Our historical home came with a built-in cupboard that is shaped like a church altar, a sanctuary, in which the former owner locked his gun collection. I was taken aback when the realtor told us this, but didn't miss a beat. "It's perfect for my bead collection," I announced. "Beads for guns," he said, "each to his or her own treasures."
My fascination with the history of beads as currency began in elementary school. Our teacher told us that American Indians sold Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626 for beads valued by the seller at $24. The entire class had a big laugh over this, since the teacher's tone implied the stupidity of Native Americans. The first of many racial slurs I would hear throughout my schooling, meant to justify discrimination while ignoring historical truths that were less fitting to the narrative.
I decided to look into the facts behind this story after reading William Bartram's journal from the 1700's that included detailed observations of Indian tribes living in the Southeast.
Bartram described native Americans as stewards of the earth, in the way they planted and rotated crops, in the decision making behind harvesting meat and fish, so that there was plenty for the future, in their knowledge of medicinal plants, and also in their family structures and reverence for tribal heritage and higher beings. After daily and seasonal work was completed they took pleasure in gathering for stories and celebrations in which they dressed up in supple rawhide fabrics with intricate beading and feathers. The more precious beads, wampum, were a status symbol.
Anthropologists tell us that bead making in the Americas was daunting work, with an hour required to drill six soft stone beads. A cache of hundred thousand Precolonial beads found near Tucson would have required eight to ten man years of labor. The beaded necklaces and clothing were thus prized.
Check out a You Tube video that shows how early Native American's made their beads, along with a detailed calculation of the worth of European glass beads in colonial America, translated into hard currency then and today. As it turns out, the beads were worth quite a bit in European currency, and are worth an equal amount today, due to the continued interest in collecting rare beads, with prices exceeding hundreds and even thousands of dollars. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avtxa6Drftw]
So why wouldn't Native Americans have interest to acquire beautiful glass Venetian beads from the Dutch? These lucent beads complemented the bone, shell and stone beads that Native Americans produced. They had everything they needed for health and prosperity; the celebratory clothing with prized beading was the special thing that brought a bit of sparkle to life. My neighbors value motor boats with two or more outboard motors and fancy outdoor kitchens for cooking the catch. Each to his /her own currency.
When I worked with nomadic Somalis and Maasai in East Africa, I learned something that applied to the Manhattan trade. For thousands of years, these nomadic tribes walked across vast territories to graze and water their livestock according to seasons. The concept of land ownership in the African Savannah did not exist. The land was given by the Gods so that all people could freely graze their prized animals, or so they thought.
When "outsiders" offered cash to nomadic herders to purchase their land, the herders thought this was a really stupid concept. They took the cash and bought more camels, cows and goats, their form of currency, or wealth. How could these newbies think that you can buy and sell land that belongs to everyone?
The big laugh stopped when the new owners, with legal titles to the watering holes and rivers, fenced off their lands and prohibited nomadic cultures to graze or water their livestock. In effect bringing these cultures to their tragic collapse. I have witnessed this.
These small clashes of civilization here and there around our small planet, give pause for reflection about the benefits and detriment of globalization. If we can't respect the awesomeness of beads and freedom to roam, as currency, then we have more to learn about life.
Over the years, I kept thinking about that Manhattan trade. I liked beads. I collected pop-beads as a child and an aunt showed me how to make depression era beads by cutting triangular shapes from colorful advertisements or wallpaper and rolling them into beads. I used my small allowance to buy the plastic pop beads or materials to make paper beads.
My mom and I plundered yard sale shoe boxes filled with cast-off beads. Costume jewelry, yes, but when layered over old lady dress-up clothes made me, and in later years, my daughter, Queen for the Day. So early on, I knew there was more to the story about trading beads for NYC.
