This paper compares glass bead color, shape, and size patterns from 19 Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk towns, ca. 1655-1754. During this time, Haudenosaunee (also known as Iroquois) Nations sought trading relationships with Europeans and other Indigenous communities to obtain goods by choice, rather than by dependence. As actors with agency, Haudenosaunee Nations intentionally sought specific visual characteristics of glass beads to generate desired outcomes. Within the context of Haudenosaunee cosmology, the colors red, white, and black have aesthetic and ideological power because their animacy evokes dynamic states of being and facilitates transformation. Considering glass bead color, shape, and size patterning across multiple contemporaneous towns in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy illuminates nation-specific aesthetic preferences, trends in bead use, and draws attention to Haudenosaunee economic and aesthetic motivations for wearing and exchanging glass beads during the fur trade.