Piedmont Historic Tube Pipes
The evolution of the smoking pipe in North America is well documented from early simple straight tubes to very elaborate effigy pipes of the Hopewell, Copena and Mississippian Cultures. The aboriginal people of the Piedmont, though, reverted to simple tubular pipes during the European invasion three hundred years ago. What would have caused this reversal in the evolution of smoking instruments? The answer may be as simple as the lack of leisure pipe making time during this tumultuous period.
Newly arrived immigrants and American born of European descent had begun moving rapidly into central Virginia and North Carolina during the early eighteenth century. This ever swelling mass of conquerors pushed the native Indians further from their traditional homelands and into smaller and smaller territories. These Siouan tribes called by such names as Saponi, Saura, Tutelo and Eno, were spending most of their time during the first half of the century just trying to survive in a fast changing world. The British, Scots and Germans were encroaching from every side, thus reducing the Indian hunting and farming lands. The warrior Iroquois from the North were frequently attacking and killing the Southern natives. These Indians were also being attacked by Old World diseases for which they had no immunity. In simple terms, the daily existence of these people was stress heavy and time short.
The Historic Period sites of these Indians have yielded glass trade beads, brass and copper ornaments and European trade pipes as well as small triangular arrowheads and native made pipes. The Amerindian tubular smoking implements were made of grit or sand tempered ceramics and ranged from two to ten inches in length. The shapes ranged from perfectly straight to flared end tubes with stem holes varying from about ¼” to more than ¾” in diameter. Could any pipe be simpler? They merely added some temper to local clay and rolled the mass into a tube shape. A hole was then drilled or punched through the clay and after air drying, the implement was placed in hot coals to harden. There was no pecking or grinding or carving or polishing required. When the pipe cooled from the firing process, it was ready to load with tobacco and smoke. Again, could any pipe be simpler to make? For a doomed people, probably not.
As the century progressed, the tribes were more reduced in numbers by alcohol, disease and war and were required to exist under the auspices of the white masters who often punished them for transgressions that they barely understood. Their culture and lifestyles had deteriorated to a lowly form. And so did their smoking instruments - to the lowly form of the Piedmont Historic Tube Pipes.
REFERENCES:
Dickens. Roy S., H. Trawick Ward & R. P Stephen Davis
THE SIOUAN PROJECT: SEASONS I AND II
1987
Painter, Floyd
“Historic Occcaneechee Habit Pipes”,
THE CHESOPIEAN, Vol. II, No. 5
1964
Rights, Douglas L.
THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN NORTH CAROLINA
1947
Wetmore, Ruth Y.
FIRST ON THE LAND: THE NORTH CAROLINA INDIANS
1975