AN EARLY-NINETEENTH-CENTURY “EASTERN OJIBWA” WOODEN EFFIGY PIPE
Christian Feest
Fig. 1 The Private Collection (hereinafter: PC) pipe, right-side view.
Carved from a single piece of maple wood, the bowl is in
shape of the head of a Native man facing the smoker, with a
horse-headed and curved-neck animal arching from the dis-
tal end of the shank to the back of the man’s head. A scal-
loped ridge with round perforations in each of the bulges
extends from between the animal’s ears down along its neck
and along the underside of the shank to its proximal end. A
crest on the upper side slightly tapers towards the human
face and ends in two bulges and a final concave curve; this
crest as well shows a series of perforations along its upper
edge. The lead lining of the bowl extends to an inlay in the
shape of a twelve-pointed star on the flat top of the head that
also features the carved representation of hair terminating
in a triangle at the nape of the neck. The hole for the inser-
tion of the stem is equally lined with lead, here extending on
both sides of the ridges to form rectangular openwork inlays
with serrations at their distal ends and inside the central rec-
tangles. Another round perforation near the proximal end
of the top ridge is inlaid with lead.
Head and neck of the effigy show traces of black pigment
that may have extended to other parts of the pipe. Especially
notable are faint traces of painted vertical stripes on the
shank, which are better preserved on the left side. There are
considerable signs of use and wear as well as patination.
Length 7 ¾ in (19.5 cm), height 4 in (10.2 cm), maximal
width 1 ¾ in (4.5 cm)
Provenance: Private collection, previously owned by Gary H.
Becker, who bought it in the 1970s at a Mountain Men ren-
dezvous from a “civilian” [non-Mountain Man] who had re-
ceived it from a relative, an antiques dealer in Maine, active
in the 1950s and 1960s.
Fig. 2 CMH III-G-884a.
Wooden pipes made in eastern North America from the
shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the Prairie Plains are ex-
tremely rare when compared to those made of stone or
clay—surviving examples make up less than one percent of
the number of catlinite and other stone pipes made in a re-
gion overlapping the known distribution area of wooden
pipes. Although some of the known wooden pipes were al-
ready collected in the seventeenth century, for the vast ma-
jority of them there are no documented collection histories
extending even to the nineteenth centuries. Despite the
small number of extant examples, there are some that were
obviously made by the same maker.
This is also true in the case of the PC pipe, a near-dupli-
cate of which is in the collection of the Canadian Museum
of History (CMH) in Gatineau (no. III-G-884a,b). This
pipe, accompanied by a spirally-carved round wooden stem,
was purchased in c. 1975 from Rupert Gentle, “Dealer in An-
tiques and Works of Art,” The Manor House, Milton Lil-
bourne, Wiltshire, England. The provenances of the two
pipes virtually exclude the possibility of either one of them
being a modern replica of the other; their similarity clearly
indicates they were made by the same artist.
Despite the overall near identity, there are some minor
but notable differences between the two pipes, such as the
bend of the animal’s neck, the position of the man’s ear, or
the fullness of the cheeks. CMH has round perforations in
the scalloped ridge only in its back portion, and those in the
1. https://www.historymuseum.ca/blog/first-peoples-of-canada-smoking-pipes-from-the-canadian-museum-of-history/ (accessed 6
June 2019).
2. Dr. Talena Atfield, Curator, Eastern Ethnology, Canadian Museum of History, personal communication, 22 May 2019.
3. The website cited in note 1 suggests an age of “150–250 years” (c. 1765–1865) for CMH.
2
Fig. 3 The PC pipe, left-side view.
front ridge are of unequal size and not as well aligned as on
the PC pipe. The striped painting is better preserved on
CMH where it clearly extends to the face and to the curved-
neck animal. While the lead inlays at the top of the bowl are
in the shape of multi-pointed stars in both cases, those at the
proximal end are different. Those connected to the lining of
the hole for the pipestem extend on CMH to the ridges
above and below; the four-pointed stars at the sides were in-
laid separately, and there is no inlay in the hole near the prox-
imal end of the upper ridge. There is no certain way to tell
which of the two might be earlier than the other, but the PC
pipe is slightly more complex thanks to the inlays and the
greater number and regularity of the perforations.
Since neither of the two pipes has a documented date3 or
place of origin, we will have to look at the comparative evi-
dence. This is first of all found in a series of pipes featuring
curved-neck animals touching the bowl with their mouth,
which appears to define a regional type. Arni Brownstone
(2011: 63, note 6) has provided a useful collection and analy-
sis of data on this type. The earliest dated examples, carved
of stone and wood respectively, were collected in the Great
Lakes region along the British-American frontier at the time
of the American Revolution and specifically among the Mis-
sissauga in 1796 (Figs. 4, 5). Others were collected in the
1830s and 1840s among the Eastern Ojibwa/Ottawa of
Manitoulin Island. For the vast majority, no date or prove-
nience can be documented.
Fig. 4 World Museum, Liverpool, no. 58.83.6.4. Fig. 5 Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH, no. 43.2872.
Collected by Arent Schuyler DePeyster probably Collected in 1796 by Moses Cleaveland from Paqua, a Mississauga chief.
between 1774 and 1785, possibly at Fort Note that in these two earliest dated examples the curved-back animal can-
Michilimackinac or Fort Detroit ( Jones 2007). not be clearly identified and the serrated ridge on its back is missing.

