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
Two Row Wampum Treaty is no expectation that early belts should have survived had they in fact been exchanged in the early seventeenth century. In any event, by 1870 the image of the two-row wampum belt had come to symbolize for the Haudenosaunee their ongoing treaty and "kaswentha" relationship with the Dutch crown. Diana Muir Appelbaum has written that: Indeed, no documentary evidence (including wampum, which is very fragile) survive from the original treaty negotiations of 1613. But, as Parmenter points out: Onondaga leaders state that the oral tradition which accompanies the wampum belts is evidence that an agreement was made in 1613. Andy