Fig. 476 A. (S. about 1–3.) Collection of J. T. Reeder, Houghton, Michigan. Locality, North Carolina. Material, soapstone.
Fig. 476 B. (S. 3–4.) Steatite, Barbour County, Kentucky. From a mound on Stoner’s Creek. B. H. Young’s collection, Louisville, Kentucky.
Fig. 476 C. (S. 1–2.) This beautiful little pipe is of a type occasionally found in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. It may not be prehistoric. At any rate, it is an interesting specimen. Collection of Dudley A. Martin, Duboistown, Pennsylvania.
Most of these tubular pipes are much larger at one end than the other, corresponding to the bowl, which is more highly developed in later forms. There is one in the Andover collection that was obtained from the Hupa Indians of California about fifty years ago by an early settler. The stem is round, made of redwood, and a stone ring surrounds the bowl. The tobacco would of necessity have to be packed tightly when one smoked such a pipe, unless, as has been reported, the smoker lay upon his back.
Fig. 457 is a roughly outlined and unfinished effigy pipe, which when complete was intended to represent the head of some animal. In this we have evidence of the method of work on the part of the maker. Instead of the hand-hammer it would appear that a cutting-tool had been used. He had begun to rim out the bowl on the top of the head, but the stem hole is not yet in evidence.
Fig. 477. (S. 1–1.) Eagle pipe. Clarence B. Moore. A superb pipe of limestone representing an eagle. “This pipe, 4.6 inches in length, carved with great spirit, is a worthy exemplar of the prehistoric art of Moundville. The bird is represented on its back, the head swung around to one side with the beak open and tongue extended. Incidentally, it may be said that the ‘hump’ shown on the tongue by the native artist, though somewhat exaggerated, is not imaginary, as may be proved upon examination of an eagle. It may be that this pipe, showing as it does the eagle lying on its back, its legs and claws on the belly, represents the dead bird. By pulling out the tongue of a dead eagle one would be certain to notice the ‘hump’; hence the examination of a dead bird would have sufficed so far as correct rendering on the pipe was concerned. On the other hand, the ‘hump’ on the tongue is plainly shown on pottery from Moundville, where the eagle’s head is erect and the bird is evidently represented as alive.”
It is in the effigy pipes themselves as a class that we see the greatest skill and care manifested in the manufacture of these strange objects. This does not, however, mean that all effigy pipes are models of the carver’s art, as many of them show poor workmanship. In other words, the art in pipes is no exception to the rule of art elsewhere. There were those who understood their business and produced masterpieces, and there were those who produced just the opposite. There may be a totally different method of treatment in representing the same creature, as for instance Figs. 468 and 470 showing the Iroquois treatment of human and bird forms in life; and the Southern Mound-Builder, Figs. 473, 474 A, 499, illustrating birds and men. The Iroquois and the Plains tribes made pipes more nearly like our modern pipes of to-day. The bowl was round or angular, and the stem long and tapering, or angular. Excellent examples from the Buffalo collection are shown in Fig. 465.