242 ART IN SHELL OF THE ANCIENT AMERICANS. 



The following is quoted from Brice, who is describing a council held 

 in the Muskingum Valley in 1764 : 



"An Indian council, on solemn occasions, was always opened with 

 preliminary forms, sufficiently wearisome and tedious, but made indis- 

 pensable by immemorial custom, for this people are as much bound by 

 their conventional usages as the most artificial children of civilization. 

 The forms were varied, to some extent, according to the imagination of 

 the speaker, but in all essential respects thej' were closely similar 

 throughout the tribes of the Algonkin and and Iroquois lineage. 



" They run somewhat as follows, each sentence being pronounced 

 with great solemnity, and confirmed by the delivery of a wampum 

 belt : ' Brothers, with this belt I open your ears that j'ou may hear ; I 

 remove grief and sorrow from j'our hearts ; I draw from your feet the 

 thorns that pierced them as you journeyed thither ; I clean the seats of 

 the council-house, that you may sit at ease ; I wash your head and body, 

 that your spirits may be refreshed; I condole with you on the loss of 

 the friends who have died since we last met ; I wipe out any blood 

 which may have been spilt between us.' This ceremony, which, by the 

 delivery of so many belts of wampum, entailed no small expense, was 

 never used except on the most important occasions ; and at the coun- 

 cils with Colonel Bouquet the angry warriors seem wholly to have dis- 

 pensed with it. * * * And his memory was refreshed by belts 

 of wampum, which he delivered after every clause in his harangue, 

 as a pledge of the sincerity and truth of his words. 



"These belts were carefully preserved by tlie hearers as a substitute 

 for written records, a use for which they were the better adapted, as 

 they were often worked in hieroglyphics expressing the meaning they 

 were designed to preserve. Thus at a treaty of peace the principal belt 

 often bore tlie figure of an Indian and a white man holding a chain be- 

 tween them.'" 



From an account of a council held by the Five Nations at Onondaga 

 nearly two hundred years ago, to which the governor of Canada sent 

 four representatives, I make tlie following extract: " During the course 

 of the proceedings Canuehoot, a Seneca sachem jiresented a proposed 

 treaty between the Wagunhas and the Senecas, speaking as follows : 

 'We come to join the two bodies into one. * * • We come to learn 

 wisdom of the Senecas (giving a belt). We by this belt wipe away the 

 tears from the eyes of your friends, whose relations have been killed in 

 the war. We likewise wipe the paint from your soldiers' faces (giving 

 a second belt). We throw aside the ax which Yonoudio put into our 

 hands by this third belt.' A red marble sun is presented — a pipe made 

 of red marble. ' Yonondio is drunk ; we wash our hands clean from his ac- 

 tions (giving a fourth belt). * * » We have twelve of your nation ijrison- 

 ers; they shall be broughthomein the spring (giving a belt to confirm the 

 promise). We will bring your prisoners home when the strawberries 

 > Brico : History of Fort Wayne, 1868, page 28. 



