Celestial Tree
24 inches wide by 48 inches tall. This is the artist's rendition of the celestial tree as the basis of the Oneida wampum belt or the Oneida people. In the Oneida longhouse version of the Creation Story, the Celestial tree grows in the Sky World, and it has all kinds of fruits and vegetables on it. When Sky Woman fell from the Sky World, she grabbed the roots of the Celestial Tree and then planted them when she fell on the back of a sea turtle and the Earth was formed. Eventually the ancestors of Sky Woman, the Longhouse People formed a confederacy, which included the Oneida people. The purple and white Oneida Wampum belt commemorates the final expansion of this Longhouse confederacy to six nations.