Frontiers and Borderlands:

Blogging Across Disciplinary Boundaries

  • March 8, 2016

    Wampum belts, when they include both purple and white shells, are crafted with designs that convey particular messages. Sometimes these patterns are unique; other times they are recognizable designs related to common relationship metaphors that recur throughout wampum's history. One [...]

  • February 26, 2016

    On Monday, members of the Haudenosaunee Grand Council visited the White House to discuss concerns about several ongoing issues. Here they are photographed with the so-called Washington Treaty Belt which dates to the Canandaigua Treaty of 1794 and serves as [...]

  • February 25, 2016

    Historical research usually entails long hours reading in the library or archives, and then holed up somewhere writing. But my wampum study invited a different sort of research. I felt that I couldn't properly research it if I didn't get [...]

  • February 22, 2016

    I was first introduced to wampum in grade school when I was taught it was Indian money. Since then, I read about wampum in books like Neal Salisbury's Manitou and Providence and William Cronon's Changes in the Land, but it [...]