Fig. 468. (S. 2–3.) New York State Museum collection, Albany, New York. Human effigy and human bird-pipes from Iroquois sites in northwestern New York. Both of these sculptures are unusually fine examples of art in pipe-working, for the greater part of Iroquois pipes are plainer.
Fig. 469. Pottery pipe with human face; the stem part broken off. Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada. Toronto University Museum.
The human sculpture of the priest on the altar at Palenque, so frequently illustrated, illustrates an individual either blowing or drawing smoke through a tube. The tube is ornamented with bands, and appears to be larger at one end. It is a straight and not a curved pipe. I have always thought that this interesting figure from ancient Palenque typified what the pipe meant to the more cultured American tribes. There is a vast difference between the use of the pipe as portrayed in that sculpture, and the degeneration of the smoking ceremony as it appears to-day among modern tribes. We have in this figure the ancient shaman in full regalia; the elaboration with which the slab is wrought, and the fact that it was part of the sacred altar at Palenque, are significant.
Fig. 470. New York State Museum collection, Albany, New York. The New York State Museum contains many fine specimens of early Iroquois make. The upper figure to the right, with long stem, is gracefully curved.
Fig. 471. (S. 1–1.) Collection of Leslie W. Hills, Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is the form of bird effigy most frequently found. That is, it is not common, but more of this type are found in the Mound-Builder country than other bird-forms.
We have no such sculptures in the Mississippi Valley, but we have altar mounds in which effigy and monitor pipes were buried. I have never found a crude pipe in an altar mound and I do not think that either Squier and Davis or Professor Mills ever found an example of crude art in an altar mound. This refers to original interments, on the base-line—not to intrusive burials. Everything indicates that the pipes in use in pre-Columbian times were of two kinds, the small, individual pipes, and the large council pipes, or those made use of at important functions either religious or tribal, being characteristic. I have never observed the mark of any steel or iron tool on a mound pipe in the Ohio Valley.
