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, however, evidence in the form of Haudenosaunee oral tradition that wampum belts featured, if not in the original negotiations, then at least in the earliest rituals of renewal (of which there were many) between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch (later the British). According to Parmenter: While most of the earliest recorded recitations of the "kaswentha" relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch do not mention wampum belts specifically, descriptions "of wampum belts in documentary sources, particularly from the early period of contact, are notoriously vague." Moreover, as artifacts wampum belts were extremely prone to deterioration and disassembly, so there