AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 583 



Mr. JaiJies E. Sebring (fig. 184), is, from au artistic point of view, 

 one of the most ornate pipes of Indian origin which the writer has 

 ever seen. Tlie art concept here evidenced is one of the most ancient 

 known, though the shape of this pipe, as the pipe itself, is known to be 

 quite modern. The bowl, in the form of an acorn, is held in the dis- 

 tended jaws of the panther, the eyes, teeth, and ears of which are well 

 carved, the projection extending from the back of the head being 

 intended evidently to afford something to hold the pipe by when 

 smoking it, being akin to the spear on tomahawk pipes, or possibly 

 to projections common to pipes in New Mexico. The opening of the 

 bowl of this i)ipe is seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, while 

 that of the stem at its end is scarcely one eighth of an inch. It is 

 singular that a Sioux Indian should have selected so elegant, and at 

 the same time so antique, a style, for in the sculptures of Phcenicia the 

 human head is held in the lion's mouth, the last vestiges of which may 

 yet be encountered in the lion skin over the shoulders of the Greek 

 figures of Hercules; in Babylonia the human face is held in the dis- 

 torted Jaws of a fish, while coming nearer home, to Central and South 

 America, the same principle is em- 

 bodied in sculptured figures repre- 

 sented as covered with human or beasts' 

 skins or held in their distended Jaws, 

 as the panther here holds the acorn. 

 The stem being curved and the Indian 

 finding it impossible to bore a curved ^'^' ^^^' 



■, 1 . , _£• -i- IT 1 STEATITE PIPE. 



hole m stone of uuitorm hardness has 



Mineral County, West Virginia. 



first excavated the bowl, into which he cat. no. 11527, u.s.n.m. coi.ect*d by j. a. Davis. 

 has bored a hole from the base of the 



stem; from the same hole he has bored in the opposite direction toward 

 the mouth j)iece; then from the mouthpiece a hole has been drilled inter- 

 secting the latter hole. All that was then necessary to make a con- 

 tinuous tube to the bowl was to plug the hole in the base of the stem, 

 and this was accomplished by neatly inserting a plate over this hole, 

 the lead being rubbed to au even surface with the rest of the stone. 



Fig. 185, from West Virginia, collected by Rev. J. A. Davis, repre- 

 sents a much-worn, broken-bowled, small, well-polished, green pipe of 

 the Siouan type, only 2 inches long, with a width scarcely more than 

 half an inch. The wing on the stem would stamp its type, though the 

 locality where found would indicate that it was far from where it was 

 originally made. 



Prof. F. W. Putnam, referring to certain burials in cairns in Kansas, 

 considers them more recent than mounds, and instances a number of 

 dimiiuitive catlinite pipes found in these stone piles associated with a 

 glass bead.^ 



From a careful examination of available data the writer can but con- 



' F. AV. Putnam, Report of the Peabody iluseuiu of American Archaeology, II, p. 718. 



