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A P E O P LE S ART HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

250 YEARS OF ACTIVIST ART AND ARTISTS WORKING IN SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS

Nicolas Lampert

THE NEW PRESS

NEW YORK LONDON

© 2013 by Nicolas Lampert All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.

A longer Version of chapter 8 ("Haymarket: An Embattled History of Static Monuments and Public Interventions”) was published in Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, Josh MacPhee and Eril Reuland, editors (Oakland: AK Press, 2007). Permission to reprint this new version of the essay was granted by AK Press.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013.

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2013 Distributed by Perseus Distribution

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Lampert, Nicolas, 1969— A people’s art history of the United States: 250 years of activist art and artists working in

social justice movements / Nicolas Lampert. pages cm — (New press people’s history)

Indudes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59558-324-6 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-59558-931-6 (e-book) 1. Art—Political

aspects—United States. 2. History in art. 3. Art, American—Themes, motives. I. Title. N72.P6L37 2013 701'.030973—dc23

2013014977

The New Press publishes books that promote and enrich public discussion and understanding of the issues vital to our democracy and to a more equitable world. These books are made possible by the enthusiasm of our readers; the Support of a committed group of donors, large and small; the collaboration of our many partners in the independent media and the not-for-profit sector; booksellers, who often hand-sell New Press books; librarians; and above all by our authors.

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To the activist-artists and the artist-activists

Contents

Series Preface vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii

1. Parallel Paths on the Same River 1 2. Visualizing a Partial Revolution 11 3. Liberation Graphics 22 4. Abolitionism as Autonomy, Activism, and Entertainment 33 5. The Battleground over Public Memory 39 6. Photographing the Past Düring the Present 48 7. Jacob A. Riis s Image Problem 60 8. Haymarket: An Embattled History of Static Monuments and Public Interventions 70 9. Blurring the Boundaries Between Art and Life 86 10. The Masses on Trial 99 11. Banners Designed to Break a President 110 12. The Lynching Crisis 121 13. Become the Media, Circa 1930 135 14. Govemment-Funded Art: The Boom and Bust Years for Public Art 146 15. Artists Organize 156 16. Artists Against War and Fascism 167 17. Resistance or Loyalty: The Visual Politics of Mine Okubo 176 18. Come Let Us Build a New World Together 188 19. Party Artist: Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party 199 20. Protesting the Museum Industrial Complex 211 21. "The Living, Breathing Embodiment of a Culture Transformed” 224 22. Public Rituals, Media Performances, and Citywide Interventions 235 23. No Apologies: Asco, Performance Art, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement 242 24. Art Is Not Enough 252 25. Antinuclear Street Art 263 26. Living Water: Sustainability Through Collaboration 269 27. Art Defends Art 278 28. Bringing the War Home 286 29. Impersonating Utopia and Dystopia 296

Notes 305 Index 347

Series Preface

T u r n in g HISTORY ON it s h e a d opens up whole new worlds of possibility. Once, historians looked only at society’s upper crust: the leaders and others who made the headlines and whose words and deeds survived as historical truth. In our lifetimes, this has begun to change. Shifting history s lens from the upper rungs to the lower, we are learning more than ever about the masses of people who did the work that made society tick.

Not surprisingly, as the lens shifts the basic narratives change as well. The history of men and women of all dasses, colors, and cultures reveals an astonishing degree of struggle and inde­ pendent political action. Everyday people played complicated historical roles, and they developed highly sophisticated and often very different political ideas from the people who ruled them. Sometimes their accomplishments left tangible traces; other times, the traces are invisible but no less real. They left their mark on our institutions, our folkways and language, on our political habits and vocabulary. We are only now beginning to excavate this multifaceted history.

The New Press People’s History Series roams far and wide through human history, revisiting old stories in new ways, and introducing altogether new accounts of the struggles of common people to make their own history. Taking the lives and viewpoints of common people as its point of departure, the series reexamines subjects as different as the American Revolution, the history of sports, the history of American art, the Mexican Revolution, and the rise of the Third World.

A people’s history does more than add to the catalogue of what we already know. These books will shake up readers’ understanding of the past—just as common people throughout history have shaken up their always changeable worlds.