Before entering into a stylistic comparison, it may be useful
to discuss the issue of the animal represented, quite sensibly
identified by Brownstone as a horse because of the shape of its
head. But Brownstone also points out that the ridge along the
back (serrated rather than scalloped in all other examples) may
not represent a horse’s mane but more likely reference the ser-
rated back of mythical underwater beings (see also Brasser
1976: 112, no. 84; Phillips 1987a: 59, no. W100; 1987b: 63,
fig. 48). This is further supported by a catlinite pipe from the
old Boston Museum that shows a lizard-like animal (Fig. 6)
and also serves as a reminder that the curved-back animal is
only a special case of a much more widely distributed type in
which an animal is clinging to the back of the bowl (Figs. 7, 8).
Given the insignificance of horses in the lives of the Native peo-
ples of the Great Lakes region and specifically on Manitoulin
Island,4 where several documented examples of this type were
collected, the identification of the animal as a supernatural
being with a horse’s head appears more likely.5
Further confirmation for this assumption is the inscrip-
tion “Serpent” found on the right side of the neck of this
being on the CMH pipe—presumably made by the original
collector on the basis of information received at the time of

Fig. 6 Peabody Museum, Harvard Uni- Fig. 7 National Museum of Denmark, Fig. 8 National Museum of the American Indian,
versity, Cambridge, MA, no. 99-12-10/ Copenhagen, no. E.Dc16 (Ole Worm Washington, DC. no. 15/0157. Acquired in 1926 in
53106.1 (ex Boston Museum). No pro- coll.), before 1653, attributed to the England by George Heye; attributed to the Missis-
venience, attributed date c. 1800–1850. Iroquois. sauga.

4. As Brownstone (2011: 61) notes, there were only thirty-one horses on Manitoulin Island in 1843, and two years later it was reported
they were exclusively used for racing on Sundays (Hanipaux 1846: 463).
5. Just as Manitowaning on Manitoulin Island refers to a cave believed to be the abode of an underwater spirit (Brownstone 2011: 61),
Lake Manitou in Indiana was regarded by the local Potawatomis as the dwellling place of an enormous snake with a head “having some-
thing of the contour of a ‘beef head’” (Cooke and Ramadhyani 1993: 124–125).

