How do wampum belts function as material rhetoric?
Wampum belts functioned anciently, and function now for native traditionalists, as mnemonic devices, communication devices, law libraries, and instruments of spiritual and political life. As a communication device in diplomacy, each belt represented (and still represents) a particular event–a single talk, or a council, or a treaty. The beads carried (and still carry) the words of a speaker. Another way to say it is that meaning is in the beads. The next question is how this is so. How Do Belts Mean? Here is one ethnohistorical summary, based on present-day interviews with native historians, of the process of fusing beads and information. When all has been agreed upon [by the council], the men selected [as messengers] are summoned to the council and informed of their duties. On instruction from the chiefs, a speaker performs a speech act which roughly translates as “reading the message into the wampum”. . . In the Iroquois view the wampum is thought literally to contain the message; th
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