Ornamented Pipe

Item number E2604-0 from the National Museum of Natural History.

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Notes

FROM CARD: "WOOD INLAID WITH IVORY. REFER: MCGUIRE: USNM.REPORT, 1897, FIG. 187, P. 585."Written on this pipe in old handwriting: "Pipe - N. W. Coast Ex. Ex. b.17 - R. R. Waldron." This may mean that Richard Russell Waldron, purser, USS Vincennes, was the collector of this pipe. Provenience note, in 1841 Oregon Territory encompassed the land from Russian Alaska to Spanish California and from the Pacific to the Continental Divide. The U.S. Exploring Expedition did not go to Canada, but did reach Oregon Territory in 1841, and carried out a hydrographic survey of the Columbia River from its mouth to the Cascades, as well as doing some surveying inland.They had dealings with Hudson's Bay Company staff during that time, and it is probable that the HBC is the source of a number of the Northwest Coast artifacts collected by the expedition.7-20-2005 Jay Stewart and Peter Macnair note about this panel pipe or ship pipe that "This is another rare example of the wooden panel pipe. It has a wooden base and (the design) incorporates houses, fortifications and a picket fence carved from whalebone."Illus. Fig. 14, p. 46 in Wright, Robin K., 1979, "Haida Argillite Ship Pipes," American Indian Art Magazine, 5(1). Identified there as as a wooden ship pipe: "Pipe of wood, paint, glass, whalebone. Has picket fence, house-like cabins, floral and palm tree motifs and blockhouse."Object on display in National Museum of Natural History exhibit "Objects of Wonder", 2017.