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THREE IROQUOIS WAMPUM RECORDS 
By Diamond Jenness 
Illustration 
Plate I. Three Iroquois wampum records 
Page 
29 
The National Museum of Canada recently acquired from Chief Wil- 
liam D, Loft, an intelligent and highly respected Mohawk Indian of 
Caledonia, Ontario, three wampum records that appear to be unique 
enough to deserve illustration and presentation of his interpretations. 
The first (Plate I, figure 1) is the covenant or Magna Charta of the 
League of the Five Nations, the record of its foundation and organization, 
made by the Iroquois women at the command of Dekanawida and his 
associates when they established the League about 1580 A.D. In the 
tradition known to Chief Loft, Dekanawida appointed fifty sachems from 
the five nations, Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cajmga, and Oneida, made 
them join hands in a circle, and ordained that they should all be of equal 
rank and bear individual titles. That they might remember their titles 
and positions in the council house, he then devised this wampum record, 
which he entrusted to the keeping of an outstanding warrior, a man who 
bore the title Sharenhhonwaneh , “Majestic Tree,” through his appoint- 
ment as the first sachem of the wolf clan in the Mohawk nation. The 
successors to this title and sachemship remained the official keepers of 
the record down to the latest Sharenhhonwaneh, Chief Loft himself, now 
seventy-three years of age. At the time of the Revolutionary war its 
keeper was a noted warrior whose ordinary name was Dewaserageh, “Two 
Axe,” because he carried two tomahawks into battle. Two Axe deposited 
the record during that disturbed period inside a brass kettle, which he 
buried under the soil in the middle of a hazel bush beside Osagundaga 
creek. There it remained eight years. Then the celebrated Joseph Brant 
(who was the first sachem, Tehkarihhoken, of the turtle clan of the Mo- 
hawks) secured it for the ceremony renewing the council fire of the Five 
Nations that was held on the banks of Grand river; but after this cere- 
mony it reverted once more to its hereditary keeper. 
The number of separate beads in the record is slightly over 1,800, 
all white, and, as seen under the X-rays, drilled from both ends, which 
indicates their manufacture before iron was in everyday use and estab- 
lishes a considerable antiquity for the record. From a large circle formed 
by two entwined strings, symbolizing respectively the Great Peace and the 
Great Law that were established among the Five Nations by the formation 
of the League, there hang fifty pendants to represent the fifty sachems 
of the confederacy. That representing the seventh Onondaga sachem, 
Hononwiyendeh, who was the keeper of all the other records of the League, 
is slightly longer than the rest; it served as a guide in the reading of the 
record and in arranging the sachems in their proper order. 
