Yellow Indian Trading Beads

Back in the 1990s, '93, '94, '95, I was living in a town down in north central Illinois, and there was a little antique shop there out on the highway. Sort of place that's a combination antique shop and gun shop, if my memory serves me correctly. Most of the stuff they had there was way out of my range, but they did have a quantity of Indian trading beads for cheap, cheap, cheap. So I sunk the price of a meal at McDonald's on these yellow trading beads. Because they were cool, you know, in a hippy-dippy way. Cool, and funky.

Yellow glass beads, with a rather rough and dull surface, not smooth. Yellow glass beads with streaks through them, streaks of blue or black or green. I have no idea whether these beads are genuine, whether they're old Indian trading beads, or newer, or something bought out of a Johnson Smith catalog. Whatever, they're just cool. And funky.

The beads were originally strung together on a dried corn shuck, but that didn't hold up, so I restrung them on several strands of thread, blue and orange. They usually sit on my nightstand, alongside my bed, with various other such curios. Yellow Indian trading beads. Funky.