Howard Zinn Boston, 2000

Preface

A FEW YEARS BACK, a friend caught me off guard when he asked, “Why aren't the artists of today responding in force to the political crisis of the moment?” He mentioned some of the visual artists who were radicalized by the Vietnam War— Mark di Suvero, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Ad Rein­ hardt, Hans Haacke, Carl Andre, and so on, and said that nothing approaching that level of en- gagement has taken place in the decades that have followed. My answer to him was simple. I told him that artists were responding, and more important, he was looking in the wrong places.

My colleague was drawing names from the art world (primarily the New York art world of galleries and museums), while I was looking elsewhere. I suggested that he look to the artists, de- signers, photographers, and Creative agitators who took part in the civil rights movement, the black power movement, the Chicano/Chicana movement, and the red power movement. That he look to the artists in the antinudear movements, the AIDS movements, the antiwar move- ments, the environmental movements, the antiglobalization movements, the prison-justice move­ ments, and the feminist movements that did not end in the 1970s. If he wanted to go further back, he could look at the artists in the 1930s’ federal art projects and labor unions, those in the suffrage movements, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and so on.

However, his point was clear. Many people look to the world of museums and galleries when they think of visual art, including political art. My argument was that these places are not the primary site for activist art. Politically engaged art can and does exist in museums and galleries, but activist art is altogether different and is firmly located in movements and in the streets and communities that produce these movements.1 My deeper point was that there is another art history that is overlooked—a history of activist art.

This study addresses this parallel history. Some examples draw upon movement culture—the art, objects, ephemera, photographs, and visual culture that emerges directly out of movements by the participants themselves. This work is done by individuals who may or may not self-identify as an “artist” or a producer of media. These individuals more likely consider themselves activists first—people who organize and at times employ visual tactics to help their causes succeed.

In contrast, other examples in this study focus upon individuals who identify first and fore- most as an "artist”—individuals who were often trained in art academies and art schools. These

ix

individuals (or art collectives) chose to locate their art within a movement—rather than a gallery or a museum—because they were inspired by the cause and decided to join the movement in solidarity as an artist.

Both paths taken—movement culture and the work created by "artists" aligned with social-justice movements—are equally significant. And both paths fundamentally change the role of art in society. Likewise, when the definition of an artist becomes more flexible (for example: an artist is anyone who creates visual culture), it breaks down the elitism in the visual arts and challenges the notion that only a select few people with special talents can participate in the visual-art field. In short, it makes art accessible to all.

Curiously, or perhaps not, the term "visual artist" is often the biggest impediment to artists themselves in the modern era. “Visual artist” comes with its own set of cultural biases, internalized dilemmas, fixed paths, and stereotypes— isolated, aloof, fringe, eccentric, and so forth—labels that define the artist from the outside. These labels and misnomers are detrimental: they present artists as fundamentally different, when in fact most artists are much like everyone eise—working-class people with working-dass concerns.

Additionally even the term "art" is suspect when one looks at material items from the past four centuries. Different cultures see the world from different perspectives, and the central thesis of this book—artists working in movements—is less applicable in describing traditional Native art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mary Lou Fox Radulov- ich, the late director of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, stated that “Indian people have no word for art. Art is part of life, like hunting, fishing, growing food, marrying, and having children. This is an art in the broadest sense . . . an object of daily usefulness, to be admired, respected, appreciated, and used, the expression thereby nurturing the needs of body and soul, thereby giving meaning to everything.”2

Contemporary artistic practice also blurs our understanding of art. Arguably, some of the most profound examples of activist art, especially during the past four decades, is work that negates traditional ideas about art—projects where the art is difficult to define. This type of work shares commonality with the tactics of social-justice movements—art as a form of civil disobedience and art that intervenes in public space and the mass media, becoming a form of tactical media itself.

Yet if anything connects the multitude of examples that are presented in this study, it is the recycling of tactics that are redeployed with minor variations—a practice that is wholly welcomed. Tactics that succeed do so for a reason, and if activist artists can draw in- spiration from the past and adapt them to the present, then all the power to them.

