Photographs (left to right): Letchworth State Park, New York; Hamlin Beach State Park, New York; Cucumber Falls, Pennsylvania

Wampum Belt Archive

 

Gaiwi:yoh Wampum Belt

(No Image)

 

Handsome Lake at Tonawanda

Ernie Smith Painting Courtesy RMSC

Description:

Quote Bardeau (2011)
Oral Tradition: It is said that this belt was made by Handsome Lake. It is not known what became of the original belt. Handsome Lake’s followers addressed him as She:dwagowa:nëh (our great one). Many years after his death in 1815, Keepers of Gaiwi:yoh knotted another Gaiwi:yoh wampum belt, which is still held by the Keepers of the Main Fire at Tonawanda.

Reference:

Bardeau, Phyllis Eileen Wms. 2011. Definitive Seneca: It's In The Word. Jaré Cardinal, editor. Seneca-Iroquois Museum Publisher, Salamanca, New York, 443pp.