IMPORTANT 1880 INDIAN RITUAL IMAGE PIPE/ FEMALE CAPTIVE WEARING SPIRITUAL WAMPUM

Description

IMPORTANT CATLINITE NATIVE AMERICAN PIPE
Date: Ca. 1880
Subject: Female captive wearing breast plate of wampum beads
and leg wrapping of wampum beads. Her arms are bound with
clearly defined twine. She wears a corset of Indian style, belted and
strapped in complete detail from front to back, accentuated with
drilled indentations, presumably ornamental. Her hair is coiffed in
four rows, set back from her forehead and continues to a short curl at her neck.
There is a a  small suspension hole drilled through the curl.
The "bowl" opening is between her shoulders.
Although their carving is rudimentary, her fingers and toes are all
indicated.
The subject's face is especially well-done, baleful and resigned. The overall
submissive posture of the figure is a powerful rendering.
COLOR: Finest quality catlinite, typical of early pieces with deep red earth hue.
COMMENT: Who is the captive? And why is she wearing what appears
to be wampum?
Here, I am offering my educated opinion, but
the successful buyer may discover alternate possible
contexts for this remarkable sculpture.
The Iroquois believed wampum was so spiritually powerful it could bring
back the spirit of dead loved ones. The scholar David Graeber notes a
Jesuit account of the Huron practice of hanging wampum around a captive
Native’s neck; if the captive accepted the necklace, that captive  became the living
embodiment of a deceased loved one.
In this instance a similar practice and belief may well have led the Lakota Sioux,
vicious enemies of the Pawnee, whose horticultural life-style
they devastated with their nomadic warfare techniques enabled
by the use of horses. In other words, the Lakota Sioux put the wampum on the captive to achieve an
annihilation of the capive's spirit and a repalcement with one of its own tribal members.
I believe the pipe is Pawnee and  commemorates mournfully the devastation caused their tribe by
the Lakota Sioux, and the captives they took. The touching exploitation of spiritual wampum,
used by the Lakota Sioux to  annihilate the Pawnees' last remnant must have been a poignant
symbol beyond our ability to grasp.
A few remarks about wampum as a helpful background:
Wampum are traditional shell beads made by the Eastern Woodlands tribes of the indigenous people of North America.
Wampum include the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell; and the
white and purple beads made from the quahog, or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. Wampum were
used as money by the Native Americans, and were kept on strings or made into belts.
The process to make
wampum was labor-intensive with stone tools. Only the coastal tribes had sufficient access to the basic shells to
make wampum These factors increased its scarcity and consequent value.
Wampum as a person's credentials or a certificate of authority: It was also used for official purposes and
religious ceremonies, and it was used as a way to bind peace between tribes. Among the Iroquois, every
chief and every clan mother had a certain string of wampum that served as their certificate of office. When
they passed on, the string would then be belong to the new leader.
Pipe Measures: About 4 1/2 inches tall by 3 1/2 inches wide
Condition: No damage or repairs.
Apparent  small "chip" on thigh appears  natural to  surface of catlinite.
GUARANTEE: THIS PIPE DATES TO THE TURN OF THE 20th CENTURY OR
SEVERAL DECADES EARLIER.