The Two "Mystery" Belts of Grand River: A Biography of the Two Row Wampum and the Friendship Belt

In the seventeenth century, the Haudenosaunee League of Five Nations introduced wampum belts as part of an elaborate set of political proceedings, which strictly regulated political protocol between First Nations and Europeans.¹ Serving as mnemonic aids to recall political agreements and guaranteeing the authenticity and sincerity of these diplomatic promises, some wampum belts paralleled European written treaties in their ability to record and preserve agreements.² Today, the Haudenosaunee consider the Friendship Belt and the Two Row Wampum, repatriated to the Six Nations community at Grand River, Ontario, from the Museum of the American Indian-Heye Foundation (mai-hf) in 1988, to be two of the most important treaties of Haudenosaunee-European diplomatic relations.³

North American academics and the Haudenosaunee agree that the Friendship Belt represents the Covenant Chain alliance, established between the Haudenosaunee and the English in 1677 to guarantee an everlasting peace between brothers. Both the Haudenosaunee and the Europeans presented a number of these white wampum belts with two purple figures, united by the metaphorical chain, at many conferences in order to remind each other of their steadfast friendship.⁴ According to contemporary Haudenosaunee oral tradition, a related treaty that also encompasses Haudenosaunee-European relations, the Two Row Wampum, predates the Covenant Chain alliance as the oldest treaty ratified between the League and the Europeans in the early seventeenth century. Cayuga Chief Jake Thomas, one of the foremost authorities in Haudenosaunee culture, described how the Two Row Wampum outlines a guarantee of independence in its structure and metaphors. The

Figure 1.

Chief Jake Thomas holding replicas of the Two Row Wampum and the Friendship belt at the 1988 repatriation ceremony. Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.

wampum's parallel purple lines represent the Haudenosaunee canoe and the European ship, comprising the laws, traditions, and customs of their respective people. Each vessel travels down the river of life, represented by the white wampum background, never interfering with the other.⁵ The underlying principles of both these relationships flow from the Haudenosaunee epic of the Great Peace, in which the Peacemaker Deganawidah united the warring Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations in a League of perpetual brotherhood.⁶

Today evidence of a treaty relationship incarnated by the Two Row Wampum and the Friendship Belt helps provide the foundation for assertions of sovereignty and self-government, as the Haudenosaunee call upon the Canadian and American governments to respect their historic pledges. The Friendship Belt and the Two Row Wampum repatriated to Grand River in 1988, however, possessed entirely different meanings, according to T. R. Roddy, a private collector who bought them at the end of the nineteenth century along with nine other belts that eventually wound up in the mai-hf. As will be shown, the Friendship Belt seems to represent the ancient Covenant Chain alliance, while the provenance of the Two Row Wampum's meaning seems to be much more recent, having verbalized an ancient assumption of autonomy towards the end of the nineteenth century, when Haudenosaunee sovereignty and survival was most threatened. Although the message of autonomy today incarnated by the Two Row Wampum undoubtedly dates from the early contact era, the more modern association of this innate understanding with a physical belt renders the official ratification of the Two Row Wampum with European parties unlikely. This examination of the historic origins of the ambiguous Two Row Wampum and of the better-established Friendship Belt is crucial because the Haudenosaunee base political demands upon their contemporary interpretations.⁷

Much like a detective novel, this article will explore the evolution of the custodianship and meaning of these two belts, by examining four points of exchange in their histories. First, although it is impossible to trace the exact historical moment at which the Haudenosaunee and the English first exchanged the Grand River Friendship and Two Row belts, early diplomatic exchanges demonstrate the protocol and symbolism necessary to forge relationships by wampum.⁸ Secondly, the controversial acquisition of the Friendship Belt and the...