Wampum as religious and political communication

Wampum was much more than something to trade. The opening challenges the familiar description of these shell beads as primarily money. The author does acknowledge that wampum became a medium of exchange between Europeans and the Haudenosaune. The correction concerns its significance: that use does not explain the religious and political communication the Haudenosaune had already been developing.

So we should ask what the beads communicated. They gradually developed from religious objects into a way to record and convey messages, including messages that helped maintain peace among different nations. That development, rather than the Europeans' use of wampum to purchase goods, is the story we are about to follow.

Start with the simplest form: loose beads in white or deep purple. Even without a string or an elaborate picture, a bead could stand for an idea. White was associated with Sapling, whose creations often benefited people. Deep purple was associated with Flint, whose disruptive activities included storms. The colors therefore carried significance; they were not merely decoration.

The fishing example shows that early communicative use. According to legend, anglers threw beads into the water to communicate with the spirit associated with creating fish. Different versions of their cosmology assigned that role to Sapling or Flint. We do not need to turn the example into a claim about whether the practice produced more fish. Its job is to show what people were doing with the beads: communicating within a religious tradition.

Later, beads were strung together and used for simple political messages, such as requests for a truce. Think of how a small set of signals can carry a message once people understand the arrangement. The comparison with a code is useful, but we are not given a codebook telling us that a particular sequence of white and purple means truce. Keep the actual claim at the level the evidence supplies.

The formation of the confederacy gave this system a major push. Previously warring tribes were organizing together, and communication now had to serve that political relationship. The author does not say communication began at this moment. Loose beads and strings already had meanings. What developed was a more deliberate system, with symbols capable of carrying more complex governmental information.

The belts make that development concrete. Strings of beads were combined into recognizable images, including longhouses, council fires and humanlike figures connected by lines. Picture the arrangement of beads forming an image, rather than someone drawing a little picture on each individual bead. People who knew the symbols could interpret the belt, and the arrangement of colors helped direct that interpretation.

Those images did specific work. A longhouse usually represented a nation. Lines between figures seem to have represented relations between peoples, and belts bearing such images could serve as safe-conduct passes. Council-fire images possibly indicated talks in progress. Notice those qualifications: the author explains plausible meanings without presenting every modern interpretation as certain.

The system could also encode constitutional provisions and make governmental business available to the public. Its vocabulary was limited, but a limited vocabulary can still be useful for a defined purpose. The author says it helped frame and enforce the confederacy's law for hundreds of years.

We have followed loose religious beads, simple political strings and more elaborate political belts. The main idea is that wampum evolved as a meaningful communication system. Its use in exchange was real, but reducing it to money misses the development and governmental role the author has explained.