Significantly, this study is not an all-encompassing survey of activist art throughout U.S. history. If so, I would have induded essays on Thomas Nast, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Black Mask, Bread and Puppet, and others, along with key struggles like the ones led by the Young Lords and the United Farm Workers, to name just a couple. Rather, my decision- making process was to move through U.S. history chronologically and to focus upon a select number of examples that inform us about various visual art disciplines and tactics used in activist campaigns. Some that worked. Others that feil short. At times, I was particularly drawn to the examples that were complicated, where the decisions made by artists were con-

troversial and confounding. My logic: analyzing histories that are deeply complicated helps us learn. A history of only success Stories does not.

Collectively, my hope is that this study serves as a call to action for more artists to become activists, and conversely for more activists to employ art, for the benefits are vast. When social movements embrace artists, they harness the power of those who excel at ex- pressing new ideas and reaching people in ways that words and other forms of media can- not. They harness the power of visual culture. And when artists join movements, their work—and by extension their lives—takes on a far greater meaning. They become agitators in the best sense of the word and their art becomes less about the individual and more about the common vision and aspirations of many. Their art becomes part of a culture of resistance.

Acknowledgments

WRITING a BOOK IS a unique opportunity to collaborate, and to be in communication with many brilliant people. I am forever grateful to Marc Favreau, Maury Botton, Azzurra Cox, and all at The New Press for supporting this project from the Start. I thank them for their thoughtful sugges- tions, edits, and patience in allowing me ample time to develop my manuscript. Gratitude is also extended to colleagues and close friends who reviewed the manuscript—most notably to Josh MacPhee. Josh ’s suggestions for edits were invaluable, as has been his Support in other facets of my Creative life. He brought twenty-five of us together to form the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative in 2007, a community that has continuously nurtured my hybrid practice of producing art for social-justice movements, writing about activist art, and curating activist art exhibitions.

I also thank Gregory Sholette, Dylan A.T. Miner. Alan W. Moore, Susan Simensky Bietila, Tom Klem, and Sandra de la Loza for reviewing specific chapters, along with James Lampert for his careful edits and for everything. Vast appreciation is also extended to John Couture for his in- sight during the early stages of the project, along with Gregory Sholette and Janet Koenig. Thank you also to Rachelle Mandik for her copyedits of the final manuscript.

In Milwaukee, I thank all my colleagues in the Department of Art and Design at the Univer- sity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who have allowed me the opportunity to teach my practice—art and social justice— from day one. Special thank-you to Kim Cosier, Lee Ann Garrison, Yevgeniya Kaganovich, Denis Sargent, Josie Osborne, Raoul Deal, Nathaniel Stern, Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, Shelleen Greene, and Laura Trafi-Prats, along with other colleagues across the University— Greg Jay, Linda Corbin-Pardee, Lane Hall, and Max Yela for supporting my scholarship, art, and teach- ing on topics that relate specifically to this study.

Thank you also to the teaching and learning community outside of academia—the many col- lective spaces and independent publications that have allowed me the opportunity to present on activist art and to contribute essays and interviews to the dialogue. In Chicago: Mess Hall, AREA Chicago, Daniel Tucker, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Lisa Lee, InCUBATE, Proximity, Ed Marzewski, and Mairead Case. In Milwaukee: the Public House and "Night School,” Paul Kjelland, Woodland Pattern, Michael Carriere and all colleagues at ReciproCity. In Madison: Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, Dan S. Wang, and Camy Matthay and Sarah Quinn for the opportunity to

»V

present radical art history inside the prison industrial complex. In Detroit: Mike Medow, Jeanette Lee, Josh Breitbart, and all who organize the annual Allied Media Conference. In Bowling Green and elsewhere: Jen Angel, Jason Kucsma, and all involved in the past Allied Media Conferences, and the greatly missed Clamor magazine.

I also extend my gratitude to those who have supported my research and have invited me to contribute writings to various books and publications, including Temporary Services (Salem Collo-Julin, Marc Fischer, Brett Bloom), Jennifer A. Sandlin, Brian D. Schultz, Jake Burdick, Peter McLaren, Therese Quinn, John Ploof, Lisa Hochtritt, Josh MacPhee, Erik Reuland, Erica Sagrans, the Compass Collaborators (the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor), and James Mann. Thank you also to those who have provided me with art and research grants: the Mary L. Nohl Individual Artists Fund in Milwaukee, and the Jean Gimbel Lane Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University. Special thank-you to Polly Morris and Michael Rakowitz. Thank you also to Nato Thompson, Gretchen L. Wagner, Lori Waxman, and Linda Fleming.