The simple elements of the Manhattan purchase that are found in textbooks over generations was this: Peter Minuit arrived as director-general of New Netherlands in 1626, and soon set about purchasing Manhattan with $24 worth of beads. The backstory is that prior to Minuit's purchase of Manhattan, the Dutch West India Company identified three areas for settlement, but all proved unlivable. The Dutch then set out to purchase Manhattan Island from the Natives and to build a fort to be named New Amsterdam. The West India Company instructed the explorers on how to obtain the land, quoted as follows:
And finding none but those that are occupied by the Indians, they shall see whether they cannot, either in return for trading-goods or by means of amicable agreement, induce them to give ownership and possession to us, without however forcing them thereto in the least or taking possession by craft or fraud, lest we call down the wrath of God upon our unrighteous beginnings. [source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43460452]
The missed educational opportunity for young students of American history was to understand the role beads played in the settlement of America and their value to the natives, and moreover the global history of beads as currency.
Another instructive element to broaden the historical fact is an exploration of the changing relations between Europeans and Natives from the 1600's to 1800's. Relations digressed from one of respect for the Natives' rightful proprietorship and vast knowledge on how to survive and thrive in this terrain (1600's), to a policy of extermination, when greed for land turned into a 5,043-mile trail of tears across nine states (Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Policy, 1838 and 1839).
Our history books failed to highlight elements of subjugation-guns, germs, and steel- that allowed dominance of one culture over another. Throughout history "might" trumps "right". Our education system could help students consider how the world would function differently if "right" trumped "might." What unique values exist in every culture that if understood and spread (a different kind of globalization), might make our world a better place to live? These are some of the important discussions integral to the Manhattan for beads purchase. This blog will focus on one aspect, the value of beads as currency.
Bead making flourished as a trading currency during European exploration and colonization. The leading glass bead maker of Europe was Venice, Italy. These exquisite beads were an essential item in world commerce for centuries. Other European nations, including the Netherlands, developed rival bead making industries in the seventeenth century. The beads were strung in hanks of a designated length and quantity, a common method for transporting them. Some historical records show that beads were used as ship ballasts to steady the boat during the sea voyage.
Through the centuries, beads have been considered a universal aesthetic. Shelves of books have been written on the subject, from which readers can explore the fascinating history. There are also bead museums in Washington, DC, Glendale, AZ, Detroit, MI, and Carmel, CA offering opportunities to learn and enjoy. Prepare to be swept away, and like me, you just might start buying and trading beads. I'll share some stories behind my love affair with beads, and describe some of my favorite beads and beading experiences.
My first serious bead purchase took place at an antique auction in Hillsborough, NC, around 1974. This Asian necklace, with a terrifying face, was replete with laupus lazili beads and other semi-precious stones. The face didn't frighten me; I thought it might be a protector, perfect garb for Halloween. I bid $50 which was a splurge on a young teacher's salary, and with that, I learned that once I made an investment in a collectible, I was hooked.
Perhaps that's why I was lured by a free source of ancient beads by my soon-to-be husband, Charles. When I met him in 1976, he showed me a shoe-box full of tiny, tactile beads found in the Peruvian deserts. He acquired these minuscule shell beads made from marine mollusks, during his travels in South America after college, and before enactment of legal sanctions against importing artifacts. While they had no real value on an open market, Charles was drawn to them, viewing these little beads as a treasure trove of stories about the ancient cultures in Peru.
For example, the tiny coral colored ones were made from spondylus shells, a type of spiny scallop that was found in Ecuador, but not in Peru. Their presence in the Peruvian dessert offered proof that the straw totora reed boats made by ancient Peruvians were ocean worthy vessels used for trade as far north as Ecuador.
I've jokingly told many people that my fate with Charles was sealed when on our first date he gifted me with a necklace of pre-Columbian beads that he had strung from the shoe box trove. A lot of work considering that Peruvian shell beads were the smallest in the pre-Columbian world.
Actually it was our second date. We first met and dated five years earlier, but did not remember or recognize each other when we met the second time. Beads brought us back together. That's another reason I developed a healthy reverence for beads.
