Wampum the spoken language is. Records and treaties are kept in this manner, and individuals could write letters to one another in this way. Wampum belts were used as a memory aid in oral tradition, and were sometimes used as badges of office or as ceremonial devices in Indian culture such as the Iroquois. The 1820 New Monthly Magazine reports on a speech given by chief Tecumseh in which he vehemently gesticulated to a belt, pointing out treaties made 20 years earlier and battles fought since then. The National Museum of the American Indian repatriated eleven wampum belts to "Iroquois" chiefs
Two Row Wampum Treaty tradition records not only the existence of a treaty, but its specific meaning, in the form of a Haudenosaunee reply to the initial Dutch treaty proposal: The treaty is considered by Haudenosaunee people to still be in effect. The Haudenosaunee tradition states: Wampum belts of the two-row style are merely one of many methods of representing in physical form the diplomatic and economic agreements implicit in the "kaswentha" relationship. There is clear evidence of Haudenosaunee use of wampum for diplomatic functions during the pre-contact period, while the post-contact period saw "increasing significance of wampum as a material form to facilitate