's like your mind can't work well when you're carrying this grief. And when you're carrying that grief, you can't see well because of the tears in your eyes. It's almost as if dust settles all over your whole body.

Gets in your eyes, causes the tears. So we have to remove those tears so you can see how beautiful the world really is. We can restore the brightness of the day.

And that dust also settles in your ears. And so it makes it hard of hearing. So you have to clean out your ears so that you'll hear the kind, comforting words of the people around you. You also hear the joyful noise of children.

birds as they sing again. And then we would take some cold water and help you clear your throat, to restore your voice, also to encourage you to eat again. Those three things become a very important part of understanding the Great Law.

And these are some other wampum strings that came from Grand River that were collected by the Smithsonian. J.M.B. Hewitt, who was a Tuscarora scholar, coined the term the re-quickening. That's what he calls this part of the ceremony, where all of these things that we're talking about were taking place. You can see here then the tears, the...

the ears, the throat. But he also continues on with the heart, limbs, your feet, your seat. And this became also a tradition that we would use for making treaties.

The only way we could make treaties with somebody is if we were to condole them for their losses, to lift up their mind and their body and their spirit so they can hear us and see us and understand us. So what started in the Great Law of a way of helping people get ready to receive the message of the Great Law became the mechanism by which we would engage the newcomers to extend the rafters of our longhouse to ensure that peace would be maintained. would exist.

So when a man is made a chief through this condolence ceremony, he's given a short string of wampum beads, white wampum. That represents his title, and this is what they call the horns. So placing the horns on the chief means that you're actually giving him this wampum string.

But as we can see in this old photograph of a Tuskegee chief, Isaac Patterson, his wampum strings were a bundle of strings, many multicolored. So things change through time, different chiefs, different positions might have a different set of strings, but generally all of the original 50 chiefs would have a string of one Like the one shown here. One of the first wampums that was made was this circle wampum.

It said it circles the people. Think of it this way. All Haudenosaunee people are born inside this circle.

And we have a birthright then to all of the laws, the traditions, the beliefs, the way of life of our ancestors. ancestors. There are 50 strings hanging down here that represent each of the 50 titles of the chiefs. There's a double row of beads that go around the outside there, and they're twisted together.

And they used to say this represents the great law and the great peace that would result from the great law. each string, they said there's a clan mother, and there's a chief standing there together in a circle. So think of it, it's almost like a circle of trees standing there, all of the same height.

And for some unknown reason, there was a different number of chiefs. Son of Dagus have 14, Seneca's have 8, Mohawks have 9, Cougars have 10, the Onitas have 9. Now in the narrative of the great law, it kind of talks about the peacemaker going to these villages. He's wanted to meet the most evil-minded men in every community. And he wants to transform their thinking, turn them from men who were advocating for war into men who were advocating for war.

men advocating for peace. So with these 50 titles, you could assume there are 50 villages, 50 main leaders that he confronted throughout our time. So it's hard to say exactly why we have these different numbers, but there's also a story of how these nations relate to one another.

In that circle wampum, as you can see here, there is one string that's a little longer than the rest. A lot of people are confused about that. They think it represents Taradaho, but when you look at the names around the circle, you realize it's not him. There's a different way of recording which chief... goes along with which title.

It's almost like a seeding plan. This is the way the nations are supposed to sit in council. The Onondagas at one end, the Senecas and the Mohawks at one side, what's called the elder brothers or the three brothers, and then the Oneidas and the Cugas on the opposite side.

So when council, it's kind of a male-oriented system. It's male chiefs talking to other male chiefs. But behind every chief is this clan mother.

So it's a balance between the women and the men and how we govern. Ironically, the Canada chose the the symbol of the circle wampum, to represent a submarine that they commissioned in 1965 called the Onondaga. So you can see how that wampum is replicated behind the back.

So it's kind of amazing for us. It represents peace. For them, they use it as a symbol to defend them. At the same time, look at the title. In Latin, Invicta means the unconquered.