Our daughter, Bronwyn, has a beading story that symbolizes the few degrees of separation between people who mean something to you. That's currency! Her grandfather, Charlie, was a faculty member in the Psychiatry Department at Duke Medical Center. He became friends with a woman named Pat, a distinguished muralist who cheered children in the pediatric ward with her wall paintings. Pat enjoyed hearing Charlie's stories about his beloved grandchildren who lived overseas.
Pat asked Charlie if it would be OK for her to invite Bronwyn out to lunch and an art show when we were back in Durham for the summer. Although this is not something parents would allow today, we were delighted, as we kept our eyes open for adult mentors to inspire our kids. Lunch out and art gallery visit became a special event for Bronwyn over numerous summers. After several summer outings, Pat gave Bronwyn a treasure box of beads and sparkly things she had collected over many years to use in her painted collages.
About ten or twelve years later, our son, Chas asked his sister, "Do you remember the artist who gave you the box of beads? I met her when she was visiting her brother, John Payne." John was Chas's preeminent mentor, who built life-sized kinetic dinosaurs out of metal, and is renowned in Asheville for starting the River Arts District. When John introduced his sister, Pat, to Chas, she was curious about his name, saying she had been close friends with a Charles Llewellyn, now deceased.
Within seconds they made the connection and Pat told Chas that he and Bronwyn could not have imagined the love expressed by their grandfather when he told stories about their overseas escapades. It still amazes me that two adults, who were so important to the development of our children at different phases of their lives, were actually connected as sister and brother. Except for that chance introduction we would have never known this fact. Isn't that a treasure?
In 1988 my husband finished his assignment in Bolivia and we received notice that Ghana would be our next post. I contacted another USAID spouse, Ann Shultz, whose family had spent most of their working years in Africa, including Ghana. She invited me over for tea to talk about Ghana.
As we talked, my eyes drifted from her face to a large Ghanaian basket under the table to the left of her chair. It held coils of African trade beads on leather or sisal strings, wound like snakes, a pot of gold. She noticed my interest and grabbed several strands, draping them over her arm, and said, "Africa gets in your blood." I was soon to discover that African beads get in your blood.
In Ghana, beads speak. Each bead, by color and shape, carries symbolic meaning. I learned not to wear my red beads (funeral beads) to the office, and to wear white beads to weddings.
During our stay in Ghana, our family (along with my mom, Ruth, and Charles's mom, Sara Grace) was invited to a Krobo wedding. The Krobo Paramount Chief lived across the street from us in Accra. We became good friends with the chief's daughter, Martina, and her fiancé, John, who was a biodiversity scientist. During our Ghana years John was a mentor to Bronwyn. He taught her an approach that enabled communities to live in harmony with wildlife. He introduced twelve-year-old Bronwyn to Jane Goodall and inspired Bronwyn to pursue a career in bio-diversity management.
The wedding was a splendid affair that required Martina to change clothes and beads several times during the ceremony, each speaking volumes to the Ghanaian guests.
I have since learned that special wedding beads are worn in many other cultures. I have Nigerian Wedding beads and rare shell beads worn by brides in Papua New Guinea. This shell, the most valuable currency on the island, represented the bride's dowry.
Most likely, the Ghanaian bride also wore waist beads, designed to allure her husband. In many parts of Africa, babies also wear very small white waist beads. The beads signify whether the child is gaining or losing weight, and offer a visual signal for health practitioners to identify under-nourished children. This is important because malnutrition diminishes brain development and health for life; early intervention is critical.
Ghanaian friends knew I was interested in girl's education equity so they arranged for me to meet a Queen Mother, who was head of a powerful women's organization, FAWE. She wore yellow beads reserved for women of very high status.
At the close of our visit, she gave me a necklace that included a prized Bodom bead from her personal bead collection. When we left, I was eager to talk about FAWE's plans for girl's education with my friends, but their chatter was all about the beads.
Bodom beads are thought to have magical, protective powers. I had been given an unusual gift.
There was a monthly bead market in Accra. My son, Chas, enjoyed going with me when he was seven and eight years old. He walked from one vendor to the next carefully appraising their wares, and at the end of each bead bazaar, he had chosen only one bead.
