Native America Glass Trade Beads

Early glass beads acquired by the Mohawk Indians of New York state were a mixture of whatever was made available to them by European traders. By the second quarter of the 17th century, the beads reflected a dominance of particular types and/or colors as villages were relocated. This phenomenon appears to have ritualistic connotations and suggests that the bead-selection process was a part of the ceremonialism practiced in the daily, seasonal and annual life modes of the Mohawk. Ten distinct periods have been identified based on an examination of approximately 10,000 glass beads recovered from 33 Mohawk village sites. Other datable artifacts, historic occurrences and documents are cited to bolster the validity of using glass trade beads as a primary tool in dating the Mohawk village relocations.

The purpose of this paper is to clear up fallacies about the distinctive glass beads known as Nueva Cadiz beads. Among topics covered are place of manufacture (NOT Nueva Cadiz!), how date ranges were
worked out, various varieties, how they were made, regional variations, and archaeological occurrences. In addition, anomalous similar-but-later beads will be discussed (red ones in the Northeast and huge ones
produced in the nineteeth century). The fact that Nueva Cadiz and other sixteenth-century glass beads are being looted on a massive scale in Peru and widely sold means we must be especially careful about interpreting unprovenienced collections.

There is no other North American fur trade establishment whose longevity and historical significance can rival that of York Factory. Located in northern Manitoba, Canada, at the base of Hudson Bay, it was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s principal Bay-side trading post and depot for over 250 years. The existing site of York Factory is the last of a series of three posts, the first of which was erected in 1684. Completed in 1792, York Factory III functioned as the principal depot and administrative center for the great Northern Department until the 1860s when its importance began to wane. It finally closed in 1957. Archaeological work at the site has revealed many structural features and associated artifacts including a large and varied assemblage of beads, mostly glass, which are the subject of this report.

From the 18th through the early 20th century, cloth bags embroidered with silk thread and beads known later as octopus (for their eight suspended tabs) and panel bags were in use among the Subarctic Algonquians and spread westward with the fur trade and Cree-Métis settlers. Used by men “to carry tobacco, flint and steel for firemaking and, after the introduction of the muzzle loader, shot and shooting accessories,” these bags underwent a number of transformations (Duncan 1989:87).
    Along the Columbia River there once existed a form of beadwork not seen in the other places where these bags appeared. That unusual form was the fully beadwoven tabbed bag. While beadwoven works on the Plateau are quite limited in number compared to their bead-embroidered brethren, the bags being discussed here were woven in an even rarer technique, not with bead looms but by hand in a loose-warp method worked in much the same way that baskets are made

This is what Kent Lightfoot says about this chapter in his summary chapter from the same book:

"The most sophisticated and systematic study of the outlying indigenous landscape is the Enculturating Environments Project in Southern California as presented by Bernard, Robinson, and Sturt in Chapter 9.  This impressive project is undertaking regional survey and selected excavations of sites in the territory of the Emigdiano Chumash, who inhabited the interior foothills and mountains a little distance east of the coastal Franciscan missions.  In featuring the Tashlipun/Runnaway Camp, Pinwheel, and Santiago locales, they show how detailed investigations of outlying sties can provide incredible information about the political economies, social relationships, and cultural practices of hinterland peoples before, during, and after the mission period... "

Lightfoot (2014: 203)
"

Unattributed newspaper article, probably New York City (a shorter version appeared in The Review, Dayton, Ohio, Nov. 15, 1934).
It presents both fact and some fiction, like the Czechs not being able to “horn in” and the Italian beads being made near Milan.