I am also indebted to the many co-collaborators who have allowed me the chance to collaborate as an artist in a movement. Thank you first and foremost to all in Justseeds, and to Dara Greenwald, whom we miss dearly. Thank you to Aaron Hughes and the Chicago chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW); TAMMS Year Ten, Laurie Jo Reynolds, Jesse Graves, and all involved in the mud stencil action; the Chicago chapter of the Rain Forest Action Network (RAN); and all involved in the Warning Signs project.

Much appreciation is also extended to the activist art archives, in particular the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) in Los Angeles, the Interference Archive in Brooklyn, the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives and Radicalism Photograph Col­ lection at NYU, the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, the LGBT and HIV/AIDS Activist Collections at the New York Public Library, and the Womans Build­ ing Image Archive at Otis College of Art and Design. And thank you to the art historians and the artists who informed this study. The book is a tribute to your work.

Much gratitude is extended to all the artists, art historians, historians, scholars, librar- ians, and archivists who provided images for this book, provided insight, and directed me to various collections. First and foremost thank you to those who reduced or waived image per- mission fees. It would not have been possible to compliment the text with so many images without your generosity. Special thank-you to Seiko Buckingham, Suzanne Lacy, Russell Campbell, the Yes Men, Betsy Dämon, Aaron Hughes, Sue Maberry at the Woman’s Building Image Archive at Otis College of Art and Design, Faith Wilding, Nancy Youdelman, Judy Baca, Pilar Castillo at SPARC, Harry Gamboa Jr., Chon A. Noriega at the UCLA Chicano Stud- ies Research Center (CSRC), Francis V. O’Connor, Penelope Rosemont, Sandra de la Loza, Jon Hendricks, Marc Fischer, the Jump Cut editors, Mike Greenlar, Lincoln Cushing, Michael Shulman at Magnum Photos, Josh MacPhee at the Interference Archive, Carol A. Wells at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), Julie Herrada at the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, and Evelyn Hershe at the American Labor Mu- seum/Botto House National Landmark. I am a firm believer that art created for social justice movements should be part of the public commons and our shared collective history and not restricted by Copyrights and expensive image permission fees, something that many activist-

artists and activist groups have embraced, often through Creative Common licenses. In clos­ ing, thank you to Azzurra Cox and Ben Woodward at The New Press for assisting me with the image permission process.

Lastly, and most importantly, thank you to my family—Laura, Isa, my parents, and my brothers. Special thank-you to Laura for the never-ending support of this project and the time needed to accomplish it. Finally, thank you to Howard Zinn. In 2003,1 invited Profes­ sor Zinn to Milwaukee to present to my students, and during his visit we talked at length about art and activism. At the end of his stay, he encouraged me to propose a book to The New Press. His enthusiasm for the project and his early feedback helped fuel me through many years of research and revisions. Always the teacher, he reminded me of the need to inspire others, to communicate in clear prose, and to bring more people into the movement.

A PEO PLE S A R T H I S T O R Y O FT H E UNITED STATES

Plate 4

Illustration from Wampum and Shell Arides Usedby die New York Indians (William M. Beauchamp. New York State Museum Bulletin M l. votume 8. February 1901. plate k University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee Libraries collection)

1 Parallel Paths on the Same River

A r t IS A SUBJECTIVE m e d i u m . Even the term is suspect. In Native societies, art was not isolated from other aspects of life; it was interwoven with political, social, and religious life. It was ex- pressed on the body, clothing, objects of daily use, warfare, and through gifts to the spiritual world. Art was also affected by events taking place throughout the continent. Thus, it is not sur- prising that one of the first material objects that showcased the early contact between Native peoples and European colonists was a cross-cultural product—wampum belts.

Wampum derived from Shells. Atlantic Coastal tribes, and later European settlers, collected whelk and quahog Shells from the Coastal regions of present-day Cape Cod to Virginia and trans- formed the central column of the shell into cylindrical beads that were then strung together into cere- monial wampum Strings and later elaborate wampum belts. These objects—produced by the aid of European tools and manufacturing techniques—became essential objects that facilitated communica- tion between the living and dead, increased trade, nurtured treaty agreements, and recorded histories.

