Trade beads Trade beads Trade beads (sometimes called aggry and slave beads) were otherwise decorative glass beads used between the 16th and 20th century as a token money to exchange for goods, services and slaves (hence the name). Trade beads were used to African resources by early Europeans. This included African slave trade. The beads were integrated in Native American jewelry using various beadwork techniques. Aggry beads are a particular type of decorated glass bead from Ghana. Made to ease the passage of European explorers and then traders mainly across the African continents, the beads were made throughout Europe although the Venetians
Beadwork five centuries in the Americas. Today a wide range of beading styles flourish. Alongside the widespread popularity of glass beads, bead artists continue incorporating natural items such as dyed porcupine quills, shell such as wampum, and dendrite, and even sea urchin spines in a similar manner as beads. Wampum shell beads are ceremonially and politically important to a range of Eastern tribes, and were used to depict several important treaties between the Native peoples and the colonists, as in the case of the Two Row Wampum Treaty. In the Great Lakes, Ursuline nuns introduced floral patterns to tribes who quickly