Glass Trade Bead

A glass trade bead is a European-made glass bead traded to Native people from the late 1500s onward. Forms run from seed beads under 2 mm across to large tubular beads, in round, oval, tubular and faceted shapes, single-coloured or layered and decorated with stripes and inlays (NPS Kijik; Fitzgerald 1982; Glencross et al. 2025).

Most were drawn: a hollow gather of glass was stretched into a long tube, cut into short lengths and often reheated and tumbled to round the ends; the bubble in the gather becomes the hole. Wound beads were made one at a time by winding glass around a wire mandrel, which allowed multicoloured designs; mold-pressed and blown beads are rare (NPS Fort Vancouver; NPS Kijik).

Kidd and Kidd (1970) classed glass beads by manufacture, shape, size and colour, with codes such as IIa31 still in use (Fitzgerald 1982; GRSLE). Styles changed quickly, so beads date sites: Ontario's Glass Bead Period 1 (1580–1600) has frit-core and small round turquoise beads, Period 2 (1600–1625/30) is dominated by white and blue oval and tubular beads, and Period 3 (1625/30–1650) by turquoise round and red beads, with red tubular Ia4 as its hallmark (Glencross et al. 2025). The key trait is a bead of European glass, drawn or wound, rather than native stone, shell or bone.

Seed beads are under 2 mm in diameter; a wound light-blue Cook-type bead from Kijik, Alaska, measures 9 mm in diameter and 6.6 mm high (n = 1) (NPS Kijik).

Throughout North America wherever European trade reached: the Great Lakes and Ontario, the Plains, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska (Fitzgerald 1982; Glencross et al. 2025; GRSLE; NPS Fort Vancouver; NPS Kijik).

Look for glass: a glassy surface and, in drawn beads, a hole formed from an air bubble (NPS Kijik). Native stone, shell and bone beads are not glass. Named styles help date a find: Cornaline d'Aleppo, also called Hudson's Bay or white-heart beads, is a layered drawn bead with a brick-red layer over a lighter core (NPS Kijik), and red-on-white beads mark the 19th century on the Plains (GRSLE, citing Billeck 2008). Seed beads are rare in Alaska before 1840 (NPS Kijik). At Fort Vancouver, 97.6% of the beads are hot-tumbled drawn beads (NPS Fort Vancouver, after Ross 1976). On Neutral sites, glass beads rise from 8.9% of European goods at Christianson to 27.7% at Hamilton and 43.6% at Hood (Fitzgerald 1982). Karklins (2012) revised the Kidd and Kidd system for beads found in the Americas.