148 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Iroquois clay pipes in fact are the most carefully made and best 

 modeled clay pipes made by the aborigines of North America north 

 of Mexico. There are certain featurcs about them that give a hint 

 of the customs and costumes of the people who made them; for 

 example, they show that the skin robe with the animal head still 

 upon it was worn as a blanket and headpiece; they give an idea of 

 facial decoration; they represent masked ifigures with their hands to 

 their lips blowing, (see figure 23) as in the false face ceremony, or 

 they reveal their totemic animals. Some of them have numerous 

 human faces modeled upon the stem and bowl and both the form of 

 the face and the concept is still carried out by some of the Iroquois 

 today, especially the Cayuga, who carved these faces upon gnarled 

 roots as charms against witches. 



The most common type of pipe among the Alohawk-Onondaga 

 group is that having a flaring trumpet mouth. , The Seneca-Erie, on 

 the other hand, including the Hurons of the north, commonly used 

 pipes having a cylindrical bowl upon which was a long collar decor- 

 ated by parallel rings (see figure 24). 



^ '^A'%'*'fejt 



Fig. 24 Three typical Irofjyoian pipe bowls, i, the trumpet bowl; 2. the 

 raised point square top; 3. the ringed bowl. The last appeared more recently 

 than the other two. 



Early types of both clay and stone pipes made by the Iroquois 

 show a type of decoration made by rectangular slots arranged in 

 series. These slots, it has been suggested, were inlaid with pieces of 

 colored wood or shell. None so arranged, has yet been found, so far 

 as we are able to state. This slotting is a characteristic feature in 

 certain early pipes. (Compare 9 in plate 50 and i and 2 in plate 48.) 



Certain forms of pipes show how widely prevalent certain con- 

 cepts prevailed among the Huron-Iroquois. Briefly, there are the 

 owl-faced pipe, the blowing ])ipe with the human face, the ring 

 collar pipe, the square top pipe with the flaring collar, the trumpet 

 bowled i)ipe and others. It appears that Iroquois pipes are a uni(]iie 



