I thought these were an interesting and novel adaptation of Euro trade goods until I got to digging into it. Turns out there are pre-Columbian artifacts with inlaid (shell) beads. The technique continued in at least occasional use til the Reservation Period.
Beads were inlaid in several ways including in a drilled hole, in a punched hole, and inlet like inlays on a gun. The first two methods seem most common, and these seem to be the ones where some type of glue is use to retain the bead, since the hole is usually at least slightly larger than the bead. (Glue may have been used with inlet beads/partial beads, but it would be hidden.) Pine pitch "glue", birch tar, possibly hide glue, and sealing wax were all used (probably some others as well). I suspect oil paint may have also been used at times, based on a couple of pieces I've examined.
Pine pitch can be "whitened" by the addition of chalk powder. I haven't been able to identify any red glue where vermillion was used, but it probably was at some point. I've seen several examples where red ochre was used. Black pine pitch seems to have been due to the typical addition of charcoal to the pitch. i haven't seen or heard of colored birch tar, probably because birch tar made in primitive conditions tends to be fairly dark. Red seems the most common color of sealing wax used.
Bead size used varies but over the 1700-1880 time period seems most-commonly to hover around what we could call a size 8. There are exceptions of course. I can think of two pieces (one from ~1703 in a French museum, another from probably 1875 in a family collection in Oklahoma) where beads around size 13 were used. On the other end, there are a couple pieces from the Pacific Northwest where beads around .2" were used. Maybe it depended on what was being traded in the area (I doubt they sent off an order to Shipwreck Beads for "just the right bead").