Maybe unintentionally, but it turned out to be true. We still are the unconquered Haudenosaunee people. A condolence cane was developed, a long wooden stick with graphics for each.

one of the titles as we can see here and this stick is used to help to keep track of the sequence of names and the ceremonies but also a little indicates about a story behind each one of the titles so there's 50 titles they're divided into the five nations and on the cane they're shown on opposite sides with the Mohawks the Onondagas and Senecas on one side of the cane and the Oneidas and the Kugas on the other this is a set of wampum strings that are attached to a single piece that represent the nine Mohawk chief titles, three for each of the clans. So there's three turtle clans, three wolf clans, three bear clans, each with their own clan mother, each with their own chief's title. I imagine each nation had a set of strings similar to this. Unfortunately, some of them become lost, and even this one was removed for a long time. It's only been recovered within the last decade or so.

They said when the peacemaker assembled the chiefs in that circle, like the circle wampum, he gave them their instruction, told them how to be a chief, the things that they have to think about, and how to use their good mind. to render good decisions for the sake of the people and the future generations. And he took an arrow and he broke it.

So see how easy one arrow is to break? But then he took five of them, bundled them together, and showed how strong it is. If the chiefs can remain united in their thought, can remain committed to each other, they can ensure peace for many generations to come. However, if they start arguing, they start disagreeing, they stop coming to the meetings, it's almost as if they're pulling their arrow out of that bundle. And each one that gets pulled out weakens that bundle.

So he placed this bundle of arrows in the center of that circle, reminding the chiefs that their job is to use the good mind to render good decisions for the sake of the future generations. Then the peacemaker planted a pine tree, a tall white pine in the center of that circle. Old white pines are really huge. I was in the woods near Rochester, New York, and I was looking at 300-year-old white pines. They were probably about 6, 7 feet in diameter.

So imagine how big these trees could get to be. But the peacemaker used the white pine as a symbol of strength, that peace will come. We'll never grow old if people are tending to it. We put our minds to it. But peace often gets tested from without or even from within.

It's like a big wind's going to come and try to knock that tree over. So the chief's job is to make sure that whatever trouble comes our way, they remain strong in their minds, that they remained one council using one mind to render good decisions. So the peacemaker's instructions to the chiefs to remain strong are seen in this wampum belt.

On the bottom, we can see what it probably originally looked like. Unfortunately, was cut into two, as we see. On the top part, 1877, and Chief John Buck, the Skunawati, he was the wampum keeper at the time, he said this belt represents the tribe standing in a ring joined hand in hand. And the compact was so strong that even though the tree might fall in, it could never break this chain of unity.

So linking their arms becomes a symbol of the chief's job. When their arms are linked and their minds are together, it's an unbreakable circle. And if that strife ever tried to push that tree over, the chiefs would keep it from touching the ground. So linking... our arms becomes an important symbol, joining our hands set together.

Whenever we made treaties with other native nations or the Europeans when they arrived, we would link our arms together in a chain of unity. We would add them to this circle. They would come in and join us because we realized in order to be at peace in our land, we have to treat each other as if we're members of one family. And that was one of the founding principles of the great law, that all people are equal, all people are deserving of justice.

So we have to stand. together in that unity of thought. This is a painting I did a long time ago, 1975, and I'm trying to illustrate what the first council was like. I'm working with some community elders and some traditional chiefs, and they described the swamping belt that I depicted here, a white belt with five purple diamonds. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find that belt, but they said that was the first belt.

But those were the only people I ever heard that from, and so it's really hard to say. But I tried to show the chiefs gathered in a circle and the peacemaker negotiating with Tut-a-Dot. to remove the snakes from his hair so that he would join this confederacy.

And when he did, the snakes fell out of his hair, his body was straightened up, his mind became good, the good mind, and he was able to form then this confederacy. So in this wampum belt here, although it's usually called the Hiawatha wampum belt, it's really this five nations union or five lands belt, five lands put together in one so that we're one people. And this is when we begin to call ourselves the Haudenosaunee, Haudenosaunee, people of the long house.