Metaphorically, wampum belts connected Native tribes with other tribes, Native peoples with European colonists, and North America with the markets of Europe.1 Present-day Albany, New York, became the epicenter for Dutch colonists, and later the English, to trade wampum to the Iroquois. In return, the Iroquois traded tens of thousands of beaver pelts to the colonists; the pelts served as the material for broad-brimmed feit hats that were immensely populär in Europe. In payment, the Iroquois received wampum beads, brass kettles, iron axes, and other European goods. In essence, nearly two centuries of economic life in the Woodlands—northeastern North America—revolved around four essential goods: beavers, iron, copper, and shells.

Cross-Cultural Product

The wampum-bead trade had existed long before Europeans began establishing permanent Settle­ ments in North America. Woodland Natives circulated shells throughout the continent in an

1

2 A People's Art History of the United States

extensive trade network that included other luminous materials—quartz from the Rocky Mountains and copper from the Great Lakes.

Wampum was revered for many reasons. The Shells were used as ornamentation for the body, and to project one’s Status. It was worn on the ears, applied to wooden objects, and crafted into headbands, necklaces, and cuffs. Wampum was also strung together on a single Strand and used during treaty agreements to facilitate the communication process between two tribes. It was also "tossed into waterfalls and rivers as offerings to spirits, and burned in the White Dog ceremony.”2

Moreover, wampum served as a burial item—gifts that the dead could take with them on their journey to the next world. Adult men and women, to strengthen their voyage to the spirit world, were buried with food and other items, induding personal possessions, tools, weapons, and effigies. Children required even more burial items. In one example, archeolo- gists excavated a grave where a young Seneca girl who had died in the 1650s was buried un- der belts and necklaces containing more than 43,000 wampum and glass beads.3

European arrival on the North American continent extended the trade of wampum and other material goods. Europeans were first called metalworkers, ax makers, and cloth mak- ers by Native peoples, and their goods made of iron, copper, and glass were seen as a positive development that made cooking, starting fires, hunting, and fighting wars easier.4 Tools and materials from Europe also allowed Native crafts to flourish. Beadwork was greatly en- hanced by the introduction of glass beads, needles, threads, and various clothes. Iron knives, chisels, and awls all improved carving techniques.5

Native tribes often moved doser to, rather then farther away from, those who had ar- rived on their shores. Some tribes, including the Susquehannock, relocated near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay around 1580 to be closer to the European fishing vessels.6 The goal for Native people: gain access to European goods and the “power they might possess.”7

Natives believed that the next world was not adequately supplied with European goods but that an abundance of traditional crafts already existed in large amounts in the next world. Trade with Europeans could serve the needs of the spirit world, but it could also serve the needs of the living. European copper kettles were cut into smaller pieces and turned into ritual items—jewelry, Ornaments, and weapons. Iron ax heads and knives were reappropriated into needles, awls, and arrowheads—objects that were all rooted in Native culture.

European contact also transformed the use of wampum. Wampum strings evolved to wampum belts that developed through the use of European tools. The Dutch introduced drills and grindstones to Coastal Algonquians and revolutionized the manufacturing process that allowed Native women to produce a more refined product—small, tubulär wampum beads that were more uniform in shape and size. Tools also allowed a small hole to be drilled through the bead at opposite ends, where it was then strung with vegetable fiber. Finally, the rows of strings were arranged in geometric designs that were placed on top of a piece of deerskin that served as the backside of the beit.

The Two Row Belt (Guswenta)—a wampum beit that the Mohawk first gave to the Dutch in 1613, and later versions to the English, French, and Americans— exemplified warn- pum’s physical form, its mode of communication,8 and its meanings.

Parallel Paths on the Same River 3

The beit consists of two rows of purple wampum beads against a background of white beads and depicts two purple lines (two vessels— one canoe and one European ship) trav- eling down parallel paths on the same river. The three white stripes on the background signify peace, friendship, and for- ever. Together, the beit advocates for the ideal scenario—the peaceful relationship between the Iroquois and the Euro­ pean colonial power that they were negotiating with. In a broader sense, the wampum beit advocated for tolerance for other cultures, a separate but equal coexistence, and the “en- during Separation of [the] Iroquois from European law and custom.”9 It symbolized two distinct peoples sharing the same continent.