He kept them in a small leather box. Small children like lots of something, anything, never choosing one when they can have a handful. Without any prompting Chas wanted to buy only one bead each time. I wish I had asked him his selection process when there were dozens of vendors and thousands of beads from which to choose. Here's Chas's bead box and his collection of beads.
Ghanaians love beads, collect them, and know their history and value. Serious collectors convene regularly at the Ghana Bead Society, which was established by bead enthusiasts who wished to promote knowledge about the traditional usages of beads, and to establish a permanent collection and a bead reference library at the National Museum.
Bead reference libraries catalog beads by name, location and date, providing a great tool for collectors and historians. Here are examples of a bead catalog as well as an example of an old bead card from which traders and their buyers ordered beads during European colonization.
My husband, Charles, was an avid participant in the Ghana Bead Society, making beads a family affair during our Ghana years. For this meeting, individuals prepared presentations for the group. They showed special beads from their family collections and told stories about beads.
During our overseas posts we were fortunate to live in three places that were ancient bead trading Routes-Ghana, Kathmandu and Zanzibar. The possibility of purchasing a thousand-year old bead added excitement to the already marvelous fun of combing through strands or bowls of beads in the antiquities and crafts markets of these three countries.
In Ghana, I had a Danish friend, Anne Jeppesen, who collected Chevrons, considered the aristocrat of beads. First invented in the 1500s by Venetians, and later produced by others including the Dutch over five hundred years.
Chevrons are formed by blowing a single or multiple layered gather of glass into a tapered mold with corrugated sides, thus producing points on its inner surface. This pleated gather is subsequently encased with additional glass layers of various colors. Using this process, the chevron may consist of two to eight layers and a variety of points. A very complicated bead to reproduce.
After moving to Nepal, I was surprised to see a strand of very old and large Chevrons in a bead shop for $500. While a bit pricey for me, I knew they would have been worth far more to Chevron collectors like Anne. I ran my fingers over the strand of Chevrons and felt like I was meeting an old friend. The appearance of Chevrons in Africa and Asia demonstrated the global nature of bead trading. Between Ghana and Nepal, I was able to add to my Chevron collection, a bead at a time.
My most exquisite Chevrons are ones that daughter Bronwyn purchased and made into a necklace for my birthday. These tiny, highly polished beads have six layers, an extremely painstaking production on such a diminutive bead. Knowing their value, and prizing their beauty, the necklace serves as a reminder of Bronwyn's love, a far greater currency.
In Kathmandu, several of my bead-collecting friends formed a bead group. Each month, the evening's host would take us to one of her favorite bead dealers and we would ooh-and-ah over the treasures. After our purchases we ate dinner out, and then went to the host's house. We chatted, offering advice on bead design and life, as we each made a bead necklace using beads we had brought from home along with other special beads that members shared. Here are photos of bead necklaces I made during these delightful monthly meetings.
Thinking about those wonderful evenings beading with friends, I concluded that the value we assign to beads and other objects held as currency, is somewhat related to their ability to build our social capital. "Money can't buy friends," but apparently beads can.
When a member of our bead group traveled, she almost always found some unique beads to share with us at the next meeting. One friend, Peggy, traveled to Cairo and returned with two identical conical silver beads for me. For the longest time I simply enjoyed looking at them and thinking of her.
On September 11, 2001, I was living in Bangladesh and watched the towers collapse on CNN news. I was brought to my knees in sadness. I processed my sadness by making a Twin Towers memorial necklace using the two silver beads.
On 9/11, the world stood together and with us. While 9/11 brought us closer to global peace and solidarity, the good will from our Muslim brothers and sisters was squandered when we invaded Iraq under false pretense. This fueled a second crusade, Christians against Muslims, that still rages. I think of these things when I wear the necklace, and now it hangs on my little altar of Mexican milagros, symbols of miracles desired and blessings received. Beads for peace.
