For The Love of Beads BlogThe adventures of Suzanne, Nibbler, and friends in the world of beads and jewelry making crafts

While we grow as a company and as beaders, we try to understand where our patterns, ideas and our need to bead comes from. We wanted to gain more knowledge about beads – I mean, we are always learning new techniques, finding new types of beads and meeting new people, but we really don’t know how those techniques started, where they started, who started them and why. So here begins our journey into history of beads. I thought we should start with our own part of the world, beginning with early North American culture, and more specifically, the Canadian First Peoples.

The Royal Ontario Museum (www.rom.on.ca) has a wonderful collection of articles of clothing, accessories, and ritualistic utensils covered in beads and seed beads, displaying beautiful designs and artwork used by Canada’s First Nation Peoples. Looking at the artifacts and clothing covered in extensive seed bead patterns, you can tell North American aboriginals used beads in every aspect of their lives, whether it was to crown a hunter with a necklace made out of bone “hair pipes” with a bear claw or to decorate moccasins for “wood runners” with a running wolf (to symbolize agility and speed). Beads always had a meaning.

A big part of beading in early North American societies was loom beading, and it still is. Some pieces, like the top and sleeves of a buckskins dance dress, would take a year of intense work by a very talented loom artist working with seed beads. Generally, pieces as complicated as a head dress or other personal attire used in religious ceremonies are made by the most skilled loom workers, and are given as gifts. Almost anything could (and still can!) be turned into a bead: porcupine quills were used for beads, claws, teeth and bones were bored and strung or used as pendants, and they all had different meanings. Sometimes the process of making the bead was the most important part of the beading tradition. Regularly, animal sinew was slit very finely and used as string, but sometimes plant fibers such as nettle were spun into string.

Beads were also used in trade, since they were considered very valuable. Beaded chains and belts were considered very important, and they would have a small role as money or as very important documents to signify trade with other nations.  These were called wampum, and it would either be a precious bead like a Quahog strand or an intricate beaded belt. But it wasn’t until after the European colonization that wampum was used frequently in trade for goods, land or rights. Many belts were stolen or lost by European colonists.

I could go on and on about all the things I’ve read and the artifacts I’ve seen covered in beads belonging to First Canadian Nations, but this is just a taste! I invite you to explore the history of your culture with beads or of other cultures with beads – I am sure it is pretty interesting. Next time I will be posting about the history of beading in Central America and Mexico.