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| Washington Boro Effigy |
This
triangular face is depicted both with and without a body on the rims of ceramic
vessels from the Washington Boro Village (1600-1625); and is the face that
greets you upon entering the Hall of Anthropology & Archaeology at The
State Museum of Pennsylvania. Effigy is
defined by the Word History Dictionary as:
A.D. 1539, from L. effigies "copy or imitation of something,
likeness," related to effingere "mold, fashion, portray,"
As such, an
effigy can take on limitless forms and can be fashioned out of a variety of
materials. In the northeast, the most
common materials are stone, ceramic, shell and bone; and the artifacts most
typically adorned with effigies in this area are charms or beads,
combs,
and pipes.
The latter
will be the focus of this blog.
Most attempts
to categorize and understand the effigy pipes of the Northeast begin by
dividing them into one of three categories.
The first is zoomorphic or animal effigies which can be subdivided into
bird, reptile, mammal, and although rare, the rodent class (Nobel 1979). Of these, the bird group seems to dominate
the numbers, “about half of the faunal representations on Ontario Iroquoian
pipes” (Mathews 1981). Only about half
of those (less than 50%) were able to be identified further, most of which were
owls. Similarly, 50% of the effigies on Susquehannock pipes are in the form of
birds, “twice as frequent as mammals and reptiles” (Kinsey 1989). The
difference is that the Susquehannock bird pipes are dominated by water birds
(51%) vs. raptors (25%) (Kinsey 1989).
Reptiles can
be difficult to identify as they are “dizzyingly enigmatic” (Mathews 1981), it
appears that lizards/salamanders, coiled snakes and turtles are represented. Snakes
are usually depicted coiled around the pipe bowl. Some examples continue to coil down the stem
of the pipe and yet others portray a head either above the rim head raised
toward the smoker or in relief. Turtle
effigies on pipes are rare, as are fish which are very rarely represented. Reptiles appear more frequently depicted in
Susquehannock effigies (15%) as opposed to only (4%) among the Seneca examples
studied by Kinsey (1989).
That brings
us to mammals, which are a bit puzzling.
It seems that only two mammals are represented in the effigies of
Ontario and New York, the bear and the wolf/canine/fox (Mathews 1981). According to Noble (1979) and Mathew (1981),
it is difficult to differentiate between the wolf/canine/fox due the similar
shape of the ears and snout. Noble
(1979) also suggests a fourth class for the zoomorphic category as the rodent
class. The rodent class is represented
by a single beaver pipe from southern Ontario (Noble 1979 & Laidlaw
1913). One could just as easily
eliminate the rodent class and include beaver with the other two mammals. It is interesting that so few mammals are
represented and it makes one wonder why there are no deer (until the later
rouletting designs), squirrel, raccoons, chipmunks, rabbits or mice. Approximately a quarter of the Susquehannock
pipes represent mammals and unlike the northern counterparts, seem to include some
short snouted mammals probably cougar/panther and perhaps even otters and
martins (Kinsey 1989). Interestingly, it
is also pointed out by Kinsey (1989) that unlike other cultures that choose
economically important animals as zoomorphic representations, this was not the
case with the Susquehannock. “Deer and
elk accounted for 73% of the meat consumed by the Susquehannocks but these
animals are never represented in Susquehannock and Seneca art!” (Kinsey
1989:84).
The second
category are the human effigy pipes which are the most variable in
form. They can be subdivided any number
of ways but perhaps the most useful place to start would be heads only (the
more common focus) or heads and bodies (much less frequent) as suggested by
Nobel (1979). Some have suggested a
divergent chronology between animal effigies and human effigies. Suggesting that the human effigies seem to
exhibit evolving attributes “that changed with the historical situation and its
effects, such as contact and disease”; while the zoomorphic effigies seem to
change very little over time, perhaps suggestive of a guardian spirit which
remained constant (Mathews 1980).
Comparatively, the Susquehannock and Seneca have equal numbers of human
effigies (Kinsey 1989).
Wonderley
(2005) has subdivided the human effigies into four motifs. These include the “Roebuck type, which features
a realistically modeled human face”.
The
Figure-in-Arch type which has many possible interpretations including “the
niche of a saint, a boat, the Sky Dome” or could represent a birth scene, both literally as suggested by Hosbach (1992) or “possibly connected to the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy” (Wonderley
2005), this idea will be discussed later.
