# Peace pipes?



## Steve Thompson (Sep 19, 2009)

Check out these photos - A guy in Atlanta had several thousand artifacts collected by his family over 3 genreations. He said his great great grandfather owned the land where the Etawa Indian mounds are now.
  He said he was selling them to corporations who intern would donate them to Museums for tax deductions. He left these with me & then ran off to Europe with his girl friend, never to be seen again - 20 years ago.
   I've always wondered if they were real?


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## Six million dollar ham (Sep 20, 2009)

Looks like a samurai somehow.


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## Steve Thompson (Sep 20, 2009)

They are suppose to be very old - like a 1000 years or so.


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## chadf (Sep 20, 2009)

neat!!!!

more details??????


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## Steve Thompson (Sep 20, 2009)

Cant tell you to much more. I think I'm going to add the steam and a few feathers. Maybe start using them around the camp fire, before the hunt..


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## bilgerat (Sep 20, 2009)

cool, Ill give ya 20 bucks each for them, I need a tax rightoff


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## Nicodemus (Sep 20, 2009)

'Peace pipes" have been perpetuated by Hollywood, since there really was no such thing. If those are original, they would be a highly sought after artifact. Just from lookin` at the pics, it would be impossible to tell. You might want to look up a good authenticator, if you want to find out more about them.


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## irocz2u (Sep 20, 2009)

cool  and  worth  bunches


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## chadf (Sep 20, 2009)

Nicodemus said:


> 'Peace pipes" have been perpetuated by Hollywood, since there really was no such thing. If those are original, they would be a highly sought after artifact. Just from lookin` at the pics, it would be impossible to tell. You might want to look up a good authenticator, if you want to find out more about them.



indians never had peace pipes????


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## Nicodemus (Sep 20, 2009)

chadf said:


> indians never had peace pipes????



They had pipes, and they were used for various different ceremonies. War, peace, any time talks were to be held, after supper, lots of reasons. Don`t believe everything you see on TV, or what you learned in school, about all this stuff. For the most part, it wasn`t the way it has been taught.


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## Six million dollar ham (Sep 20, 2009)

Nicodemus said:


> They had pipes, and they were used for various different ceremonies. War, peace, any time talks were to be held, after supper, lots of reasons. Don`t believe everything you see on TV, or what you learned in school, about all this stuff. For the most part, it wasn`t the way it has been taught.



There was no Georgia controlled substances act back then either so I'm wondering if these were for recreational use.


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## Nicodemus (Sep 20, 2009)

Six million dollar ham said:


> There was no Georgia controlled substances act back then either so I'm wondering if these were for recreational use.





Maybe some was recreational, but for the most part, it was taken very seriously. What do think they smoked in those pipes?


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## chadf (Sep 20, 2009)

Nicodemus said:


> They had pipes, and they were used for various different ceremonies. War, peace, any time talks were to be held, after supper, lots of reasons. Don`t believe everything you see on TV, or what you learned in school, about all this stuff. For the most part, it wasn`t the way it has been taught.



ive seen pipes in museums, thats why i ask....



Nicodemus said:


> Maybe some was recreational, but for the most part, it was taken very seriously. What do think they smoked in those pipes?



tobacco and pot ......


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## Miguel Cervantes (Sep 20, 2009)

Nicodemus said:


> Maybe some was recreational, but for the most part, it was taken very seriously. What do think they smoked in those pipes?


 
It is a Georgia native plant...


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## Nicodemus (Sep 20, 2009)

And willow bark, red sumac leaves...


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## Handgunner (Sep 20, 2009)

scooter1 said:


> It is a Georgia native plant...


You take that picture in your back yard?


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## Miguel Cervantes (Sep 20, 2009)

Handgunner said:


> You take that picture in your back yard?


 

Jamaica....


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## Bow Only (Sep 20, 2009)

It will be difficult to say if those are authentic, but the bird pipe looks like it has some Hopewellian influence and the Etowah peoples were members of the Southern Cult which had more Aztecan influence.  If authentic, they would be "VERY" valuable.  

I have not seen any Mississippian pipes that resemble those, but they would be original works of art and would have been associated with burials.  

Very nice pieces!


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## Bow Only (Sep 20, 2009)

Looking at the head pipe, it does have an ear spool which would be appropriate for the elite peoples of Etowah.  The cheek markings would also be appropriate, but the nose is not anthropomorphic like you would think it would be.


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## bam_bam (Sep 20, 2009)

Nicodemus said:


> And willow bark, red sumac leaves...



