An Indigenous Glass Bead Industry In The Northern Plains Of North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During the first half of the 19th century and perhaps slightly earlier, Indigenous individuals in the Plains region of North America began making their own glass beads by recycling beads obtained through trade. They crushed glass beads and reformed the crushed glass into different beads that are visually distinctive, fusing the glass in a hot fire. In 1804, Lewis and Clark witnessed this beadmaking by an Arikara woman and their journal entries describe the process. Additional accounts describe the manufacture of the beads as a culturally restricted skill—only certain members of tribes could make them, and the accounts also provide indications of the symbolic meaning of these Native-made beads. These beads are identified in some Plains glass bead assemblages.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow