I received valuable information on several important historical aspects of the matter while on the Blackfeet Reservation, Mont., in the early 1940s. James Adair noted the survival of the wearing of long sheathed columella beads among the Southeastern Indians (Chickasaw, Creeks, and /or Cherokee) in the early historical period.
PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES — EWERS 39
17TH-CENTURY TUBULAR TRADE ORNAMENTS OF GLASS
We can only speculate about the Indians' motives in accepting the glass substitutes. There also appears to be no record of these specimens being found at documented historical sites.
SHELL HAIK PIPES
An inventory of goods on hand at Fort Osage, September 30, 1810, listed 32 silver hair tubes, valued at 40 cents each (National Archives, MS. D). I have found no reference to any silver hair pipes being traded to the Plains Indians in later years, nor do there appear to be any contemporary records of the trade in silver hair pipes by private traders who were competitors of the Government Mills for Indian business in the Osage Country in the first decade of the 19th century.
MANUFACTURE OF SHELL HAIR PIPES
In 1809, William Clark (National Archives, MS.) sent 20 silver hairpins, each valued at 75 cents, to Fort Osage.
PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES — EWERS 43
Then the string was pulled back and forth and the drill went into the tube. The most ingenious and labor-saving invention of the Campbells was the pipe-drilling machine, which could drill 6 pipes at the same time and increase the production of an individual to 400 pipes per day.
PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES EWERS 45
There is also a suggestion that others made hairpipes in the laconic statement attributed to a member of the Campbell family in the mid-eighties that "none of them could ever make hairpipes like ours" ( Norton, 1888, p. 594).^.
DISTRIBUTION OF SHELL HAIR PIPES AMONG THE PLAINS INDIANS The New Jersey hair-pipe makers did not sell their products directly
PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES — EWERS 47
Louisand thus entered the Upper Missouri trade, shell hair pipes being among the manufactured goods offered by this firm. New York office notations on these orders indicate that all but 1,000 inches of the hair tubes were purchased from Campbells (New YorkHist.Soc, MS.
USES OF HAIR PIPES BY PLAINS INDIANS PRIOR TO 1880
This brief review of the available evidence on the distribution of shell hair pipes among the Indians prior to 1855 will suffice.
ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF USE
HAIR PIPES AS EAR ORNAMENTS
None of the Iowa Indians painted by George Catlin in the field in 1832 wore hair tube ear ornaments. The Kiowa and their neighbors of the southern plains usually hung ear-rings with hair tubes on large skin cords.
HAIR PIPES AS HAIR ORNAMENTS
No™or' ^^'^' PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES— EWERS 55 otter skin after the usual southern plains fashion.". In the summer of 1953 I showed photographs of Catlin's portrait of a Cree chief (fig. 20). , a) to senior Assiniboin informants on the reservations Fort Peck and FortBelknap.
HAIR PIPES IN NECKLACES
56 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull.164 The Crow chief Rottentail wore hair ornaments with hair pipes when his portrait was drawn by the artist R. They told me that in the late 1970s and early 1980s some Assiniboin men wore these types of hair ornaments, but it was not a common Assiniboin one.
HAIR PIPES IN BREASTPLATES
No.50] PLAIN INDIAN HAIR PIPES— EWERS 59 and Arapaho men at the time. See table 2.) Many of these photographs show the joining of hairpipes into four rows of relatively short pipes similar to the breastplate worn by the Kiowa, White Horse, reproduced in plate 19, 6. Early photographs showing hairpipe breastplates worn by men are of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Southern Plainstribes. It is true that for some years prior to 1870 the Teton Dakota wore a necklace of similar form of the shorter prongs.
The earliest photographs of Teton Dakota men wearing hair pipe harnesses appear in the pictorial record of delegations to Washington in 1872. These simple harnesses are rudimentary in form compared to the elaborate harness worn by the Southern Plains Indians at the time. It is worth noting that the more traditional type of Dakota breast, made of dentalium shell, was worn in greater numbers.
PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES EWERS 61 graphs of the Brule White Thunder appearmg in plate 28. Figure a
LIMITATIONS OF THE SHELL HAIR PIPE
They may have re-used the solid parts of broken pipes as pendants in the decoration of small bead vessels. BONE HAIR PIPE REPLACEMENT About 1880, at a time when large numbers were in demand.
THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE BONE HAIR PIPE About the year 1880, at a time when the demand for large numbers
They were actually bone hair pipes and became known to Indian traders as hair pipes. The Sherburne brothers had no knowledge of where or how the bone hair pipes were made. Otto provided a valuable clue when he wrote to me that the bone stems of corncob pipes were supplied to his firm by Armor & Co.
In the absence of written records, he discussed the matter with longtime employees of the company, some of whom are. Wentworth further stated that the bones from which hair tubes were made were the metacarpals or lower leg bones of cattle. It must have been the pressure of competition with this cheaper, stronger bone-hair pipe that caused New Jersey's shell-hab pipe makers to cease operations in 1889, less than a decade after bone-hair pipes entered Indian country reach.