I loved my Kathmandu bead group so much that I decided to strike up the habit with three friends in North Carolina who needed something to do with our hands while we caught up on the past year. Mary, Jane and I joined our beloved friend Ruth at her Kerr lake house. I wrote about Ruth in a previous blog and told something about the years we made bead jewelry with her during our reunions in the fall. The beads, autumn leaves, and conversation are threaded together in my memories.
Another memory. I was hiking in Nepal with my husband and children on the trail that connects Lukla to Everest Base camp. I came across an old woman dripping in wrinkles, perched on a flat boulder jutting out from the escarpment, in front of her hut.
At first glance I thought she was gazing out to the vast beauty before her, but then I saw that she was counting prayer beads made from bone, smoothed by her touch. Her expression told me she was looking inward, not outward, for meaning and inner peace. Deep into her meditation, she did not see me.
I forever seek her calm, her prayer beads, her currency.
I keep my prayer beads in a bowl near my bed. I touch them and hold dear that forever memory on the trail to Tengboche.
Himalayan cultures predominantly use coral and turquoise in bead making, but the dZi bead is the most treasured.
I acquired several dZi beads from my years in the Himalayas. The dZi bead is the most revered among Tibetans and other Himalayan people. The dZi is an etched agate of ancient origin, found long ago in the rocky landscape and grasslands. Tibetans believed the beads had supernatural origin, with great power to protect the wearer from potential disaster. They did not believe they were man-made because they were found in the earth.
Scientists and bead scholars, however, think that these early dZi beads were repositories of ancient people who once lived in the areas where they were found. The old dZi beads, or knowledge for making them, likely came from Iran or Arabs of the Bon faith, Tibet's pre-Buddhist religion. The beads are being reproduced today, in glass or clay imitations. These can be distinguished from genuine beads, which are etched agate with sharply delineated patterns on a glossy surface, such as these shown here.
I have two prized dZi beads with nine eyes strung with two other styles of dZiI and an old silver Nepali bead. (See photo above.) I assume they are a good fake, because two to four eye authentic dZi beads sell from $2,000 to 8,000. It is fun to wear the necklace in Nepal and watch Buddhists stare at my neck, trying to determine if they are fake or genuine.
My husband obtained my most precious dZi, shaped like a disk, on a trek to the ancient Buddhist Kingdom of Mustang.
Beads are central to many cultures, from the serene Buddhist worshipers who use beads in meditation and prayer, to the boisterous Maasai tribes who use beads to brighten up their drab barren landscape.
When you come upon a Maasai tribe, you can't help but smile. White rubber sandals and rows and rows and rows of beads around their neck, their waist, their arms and in their ears, brightening the clay terrain like a Christmas tree ablaze with lights.
They are adept at making and selling jewelry from white, red and yellow plastic seed beads. When my friends and I went on Safari and came upon road-side Maasai bead vendors, we left draped in their finery. Only to find that the style doesn't translate quite as well back home.
While living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and traveling weekly to Zanzibar for work, I came across distinctive beads made from old glass in three colors-turquoise, ochre, and brick red. A strand of beads that included these tiny glass beads cost far more than other beads in the shops and was difficult to find. The vendors in Dar told me they came from Zanzibar but did know any specifics. I wanted to know the source, and as usual when I'm hunting for beads, I learn a bit of unexpected history.
I learned that these beads wash up on the beaches of Zanzibar, deposited with the storms and tides. Their origins are sunken ships that sailed annually with the trade winds from Oman down the coast of East Africa in the 1200's -1400's.
The ships carried beads and other goods from the Arab world for trading and returned six months later, when the winds shifted, carrying African cargo –ivory, spices, and slaves being the most prized.
A friend who lived in Zanzibar told me where to find the source for these beads. I navigated twisted alleys by fortress-like walls, past bronze studded wooden doors. Stepping over sleeping dogs and monsoon puddles, I came to the shop. The shopkeeper led me to an interior room where a woman sat on a stool with a large tin tub perched between her legs. She was stringing "trade wind" beads on foot-long lengths of fishing line, picking each tiny bead from thousands of others lighting up the tin tub and my eyes.
