I am sure the first thing that most people who start this class and possibly those who wanted to start but drop before they ever really do is that they didn't realize a torch would be involved. I will be honest I wasn't 100% if would or would not be either, though that did not stop me. Using all the machines necessary to create these types of jewelry can seem scary at first but after seeing a demo or two they are not anything someone wanting to learn the art of jewelry making needs to worry about. I have greatly enjoyed working in this class and have been surprised by some of the products I was able to produce after such a short period. Anyone can make jewelry, and not just beading.

        I think my favorite project has been the plate project. Though this may be because my first attempt came out better than I thought it would and so I naturally think I have a "natural" talent for it. Whether this is the case or not, it was fun. And while I am working on my plans to do it professionally (kidding) I will continue to work and improve the skills as much as I am able or at least as much as I have access to the appropriate tools:P

Angela Fields

Art 1040

2/5/2017

Professor James Lund

                                                            Wampum

            Before the seven denominations of paper currency we use today, before the Greenbacks, even before silver and gold coins, there was another type of “currency” that the native peoples of the Americas northeast territories used that eventually served that purpose and before Europeans deemed it as such, many others. Even before we can honestly call these lands the Americas, Wampum was not only used as a means of trade, but also as symbolic statement of friendship, used in treaties, ceremonies, gifting, and commonly as jewelry. Wampum is what it was called when white and cold colored hued shells, often purple, were created in various forms from beads to pendants. Because of the fragile decomposing nature of these beads it is hard to say when the practice/art began however, “shell beads in the Northeast have been found which are 4500 years old” (Prindle)Histories or significant events could also be created in the finished crafts to help cement the memory within a group of people, like a history book or memorial to the moment they wished to last. Wampum when worn or displayed could also be seen as a sign of status within a Native community.

            In the beginning, the beads we now think of as wampum went through stages in production mostly because of the difficulty to produce the current bead-like versions. And it was not until later in history when the stone tools developed to suit such crafting, “this earlier bead, proto-wampum, was traded within ceremonial contexts, in part for the connections of shell with water and its life-giving properties” (Prindel). Though Wampum was being used by many eastern tribes when the Europeans landed, it was still known to all by the title that is “Wampum which comes from the Narragansett word for 'white shell beads'” (Prindel). And though many shells can be used to make the beads, “One of the most prized and often used mollusks for wampum beads is the quahog clam” (Mercenaria). This clam, which lives in the coastal waters of the northeastern United States, has a distinctive shell that yields the purple beads" (Wampum). Wampum did not always come in white and purple though both colors had strong symbolic meaning and how they were oriented within the jewelry through design had various connotations.  According to Tara Prindle,

White wampum is the emblem of health, peace, or purity. Purple and black wampum are color variants of the same bead, and were used for serious or civic affairs, sometimes indicating disease, distress, or hostility, at least in referring to the background colors in belt patterns. The meanings in the designs can become very complicated, for example a belt may have white designs on a purple background but be surrounded by a white border, indicating a relationship that was once hostile is now peaceful. A wampum belt painted red (with red ochre or vermilion) was sent as a summons for war.

            Below are some examples of Wampum necklaces and two Wampum belts the first of which with three figures holding hands is known as the Hudson Bay Belt. Off to the side is a cross symbolic for the church and is at a distance because the three figures presumably the Mohawk, the Algonquin and the Nepissing tribes were unsure of that new religion. The second belt, “which is on exhibit at the Philadelphia History Museum, was said to be given to William Penn by the Lenape tribe at the time of the 1682 treaty” (Maria).

Other materials used in the creation of this jewelry were the thread usually the inner fibers stripped from milkweed, dogbane, toad flax, velvet leaf, and nettle plants. Tubular glass beads and small round pony beads were added after the arrival of the Europeans and their trade around 1700 to the art form. Tools used in the creation of the jewelry also evolved over time going from stones to drill the holes, later turning to European metal awls that averaged about 1mm for the hole size and then to metal drilled holes that measured just under 2mm. Though much of the jewelry which ranged from belts, bracelets, bands, necklaces, and collars could be made by hand with these tools and others, at times a loom was used to create them. Some of the difficult process for how the beads themselves were made is broken down by Prindle where she states,

The intense hardness and brittleness of the materials made it impossible to wear, grind, and bore the shell by machinery alone. First the thin portions were removed with a light sharp hammer, and the remainder was clamped in a scissure sawed in a slender stick, and was then ground into an octagonal figure, an inch in length and half an inch in diameter. This piece being ready for boring was inserted into another piece of wood, sawed like the first stick, which was firmly fastened to a bench, a weight being so adjusted that it caused the scissure to grip the shell and to hold it securely.

For the Wampanoag, the clams that provided these shells were also a source of food. Tall Oak, an Absentee Mashantucket Pequot (Wampanoag) tells us in the documentary TV series We Shall Remain, “we wasted nothing the creator gave because it was a gift...All the tribes respected the Wampum, and the value that Wampum had was spiritual, more so than material. We used it in ceremonies, it sealed agreements, it was what notarized the transaction. When Wampum was exchanged, no one would break the agreement that went along with the Wampum: the marriage agreement, or treaty or whatever because it was so sacred and you don’t go against the creator” (We Shall Remain). It was the introduction to European trade that this became a cornerstone means of exchange between the two very different people. Benjamin Pratt stating that they made “the Indian’s traditional ceremonial amulet, the coin of the American realm” (We Shall Remain). And though this meant it would be used in ways it was not fully intended, it can still be seen as a beautiful and creative craft of the America’s First People.

Work Cited (Text)

Maria, Mikaela. "Treaty of Shackamaxon Wampum Belt." Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. N.p., 25 Feb. 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.

Prindle, Tara. “NativeTech: Wampum; History and Background.” NativeTech: Wampum; History and Background, 1994, www.nativetech.org/wampum/wamphist.htm. Accessed 4 Mar. 2017.

“Wampum.” Ganondagan, Friends of Ganondagan, 2016, www.ganondagan.org/Learning/Wampum. Accessed 4 Mar. 2017.

We Shall Remain. Dir. Chris Eyre, Ric Burns, Stanley Nelson, Jr., and Dustinn Craig. Perf. Benjamin Bratt. Alexandria, Va.: PBS Home Video, 2009. DVD.

Work Cited (Images)

Leal_shaw. “How to Make a Wampum Belt.” EBay, EBay Inc, 9 Aug. 2015, www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Make-a-Wampum-Belt-/10000000205616750/g.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2017.

Hamell, R D. “Wampum Belt Archive.” Untitled Document, 24 May 2011, wampumbear.com/W_Hudson%20Bay%20Belt.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2017.

"Native American Wampum Beads Reference 745 | WSOURCE." Native American Wampum Beads Reference 745.  n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2017.

"Wampum." Cayuga Nation of New York. Quantumcms, 2009. Web. 04 Mar. 2017.