The bowl for the tobacco in this pipe is in the top of the otter's head, and there is a small hole at one end to breathe in the smoke. The pipe was made by Native Americans living in what is today the US state of Ohio. These Native Americans were small-scale farmers who built large burial and ceremonial mounds. This pipe was buried with 200 other pipes in a collection of mounds known as the 'Mound City Group'.
What was the pipe used for?
This pipe was not simply smoked for pleasure but probably had a religious function. A shaman may have smoked it to evoke the otter as a representative of his clan, or as a spirit guide who would then accompany the shaman on a spiritual journey. Tobacco has been smoked in North America for at least 2300 years and pipe smoking still remains an integral part of modern Native American culture. Tobacco was first brought to Europe in the early 1500s, where it quickly spread across Europe, Africa and Asia.
In historical accounts, the raw materials for pipes even included lobster claws and parts of gunstocks and gun barrels
Rising smoke
This otter pipe has many stories to tell.
The two archaeologists who excavated it, Ephriam George Squire and Edwin Hamilton Davis, were the first to publish the scientific results of excavations in the US, in the Smithsonian Institution’s first volume in 1848, and the pipe and its excavation therefore can tell part of the story of early Americanist archaeology.
The pipe, also tells the story of the development of anthropology and contributed to the nineteenth century anthropological debate – it was said to represent a manatee, the design or pipe must have been imported from the Gulf of Mexico - an erroneous ‘fact’ used to question whether the sophisticated mounds from which this pipe comes could have been built by peoples related to present day Native Americans!
Most obviously this pipe tells the story of the mound building pre-European contact Americans, as traders and peoples who built elaborate tombs and ossuaries where these pipes were buried. Probably the pipe represented what today we might regard as a clan or familiar spirit, a helper in good times and bad.
The story I like best from this pipe, however, is the story of smoke. Smoke, for indigenous Americans, has the power to heal, is an offering, and consecrates. It is also thought today by some that just as smoke carries a message, thought or prayer to the skies or cosmos, conversely, the pipe bowl is a microcosm of the universe itself; and if one’s prayers are lifted to the skies, it is also so that one can hold smoke in the mouth to bring wisdom into the mouth before speaking.
This pipe, as a material manifestation of past practice conjures the ephemeral smoke that bound the smoker to his or her clan lineage spirits and, when the smoking was communal, bound people to one another, just as I feel bound to this pipe, through the intimacy of the form and the imaginings of smoke it invokes.
A form of prayer
It is a beautiful, beautiful pipe, and it makes you wonder who had it? Was it buried with somebody? Should we even be looking at it?
Understanding the concept that whoever it was who earned this pipe earned the right to carry that pipe and maybe it was buried with them and maybe it was something that was supposed to be with them in the other world, and maybe it’s not something for us. There are rituals and initiations that go along with it, tremendous responsibilities that go with being a pipe carrier. I hesitate to even call them objects.
Native people still use tobacco, it’s a very sacred item and it’s a form of prayer. The use of tobacco smoke is a way of transforming prayer and thought and community expression and putting it into a pipe.
When people were smoking what was called the “peace pipe��? at a treaty negotiation – that is even more meaningful than to sign a document. It’s a way of sealing a deal not just legally but by giving a vow and confirming that to the wider universe. It’s really important to understand this idea of connection and relationship, it’s not just an individual act it’s a very collective act and a way of confirming and encoding and validating their prayers as being very serious.
Comments
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15 comments
- 11. At 13:55 on 7 July 2010, Traveller wrote:
- 12. At 15:41 on 9 September 2010, wolfsong wrote:
- 13. At 15:59 on 9 September 2010, wolfsong wrote:
- 14. At 13:33 on 3 November 2010, Devorah Romanek wrote:
- 15. At 13:49 on 18 May 2011, jeffreyadillon wrote:
pages 1Â 2ÂThank you for the reply I will look into it further now.
I was wondering if the otter was carrying a smaller object in its mouth, like the carving of a fish or crab or alike. It looks like a piece is missing, broken off. Is there any knowledge about that?
@daniella: The mound it was found in was a burial mound, meaning it was most likely accompanying human remains. So I would tend to think the person buried there was 'the pipe carrier'. I don't think he would have been seen to be the 'owner' but rather the guardian of the pipe. Though I love seeing this pipe and it's beauty, I am not so sure it should be in a museum and on display. And I think this sentiment of a sacred object remaining sacred for the people of that religious group, even after the act of burying it in the ground (or other transforming acts), is a concept that people of our mostly now secular cultural background don't seem able to fully appreciate. Good to have this view represented here by Ms Tayac.
Hi wolfsong, this is Devorah, curator for North America at the British Museum. To answer your question as to whether there was something in the otter's mouth, yes, indeed there was. Though we do not know for sure, it is thought that originally there was a fish in the mouth of this otter. Thanks for your question.
I have just discovered your podcast and website and am thoroughly enjoying them so far. I recall fondly my time as a university student in Bath and the many weekend trips to London to visit the British museum. I am an American who grew up in Ohio not far from where this object was found. Ohio is embarrassingly rich in Native American history, especially that of the Mound-Builders/Hopewell culture. Having spent many hours walking freshly plowed farmers fields as a boy I amassed a rather modest collection of stone hammers, axes and spear points. I recommend to those interested to search for aerial photographs of Serpent Mound, located about 45 minutes to the southeast of Mound City, it is quite remarkable and mysterious.
I do have one correction to make to your website however, and that is regarding your map showing where the object was found. Although quite a large circle indicates the site, it appears to be centered over the state of Louisiana and not Ohio. Ohio is located to the north and west of the indicator dot, just south of the mid-eastern end of the Great Lakes (Lake Erie to be exact). Thank you for your work and dedication.