The Iroquois, neighboring tribes in the Northeast Wood­ lands, and colonial officials produced hundreds, if not thou- sands, of wampum belts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Famous belts induded the "Hiawatha” beit that symbolized the formation of the Iroquois League (also called the Five Nations, or by the people themselves the Haudenosaunee— the People of the Longhouse) that formed in the late fifteenth Century, nearly a Century before Europeans began settling on the northeastern seaboard and the St. Law­ rence River.10

The “Hiawatha” beit pictured the powerful confederacy of five Indian nations— Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, and Cayuga— that were spread across what is now present-day central New York. Four of the five nations are represented by rectangles. In the center is pictured the Great Tree of Peace, representing Onondaga (Keepers of the Council Fire and Keepers of the Wampum Belts), and outward from it extends lines that connect the Five Nations in a shared alliance.

Wampum belts of this scale required intensive labor to produce. The bulk of the time involved manufacturing the central column of a shell into a bead with hand tools. In the mid-seventeenth Century, the average output for a Native person manufacturing shells was forty-two white beads per day, and this excluded the time needed to collect the shells. Purple beads, which derived from a much harder part of the shell, took twice the time to produce: twenty-one beads per day.”11 A wampum beit with three hundred beads took up- ward of 7.1 days of labor and a beit with five thousand beads took 119 days of labor just to produce the beads alone.12 One can barely imagine the time and labor needed to produce Pontiacs Great War beit, at six feet long and containing more than nine thousand beads that were arranged in patterns to depict the emblems of forty-seven tribes that were in al­ liance with him.

As non-Native people began taking over the trade—mainly owing to Native tribes be- ing decimated by European diseases and colonial populations waging war against Coastal

Illustration from Wampum and Shell Arides Used by IheNew York Indians (William M. Beauchamp. New York State Museum Bulletin M l . volume 8. February 1901. plate I t : University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries collection)

4 A People’s Art History of ttie United States

Native communities—both the labor dynamics of wampum and its value began to change.13 By the mid-seventeenth Century, colonists in New England, New York, and New Jersey be­ gan churning out wampum beads by the tens of thousands, including at a wampum factory that was established by John Campbell in New Jersey.14 Colonists using lathes and more re- fined tools were then able to produce upward of 375 beads per day per worker; a 5,000-bead beit would take approximately thirteen days to manufacture.15

The colonial production of wampum was also fueled, briefly, by its role as money. The Dutch and the English lacked adequate metal coinage and by the mid-1630s wampum beads were adopted as colonial currency to purchase goods, land, and labor.16 However, wampum’s value quickly depreciated. The value of wampum compared to pelts feil by 60 percent be- tween 1641 and 1658, and by 200 percent during the 1660s.17 By the end of the decade, colonists had largely abandoned wampum as a form of currency.

During this same era, the use of wampum by the Iroquois accelerated; by the midcen- tury mark, more than three million individual beads were estimated to be in circulation in the Five Nations alone.18 The demand was fueled by the spread of European diseases, con- stant warfare, and competition over scarce resources that heightened the need for alliances, treaties, and burial gifts.19 Between 1663 and 1730, the Iroquois alone had approximately four hundred diplomatic encounters with the Dutch, English, and French.20 Wampum strings and belts became an essential part of this process.

Forest Diplomacy

“ You may know our words are of no weight unless accompanied with wampum. and you know we spoke with none and therefore you will not take notice of what was inconsiderately said by two or three of our People.”

—Mohawk Speaker addressing Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Northern Indian Affairs, February 175721

Parallel Paths on the Same River 5

Colonists, newcomers to the continent, quickly came to realize that they had to follow Native customs if they wanted to negotiate over the two things that mattered most to them: obtaining beaver pelts and obtaining land.22 Additionally, colonial powers had a Strategie interest in negotiating with the Iroquois, for they were the strongest confedera- tion in the region. The Iroquois were situated between two imperial powers—the French on the St. Lawrence River and the Dutch (later the English) on the Hudson River. This location allowed the Iroquois to be the trade broker between colonists in New York and Albany and the Native people to the north and the west. To the Dutch, and later the En­ glish, the Iroquois were the perfect buffer zone between them and the French in Mon­ treal and Quebec. They could be counted on to fight against Native tribes allied to New France, and they could help offset New France’s control of the St. Lawrence River trade route by facilitating the trade of beaver pelts from the Great Lakes toward Albany and New York. *

