WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 423 
Fig. 238 Braces to buttress up a house so that it would not 
fall. Made when the St Regis were taken in—so that the St Regis 
were a brace to the Five Nations, and the Five Nations to the St 
Regis. 7 
Fig. 249 A record of the first coming of the people with whit 
faces. 
Fig. 250 shows what remained of an Onondaga belt in 1878. 
This fragment has long disappeared. ‘This steady waste of the belts 
caused an effort for their preservation. By council action at Onon- 
daga the regents of the University were made keepers of the wam- 
pum, and at a council in the capitol at Albany, June 29, 1808, the 
Iroquois chiefs of New York placed in their hands all the belts that 
remained. The meeting was held in the senate chamber, and the 
proceedings were impressive. 
Figures are given of 11 belts belonging to Thomas W. Roddy, 
of Chicago. They are mostly fine and in good preservation, but 
erroneous dates have been given to some. In fact a good authority 
reports them as having recently belonged to the Canadian Six Na- 
tions. Fig. 185 is called a “ French peace belt, 200 years old,” but 
without particular reason. It may be a covenant belt of half a cen- 
tury later, or a proposal for an alliance. ‘The single line seems the 
path of peace, and the five long open figures are probably the Five 
‘Nations, while the four uniform white diamonds may be four of 
the colonies of the white settlers. This is the largest belt in this 
collection, but does not equal many others in size, being 14 rows 
deep and 500 beads long, an unusual length now. The material 
and symbols make its recent date probable. Fig. 184 is called a 
French mission belt by the owner, apparently because of the 
crosses. This is a plausible but not certain test, and it may be 
considered about the age of the last. I‘ig. 180 is called the Red 
Jacket belt, and the owner says that “it contains pictorial represen- 
tations of the nine council fires in which he took part during his 
life.” It might bear this interpretation, as the diamonds may 
mean fires, villages or nations, but the Seneca orator can hardly be 
limited to so few councils. The usual interpretation would be an 
alliance between nine towns or nations. ‘The belt is Is rows, with 
a line and diamonds of dark wampum on a white ground. 
