While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Beadwork. Attractive and precious objects,
perforated usually through the middle and strung for various purposes,
constitute a class of ornaments universally esteemed, which the Indians of North
America did not fail to develop. Akin to beads, and scarcely separable from
them, were objects from the same materials called pendants. They were perforated
near the end or edge and hung on the person or on garments. All were made from
mineral, vegetal, or animal substances, and after the discovery the introduction
of beads of glass and porcelain, as well as that of metal tools for making the
old varieties, greatly multiplied their employment. Mineral substances showing
pretty colored or brilliant surfaces, from which beads were made, were copper,
hematite, all kinds of quarts, serpentine, magnetite, slate, soapstone,
turquoise, encrinite sections, pottery, and, in later times, silver and other
metals, porcelain, and glass. They w r ere of many sizes and shapes. Among
vegetal substances
seeds and, especially along the southern tier of states from Florida to
California, nuts were widely used for beads, and here and there stems and roots
of pretty or scented plants were cut into sections for the same purpose. But far
the largest share of beads were made from animal materials shell, bone, horn,
teeth, claws, and ivory. Beads of marine or fresh water shells were made by
grinding off the apex, as in the case of dentalium, or the unchanged shells of
bivalves were merely perforated near the hinge. Pearls were bored through the
middle, and shells were cut into disks, cylinders, spheres, spindles, etc. In
places the columellae of large conchs were removed and pierced through the long
diameter for stringing. Bone beads were usually cylinders produced by cutting
sections of various lengths from the thigh or other parts of vertebrate
skeletons. When the w r all of the bone was thick the ends were ground to give a
spherical form. The milk teeth of the elk, the canine teeth of the bear, and the
incisors of rodents were highly valued, and in later times the incisors of the
horse were worn. The beaks of the puffin, the talons of rapacious birds, and
bears claws were wrought into ceremonial dress and paraphernalia. A great deal
of taste and manual skill were developed in selecting the materials, and in
cutting, grinding, and rolling them into shape and uniform size, as well as in
polishing and perforating substances, some of them very hard, as jasper. Many of
the cylinders are several inches long. The tribes of N. w. California wrap
dentalia with snake skin glued on in strips, while the Porno and their neighbors
make large cylinders of a baked mineral (Kroeber).
The general uses to which beads were put are legion. They were tied in the hair,
worn singly or in strings from the ears, on the neck, arms, wrist, waist, and
lower limbs, or were attached to bark and wooden vessels, matting, basketry, and
other textiles. They were woven into fabrics or wrought into network, their
varied and bright colors not only enhancing beauty but lending themselves to
heraldry. Glass beads thus woven produce effects like those of cathedral glass.
Again, they were embroidered on every part of ceremonial costume, sometimes
entirely covering headdress, coat, regalia, leggings, or moccasins, and on all
sorts of receptacles. The old-time technique and de signs of quillwork are
closely imitated. They were largely employed as gifts and as money, also as
tokens and in records of hunts or of important events, such as treaties. They
were conspicuous accessories in the councils of war and peace, in the
conventional expression of tribal symbolism, and in traditional story-telling,
and were offered in worship. They were regarded as insignia of functions, and
were buried, often in vast quantities, with the dead.
In each of the ethnic areas of North America nature provided tractable and
attractive material to the bead-maker. In the Arctic region it was walrus ivory
and the glossy teeth of mammals. They served not only for personal adornment,
but were hung to all sorts of skin receptacles and inlaid upon the surfaces of
those made of wood and soft stone. The Danes brought glass to the eastern
Eskimo, the whalers to the central, and the Russians to the western tribes. In
the St Lawrence Atlantic area whole shells were strung, and cylinders, disks,
and spindles were cut from the valves of the clam (Venus mercenaria}. In
Virginia a cheap kind, called roanoke, were made from oyster shells. In the N.
small white and purple cylinders, called wampum, served for ornament and were
used in elaborate treaty belts and as a money standard, also flat disks an inch
or more in width being bored through their long diameters. The
Cherokee name for
beads and money is the same. Subsequently imitated by the colonists, these beads
received a fixed value. The mound-builders and other tribes of the Mississippi
valley and the Gulf states used pearls and beads of shell, seeds, and rolled
copper. Canine teeth of the elk were most highly esteemed, recently being worth
50 cents to $1 each. They were carefully saved, and a garment covered with them
was valued at as much as $600 or $800. The modern tribes also used the teeth of
rodents, the claws of bears and carnivores, and the declaws of ruminants. Nuts
and berries were universally strung and worn, and the
Mandan and other Missouri
r. tribes pounded and melted glass and molded it into beads. After the
colonization cradles and articles of skin were profusely covered with bead-work
replete with symbolism. The Yukon-Mackenzie tribes were most skilful in
quillwork, but later decked their garments and other useful things with glass
beads. All along the Pacific slope dentalium, abalone, and clam shells fur nish
the most valuable materials. The length of the wrought bead represented a
certain amount of work and established the money value. The price of dentalium
shells increased rapidly after a certain length was exceeded. These beads were
decorated with grass, skin, and feathers to enhance their worth. The California
coast tribes and the ancient peoples of Santa Barbara ids. were rich in the
little flat-shell disks as well as the stone drill, and they knew how to reduce
them to uniform diameter by rolling long strings of them between slabs or
through grooves in sandstone. The tribes of the N. part of the interior basin
were not well supplied with bead material, but early made the acquaintance of
the trader. A series of Ute costumes made before the advent of glass shows much
pretty decoration in dewclaws, bits of goat and sheep horn, and perforated
seeds. The Pueblo Indians string the yellow capsules of Solanum, sections of
woody stems of plants, seashells, turquoise and other varieties of
bright-colored stones, of which they have great store. The Hyde Expedition found
more than 30,000 turquoise beads in a single room at Pueblo Bonito, N. Mex. The
Huichol, with colored beads of glass, using wax as an adhesive, make pretty
mosaic figures on gourds, carved images of wood, etc.
Consult Beauchamp in Bull. N. Y. State Mus., no. 73, 1903; Catlin, N.
A. Inds., 1841; Hoffman in 14th Rep. B. A. E., 1896; Mason in
Rep. Nat. Mus. 1899, 485-510, 1901; Matthews, Ethnog. and Philol.
Hidatsa, 18, 1877; Nelson in 18th Rep. B. A. E., 1899; Holmes,
Annals, i, 271, 1829; Sumner, Hist. Am. Currency, 4, 8, 1874; Powers
in Cont. N. A. Ethnol., in, 1877; Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, 1902;
Pepper in Am. Anthrop., vii, no. 2, 1905. See Adornment, Art, Arts and
Industries, Basketry, Copper, Quillwork, Shellwork, Turquoise, Wampum, and
articles on the various raw materials mentioned above as having been used for
beads. ( O. T. M. )
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906
