Wampum a Craft of Politics and Storytelling

Wampum are beaded goods made by Native Americans in the East Coast woodlands of North America. They were made out of colored mollusks which were rounded and drilled to make beads. These beads were then strung together and woven. The labor-intensive work needed to make Wampum gave Wampum value. 

Though they are often associated with being Native American currency, this was mostly after European contact and Wampum were mostly used for a myriad of other purposes. The George Washington Belt, for example, represents a treaty between the United States and the Iroquois. This treaty, the Canandaigua of 1794,  established friendly relations between the Iroquois Confederacy and the United States and an agreement that the United States would respect Iroquois land. It shows thirteen people, representing the thirteen states of the United states, as well as two people next to a longhouse, representing the Mohawk Keepers of the Eastern Door Iroquois tribe as well as the Seneca Keepers of the Western Door Iroquois tribe. The Hiawatha Belt is the national belt of the Iroquois people and is the equivalent of a national flag. This belt contains two boxes on the left and two boxes on the right with a tree in the center.  Each of these shapes represent one of the five nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy: the Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaiga, and Cayuga. Wampum were also used to denote leaders and titles. When a leader died, the Wampum was passed on to a successor.  

Wampum was also used as a form of narration or record-keeping, and Wampum belts would be made with images that would be interpreted by Wampum interpreters. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, Wampum was used as a currency with rarer colors being worth more than common colors. Native Americans and Europeans used Wampum in trade, and it even became legal tender in some colonies. However, the usage of Wampum as a currency was phased out as new industrial methods of creating Wampum appeared.  This made Wampum far less labor-intensive which, in turn, resulted in inflation. Eventually, Wampum stopped being used as it lost its effectiveness as a currency. Despite this, Wampum still has retained its cultural significance for many Native American tribes to this day.

Sources:

https://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/

http://nativetech.org/wampum/wamphist.htm