Wampum is a term for small, cylindrical beads made from the shells of coastal marine animals, used for centuries by Indigenous peoples of eastern North America. Far more than currency or decoration, wampum served as a system of record-keeping, diplomacy, and sacred communication. The beads were woven into strings and belts with specific patterns that encoded treaties, marked alliances, commemorated events, and carried the weight of law.
What Wampum Beads Are Made Of
Wampum beads come in two colors, each made from a different part of a shell. White beads are carved from the inner column of whelk shells, a type of large sea snail found along the Atlantic coast. Purple (or dark violet) beads come from the hard clam, also called the northern quahog. The interior of the quahog shell is mostly white but has a prominent purple stain near the hinge, and this purple section is the raw material for the darker beads.
Crafting wampum was labor-intensive. Each bead had to be cut from the shell, shaped into a small cylinder, smoothed, and drilled through the center so it could be strung or woven. Before European contact, this drilling was done with stone tools, making each bead the product of considerable skill and time. That effort is part of what gave wampum its value: the beads were difficult to produce, portable, durable, and visually distinctive.
The Meaning of White and Purple
The two colors of wampum carried distinct symbolic weight. White beads represented purity, light, and positive occasions. They were given to celebrate births, marriages, and peaceful agreements. Purple beads, by contrast, were associated with grief, loss, war, and solemnity. They were used in condolence ceremonies after the death of a loved one or a leader. The interplay of white and purple within a single belt allowed weavers to create patterns that communicated complex ideas visually, encoding meaning that could be read and interpreted across generations.
Wampum as Living History
For the Haudenosaunee (the confederation often called the Iroquois), wampum belts are not artifacts or symbols in an abstract sense. They are living records. When a treaty or agreement was made, the speaker would “put the words into the wampum” as the strings or belts were woven together. Each speaker who came after would use the physical belt to remember the original agreement and the history that had unfolded since. The belt was not a summary of what happened. It was the agreement itself, holding the words and the obligations within it.
The most significant example is the Hiawatha Belt, considered the original record of the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy. Made of purple and white beads, it features a central figure of the Great Tree of Peace flanked by four white squares, all connected by a horizontal white band. Reading from east to west, the squares represent the Mohawk Nation (Keepers of the Eastern Door), the Oneida Nation, the Onondaga Nation (where the council fire burns, represented by the central tree), the Cayuga Nation, and the Seneca Nation (Keepers of the Western Door). The connecting band shows that all five nations are joined. It is widely considered one of the most important and most valuable wampum belts in existence.
Wampum in Diplomacy and Treaties
Wampum belts played a central role in negotiations between Indigenous nations and, later, between Indigenous nations and European colonizers. One of the most well-known diplomatic wampum is the Two Row Wampum Belt, known in the Haudenosaunee language as Gaswéñdah. It records an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch in the early 1600s, built on three principles: friendship, peace, and permanence. The two peoples would live in a friendly way, settle disagreements through dialogue, and honor the agreement forever, for all future generations.
The belt’s design is simple but powerful. Two parallel purple rows run the length of a white background. One row represents a canoe carrying Haudenosaunee ways: their language, songs, dances, governance, and spiritual practices. The other row represents a European ship carrying its own ways. The rows are equal in width, signifying that although the two peoples’ ways of life are different, they are equal. Neither would try to steer the other’s vessel. Neither would pass laws or create obstacles to the other’s way of life. They would travel side by side down the river of life.
Another major example is the George Washington Belt, one of the greatest pieces of Haudenosaunee diplomacy with the United States. It represents the ratification of the 1794 Canandaigua Treaty between the new American government and the Six Nations.
Wampum as Currency
European colonists in the 1600s quickly recognized the value Indigenous peoples placed on wampum and began using it as a medium of exchange in the fur trade. Strings of beads were standardized into specific quantities: strings of 8, 24, 96, and 480 beads were valued at 1, 3, and 12 pence and 5 shillings respectively. Purple beads were worth twice as much as white ones, reflecting both their greater difficulty to produce and their deeper symbolic significance.
Colonial governments in New England and the mid-Atlantic formally accepted wampum as legal tender for a time, and the beads circulated alongside European coins. Competition over wampum production and the beaver fur trade fueled alliances and conflicts among both Indigenous nations and colonial powers. But reducing wampum to “Indian money,” as many early European accounts did, misses the point entirely. For Indigenous peoples, the diplomatic and spiritual functions of wampum were always primary. Its use in trade was real but secondary to its role as a carrier of words, agreements, and collective memory.
Wampum Today
Wampum remains a living tradition. Indigenous artists and knowledge keepers continue to make wampum using both traditional and contemporary methods. Elizabeth James-Perry, a Wampanoag artist, teaches and demonstrates wampum-making techniques, emphasizing the belts’ enduring role in Indigenous identity, sovereignty, and cultural continuity. In 2024, Longhouse Faithkeeper Tony Gonyea of the Onondaga Nation’s Beaver Clan created a replica of the Two Row Wampum Belt, now on display at Harvard’s Peabody Museum.
Across Haudenosaunee communities, wampum belts continue to serve their original purpose. They are brought out at gatherings, referenced in governance discussions, and treated as the living documents they have always been. Efforts to repatriate wampum belts held in museums and private collections remain an important part of broader Indigenous sovereignty movements, because for the nations that created them, these belts are not historical curiosities. They are active records of agreements that are still in force.