Photo Hunters: Support

A person could do so much with this week’s Photo Hunt! I decided to use “support” as a verb. Here’s a photo of the Hiawatha Belt. This is not the real belt, it’s a replica of one, and we saw it at the Children’s Museum in Utica, NY. You can read about our visit to the Museum here.

Why do I have a wampum belt for Photo Hunt? The original Hiawatha Belt was made of wampum, which were beads made from clam shells, found in the Atlantic Ocean. These beads were extremely precious to the Indians of Upstate New York. They used the beads to make wampum belts, which were binding contracts or treaties. Nowadays people use hidden spy cameras to enforce treaties, but back then, people kept their word with a binding contract!

This wampum belt is the contract– the covenant– that the five individual Iroquois tribal Nations (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk) agreed to. They agreed to support each other and to have peace with each other. This peace lasted for about 500 years, until the American Revolution. Only the Oneida Indian tribes joined the American patriots and they gave us their support. They suffered horrible losses, but they believed in our cause.

How did your Photo Hunt go today?