A Very Unusual Coastal NC Pipe
Ocean Isle Beach is a small Atlantic Ocean resort a few miles north of the NC/SC border. The region is not known as a hot bed for finding Indian artifacts but occasionally one is discovered there. Such is the case of this unusual coastal NC artifact – a rare coffee bean elbow pipe.
Elbow pipes were made and used by the Indians in the Carolinas during the Woodland, Mississippian and Historic Periods. They are not usually encountered in the Coastal Plain east of the fall line but instead are normally, though infrequently, found in the Piedmont and mountainous regions. The ancients made these smoking appliances using ceramics and various stone materials such as limestone, sandstone and steatite that are native to the area. As the name implies, the general shape of these artifacts is a right angle or in the shape of a human arm bent at the elbow. Elbow pipes were commonly rather small in the two to four inch long range but were also sporadically made in sizes over twelve inches in length. The smaller ones are called personal pipes and were usually simple in form but some were embellished with various decorations. The type that is called coffee bean pipes is of this decorated group. They have small engraved circles and/or small nodes on the pipe bowl and occasionally on the stem. These adornments reminded early collectors of coffee beans and therefore they were named for the seeds used to make the aromatic drink we consume daily. Some collectors today believe these motifs are actually effigies of bird eggs which is a logical assumption since the prehistoric inhabitants of our country would have had no knowledge of coffee beans until the arrival of Europeans almost five hundred years ago. That being said, it is not likely to change the name used for these small artifacts – coffee bean pipes. The actual meaning of these ornamentations to the natives will probably never be known but they most likely had some ceremonial/religious reasons since the nodes and/or circles conceivably served no function to the actual purpose of the smoking pipe.
This coffee bean elbow pipe was found by the late Dr. Frank Sanders of Conway, SC. It is two and one-quarter inches high by two and one-half inches long and is made of polished black steatite. It is, of course, a rare artifact but is even more unconventional because of a couple reasons. First it was found near the beach in coastal North Carolina which is not a normal place to find such an artifact and is a goodly distance for the nearest source of steatite. Secondly it has six “coffee bean” circles engraved on the bowl and stem all of which are filled with cross hatched incising which is not typical for this symbolic motif. Coffee bean pipes are not at all common but this writer has owned several has seen many more of the type and has only observed this one with cross hatching in the “bean” engraved circles. The type artifact, the location where found and the extraordinary cross hatched decorations do indeed make this a very unusual coastal NC pipe
REFERENCES:
Berner, John F.
“Coffee Bean Pipes Are For The Birds”,
CSAJ, Vol. 54, No.2
2007
Dickens, Roy S.
CHEROKEE PREHISTORY
1976
Hothem, Lar
COLLECTOR’S GUIDE TO INDIAN PIPES
1999
Maus, James E.
“The Unique Coffee Bean Pipes”,
THE PIEDMONT, Vol. 29, No. 3
2005