It's one family living together. together. And the symbols we can see here, the tree in the center represents the Onondaga Nation.

The square on the far left represents the Mohawk Nation, then the Oneida Nation, Onondagas in the middle, the Cayugas, and then the Senecas. So together we form this confederation. And the little white line represents the unity. It almost looks like a chain, the unity of thought, the path of peace. Now the reason why the belt is purple is because this was in very dark times.

Our people were... They're actually hunting each other down. There's murder and warfare all over the land.

It was very dangerous even to go get some water. So this belt represents that hope, that peace will sustain the people in the future. So Wampum has these symbols of memory. And it's ironic because there's been a big discussion among our people.

Is it a tree or is it a heart? Depends on which way you hold the belt. Some of these belts were held up and the message read or recited.

Halfway through the belt would be turned over and the rest of the message recited. So I could very well say that. see that at one point it may be start off as a heart, get halfway through the story, you turn it over, and then it's the tree being erected.

When the belt was first photographed, as we can see in this picture, the belt was shown what most people would say is upside down. But when you hear what the Onondagas had to say at that time in the early 1900s, they talk about it representing the heart, that we're in union together to form one. So I would like to say it's not an argument which one it is, because it's actually both, that in our heart should be this tree of peace. That's what unites us together. One heart, one mind, one voice, one people.

So the great law has these three principles then. We're supposed to use this good-mindedness. It's supposed to be fair, have justice for all people.

And if we combine our thinking together, the strength, the unity of thought, it creates a great power. But it's not just a military power. It's a different kind of power. It's almost like a spiritual power. And that allows us to relate to one another the way that we're intended, and then allows peace to prevail in the land.

And when peace prevails, we're very healthy people. So this is a health plan as it is a government plan. Healthy minds can make good decisions.

When you have an unhealthy mind, like Tata Daho did in the beginning, you can't make a good decision. So you have to deal with the stresses, the grief, the troubles that your mind may have in order to be a good leader. I mentioned that the Peace Breaker planted a tree of peace, and the original tree is put together in Wampum Belt to symbolize that tree. You can see the details here. stylized pine tree growing tall.

It's a huge belt. Now, sometimes it was called the dust fan or the council president because the story behind this belt is that one of the jobs of the chief, one of the jobs of Taradao, is to keep what they call the creepy crawly things from entering the council. That was Vidya's descent, to always have a good mind and use an even tone, not to get angry with one another. And they have to sweep away all the negativity, keep it away from the council fire, keep it away from the place where the chief sit, because that negativity can destroy the unity. So this peaceful...

Ever grow old as long as we're meeting in council, using the good mind, and thinking about the future generations. So you can see how the Tree of Peace Wampum Belt's stylized version of the white pine, the ever-growing tree. The white pine was chosen.

because it has these great white roots that grow. And as you can see here, they kind of grow right on the surface. They can grow over rocks, and they're huge in the woods when you see them there. And the idea was you could follow those roots to their source.

It would lead you to the tree that was planted in Onondaga. over a thousand years ago. On the branches of that tree, you can see five needles coming together in each little bundle. It represents like the five fingers of our hand, the five nations, all coming together as one.

So the white pine becomes the symbol of the great law, symbol of this peacefulness. But there was also a wampum belt dedicated to Taradaho and his duties. His primary responsibility is to bring the chiefs together when matters are affecting all of us.

And this is a Confederacy matter, something that comes up that affects all of the people. Each nation. and each clan was supposed to deal with their local matters, but when they couldn't resolve things, sometimes it would make its way to the Grand Council, which was held at Onondaga. Tadodaho's job was to invite the chiefs to there, explain to them the nature of the matter before them, and then monitor their discussion as they go along.

