Indian Horse Bandolier
This thirty-five inch bandolier went around a horse's neck. While on his way to the Columbia River and Fort Astoria in 1811, Wilson Price Hunt mentioned a similar decoration on a Cheyenne Indian horse's neck. This pre-1885 Crow bandolier has on it: Crow beads, vasaline beads, French brass beads, white hearts, Mescal seeds, sea shells, Abalone shells, Dentalium shells, Dutch dogans, watermelon beads, hawk bells, thimbles, buttons, rifle shell casing, bullets, deer dew claws, and a pieces of an American flag.
October 12, 1492, Columbus recorded in his logbook that the natives of San Salvador Island were given red caps and glass beads. This is the earliest written record of glass beads in the Americas. The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortéz landed on the coast of Mexico in the spring of 1519. His ships carried glass beads along with other European trade goods. The Spanish explorers Narváez in 1527 and De Soto in 1539 carried glass beads for trade with the native inhabitants of Florida. In 1622, a glass factory was built near Jamestown, Virginia. Less than a year later, a raiding party of Indians burned the factory. Very few of the beads made in the Jamestown factory are believed to exist today.
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