AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING GUSTOMS. 507 



originally of beads of wood or shell, and later of bands of shell, and 

 still later of china or glass beads worked into bands, or belts, as they 

 were commonly called, arranged in rude order, were employed, a sim- 

 ple example of A\hich, represented in fig. 125, after Eev. W. M. 

 Beauchamp, is formed of "white beads on a dark background." The 

 long house represents the Five Nations, and the cross the French.^ 



The design of this belt, which appears to have succeeded the string 

 of wampum, varied according to the occasion, and was intended to 

 remind those presenting it, as well as those who received it, of what was 

 agreed upon at the time of its presentation or exchange. Instead of 

 the belt the French, from the earliest period of their intercourse with 

 the natives, adopted the pipe ceremony in council, as well as in their 

 trading, in which invariably the pipe had to be smoked before any 

 serious business could be undertaken. In the early French records there 

 is abundant evidence that the pipe was considered as similar to the flag 

 of truce, and protected its bearer under ail circumstances. Later the 

 pipe and belt of wampum, especially with the great Iroquoian Confeder- 

 acy of the Five and later the Six iSTations, appear to have been employed 

 in conjunction with e?^ch other. When the English were holding a 



Fig. 125. 



WAMPUM BELT. 



After W. .M. IJuamhamp. 



council with the natives the belt was most important, whereas if the 

 deliberations were with the French it was the pipe that was most sig- 

 nificant. Still later the Americans appear to have supplanted the pipe 

 of the French with the American flag, or more often with medals stamped 

 with the head of the President of the United States. Prior to the 

 advent of the whites some interchange of commodities in the way of 

 trade ai)pears to have existed between the natives. Even during times 

 of hostility the trader has been allowed to travel back and forth with 

 his articles of exchange with little danger. The religious sentiment 

 was of the crudest character among the Indians, and was little, if at all, 

 superior to the fetish worship of the Africlin. Hunger, climate, and 

 variation of seasons necessitated constant movement in search of game, 

 fish, and peltries, for the Indian had learned but the rudiments of the 

 cultivation of soil. Expert as a hunter, able to track his prey, whether 

 man or beast, with an accuracy surprising to the whites, he was not a 

 herdsman. He migrated with the buffalo. Agriculture was almost an 

 unknown art to him. His boundaries were only limited by the presence 

 in a given area of a more powerful neighbor who was ever ready and 

 anxious to resent a trespass on his territory or the slaughter of his game. 



' W. M, Beaucbamp, Smithsouian Report, 1879, p. 390, fig. 1. 