So this belt reminds me of the Tree of Peace belt. The white pine is unusual because the bottom branch is kind of faced down towards the ground, the top branch is kind of faced up towards the sky. And then there's this diamond pattern.

pattern running up the middle. Some people thought it represented the 14 Onondaga chiefs. Some thought it represented the unity of all of our people.

Whatever it is, we show that Taradaho has a primary job to make sure that our leaders gather together, make sure they use a good mind, and then they render decisions that represent justice and fairness. But sometimes they also have to defend our people and get our young men to come forward in defense of our great people. piece. This is a painting I did of the Taradao at the time.

His name was Leon Shenandoah. And I have him as if he's having this conversation with the original Taradao. One thing they told me is that evil or dark thoughts, disruptive thoughts, this bad-mindedness can always invade our council. It's always constantly struggling to get the attention of the chiefs away from the great law.

So chiefs have to be extraordinary people. They have to be really strong people to keep their mind focused on their task. which is to maintain the great law, maintain the great peace.

So you can see here the old Tadadao is almost trying to reason with him, almost trying to talk him into forgetting his duties. And I think this is something we all have to wrestle with. It's not just our chiefs that go through this, but all of us have to do it. We are all part of the great law, and the quality of our mind determines how well the great law is going to function. They say that they made a big white mat that the chief sat on.

This is a section of that mat. It's a metaphorical map. It was made on a white wampum. It was probably four, six feet long when it was first made. They laid it upon the ground, and they said that the chiefs will use this.

So this is a reminder of the peace and purity of the Great Law. It's hard to see in this photograph, but the center part is white, and there's two purple rows where the purple beads run horizontally on that. It's a very unusual belt.

We only have a small section of it left. They also gave this chief this wooden cane, this wooden staff. They said whenever something comes to cause harm, tries to upset the fire, they have to use this stick to flick it away from the fire.

They have a wing fan to dust the mat off, but then they also have this rod. It took me a long time to realize what this was about. And it's really about the chiefs, particularly Taradao, having the authority to call the young men to come to defend the Confederacy. When people are trying to destroy the council, trying to destroy our chiefs, trying to destroy this great law, we have to have a vigorous defense of it.

And so that stick, the thing that flicks that away from us, represents the young men willing to use their minds and their bodies to defend the great law. When the peacemaker gathered the chiefs together, he asked them to share a meal from this common dish. And inside that dish was a beaver tail.

They said it was the most nutritious meal. They said this is what our chiefs should eat. So we can see it in this wampum belt here. We can see the dark figure in the middle representing the bowl, the white rectangle representing the beaver tail. So sometimes I wonder...

This is one of our problems today because I have never seen beaver tail served at a grand council meeting. Maybe we've been eating too much chicken. We have to get back to the power of the beaver tail.

Women were given a special responsibility within the great law, particularly those of the clan mothers. So we see in this belt called the women's nomination belt. It shows the clan mothers there, their arms joined together in unity. They have a responsibility to ensure that young men can be stood up who can handle the responsibility of the great law.

So the clan mother is always trying to help the young men. And be good, young man. to maintain this great law. So she has to pick a candidate out of the men in her clan to become the next chief. And this Wampum Bell tells about that. It also tells about how she has a responsibility to supervise their work, to work with them, and, if necessary, to remove...

them if they don't fulfill their duties. We can see this detail of this little purple square. Now one story says that that represents the council fire of the clan mothers.

The clan mother is supposed to gather from time to time, renew their strength, renew their stories, and help each other do a good job. job. So we have 50 titles, 50 chiefs. We also then have 50 clan mothers. So the clan mothers function in unity and harmony with the chiefs, but they have a special authority and responsibility to ensure that the chief represents the voice of the clan.

In 1907, John Arthur Gibson dictated a tradition called the female chief. He meant the clan mother. He said she has special duties. She's supposed to provide the cooking for all of those that attend the council.