3
Fig. 9 Heritage Auctions, Dallas, TX, sale no. 5277 (13 Fig. 10 Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, no. 81.262
December 2016), lot 70254. Attributed to the “Great Lakes, (Chandler-Pohrt coll.). Attributed to the “Ottawa, Manitoulin
c. 1800,” and said to have been “traded to the Indians by the Island, c. 1800” (Penney 1992: 233, no. 157), some decades be-
French – Pre-revolutionary ... Northern New York.”5 fore the Ottawa returned to the island after 150 years.

purchase. (What appears to have been another inscription
on the right side of the shank is illegible.)
In this connection it is interesting to note that around 1800
several varieties of cast copper or brass pipes were made for
distribution among Native peoples that are not only obviously
related to the curved-back animal type, here perhaps repre-
senting a stylized bird, but also feature holes along the back
and bottom of the scalloped rather than serrated ridge (Figs.
9).6 While it cannot be excluded that these pipes were made
in imitation of Native-made pipes (as was already the case in
the seventeenth century), they appear to date before the ear-
liest known comparable wooden or stone pipes (but see Fig.
29) and a cast pewter pipe, attributed to the Ottawa, featuring
a horse head and a perforated scalloped crest (Fig. 10).
Although the curved neck seems to provide a reasonable
basis for classification, it turns out that similar pipes were ap-
parently made by the same artist with or without this feature.
The two wooden pipes shown in Figs. 11 and 12 share the
slit ears wrapped with wire, the use of inlays to indicate the
man’s hair, the basic facial features including red-rimmed
eyes and red face paint, and show similar inlays on the shank.
Like Fig. 12, Fig. 11 had formerly some effigy carving at-
tached to the shank. The major difference is the absence of
the curved-neck animal on the pipe shown in Fig. 12.

Fig. 11 McCord Museum, Montreal, no. M11030. Formerly
in the Natural History Society of Montreal (founded 1827,
dissolved 1928), collected by the Society’s librarian, Sir
George Duncan Gibb (1821–1876). Attributed by the mu-
seum to the “Anishnaabe, 1760–1780.”
Fig. 12 Bonhams, San Francisco, CA, sale no. 19161
(6 June 2011), lot 5435. Formerly in a British private
collection. No collection data.

6. For two very similar examples see Heritage Auctions, Dallas, TX, September 2006 sale of Hendershot Collection #643, lot 48099, and
Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY (Thaw coll.), no. T645, attributed to the Ottawa, c. 1800, but with a label identifying it as an ar-
chaeological find from York Co., PA (Vincent, Brydon, and Coe 2000: 67), which makes the Ottawa attribution unlikely.

4
Fig. 13 Bonhams, San Francisco, CA, sale no. 24299 (4 De-
cember 2017), lot 221. Most likely received as gift from
Eastern Ojibwa and/or Ottawa chiefs in 1836 on Mani-
toulin Island by Sir Francis Bond Head (https://www.bon-
hams.com/auctions/24299/lot/221/).
Fig. 14 Steven Michaan collection (Powers 2004: 26–29). No
collection data. Attributed to the “Great Lakes, c. 1760.” Figures
on the shank now missing.
Note the similarity of lead inlays on Figs. 13 and 14 and their dif-
ference from those shown in Figs. 11 and 12. A nearly identical
inlay on the shank is found on a brown stone pipe with octagonal
cross-section at the National Museum of the American Indian,
Washington, DC, no. 8/8689, attributed to the Ottawa.
The National Museum of the American Indian also has a pipe at-
tributed to the “Iowa, c. 1850” (no. 24/074) belonging to this
group with figures on the shank and very similar inlays.

Fig. 15 Scottish private collection. Thought to have been col-

lected by James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, who was Governor Gen-
eral of Canada from 1847 to 1854. No further collection data.
Figures on the shank now missing.