The
Figure-in-Crescent type depicts a “humanlike face within a crescent … not so
much on the flat surface enclosed by the crescent but, rather, on the edge of
the plane where the crescent is open” (Wonderley 2005)
And the
Dougherty type which seems to be a contemporary of the Figure-in-Arch Type and
according to Wonderley (2005:221) incorporates the following criteria (though
not all need to be present):
This “ordered sequence of imagery” (Wonderley 2005:221) “[calls] to
mind the developmental, linear syntax necessary to [a] narrative. Because the incidents of a story are
temporally related – one preceding and being the precondition of the next – a
tale [story] has to be presented in a certain sequence, not unlike this
composition. It would not be surprising
if this pipe imagery had a narrative referent, perhaps relating to a story
performed, told, or contemplated.” We
will come back to some of Wonderley’s interpretations later.
The last category suggested by Nobel (1979) is the Duel effigy encompassing
both zoomorphic and human forms. This
category has also been referred to as “nonnaturlaistic representations”
(Mathews 1981) and includes imagery of creatures not found in nature.
So, what does it all mean??? There
have been many theories presented about the significance of similar effigies
exhibited on pipes, combs, charms and some ceramics. They range from aesthetic “art for art’s
sake”, to ceremonially significant, to representative of clans, to mnemonic
devices for long orations.
Wonderley (2005) presents an interesting theory linking Iroquois
cosmology and legends of creation to some of the composite pipes described earlier. For example, prior to about 1800 the Iroquois
did not believe in humans being created by a divine creator but that that they
came up out of the ground. Some groups,
the Oneidas for instance could show you the hollow from which their ancestors
emerged. Could this be what is
represented in the Figure-in-Arch and Figure-in-Crescent motifs? Perhaps even the Dougherty pipe is related to
this theme of emergence.
According to the archaeological evidence of the region the
proliferation of pipes occurs, “[between] the late prehistoric and the early
protohistoric [periods, 1450-1500]” (Nobel 1979 & Mathews 1980). Funk and Kuhn (2003) suggest the Iroquois
Confederacy grew out of an earlier alliance among the Mohawk, Oneida and
Onondaga nations. Many scholars and
ethnographic accounts agree that this budding alliance or “pre-league
confederacy” began “in the late 1400’s and mid 1500’s” (Wonderley 2005) and
eventually grew into the Iroquois Confederacy of Six Nations. It is Hosbach (1992) and Wonderley (2005) that suggest a correlation
between this evidence and the ideas of birth and emergence to the iconography
of some of the effigies. Could these
pipes be evidence of growing alliances, political or economic, throughout the
Mid-Atlantic region?
It should be noted that most of this discussion has focused on effigy
pipes recovered from sites in southern Ontario and upper New York State. The images (unless otherwise noted) are from
the collections of The State Museum of Pennsylvania and were primarily
recovered from Susquehannock sites.
References:
Funk, Robert E., and Robert D. Kuhn
2003 Three Sixteenth-Century
Mohawk Iroquois Village Sites.
New York State
Museum Bulletin 503. New York State Department of Education, Albany
Hosbach, Richard.
1992 A Gyneco-Android Subset of Native Iroquoian El Ranch Pipes: A New Pipe Designation with the
Philosophical Concept of Sexual Duality as Its Basic Motif.
Proceedings of the 1989 Smoking Pipe Conference Rochester Museum & Science Center
Research Records 22
Kinsey, Fred W., and Roger W. Moeller
1989 New Approaches to Other
Pasts.
Archaeological
Services, Bethlehem, Connecticut
Laidlaw, George E.
1913 Ontario Effigy Pipes in
Stone. Annual Archaeological Report
Ontario 1913:37-67
Mathews, Zena Pearlstone
1980 Of Man and Beast: the
Chronology of Effigy Pipes among Ontario Iroquoians.
Ethnohistory 27 (4):295-307
1981 The Identification of
Animals on Ontario Iroquoian Pipes.
Canadian Journal of Archaeology 5:31-48
Nobel, William C.
1979 Ontario Iroquois
Effigy Pipes. Canadian Journal of
Archaeology 3:69-90
Wonderley, Anthony
2005 Effigy Pipes,
Diplomacy, and Myth: Exploring Interaction between
St. Lawrence Iroquoians and Eastern Iroquois in New
York State.
American Antiquity
70(2):211-240
For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .
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