WAMPUM AND SHELL ARTICLES 43 1 



expressive of the sincerity of what they had declared." If a propo- 

 sition was not Hked, the belt might lie for hours or days on the 

 ground. To raise it was to accept the proposition. Loskiel said 

 that, if peace proposals were rejected, " when the ambassadors re- 

 turn home with the refusal, the Delawares throw the belt or string 

 of wampum thus rejected into the council house, and there it lies 

 till some old woman takes it away." 



Sometimes the rejection was vigorous. In 1691 the Five Nations 

 rejected a French belt while at Albany. " We declare the belt of 

 wampum given by the French venomous and detestable, and did 

 spew it out and renounce it, and will not accept of the belt but 

 prosecute the war as long as we live; and left the belt upon the 

 ground in the court house yard." In 1693 imperious Count 

 Frontenac kicked away three belts sent him by the Five Nations, 

 and five years later flung a belt in the faces of 10 Onondaga mes- 

 sengers. They retorted in kind when he sent them five belts in 

 1699. A sachem asked for them in the council at Onondaga, " and 

 one of the sachems got them and threw them towards him, but 

 not so far as that sachem sat, and another Indian very scornfully 

 kicked them at him." Quite as vigorous was the reception of the 

 war belt which Johnson gave in 1756. "A Seneca chief laid hold 

 of it, sung the war song and danced," and it passed on to others. 



Attachments. Belts often had something attached. After the 

 treacherous seizure of the Iroquois by De Nonville a Cayuga chief 

 addressed Gov. Andros in 1688. "Hee presented a Belt of Wam- 

 pum, with twentyeight sticks tyed to itt, to shew the number of 

 the Indians taken by the French." At an earlier day, when Chau- 

 monot came to Onondaga in 1655, ^o^ his second present he " made 

 a crown of a collar, which he presented them and placed it on the 

 head of one after another. They were at first surprised at this 

 novelty." He made over 30 presents at one council, but the 

 present of the faith was " the most beautiful of all which the father 

 showed." His ninth present was a tree appropriately prepared, 

 lopped branches showing dead chiefs and growing boughs their 

 children. "They regarded more attentively this piece of wood 

 than the porcelain which was attached to this present." 



