WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 44I 
and an Algonquin, with an unusually fine belt. At a later council, 
that year, a Mohawk “took a Frenchman on one side, an Algon- 
quin and Huron on the other, and holding them bound with his 
arms they danced in cadence, and sang a song of peace with one 
strong voice.” This kind of pantomime was strikingly employed 
at the reception of the French at Onondaga in 1655. With his 
third present Garakontié took Chaumonot by the hand, made him 
rise and led him to the midst of the council. Then he “ throws him- 
self on his neck, embraces him, hugs him, and, holding in his hand 
the beautiful collar, making a belt of it for him, protests in the face 
of heaven and earth that he wished to embrace the faith as he em- 
braced the father.” A Cayuga chief also sang with his present. 
“He explained what he meant by his Gaianderé, which signifies 
among them very excellent thing. He said that that which we call 
among ourselves the faith, ought to be called among them 
Gaianderé, and in order the better to signify this he made the first 
present of porcelain.”—FKelation, 1656 
The speaker held the belt while speaking. When the Rev. Mr 
Kirkland stopped at the Onondaga council house in 1764, one of. 
the Indians with him rose and took the belt in his left hand, leaving 
the right free for gestures. He spoke for nearly an hour. “At the 
end of every sentence they expressed their assent, if pleasing to 
them, by crying out, one after another or 20 at once, at-hoo-to-yes-ke, 
i. e. ‘It is so’; ‘very true’.”—Lothrop, p. 163. After this a 
response was made. At the Seneca council house the belt was 
handed round. Some stroked it with the hand and said a few words; 
others only looked steadfastly at it. This took full 20 minutes.— 
Lothrop, p. 167 
These marks of approval were customary. The Pennsylvania 
colonial records describe the giving of a belt by the governor in 1731, 
as a league and chain of friendship with the Six Nations. ‘ The 
Indians, on receiving the Belts of Wampum & the Present, ex- 
pressed their Thankfulness by a harmonious Sound peculiar to them, 
in which those of each Nation now present joyned alternately, & 
* they repeated the same with great Seeming Satisfaction.” 
Some peculiar forms were used in early councils which have not 