Oh my gosh. I tried to remain cool, as one should when ready to strike a bargain, pretending something is worth less than the seller values it. "What's the story?" I asked, striking up the general conversation foreplay.
She told me that women on Zanzibar and Pemba islands comb the beaches in low tide, scratching the sand to find one bead at a time. "The beads wash up from sunken ships. When the women find a kilo, they sell them to me."
I cupped my hand to lift a palm-full, and imagined the wooden ships with cotton sails, some making it to the forts along the coast, and others crashing on the rocky coast on stormy nights. Finally, I thought about the mothers of the children I worked with in Zanzibar who picked up one bead at the time to feed their children.
With those thoughts, I cancelled the idea of bargaining with the vendor and was content to pay her $200 for six, 12 inch strands. The beads and their story are beautiful and haunting. I later learned that these distinctive beads were made in India around the 15th century, using a drawn-glass technique. Many similar beads were exported beginning in 200 B.C., up to the seventeenth century. My son, Chas, knew how much I treasured them so he worked with his friend, Una Barrett, an award-winning jeweler, to produce this necklace for me, using the Trade Winds beads.
Not to be outdone by my children's bead gifts, my husband Charles, longed to reach Timbuktu and secure some of the oldest beads in the history of bead making. He was working in Mali but Timbuktu was prohibited territory due to Islamist militants that overran the ancient desert city in 2012.
Timbuktu was known as the central hub for one of the oldest trade routes across northern Africa to the west coast. It was a regal capitol, hosting the world's oldest library and university. When Timbuktu was ransacked by jihadist groups, destroying fourteen out of sixteen World Heritage sites, ordinary citizens sneaked out of the city of Timbuktu and took to the wilderness. They buried chests in the desert sand, hid them in caves, and sealed them in secret rooms. Inside these chests was a treasure more valuable than gold to them - the city's ancient books.
However, a cholera outbreak in Timbuktu, gave Charles his chance to travel there with the U.S. military to take supplies to fight cholera spread. While there, he managed to do a little shopping for me.
He returned with a wrinkled plastic bag of tiny, ancient beads, that had been sifted from the sands of ancient oasis on the old camel routes from the north across the Sahara Desert, and a cowrie necklace, a reminder that cowrie beads were once considered currency.
Charles asked the vendor where the cowries came from, and the vendor replied, "the sea." Charles told him he knew that but he was asking which sea as Mali is far from any sea. Charles assumed that the cowries were recently imported. The vendor told him that these were ancient cowries, which had been used as money in olden times.
And just as delightful as the beads, were some ancient marbles from Timbuktu which we now roll across our carpets and imagine games played in the sand by traders and their children, filling time, waiting for the next camel caravan. Oh, the stories beads could tell.
Getting back to the Manhattan purchase for beads, I now see it for what it reveals. Currency is an assigned value to an object. In Timbuktu, currency was books. In colonial America, beads were currency. As a new country, the United States set up system of currency based on gold stored at Fort Knox. Over time, the government has produced far more dollar bills than it has gold to back it up. So what exactly does it stand for? And now we have Bitcom and Crypto currencies that exist digitally or virtually, with no central issuing or regulatory authority.
I'll stick to beads.
Written by Deborah's 3 Muses https://www.deborah-llewellyn.com/blog
Credits:
Maasai girl painting by Alison Pratt Vernon
Minuet trade with Indians provided by NewNetherlandsInstitute.org
Krobo child with waist beads from Wikipedia
Timbuktu scholar from Timbuktu - 1001 inventions
Timbuktu children still photo from the independent film, "Timbuktu"
Photo of Timbuktu woman from the New Yorker
Ghana Bead market photo from Pinterest stock photos
All other photos taken by the author
And when I want to talk "beads", or need help with a clasp, I take a twenty minute drive to Marsh Harbor Beads on HWY 101 just outside Beaufort and chat with owners Sandra and Samantha Taylor over a cappuccino. Their shop is bead heaven and I have beads to thank for our friendship.
Just wonderful, Deborah!