An Extraordinary NC Raven Effigy Pipe
The Europeans knew nothing of tobacco usage until the late fifteenth century when their explorations began in the Western Hemisphere. But the natives living on the two large land masses and adjacent islands knew of and used the weed. Both Christopher Columbus in 1492 and Amerigo Vespucci in 1499 wrote about the Indian custom of using the plant. In the year 1514, the Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes recorded, on the island of Haiti, the following (and later published in LA HISTORIA GENERAL DE LAS INDIAS): “The caciques, or principle men, have hollow sticks about a span long less than the thickness of the smallest finger. These tubes have two channels, merging into one. And these they put into their nostrils and the other end in the smoke of the burning herb …. And they breathe in the smoke, once, twice, thrice, or as often as they can, until they lose their senses, and for a great space they lie stretched out on the ground without intelligence and stupefied as in a dream. It is to this instrument with which they inhale the smoke that the Indians gave the name tobacco and not to the herb or the resulting stupor, as some have believed.” In 1588, the Englishman Thomas Hariot wrote of his 1584 voyage to Roanoke Island, North Carolina “There is an herbe which is sowed a part by it selfe & is called by the inhabitants uppowoc. In the West Indies it hath diuers names, according to the seuerall places & countries where it growth and is used: The Spaniards generally call it Tobacco.” That begs for an answer to the question – is it the smoking instrument or the plant that should be called tobacco? Whatever is the actual truth, the Europeans quickly took to the habit of the plant we call tobacco and the whole world today uses the nicotine addictive golden leaf in various forms – snuff, chewing tobacco, cigarettes, cigars and, of course, pipes. But five hundred years ago there was only the tobacco plant and native made smoking implements - many in simple forms but others in various animal motifs such as this Raven effigy pipe.
The early Europeans came to the lands that would become the Americas looking for gold and silver and
found much of that in Mexico, Central America and South America. In what would later be called the USA, these precious metals were not immediately found but the Europeans did discover a commodity that would bring riches to some – tobacco. By the early seventeenth century, tobacco was being farmed in the Southeast coastal regions and consumed there as well as being exported to Europe. The Englishman John Rolfe, in 1612, seems to be the first to decide that the fertile grounds in eastern Virginia were perfect for growing tobacco. He and the other Europeans living in and around that region grew more and more of the plant as the years passed and shipped more and more of it to England. By the end of that century, records show that the Virginia colony alone shipped twenty million pounds of tobacco to the mother country. That simple addictive weed had become the early colonist’s greatest economic friend.
In 1960 the North Carolina Museum of Art staged an exhibition called “Tobacco and Smoking in Art” which, as the name implies, displayed the plant and how it was used in artful smoking implements from prehistory into modern times. There were numerous Indian made pipes on display at the exhibition including an unusual one from the NC hill country. This pipe, which is pictured in the exhibition catalog, was listed as shown below.
MODIFIED PLATFORM-BIRD EFFIGY PIPE
H: 40 mm
L: 91 mm
Diameter of bowl: 20 mm
Green-gray steatite pipe, carved in a form combining a variant of the platform
pipe with the profile of a bird effigy. Carving suggests a metal prototype because
of crisp raised and rounded edges, and raised center rib over the hole in stem.
Depressions suggest that stones (or gems) may have been used for eyes.
Provenance: Found in Deep Gap, Watauga County, North Carolina
Fifty years have passed since that information was published and while much of what we knew about Indian made pipes at that time is still correct, some data has definitely been refined and modernized. It is now believed that there was not a metal prototype used to make this pipe. A metal pipe would suggest post-European contact and the pipe pre-dates that time plus there have been no trade pipes discovered that are even vaguely similar to this stylistic motif. And the depressions for the eyes are now construed to have held nothing or possibly freshwater mussel pearls but certainly not gems or stones. The pipe was acquired in the 1930’s by a father and son collecting team and has remained in that collection until very recently. The Deep Gap community, in eastern Watauga County, is an area where many prehistoric artifacts have been found and is the Blue Ridge Mountains home of the world famous singer Doc Watson. The pipe is very unusual because of the odd bird beak/head extending forward from the bowl as well as the high quality of the workmanship. Thoughts are that it may simply be a highly stylized average bird beak or it may be a more realistic interpretation of the head of a coastal bird - the Pelican. Some have suggested it is reminiscent of the Toucan but since that bird is native to tropical America, that theory seems unlikely. The beak appearance is suggestive of a Crane and the prehistoric natives in the region certainly knew of this bird based on ancient Crane bones that were fashioned into needles and beads. Others believe it is a facsimile of a raptor or the now extinct Carolina Parakeet. Several groups of pre-historic to proto-historic Indians in the Southeast had a myth that either a large red-brown moth called “wasulu” or a hummingbird was sent by the gods to retrieve tobacco from the evil guardians of the plant. Thus tobacco was saved for the use by humans. Some believe that the large beak-like projection on the front of this pipe is the proboscis of this butterfly or an overstated and stylistic beak of a hummingbird. Conceivably it could have been any one or none of these examples. This writer, though, believes the correct answer is rather simple. The wife of a collecting friend (the wife not being an artifacts collector) looked at this pipe and instantly said “it’s a Crow”. And it possibly is a representation of a large billed and very intelligent black bird - but maybe not a Crow. A larger relative of a Crow, the more sturdily beaked Raven, occupied much of the mountainous regions in eastern North America until they were almost completely eradicated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by over zealous farmers/hunters. The pipe was probably made during the South Appalachian Mississippian Period which could have been anytime from AD 1,000 to maybe as late as AD 1700 with a reasonable guess being a manufacture date of AD 1450-1650 just before the Europeans began to heavily explore the mountain region. The common American Crow as well as the Raven have been on this continent for thousands of years, after having evolved in Asia, and both certainly would have been in the Blue Ridge Mountains a few hundred years ago. The Dallas Culture people occupied that portion of the Appalachians during the AD 1450-1650 time period and the pipe bowl and stem is of the Dallas style plus those natives did make effigy pipes. American Indian made bird effigy pipes are rare and of the small number that have been found, most feature a full stylized or realistic bird body and head, not just the beak and eyes as are shown here. Just what the Mississippian Period pipe maker was attempting to portray will most likely never fully be known but we certainly know that the craftsman created a beautiful and rare art object. Maybe it was made as an effigy of the butterfly proboscis or a raptors beak or even the Toucan. Or maybe the maker had smoked too much of a hallucinogenic plant before carving this particular pipe. But the writer now believes the good eye sight and common sense of this lady who looked at the pipe and saw a Crow or Raven head and beak. But it is still such an oddity that the questions continue to enter ones mind – questions without answers. But that simply makes this another of life’s many unanswerable queries. So think and speculate and ruminate and ponder but always keep in mind that this is a totally amazing and certainly one of a kind smoking instrument – This Extraordinary NC Raven Effigy Pipe.
REFERENCES:
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Dickens, Roy E.
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JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Vol. 36, No. 1
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