The Iroquois also viewed alliances with colonial powers as beneficial. Direct access to European goods—iron implements and guns in particular—allowed the Iroquois to deci- mate many of their Native enemies, and their favorable geographic location allowed them to play one colonial power off another. If New York did not accommodate them well, they could make a treaty with the French. And if New France did not make certain alliances with them, they could side exclusively with New York, a scenario that the French sought to avoid. Thus, as long as two colonial powers were in the region, the Iroquois could be assured of relative political stability.

Stability, however, depended upon treaty alliances, and these meetings depended upon passing wampum Strings and wampum belts. Likewise, colonial negotiators knew if they were to trade and form Strategie alliances with Native tribes, they’d have to learn how to pass wampum Strings and belts properly, to reject them if need be, and to follow the etiquette of council treaties.23

The process of treaty councils followed four major stages: invitations, the preliminary meetings of delegates, council transactions, and the ratifying of treaties. To the Iroquois, a council oratory followed three metaphors: the path, the fire, and the chain.

The process for calling a council began with an invitation. A runner would be sent out to deliver a wampum String, prepared in advance, that served as the invitation notice. The wampum string, not the messenger, was what mattered most. The role of the messenger was to deliver, in essence, a prerecorded message that conveyed the invitation from the chief. The messenger would then return to the home fire to inform the chiefs of whether the invitation was accepted.

If the wampum string was accepted, the invited visitors, sometimes numbering in the dozens, would set out on the path—a ceremonial process by foot or canoe to the council site, a neutral site at the woods’ edge, where the two groups would meet. There they would first rest and ceremonially deanse their eyes, ears, and throats from the hardships of the journey. After a day of rest the delegates would be seated and a condolence ceremony would begin where tearful eyes would be dried and minds and hearts would be cleansed of thoughts of revenge.

Native Orator ReadingaWampum Belt Illustration (William Smith and Chartes Guillaume Frederic Dumas. Historical Accountof Bouquets Expedition Against die Ohio Indians, in 17M. Amsterdam: M.M. Rey. 1769. American Geographical Society Library. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries collection)

Parallel Paths on the Same River 7

Then the fire would be kindled. This was followed by the retelling of the history of the two groups gathered together and the explanation of the laws that guided council meetings. The next stage involved the offering up of specific propositions. A wampum beit for each specific proposal would then be passed. This process made the proposal visual and helped regulate the council’s business and promoted “the orderly succession of Speakers from the two sides.”24

The recipients of the proposal listened to the offer and would not respond until the next day. If wampum was thrown to the ground, it meant that the proposal was not accept- able. This process of accepting or rejecting belts could last for weeks. Every Native voice had to be heard, from sachems to warriors.25

Colors and Symbols on wampum belts communicated the tone of the proposal. Belts with a white background of beads communicated peace and goodwill. Black backgrounds conveyed a more serious matter—hostility, sorrow, death, and mourning. Belts that had red painted onto the beads changed the meaning into an invitation for war.

Symbols could also convey the same messages. In 1757, the French sent the Iroquois a black war beit with an image of a white ax in the center.26 Symbols of diamonds or squares represented a nation or a castle. The cross represented Canada and, by extension, the French Jesuit missionaries and Christianity. Sloping lines represented temporary alliances, whereas connecting lines represented a strong alliance.

The final stage was the ratifying of treaties— or the chain—a bond that brought two groups of people together in agreement. This was followed by a feast and presentations of gifts from the host— an assortment of food, clothing, weapons, and often liquor. These gifts would then be subsequently redistributed to the village.

Historical Records. Consensus, and Capitalism

The significance of wampum belts did not end after the treaty process had concluded at the edge of the forest. When leaders returned from councils, important belts were taken to the Onondaga village, as the Onondaga were the Keepers of the Wampum Belts, and stored in the Council House.27 There they served as a mnemonic device, objects that aided in the mem- ory of alliances and words spoken. In the months and years that followed councils, chiefs would take out the belts and read them to younger members of the village, teaching them the history of their relations with those outside their tribe.

