Sovereign Innovations

Come close.

Okay, A little closer.

In my hands, I hold one of the most important commodities of North America.

Measuring just about a quarter of an inch long.

These tiny shell beads have the power to acknowledge nations, record histories, resolve conflicts and form part of the economic system of colonial America.

They're also hella pretty.

Also, Ben, why are we doing this outside?

Can I go inside, please?

It's very cold and snowing out here.

I'm Cheyenne Bearfoot, your host of Sovereign Innovations, and this is wampum.

You've probably read about this stuff in your history books and how Native Americans were infatuated with owning, trading and making these little shell beads.

But if you've been following this show and what we do here, you know that Indigenous histories told within a colonial American context often misrepresent and misunderstand a few things... and by a few I mean a lot... and by a lot, I mean basically everything.

I digress.

Indigenous communities throughout the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic and on down into the Southeast used an understood the significance of beads as a symbol for treaty, collaboration, relationship authority, wisdom and storytelling.

Talk about will be purposeful.

These beads and the time and care it took to create them established an early value system among Indigenous communities, one that recognized the skill and craft necessary to create these exquisite representations of culture and community.

So that brings me to today's question: How did this little multi-use bead have the power to shape cultural elements of North America?

As always, we got to do some context setting.

What exactly is wampum?

The term was co-opted by New England colonists as a shortening for the Wampanoag and or Narragansett word wampumpeag, which roughly translates to string of white shell beads.

No one knows that better than artist and bead maker Lydia Wallace Chavez, who is one of the main creators at Wampum Magic.

Wampum specifically is beads made from a shell.

That is what wampum is.

Even if I was to replicate this, it wouldn't look the same just because the nature of the shell and the beads themselves, they're going to look different.

But of course, colonizers have to reduce the complexity of Indigenous language and culture.

So the term wampum became all encompassing for all of the words pertaining to those particular beads.

A lot of our beads come from this part, it's the muscle of the shell.

Okay.

So you can see it grows in like layers.

So you'll get a lot of the times, different color variations.

You can see if you look really close at the beads, they have all these different swirls and lines in them.

Those are the layers of the shell.

It's really important for me to clarify that both the white and the dark purple beads had different names throughout the Indigenous communities up and down the coast.

So my husband's Eastern Shoshone, we go up to Wind River a lot and they have the Sacagawea memorial there, and she's really represented in history a lot and she's on the the dollar coin, right?

And in using her as history, she took wampum with her.

Wampum was something that she had with her to bring across, to meet and communicate with all the different tribes along the trail all the way to California.

They would understand that this was a sacred thing and they could use that to speak, even if there was a language barrier.

And I think noticing that and recognized that significance is what made the settlers come and say, this is something that we can use.

Prior to colonization, the wampum beads and the incredible weavings held both sacred and secular value.

Although the beads weren't always used in this way, either culturally or economically.

In fact, in traditional Haudenosaunee stories, eagle feathers and elderberry shoots were the original markers for ceremony, trade and diplomatic relations.

However, it was the technological achievement of being able to block and drill that brought the shells to the forefront.

As the shells continued to be refined, they gained more significance over time.

Other Haudenosaunee stories tell of how the shells were used to help the people heal and find peaceful solutions between individuals, communities and even nations.

As their cultural power grew, wampum began to be used for aesthetic purposes, but continued to be used for purposes like record keeping, communications, treaty making and diplomacy.

However, once colonial powers arrived and took note, things changed drastically.

Although there was immense cultural value in the beads, there wasn't really any monetary value.

It's not like there was a wampum exchange rate or something.

It was the Dutch that saw the Indigenous people exchanging the beads and they thought to themselves, well, this must be their money.

So they began trading European goods for wampum.

They would then use that wampum to trade for furs farther inland.

And so the wampum trade triangle grew and expanded.

Drawing in the English colonists as well.

By the mid 1700s, both the Dutch and the English recognized wampum as legal tender.

Thus, the process of making wampum became the first forced industry in North America.

Indigenous peoples of the East Coast were tasked with making more and more wampum in order to trade with the various colonial powers.

This increased the monetary value of the beads, but sadly removed the ceremonial and cultural value.

It also disrupted the economic and cultural systems of tribes and communities inland who were then forced to utilize wampum beads, which further denigrated the cultural value of their own systems.

Wampum jewelry is prized for its beauty, and cultural artisans utilize new skills and technology to imbue each shell and bead with story and culture.

What's truly wonderful is that after the colonists lost interest in wampum as currency, the East Coast tribes were able to reclaim some of those cultural aspects that were lost to colonial greed.

This is the white from the white part of the wampum.

But the whelk comes from this spiral.

So this is a whelk shell, and this spine right here is a solid piece.

So we can cut the beads.

If you can imagine from that and just form them from that spiral.

Wow.

So that it makes that kind of like melon color that you see.

Wampum, beads, both light and dark are incredibly delicate and require significant time and attention in order to create.

This is an old art form and the techniques, even how to make the beads.

The process hasn't really changed very much.

we use electricity.

We use, you know, modern machinery.

But the process itself is the same.

You have to make one by one, drill one by one, shape each one.

So a lot of having be one at a time it makes it a special thing.

Usually when something is purple because of there's, you know, less of that color in the shell, it's more a powerful meaning or something more serious.

So if you see a lot of Wampum Belts, especially the older ones the more purple, the more serious the situation was.

Over the centuries, the practice of making wampum beads has been handed down from generation to generation and continues to this day.

As kids, we would find clamshells on the beach and collect them and make jewelry.

So this is one of the necklaces I made when I was little.

You find all these different clams and usually the beach beats them up and makes those holes on the top.

And so finding ones with holes in them was really special.

And we could make our own jewelry with them.

So this is something not just me, but a lot of the kids, especially from my area, they do this when they make jewelry out of it.

And it's just one of the things we teach our kids.

Wampum belts are once again used as honorings and for diplomacy.

Like in 2020, when the Haudenosaunee Nationals team was not invited to the World Lacrosse games.

The Irish team gave them their position instead.

And in thanks the Irish lacrosse team was gifted with a two row Wampum Belt, which is a design first used in 1613. the Haudenosaunee Nationals issued this following statement You have gone above and beyond, not only for us, but for what you believe is right.

Your actions have spoken louder than words, showing everyone the true power of sport and the spirit of lacrosse.

So wholesome.

Before working with my team on this episode, I wasn't really super familiar with Wampum, its history or how it was made, and I think it's really great to be able to engage with other community members to share knowledge and keep history alive.

The story of wampum is one of value and the disastrous effects of colonial economics.

But more importantly, it's a story of culture and reclamation that mirrors many of the efforts of Indigenous people across the world.

The technological and cultural innovations that wampum represents in the past and present are signifiers of the impact that Indigenous people have had throughout the centuries and continues to this very day.

Until next time,