Wampum at the Onondaga Longhouse Six Nations Reserve in New York. These belts dated to the late 18th century and are sacred to the Longhouse religion. They had been away from their tribes for over a century. The Seneca Nation commissioned replicas of five historic wampum belts completed in 2008. Artists continue to weave belts of a historical nature, as well as designing new belts based on their own concepts. Wampum Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of American Indians. It includes the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and the
Beadwork five centuries in the Americas. Today a wide range of beading styles flourish. Alongside the widespread popularity of glass beads, bead artists continue incorporating natural items such as dyed porcupine quills, shell such as wampum, and dendrite, and even sea urchin spines in a similar manner as beads. Wampum shell beads are ceremonially and politically important to a range of Eastern tribes, and were used to depict several important treaties between the Native peoples and the colonists, as in the case of the Two Row Wampum Treaty. In the Great Lakes, Ursuline nuns introduced floral patterns to tribes who quickly