Two other wooden pipes (Figs. 13, 14) have been
thought to be closely related to the previous pair (Ingmars
Lindbergs in https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/24299/
lot/221/), but while the two are indeed very similar to one
another, their facial features and the metal inlays represent-
ing the hair7 as well as those on the shank differ significantly
from the the other ones. Both are lacking the curved-neck
animal, and in both cases the effigies formerly attached to
the shank have been broken off. The example offered at Bon-
hams in 2017 (but withdrawn before the sale) strongly sug-
gest a provenience from Manitoulin Island in the 1830s, 70
years later than the attributed date of the pipe in the Michaan
collection—about the same difference between the probable
collection date and the attributed date of the McCord Mu-
seum pipe. An even more distantly related curved-neck ani-
mal pipe depicting the head of a European with brass inlays
(Fig. 15) contributes to the combined evidence indicating
the presence of several presumably Eastern Ojibwa/Ottawa
makers of related effigy pipes in the period between 1830
and 1850.
A further set of grey stone effigy pipes, some of them
smoke-blackened, have been identified by Brownstone
(2011) as the works of two named carvers from Manitoulin
Island who were active during the same period: the Ojibwa
chief Awbonwaishkum and Pabahmesad, another Ojibwa.
Their works are stylistically closely related and share the use

7. Stylistically very similar inlays representing a headdress, rather than hair, are found on a pipe sold in September 2017 at Cowan’s
in Cincinnati and now in the Museum of Native American History in Bentonville, AR, which I dated to the late eighteenth century,
based on the similarity with the Michaan pipe and its attributed date (Feest 2017). The evidence associated with the pipe collected
in 1836 by Sir Bond Head became available only at the time of its sale in December 2017 and very likely moves the date for the Ben-
tonville pipe into the early nineteenth century.

5
Fig. 16 National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, no. MI 1893-732. Carved by Pabahmesad, collected on Manitoulin Island by the Rev.
Frederick O’Meara between 1841 and 1846. Figure(s) attached to the shank now missing.

Fig. 17 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, no. HD15A. Attrib- Fig. 18 Karl-May-Museum, Radebeul, no. D11b/289. Probably
uted to Pabahmesad (Edmund Morris coll., accessioned in carved by Pabahmesad or Awbonwaishkum. No collection data.
1913). Two figures on the shank now missing. Attributed in the museum’s catalog to the Potawatomi.

Fig. 19 National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, Fig. 20 Skinner, Boston, MA, sale no. 2391 (13 May 2006), lot 95.
DC, no. 12/0105. Probably carved by Pabahmesad, possibly col- Possibly carved by Pabahmesad or Awbonwaishkum. No collec-
lected by Paul Kane in 1845. Acquired by George Heye in Eng- tion data. Attributed to “Ojibwa, c. mid-19th century.” Figures on
land in 1923. Attributed in the museum’s catalog to the Miami. the shank now missing.

of white glass beads to indicate the eyes, but while Awbon-
waishkum appears to have sculpted the whole pipe, includ-
ing the figures on the shank, from one piece (Fig. 21),
Pabahmesad attached the separately carved figures with a
dowel and socket (Figs. 16, 17, 19). The group includes
pipes with the curved-neck animal or with a human figure
clinging to the back of the head-shaped bowl. The cross-sec-
tion of the shank is either square or octagonal. These differ-
ences can presently not be definitely associated with either
of the two carvers (Figs. 18, 20).
The pipes attributed to Pabahmesad and Awbon-
waishkum differ in their style from the wooden pipes reput-

6
Fig. 21 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, no. 38457 (Frank Eames coll., accessioned in 1920). Carved by Awbonwaishkum, collected
by Paul Kane on Manitoulin Island in 1845.

Fig. 22 Museum der Kulturen, Basel, no. IVa18. Acquired in 1825 Fig. 23 National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC,
by Lukas Vischer in a shop in Quebec without further documenta- no. E2594 (War Department coll., misattributed to the U.S.
tion. Figures carved on the shank now missing. Feder (1971: 99, no. Exploring Expedition coll.). No collection data, but must have
125) identified the animal’s head as that of a bird. been collected 1824–c. 1840. Curved-neck animal broken off.

