A TURTLE PIPE FROM WISCONSIN, 
BY HENRY L. WARD. 
The Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee has recently 
obtained by purchase an effigy pipe representing with considerable 
accuracy a turtle such as may be found in our streams and ponds. 
In his important and most interesting monograph on "The 
Aboriginal Pipes of Wisconsin" Mr. West describes and 
figures another "turtle pipe" which is also the property 
of the Public Museum, received by gift in 1883 from 
the Wisconsin Natural History Society. This pipe was, according 
to record, collected on the grounds of the House of Correction 
within the limits of the City of Milwaukee, by Hugh McGarry. 
The identification of it as a turtle is rather a matter of elimination 
than because of a close approximation to any known species of 
turtle. 
It is more nearly like a turtle than it is like any other kind of 
animal, but the number and the disposition of the raised scutes 
covering the carapace do not agree with those of any turtle and 
much less do the similar raised scutes, arranged in longitudinal 
rows alternating with raised bands, covering the head bear a close 
resemblance to the armature of that portion of a turtle. It is 
without eyes, limbs or tail, and bears upon its back a shuttle- 
shaped decoration through the center of which was made the 
excavation of the bowl. The posterior part of the body is trun- 
cated, with no projecting stem, and Mr. West believes that it was 
"used without the addition of a detachable mouth-piece." The 
lower surface is left blank. If, as is probably the case, it repre- 
sents a turtle it is probably a conventionalized figure of a box or 
wood tortise with feet retracted and tail folded under the carapace. 
Of it Mr. West writes : "[it] is believed to be the only ceremonial 
pipe of turtle form, so far found in Wisconsin."* 
The pipe now under consideration is unmistakably the repre- 
sentation of a turtle notwithstanding that the plates of the carapace 
do not agree in arrangement with those of any species ; and 
although their shapes and the general form of the body would 
indicate that one of the Efnydidce was meant the plastron does not 
approximate the form found in that family but is suggestive of the 
* West, Geo. A., Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 4, Nos. 3 and 4, p. 101- 
102 (1905). 
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