Something analogous to the Peruvian knots is to be found in the tasselled and knotted fringes which adorn the ceremonial hats of dignitaries in the Romish church.
The hats themselves are always of the same shape, round shallow crowns with broad brims. The fringes, however, differ in size and colour according to the rank of the wearer. The master cord is drawn through the brim of the hat at its inner edge, at a point over each ear, and kept in place by a large ornamental knot on the outside.
The tassels start from one, and from this two others depend, and from these three, and so on, one more in each row. An abbot wears a black hat with six green tassels on each side; a bishop wears a green hat with six green tassels on each side on a gold cord; an archbishop has a violet hat with ten violet tassels on each side on a gold cord, and a cardinal has a red hat with fifteen red tassels on a gold cord, depending on each side.
Fig. 10.—Portion of North American wampum belt.
The wampum belts of North America were primarily used as money, but they were also made sometimes in such a way that they formed historical records.
The true “Six Nation” wampum belts were made of little white and purple cylinders of shell very laboriously cut, and the purple ones very difficult to get. “Wampum” means white, and there is generally a preponderance of this colour. The short beads are strung upon long threads or strips of leather, and the design shows sometimes in purple on a white ground and sometimes in white on a purple ground.
The designs are sometimes easy to decipher, like the belt which typifies the Iroquois League, showing the one heart of the ruling nation in the centre, and the allied nations, each shown by a square, united together in one bond.
A very fine and interesting wampum belt was given as a record of friendship to William Penn at the Great Treaty in 1682, by the Sachems of the Lenni Lenape. It is now preserved by the Historical Society at Philadelphia. It is made of eighteen rows of white and purple cylindrical shell beads, the ground white and the designs in purple. The beads are laced upon nineteen parallel “horizontal” strips of leather by means of thinner strips running vertically across them and brought twice through each bead, one running being above the horizontal strip and the other below it. It is a curious way of stringing beads, and was practised in England some sixty or seventy years ago in the making of small bead ribbons. In the centre of the belt is a conventional figure of Penn shaking hands with the chief Sachem.
Many of the wampum belts seem to have only geometrical designs upon them, but doubtless, without exception, these fine white and purple shell belts, cut with infinite patience and skill, and put together with the greatest care, always have some meaning. The Iroquois could, until recently, interpret them at once, but now they are less able to understand the work of their ancestors.