NARRATOR: This intricately decorated strap may once have held a powder horn, or pouch. It would have been worn around the neck by a member of the Haudenoshaunee confederacy, or group of Native American nations, and can also be appreciated as a document to be read.

MICHAEL GALBAN: My name is Michael Galban, and I’m the director of the Seneca Art & Culture Center at Ganondagan State Historic Site.

Native people developed a system of design and shape and form which could be read from New Brunswick to South Carolina and beyond. This language became useful becauseeveryone spoke different languages.

And so when we look at this object, oftentimes the hexagonal form represents a council of a nation, and numbers matter. So in this case, six hexagons could represent the six Haudenosaunee nations. When we look at the ends of the object, there are four white and four black lines, and when the Haudenosaunee formed into a confederacy, they chose the great white pine tree to be the emblem. This white pine tree in a metaphorical sense has four white roots and they extend in the four cardinal directions, and people can use them to trace themselves back to the pine tree and find themselves enjoying the great peace that unified them so many centuries ago.

NARRATOR: Symbolic straps were presented to others in a ceremonial context as a symbol of reconciliation and condolence. They’re called wompum. But this strap, with its manufactured glass beads from Europe, isn’t real wompum. It’s a decorative stand-in, like costume jewelry that glitters, but lacks the complex meaning of the real thing.

Traditionally, Native people wove wompum using white and purple marine shells they'd painstakingly collected.

MICHAEL GALBAN: It was hard to get, and there was a lot of effort and time spent on making shell beads. Glass imitation wompum was an attempt to kind of replace it. European traders wanted to substitute, but Native people never fell for that. (Laughs) And they liked to have original shell wompum because it had a spiritual meaning and a spiritual value that the glass just didn’t.