With Thanksgiving coming up I began thinking about Native American Indians and how they could really be considered the first American bead fanatics!

This is a no-brainer to lovers of Southwest art and design and people who live near Native American populations and reservations. Here on the East Coast we tend to forget how important beads were in the American Indian culture and how amazingly intricate and beautiful much of their beadwork is.

There are plenty of amazing examples of Native American bead jewerly to be found. One of the best places I discovered is E-pueblo.com’s Native American Jewelry area, a store based in the Southwest that specializes in Native American art and jewelry and has an amazing collection of authentic pieces by local artisans. To the right is one of the many pieces on the site by Ray Lovato. It’s made out of handcut natural turquoise beads. It’s absolutely beautiful, but I can’t imagine how much work it is to actually cut each and every bead by hand! I’m glad I can just drive down to the local bead store with cash in my purse!

Moving a little more west and a little more north we also have Wintum Jewelry and Arts which specializes in Indian Jewelry Native to the California Pacific Northwest. A lot of their jewelry looks more like the bead jewelry I’m used to making, though their pieces are often made out of natural materials such as sea shells, bones, abolone, mother of pearl, grasses and other things found in nature.

You don’t have to be a Native American to appreciate the beauty and skill required to make some of these amazing pieces. In fact, you can even try making your own bead jewelry using authentic Native American beads. I searched for a while but couldn’t find any good online bead stores that sold authentic Indian beads.