Now at first this sounded a little sexist, you know. which is women do the cooking and men will do the thinking. But what it says is that by the quality of the food that she provides, it will satiate the people and make them peaceful, and they will become right as to their strength and also their minds. So it's metaphorical as well as it is physical.

Yes, she has to ensure that good food is there, like the beaver tail, so that the men can think well, that all the people attending the council will be in their right mind. But it also said everything is put on her shoulders. The decisions for her family rest in her hands. She has to nominate the male leader.

She has to work with that man. If the chief wavers away, she has to kind of bring him back in line. She's always thinking about what's good for her family and what's good for the Haudenosaunee generally.

It's a big responsibility that the clan mothers have. This is a very unusual set of wampum strings that was in a museum collection. It talks about when they do stand up this candidate. You actually stand up five people.

You see the nominated chief. represented by the white string. The one with white and purple beads, that represents his assistant.

And then there's some other strings. One would represent that of the clan mother. And then the two purple strings represent what was called the female cook and the male cook.

Now this is based upon the note attached to this wampum string that was collected for this Cougar title. Today people may say the female cook and the male cook are the faith keepers. But there is this metaphor about cooking, about providing good food in order to come to a good mind.

Just as the chief wampum string to be his antlers or his horns of authority. There's also a purple string attached when that chief passes away. They would send this string around to notify everybody that this man passed away when they were going to have his funeral, and then hopefully soon after that, they would find a way to put a new person in his place. Another important wampum was the Confederacy Ember, as we called it, or the Council Fire. And as we can see here, it's five strings, long strings of wampum that's tied together at one end.

One scholar wrote that when he attended a grand council, they laid it out. so it would be like spokes of a wheel all coming together in the center. Taradaho or Onondaga would give the Thanksgiving address holding these strings. They would talk about what the meeting is about.

They would lay these strings out during the council, and at the end they would pick them up. So it represents what we call the fire, the council fire. Almost like five logs put together attached at one end. When the Tuscaroras joined, a string was added to it, and sometimes that string is all purple or sometimes half white and half purple.

What it said was when the Tuscaroras came, Basically, a lot of them were Christians because they had a big battle going on in North Carolina. And what the other chief said is, you can join us, you can take a seat among the younger brothers, and then once you restore your traditional ceremonies, we'll transform that string and produce it all white. The Tuscarora Nation is very active at restoring their ceremonies, trying to retain their language.

So maybe in the near future, we'll see this council fire become six strings of all-white wampum. In 1924, the RCMP moved in at Grand River. had ousted the chiefs and tried to establish an elective system.

A lot of people believe they confiscated all the wampum belts, but these are the only things I could find that they actually confiscated. A string of beads, it's either purple and white, that was used as the council fire in the old council house in the village, and a bag of loose beads. That's all they were able to acquire. They tried to acquire the others because they understood who holds the wampum holds the authority.

And they kept this for a long time. Basically, it was returned. to the chiefs, I think it was about 1986, when the Electoral Council returned this wampum back to the Confederacy Council.

Whenever a council was called, Taradaho would have a runner send wampum beads to all of the delegate chiefs. It's a notch stick. Each notch would represent a knight and how many knights before the Grand Council would be convened.

Now today it's usually just one string of white beads attached to it, but in the past, depends on the nature of the message, you could have many different strings like this one. From 1714 ...to about 1722, the Tuscarora nation joins the Haudenosaunee, enters into this confederation. These two wampum belts acknowledge that. The one on top where you can see it almost looks like steps, those are considered rafters to the longhouse.

So we can see... five of these rafters strengthening the old longhouse the grand council and then we see a sixth rafter it's not quite as the same being added to that and you'll notice down in the lower right corner of the belt on the top there's one little segment of that rafter The story attached to this belt also explains, now that the non-natives are in our backyard and they were causing the Tuscaroras a lot of problems, we had to find a way to bring them within the longhouse once again. How do we extend the rafters to these people who are building their villages next to ours? The belt on the bottom acknowledges then that we're going to be called the Six Nations. I think it was first mentioned in 1722, and we've been known that ever since.