edly carved by their contemporaries on Manitoulin Island
discussed above. Indeed it was reported that Pabahmesad
carved pipes of white stone, black stone, and catlinite8 (Wil-
son 1857: 41), but apparently not of wood. These works nev-
ertheless add to our knowledge of documented styles of pipe
carving on Manitoulin Island in the 1840s (and probably the
decade before and after), and are useful for comparisons
with the PC pipe and its CMH relative.
The bad news, however, is that there are almost no other
comparable wooden or stone pipes with a documented prove-
nance and only a few with reasonably documented dates of
collection. Among the latter, two are of particular interest. A
pipe collected by a Swiss traveler in Quebec in 1825 (Fig. 22;
see also Feest 1968: 49) resembles in the carving of the human
face and in the three vertical ridges at the proximal end of the
shank another one (Fig. 23) from the U.S. War Department

8. Within the last thirty years, two curved-neck animal catlinite pipes with no known collection history have come on the market:
[1] Sotheby’s, New York, NY, sale of 4 December 1993, lot 114; Shaw 1999: 20; Sotheby’s, New York, NY, sale of 21 May 2015, lot 142;
[2] Skinner, Boston, MA, sale no. 3243B (18 May 2019), lot 10. Both of them differ in having highly unusual vase-shaped instead of
human-head bowls (unknown at least from any other curved-neck animal pipe), and one of them [2] features lead inlays of a kind not
found on any of the Manitoulin pipes (or indeed on any other Native American pipe). The recent attribution of the other one [1], with
figures attached to the shank, to either Pabahmesad or Awbonwaishkum is rather unlikely.

7
Fig. 24 Museo de la Civilità, Rome, no. 11312 (Enrico Hillyer
Giglioli coll., acquired before 1909). No collection data. Curved-
neck animal broken off. Attributed to the “Ojibwa, c. 1830” (Feest
1980: 159, fig. 50).
Fig. 25 Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, no. III-G-832
(ex Arthur Speyer coll., acquired in the 1960s from the Fred
North coll., London). No collection data. Attributed to the
“Wyandot, pre-1850” (Benndorf and Speyer 1968: 63, no. 75)
and to the “Eastern Ojibwa, c. 1840” (Brasser 1976: 112, no. 84).

collection, which must have been collected in the United
States. The Canadian pipe originally had figures on the shank
sculpted in one piece with the pipe (like those attributed to
Awbonwaishkum, but before the large-scale resettlement of
Manitoulin Island in the 1820s and 1830s), whereas the per-
forated and scalloped crest on the American pipe is reminis-
cent of the Mississauga pipe collected in 1796 (Fig. 5) and,
even more so, of the PC pipe and the related one at the CHM.
One may conclude from this that in the 1820s and 1830s
curved-neck animal pipes were made by carvers from groups,
such as the Eastern Ojibwa (including the Mississauga), Ot-
tawa, and Potawatomi, who lived on both sides of the Cana-
dian-American border or moved across it. The range of styles
and materials represented by this group of pipes is further il-
lustrated by less well documented examples probably made
during the same period (Figs. 24, 25).
A comparison of the head-shaped bowls of the PC pipe
(A) and its CMH relative (B) with those documented to have

A B C D E F G

H I J K L M N
Fig. 26 Head-shaped bowls (some laterally reversed for easier comparison):
Upper row: A: PC; B: CMH. Manitoulin pipes: C: Fig. 13 (Bonhams, Sir Francis Bond Head coll.); D: Fig. 16 (Pabahmesad;
National Museum of Ireland); E: Royal Ontario Museum, no. Hk924 (perhaps by Awbonwaishkum); possibly Manitoulin pipes:
F: Fig. 12 (Bonhams); G: Fig. 11 (McCord Museum).
Lower row: unknown provenience: H: Fig. 22 (Museum der Kulturen); I: Fig. 23 (National Museum of Natural History); J: Fig. 25 (Ca-
nadian Museum of History); K: Fig. 24 (Museo de la Civilità); L: Bryn Mawr College, no. 70.45.6/BMC/s/2 (ex Philadelphia Acad-
emy of Natural Sciences, collected in Detroit); M: Slovenian Ethnographic Museum, Ljubljana, no. E2875 (collected by Frederick Baraga
most probably in 1836 among the Southwestern Ojibwa at La Point, WI); N: same museum, no. E2873 (same collection information).