Council negotiators also had another process for belts and strings of lesser importance— they would break them up and redistribute the beads amongst the village.28 A leaders Status was not determined by his material wealth but by how he provided for his people. Daniel K. Richter explains, "Most presents delivered during treaty councils belonged to the lineages of these headsmen, who could then raise their Status by distributing coveted items in Commu­ nity."29 Wampum became a shared community asset, and family and village Stores typically held wampum beads as public treasures.30

Shared resources reflected upon a shared vision of governance. Politically, the Iroquois League was structured to ensure that one faction could not gain absolute authority.31 The Five

6 A People's Art History of the United States

Nations of the League (and later the Six Nations, when the Tuscarora joined in 1722-1723) could negotiate with colonial powers as individual entities as long as their actions did not harm other League members.32 This allowed a certain degree of autonomy, but its key pur- pose was to decentralize leadership. Richter explains, “In a paradoxical way, it was precisely the lack of centralized political unity that made the modern Indian politics work: factional leaders independently cultivated ties to particular European colonies, cumulatively main- taining the multiple connections that warded off political dependence on powerful Euro­ pean neighbors."33

This process no doubt frustrated colonial negotiators to no end (accustomed as they were to negotiating with a central authority that made finite decisions), but the more anar- chistic structure served the Iroquois' purpose well: it allowed for neutrality to occur when needed and it kept the power in check among League nations.

In this manner council negotiators were free to complement or contradict the terms negotiated by other League members. Richter writes:

Plate 27

Illustration from Wampum and Shell Arides Usedbythe New York Indians (William M. Beaudiamp. New York Stale Museum Bulletin M l. Votums 8.. February 1901. plate 27: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries colledion)

Parallel Paths on the Same River 9

In a nonstate society, neither the village majority nor those who held he- reditary office had any power to force a leader who spoke for a substantial following to abide by collective decisions. Issues of war and peace therefore became extraordinarily complex, with at least the potential that arrange- ments painstakingly crafted by one group of village headmen might be un- done by another, as each leader sought by his own lights to forge alliances with forces that might bring spiritual and material power to his kin, fol- lowers, and community. Each headman and war chief was free, to the ex­ tern he could mobilize resources and followers, to pursue his own policies both at home and in dealings with other people.34

At stäke were two competing value Systems between Native and non-Native peoples: one based on consensus and various degrees of shared power, land, and resources, versus one based on hierarchal forms of government and private property.

These fundamentally different views of society came to a head during council treaties. Europeans viewed signed paper documents, not wampum belts, as “concrete evidence that a binding contract had been made.”35 During the councils, colonial clerks recorded only small portions of the Speeches made by the Iroquois participants. These individuals, like the ma­ jority of colonists, outside of Jesuit missionaries, never learned the Iroquois language. This affected the reading of the wampum belts. Mary A. Druke writes that colonial negotiators “never developed a System for transmitting oral traditions associated with wampum belts, so the specific meanings of belts were lost to them.”36 Conversely, the Iroquois did not care for signed documents, nor did they care for the note-taking process by European clerks during the councils.37 To the Iroquois, the treaty council process was not a means to an end. It was part of the regulär lines of communication, not a conduding Statement. The Iroquois believed that alliances were in need of constant attention, and the belts were part of a continuous process that regulated the dialogue and face-to-face communication that was needed to bring forth peace as conditions changed. Thus, wampum belts, both then and now, embody a large cultural disconnect: their meanings were un- derstood by the Iroquois, but largely lost on the colonial population.

In more recent times, Native nations have brought wampum belts into the courts of law in the United States and Canada to support sovereignty rights, treaty rights, and other agreements that took place in the past, but the meanings of the belts are de- pendent on Native oral history and have been subsequently down- played due to a System that prioritizes the methods that the colonial powers institutionalized— signed paper documents.

The Iroquois' oral history of wampum belts presents a different perspective—a Native perspective. It viewed the 1613 Two Row treaty alliance with the Dutch as binding. Onondaga Chief Irving

Onondaga Nation Chief Irving Powless Jr. displays the two-row wampum beit at the Onondaga Land Rights fomm at Syracuse Stage. Juty 13.2010 (photograph by Hike Greenlar. Courtesy Mike Greenlar!

A People's Art History ofthe United States