Now, some people argue that the Tuscaroras weren't included in the Great Law because there's only 50 titles and 50 chiefs, but at this time, 1714 to 1722, our Grand Council made a decision that the Tuscaroras are going to be the sixth nation of the Confederacy. The United Nations also has a wampum bell that relates to the Great Law, but also talks about the recovery or the restoration of our alliance after the American Revolutionary War, where our nations fought against each other in many ways. The Great Law was severely tested during the French and Indian Wars, during the American Revolutionary War.

War during the War of 1812. The Oneidas and the Tuscaroras allied with the Americans, other nations allied with the British, and we actually fought one another. We spilled our blood on the battlefield, in many ways betraying the underlying message of the Great Law. But, like all things, we had to restore that. We had to use our good mind to be fair to everybody, bring them back in, so that we can say that we're Haudenosaunee, one people living under one law, and this Wampum Belt attests to that.

Whenever we wanted to invite another nation to come to the Grand Council, we would send them this wampum belt. Or if we wanted to admit them in, there's many different ways people can get admitted into the Confederacy. There could be a full adoption, or they could come in as a member nation like the Tuscaroras, and many variations in between. But we would invite people to come.

But they also say that this belt serves as a memory of the Klan law that was established in the Great Law, which means Klans are the primary political unit within the Haudenosaunee, and the Jinnahsbo. supposed to intermarry between our clans. So we have a unity of clans. All members of the bear clan are related, no matter whether they're Onondaga, Seneca, or Mohawk. We also recognize that people in the same clan will not marry one another because that will create some disunity and harm in the future.

When other nations came to the Grand Council, we would offer them this hospitality or welcome belt. The diagonal lines represent what we call rafters or their braces. Metaphorically, they're supporting our confederacy, supporting our house, because they are coming to join in a discussion. of peace. A lot of our council meetings with other Native nations were a way of forming treaties, forming an alliance, creating unity, joining our arms together with them so that we can coexist.

This belt, again, we can see the rafters. It represents when Akwesasne was admitted into the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in 1888. What it really means is that after the American Revolution, the Mohawk nation became split. Some people came to Grand River, some went to Tyendinaga.

Earlier, some went up towards Montreal. Anahuagay and Gunasatagay are those that were allied with the Catholic religion and their French allies. But after the American Revolutionary War, we had to reassess, how are we going to coexist?

And the Confederacy kept meeting, but sometimes the Mohawks weren't attending those meetings. So in 1888, the Grand Council that meets at Onondaga decided that the Mohawk fire of the council that meets there will be represented by Akwasasi. And that's what the Swamp and Belt talks about. Today there's a great movement to recover the understanding of the Mohawk. of our ancestors and recover the hidden story of these wampum belts or the teachings are there these are two of our leaders jock hill and sid hill who are involved in this recitation of the great law were able to actually have the wampum belts in our possession for a hundred years they disappeared taken away by collectors anthropologists museums and it was a century-long struggle to recover them here's a very unusual belt that we just received back from the smithsonian there was a painting done of it and in the story attached to the painting, says that the belt was cut in two during the American Revolutionary War because our people couldn't decide what side to support.

And that's why it has these six star-like figures between these two rafters. But I've since found another report, another part of the belt was still intact. So it's really hard to say. You can't always trust what's written. Sometimes the historians got it wrong, sometimes anthropologists didn't understand, and then sometimes our people told them things to kind of distract them.

them away from the real truth. To recover the knowledge of the wampum belts, you have to become like a cultural detective. Try to weed through all of the evidence, try to determine what is the real story of this belt.

And unfortunately, there are several belts where we don't know the story. But look at the imagery of this big belt on top. It's a huge belt. with five white squares, most likely representing the five nations, or the other belt with the five diamonds representing their nations and their fire. A lot of times these belts would be used in treaties.