8
Fig. 27 Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, no. T0013 Fig. 28 State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, no.
(Thaw coll., ex James Economos, Santa Fe, NM, ex Thomas A. 1954.2104, collected by James Duane Doty, probably in the
Dale, Santa Fe, NM). No collection history; attributed to the 1820s or 1830s, perhaps among the Southwestern Ojibwa of
“Eastern Ojibwa, c. 1790” (Vincent, Brydon, and Coe 2000: 68). Wisconsin.

been collected on Manitoulin Island shows a closer relation-
ship in the rendering especially of the hair and ears and to
some extent also of the cheeks with pipes carved by Pabahme-
sad and Awbonwaishkum (D, E) than with C, but some of the
similarities also occur on pipes collected elsewhere (Fig. 26).
One of the more unusual features of both the PC and the
CMH pipe is the painting with vertical stripes that occurs only
on three other wooden pipes: an undocumented one in the
Thaw collection (Fig. 27), attributed to the Eastern Ojibwa, c.
1790, on the basis of a very similar but unstriped pipe col-
lected by Jasper Grant between 1800 and 1809 at Fort George,
near Niagara Falls, and Fort Malden, opposite Detroit
(Phillips 1984: 46, no. 45, 72); one collected by James Duane
Doty, probably among the Southwestern Ojibwa of Wisconsin
during the 1820s or 1830s (Fig. 28); and the Mississauga pipe
collected in 1796 (Fig. 5).
Only two stone pipes with perforated ridges on the prow
and bottom have been located. On the one collected by De-
Peyster in the 1770s or 1780s, the ridge is scalloped like on
the PC and CMH pipes (Fig. 29), on the other one, bearing
a close relationship to the pipes made by Awbonwaishkum
and Pabahmesad, it is serrated (Fig. 30). However, it will be
remembered that this element also appears on the metal
pipes made as gifts or trade goods for the Native peoples of
the Great Lakes region in the late eighteenth or early nine-
teenth century (Figs. 9) and on Native-made cast pewter

Fig. 29 World Museum, Liverpool, no. 58.83.6.2.
Collected by Arent Schuyler DePeyster probably be-
tween 1774 and 1785, possibly at Fort Michili-
mackinac or Fort Detroit ( Jones 2007).
Fig. 30 Florida Museum, Gainesville, FL, no. P2432 (Leigh Morgan
Pearsall coll.). No collection data. Identified by Phillips (1987a: 59, no.
W100) as an “Ottawa or Ojibwa type, c. 1825–1850); assigned by Brown-
stone (2011: 61) to the “Manitoulin group” represented by the works of
Awbonwaishkum and Pabahmesad.

9
pipes of the first half of the nineteenth century (Figs. 10, 31).
Crests or ridges on top of the shank occur widely on
wooden and stone pipes, but are rarely found together with
effigy bowls as on the PC and CMH pipes (Fig. 32D and E
are among the exceptions). Many of these pipes are docu-
mented as the works of Ojibwa carvers and other have been
attributed to them, although this feature is also found among
neighboring groups. Looking more specifically for scalloped
and/or perforated ridges sloping toward the bowl, we find Fig. 31 Grassi-Museum. Leipzig, no. 5017a (formerly in the
Mission Museum, Leipzig). Collected between 1848 and 1852
them associated with a great variety of basic pipe forms (Figs.
by the Rev. Eduard Raimund Baierlein among the Saginaw
32A–F; also Figs. 5, 10, 23, 27, 29) executed in wood or stone. Ojibwa at the mission Bethanien in present Bethany Township,
The closest matches for the PC and CMH pipes are an un- MI (see also Baierlein 1894). Redrawn after Dräger (1999: 67).
documented British Museum pipe (Fig. 32A), which has the Since there were probably few pewter casters among the Ojibwa
(as well as for stylistic reasons), this one and the pipe shown in
perforations inlaid with lead, and Figs. 33B and E, of which Fig. 10 were possibly the work of the same artist.
at least the latter was collected in Detroit. Fig. 30F is interest-
ing because it features the same boxed X or four petals design 81.667, Chandler-Pohrt coll., attributed to the “Pawnee, c.
also found on Fig. 27, the related Jasper Grant pipe, and a 1830” in Penney 1992: 268, no. 199).
catlinite effigy pipe at the Detroit Institute of Arts (no. A distinctive feature of the two pipes under considera-