The view of Kiowa harness in plate 25, b, illustrates the transition from shell hair tubes to bone in Indian ornaments. It must have been made during the previous decade when bone hair pipes were beginning to replace shell hair pipes in the Kiowa trade.
USES OF HAIR PIPES 1880-1910
HAIR-PIPE BREASTPLATES
They claimed that the Assiniboin of the Fort Peck Reservation began wearing these breastplates before they were adopted by men of the tribe living further west on the Fort Belknap Reservation. The Crow Indians, however, were little impressed by their former enemies, the hau*-pipe breastplates of the Tetons. Claude Schaeffer that hair pipe breasts were not favored by the older Crow men and that it has only been in recent years that young Crow Indians have worn these ornaments in the grass dance.
Wilson's photograph of Assiniboin grass dancers on a visit to the Blood Reserve in 1893 shows two or three participants wearing hair pipe chests (pi.36,b). By the turn of the century, the hau'-pipe breastplate had been adopted by Native Americans of the Plateau tribes west of the Rockies. Spinden (1907, pp. 217-218) was of the opinion that the bone bead (hairpipe) breastplates worn by Nez Perce men were "undoubtedly introduced from the plains." He found that these breastplates were smaller.
However, his statement that they were "adopted by Coeur d'Alene about the beginning of the 19th century" should be dismissed.
PLAINS INDIAN HAIR PIPES — EWERS 67 The hair-pipe breastplate does not appear to have gained popularity
HAIR-PIPE NECKLACES
My Assiniboin field records show that the hair-tube necldace was adopted by Assiniboin women before 1885, and by them it was. Assiniboin women made hair tube necklaces, but Piegan and Blood women were content to receive them ready-made from the Assiniboin. Informants of all three of these tribes said that their people used hair tube necklaces only as women's ornaments to be used as accessories for dance and dress costume.
Plate 33, h, is a portrait of Susie-Shot-in-the-Eye, an Oglala woman, taken before 1900, wearing a three-strand chain consisting of 24 long (bony?) hairpieces separated. The use of commercially available leather strip dividers between the vertical rows of hairpipes was apparently adapted from the similar (but vertical) dividers used in hairpipe breastplates. The largest necklace of this type I have seen was owned by and is still worn during traditional social dances by Madam.
West of the Rockies, the hair tube necklace, in simpler form, was adopted by several tribes before 1900. Two photographs illustrate the wearing of hair tube necklaces by prominent men of tribes east of the Mississippi in the early years of the century present.
HAIR-PIPE BANDOLIERS
The adaptation of hair pipes for use as men's bandoUers, as well as the perfection of the complex women's necklace, provide evidence that Native Americans continued to develop new uses for hair pipes during the reservation period.
HAIR-PIPE EAR PENDANTS
HAIR-PIPE HAIR ORNAMENTS
HAIR-PIPE CHOKERS
SURVIVAL OF THE USE OF HAIR PIPES
The Fort Peck informants knew of no dealer on or near their reservation who sold hair pipes to the Indians after their deaths. They claimed that he continued selling hair pipes "until... he couldn't get them anymore," which was indeed the case. It seems likely that few hair pipes were sold to Indians by local traders after the mid-1920s.
I photographed a Taos Indian shield dancer who participated in that exhibit wearing a breast plate with a bean hair pipe (p. 37, a). In the sunnier days of 1953, my Assiniboin informants on Fort Peck Reservation showed me various chest harnesses and complex women's necklaces they owned and told me they still wear them in Indian dances and on other occasions when they feel it desirable to wear them. In my presence, an elderly Fort Belknap informant sold her 4-strand necklace of approximately 40 bone hair pipes to my interpreter for.
On Fort Peck Reservation, BernardStanding, a middle-aged Assiniboin, showed off a breastplate of bone hair pipes that he had made the previous winter. So hair pipes are still available to Indians as well as to Whites who may wish to use them.
CONCLUSIONS
Meanwhile, on the Indian reservations of the West, a period of greater and more extensive use of hairpipe decoration was ushered in, using the cheaper, stronger objects made of bone. But the basic shape of the hair pipe used in making this jewelry has survived throughout the period. The first recorded use of hairpipe earrings in the Plains was among the Osage (1806), who had trading connections with St. Louis merchants as well as the government merchants in the first decade of the 19th century.
In general, the hair tube ear pendant appears to have been a popular pre-reservation ornament among men in the central and southern plains. Its popularity declined after the invention and spread of the hair tube breastplate and the development of the bone breastplate. Available information reveals little prevalence of the hair tube necklace in the plains during the period 1845-80.
No.50] PLAIN INDIAN HAIR PIPES— EWERS 81 hair pipe necklace to specialized use as a male ornament after wearing the necklace was mainly restricted to women. Fieldwork among the Plateau tribes, in particular, should provide significant information about the processes of dispersal of hair pipe ornaments to the Indians of the Northwest in the Reservation Period.
BIBLIOGRAPHY MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
PUBLISHED SOURCES
An Archaeological Survey of the Pickwick Basin in the Adjacent Parts of the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Tools used in shell hair pipe drilling._ a, Early form of simple bow drill, b, Hair pipe drilling machine.