It'd send messages back and forth. They could be reassigned to stories several times, and sometimes the message would be sent back and forth. messages just get lost in history. There's also some wampum belts that are attached to condolence.

These are very unusual. This is one that was identified with corn planter. It's a purple belt, which represents condolence, but there were five spaces in the belt where beads were intentionally left out, representing the five nations. This is a wolfclient condolence belt associated with a Seneca chief.

It was last used when Edie Parker passed away. They had this wampum belt on his casket. You see it's got these five hexagons representing five nations. there's these white lines at either end, which were interpreted to be that they're the doorkeepers.

So this was associated with the function of the Seneca Nation to be the doorkeepers of the Haudenosaunee. There was a very similar belt, almost the exact duplicate of it, that came from Gunasatake. So it made me wonder, if the one belt represents the Senecas as doorkeepers, does this belt represent the Mohawks as doorkeepers? But there are two other belts that specifically talk about that.

The one on the top is the Seneca doorkeeper belt, where the Senecas are going to be be like guards to the longhouse, almost like dogs or wolves who will announce when danger is approaching, and will step forward and gather the young men to defend the Confederacy. There's another belt on the bottom. It's called the Mohawk Wolf Belt. You see these two figures holding hands, and then these two animals, dogs or wolves, at either end.

And then we can see these lines going off the end. Now, there's seven lines there, so some people have thought this belt represents the seven nations of Canada. There's various interpretations about that belt. This could be the case.

The Condolence Council Summons Belt was collected at Gunasatage. They said it was used to invite delegates to ensure that they send leaders when we're going to install a new leader. They said this belt was used to remind other chiefs to send their delegates to the Condolence Council. Make sure that you have people there to help install the new leaders.

There are many, many other wampum belts. Some of them are directly related to the Great Law. A lot of them are premised by the principles of the Great Law. This was a photograph taken here at Grand River in about 1870 when Horatio Hale, an anthropologist, came to study the wampums. Imagine we were all living back then.

Imagine we would see these belts in council. We would know their stories. You can see some of them that we talked about here today.

Wampum has an everlasting value to our people. It codifies the words of the peacemaker. It carries the words of our ancestors forward.

It gives us some sense of hope about the path that we're supposed to follow. There's two interesting examples here, two contrasts. One is a U.S. coin that was designed in 2010 where we can see that Iowanta, that Confederacy wampum belt, wrapped around these five arrows.

This was to commemorate the Haudenosaunee. The other is the grand seal of the Haudenosaunee designed by Orin Lyons. So we can see those 50 men standing in a circle, their hands held together.

See the Tree of Peace in the middle. You can barely make it out, but there's the figure of the peacemaker. They're holding the five arrows as he stands on the White Roots of Peace with the weapons of war buried beneath it. And then all of the family clans born within that circle.

Two very different ways of looking at what wampum means, what the Great Law means to our people. For the last several years, the chiefs have taken on the responsibility to have recitations of the great law in our various communities. They started at Oneida Nation, went to the Onondaga Nation, and next summer they're going to be at Grand River.

You have to understand it's kind of a work in progress. We're all fairly young people. We're trying to recall what our ancestors said. We're trying to learn the teachings of the Wampum Bouts. We're trying to put the narrative back together as best we can so that we can make sure that at least for one more generation...

the Great Law of Peace will continue. But we're lucky that we have these wampum belts back. We're able to recover them from the museums, and this is the first time in a hundred years that the wampum belts were actually there, all of the welts associated with the reading of the Great Law. So it's a great moment in time.

A few more years of this, we should all become more knowledgeable about what the Great Law is. So I'd like to thank you for your time. Hopefully you'll join us for our next lecture series. It's going to be on the two-row wampum.

I'm trying to take a look at what does that mean to us today. Have a great day. treaty relationship with our neighbors.

Dane tu.

Transcript for:Understanding the Great Law and Wampum Belts

Transcript for:
Understanding the Great Law and Wampum Belts