A B C

D E F
Fig. 32 One wooden and five stone pipes with scalloped and/or perforated ridges on the shank sloping toward the bowl:
A: British Museum, London, no. Am,Dc.33, acquired in 1874 in New York by William Bragge; attributed to the “Ojibwa, c. 1860”
(King 1977: 37, no. 42); B: National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, no. E2422 (War Department coll.), no collection
data, but must have been collected 1824–c. 1840; C: Musée des Beaux Arts et d’Archéologie de Rennes, no. 794.1.795 (Paul-Christophe
de Robien coll.), documented before 1749; no provenience; D: British Museum, London, no. Am1850,0830.1, donated in 1850 by
John Doubleday as a pipe from Nootka Sound, attributed by King (1977: 20) to the “Northeast, c. 1840”; E: Bryn Mawr College,
Bryn Mawr, PA, no. 70.45.5 (William S. Vaux coll. of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia), inscribed “Detroit, Michigan,”
no further collection data; F: Florida Museum, Gainesville, FL, no. P2432 (Leigh Morgan Pearsall coll.), no collection data, attributed
by the museum to “Plains, late 19th to early 20th c.,” but probably Eastern Ojibwa, early 19th c.

10
 Fig. 33 Twelve-pointed star inlay at the top of the
bowl of the PC pipe.
Fig. 34 Serrated openwork inlay of the PC pipe.
tion is the cross-section of their shank. Other than the
wooden pipes collected on or attributed to Manitoulin Is-
land, which are octagonal in cross-section, and the stone
pipes carved by Awbonwaishkum and Pabahmesad, which
are either octagonal or square, the PC and CHM pipes have
flat sides and a rounded top and bottom so that the cross-
section approaches the hexagonal.
As for the lead inlays, the multi-pointed stars at the top
of the bowl are shared by the PC and CHM pipes (twelve-
and fourteen-pointed, respectively), but have not been
found on any other example and may be regarded as a hall-
mark of the artist (Fig. 33). The serrated openwork rectangle
on the PC pipe is absolutely unique (Fig. 34 ); the four-
pointed star on the CHM pipe has only a remote resem-
blance with X-shaped inlay on the Earl of Elgin pipe (Fig.
15).
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis has shown that the PC pipe and its CMH rela-
tive share many features that connects them to wooden and
stone pipes documented to have been collected on Mani-
toulin Island in the 1830s and 1840s and to a lesser extent
with pipes collected in the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth century in the Canadian-American border region
from Michilimackinac to Detroit and Cleveland, an area pri-
marily inhabited by the same peoples who were later also
found on Manitoulin Island. Although the only group for
which the manufacture of these pipes can be documented
are the Eastern Ojibwa (including the Mississauga), the pos-
sibility that some of the undocumented examples were made
by their relatives and neighbors cannot be excluded. The
11
usual attribution of all of them to the Ojibwa is merely a con-
venience based on the fact that the styles of, e.g., Ottawa or
Potawatomi pipes of this period are unknown.
The resemblance existing between the two pipes is obvi-
ous and can only be explained as the result of the work of
the same artist. But while they share many features with
other pipes known to have been made between the 1770s
and the 1840s (and perhaps beyond), there are several dis-
tinctive features (cross-section, inlays at the top of the bowl,
perforated scalloped ridge on the back of a curved-neck an-
imal) that sets them apart from other identifiable “Eastern
Ojibwa” pipes. The fact that the pipe at the CMH had sur-
vived in England may be an indication that it originally came
from the Canadian side of the border, but the markets exist-
ing for Native American arts in places like Quebec, Montreal,
Niagara Falls, or Detroit were to some extent certainly also
carrying products from both sides of the border.
As the comparative evidence has shown, some of the
pipes with an attributed eighteenth-century date were obvi-
ously made in the 1830s and 1840s. But while some stylistic
features of the PC and CMH pipes are also found on the
pipes made on Manitoulin Island in the 1830s and 1840s,
some others (including the perforated scalloped ridge found
on the cast metal pipes dating from around 1800) may indi-
cate they were made prior to the resettlement of Manitoulin
Island or, in other words, the first quarter of the nineteenth
