How to Make a Native American Wampum Belt

Wampanoag means 'People of the First Light.' For thousands of years, this coastal Atlantic tribe saw the first light of dawn over the North American continent. The word wampum is just as timeless. A tremendous amount of labor is involved in cutting and drilling small cylindrical 'wampum' beads out of quahog shells. For generations, the labor invested in producing these beads gave them an intrinsic value to native people. Tribes throughout Eastern North America regularly exchanged fabulously decorated belts as peace offerings or traded individual beads as currency.

Beaded straps and belts, like the one produced in this video, were popular among frontiersmen and native peoples across the frontier. There are many cases of frontiersmen who were friends of a Native American tribe being given a belt to provide passage throughout tribal territories. The arrival of the European settler brought glass and machined metal beads to the frontier trading cycle. Initially, importing these materials from Europe was very costly, and they were rarely traded to American Indians. Once an industrial infrastructure developed in North America these trade goods became cheaper and more available. Though wampum beads retained their value, glass and shiny metals were more attractive, and wampum slowly fell out of popularity among most American Indians.

It is an honor to teach beadwork, a skill that has been threatened by modern convenience for several hundred years, in a medium that will live on forever.

00:00 - Introduction
00:27 - Materials & Considerations
03:41 - Planning
04:22 - Stringing A Loom
06:52 - Threading Your First Row
10:39 - Timelapse Part 1
11:58 - Rolling Down The Loom
15:05 - Timelapse Part 2
22:19 - Correcting Mistakes
24:52 - Timelapse Part 3
28:40 - Finishing & End Leatherwork
30:31 - Conclusion

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Видео How to Make a Native American Wampum Belt канала Frontier Trading Company