century.
ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF THE PC PIPE
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Brasser, Ted J.
1976 “Bo’jou, Neejee!” Profiles of Canadian Indian Art.
Ottawa, ON: National Museum of Man.
Brownstone, Arni
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Manitoulin Island. American Indian Art Maga-
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Cooke, Sarah E., and Rachel B. Ramadhyani (eds.)
1993 Indians and a Changing Frontier. The Art of
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ical Society.
Dräger, Lothar
1999 Indianer. Die Ureinwohner Amerikas. Leipzig:
Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig.
Feder, Norman
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Feest, Christian
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66.
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& Hudson.
2017 An Extraordinary 18th Century Eastern Wood-
lands Pipe, from the Collection of Clem Cald-
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OH), American Indian and Western Art: Live
Salesroom Auction, 23 September 2017, lot
119.
Hanipaux, Urbain
1846 Letter du R. P. Hanipaux, missionaire aposto-
lique de la Société de Jésus, à son frère. Ste.
Croix, Grande Ile de Manitouline, 14 septembre
1845. Annales de la Propagation de la Foi
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Jones, Simon
2007 Caldwell and DePeyster: Two Collectors from
the King’s Regiment on the Great Lakes in the
1770s and 1780s. In: J. C. H. King and Christian
Feest (eds.), Three Centuries of Woodlands Indian
Art. ERNAS Monographs 3. Altenstadt: ZKF
Publishers.
13
King, J. C. H.
1979 Smoking Pipes of the North American Indian.
London: British Museum Publications.
Penney, David W.
1992 Art of the American Indian Frontier. The Chandler-
Pohrt Collection. Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press.
Phillips, Ruth B.
1984 Patterns of Power. The Jasper Grant Collection and
Great Lakes Indian Art of the Early Nineteenth
Century. Kleinburg, ON: The McMichael Cana-
dian Collection.
1987a Northern Woodlands. In: The Spirit Sings. Artis-
tic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples. A Cata-
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1987b Like a Star I Shine. Northern Woodlands Artis-
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ON: McClelland and Stewart, 51–92.
Powers, Steven S.
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Shaw, George Everett
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Press.
Wilson, Daniel
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ONLINE DATABASES CONSULTED
Bonhams, San Francisco, CA:
https://www.bonhams.com/search/
British Museum, London:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collec-
tion_online/search.aspx
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA:
http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/
Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau:
https://www.historymuseum.ca/collections/
Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, OH:
https://www.cowanauctions.com/lot/search
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI:
https://www.dia.org/art/collection
Florida Museum, Gainesville, FL:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/pearsall/gallery/
Heritage Auctions, Dallas, TX:
https://fineart.ha.com/
Musée McCord Museum, Montreal:
http://collections.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/keys/col-
lections/
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institu-
tion, Washington, DC:
https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/anth/
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC:
https://collections.si.edu/search/
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cam-
bridge, MA:
https://pmem.unix.fas.harvard.edu:8443/peabody/
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto:
https://collections.rom.on.ca/
Skinner Auctioneers, Boston, MA:
https://www.skinnerinc.com/search
Sotheby’s, New York, NY:
http://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/lot-archive
Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH:
http://norton.wrhs.org/starweb/p.skcc-
catalog/servlet.starweb?path=p.skcc-catalog/skcccata-
log.web

Altenstadt 2019: Christian Feest

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.30011.26409

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