Willow bark and sumac??? Was that just a regular smoke or did it have "medicine" in it.


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## backwoodsjoe (Sep 20, 2009)

Since my interest focuses on Pre Columbian art, and this is what surrounds sites such as Etowah, I have read, searched, looked through museum collections, private collections and have searched the internet since it first became available and have had the opportunity to look through the metal door bone room at UGA. I  have seen may "authentic" items from this site, village and the mounds. I have also had the pleasure of seeing hundreds and hundreds of "fake" items that were passed off as authentic. I even had one guy would offered to buy all my shell gorgets but insisted they be mad to scale. He wanted no pigment added as he was going to acid dip them and then add patina.  We all know what he was up to and I refused to do any work for him.

I know a man who is one of the best at making Hopewell and southeastern moundbuilder pipes. He told me that for every authentic pipe there were 10,000 fakes. When the digging got cranked up back in the 1800's at Etowah, the Colonel Lewis Tumlin family owned the property. They even delayed the Moorehead ( Andover )dig at one point to plant cotton on the top of all three mounds. Most of the pipes that were recovered from the site since 1850 were clay. There were stone pipes, but most were stemmed piped with corn designs. 

In my opinion from the photos you have posted, your pipes are modern reproductions. I asked my friend to look at the photos and he agreed. He said the dead giveaway are the discolored lines in the designs. Thousands of similar pipes have been produced in Cherokee N.C over the last 50 years. Most authentic pipes have patina in the engraved areas.  I do know that many fake artifacts have been seeded in the fields around the mounds along the Etowah . We were at the mounds back in the '80's and a person at the festival had several frames of blades and points that he and his friend said were found near the mounds. I didn't comment on what they had. If what they had in the cases were real, they owned the largest assemblage of Clovis and Dalton points to ever come out of Georgia. So the world is full of reproductions. If someone had a collection of proven authentic stone pipes from Etowah, they would refuse to sell them or if they did sell them, they would be in a private collection and the whole collector world would know it. 

Did your friend ever say who his GG grandparents were ? Take the pipes to UGA.  Someone in the Anthropology Department will be more than happy to authenticate the pipes for you.


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## Steve Thompson (Sep 23, 2009)

Thanks - I might do that. I dont remember the guys name but he said they had the largest collection, private owned. His ancestors were high ranking military, one was in the OSS? They all collected stuff from all over the world - father, grand, great, & great great grandfather. He said the scratchs were from the plows and rock rakes used to unearth. 
  I tried to get in touch with him for a while however I was told he left the US and his mom told me not to worry about it. She was 90 + & they lived together in a large old Atlanta / Buckhead home.
  They had crates & boxs full of artifacts from all over the world.

Also - I wonder if those Indians smoked rabbit tobbackie....


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## allenww (Sep 24, 2009)

I'm w/BackwoodsJoe.  

I've never seen a prototype of the head pipe, but the parrot pipe has authentic antecedents, except for some of the markings. 

As an amateur, I would say the originals these are based upon were from Yucatan in style, of soapstone, and that the markings are fanciful or I am ignorant of them. 

   wa


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## Steve Thompson (Sep 24, 2009)

I've always suspected that they were not made by a little Native guy.  If they are not authentic, I'll pitch'em in the river for someone else to find in a 1000 years..


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## Bow Only (Sep 24, 2009)

Steve Thompson said:


> I've always suspected that they were not made by a little Native guy.  If they are not authentic, I'll pitch'em in the river for someone else to find in a 1000 years..



If they are not authentic, sell them to someone as a reproduction so that you'll get something for them.


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## slip (Sep 24, 2009)

Steve Thompson said:


> I've always suspected that they were not made by a little Native guy.  If they are not authentic, I'll pitch'em in the river for someone else to find in a 1000 years..



if you do that, someone else well be posting pics of those in a short time saying they found them in the river, asking if they are real


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## ArmyTaco (Sep 25, 2009)

Steve Thompson said:


> I've always suspected that they were not made by a little Native guy.  If they are not authentic, I'll pitch'em in the river for someone else to find in a 1000 years..



If your gonna pitch em in the river, just send em to me. I just like that kind of stuff, even if it is not authentic. I will even pay shipping.


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## Nicodemus (Sep 25, 2009)

Steve Thompson said:


> I've always suspected that they were not made by a little Native guy.  If they are not authentic, I'll pitch'em in the river for someone else to find in a 1000 years..



Please don`t do that. There is enough confusion out there already, thanks to some unscrupulous replicators.


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## Paleo (Sep 25, 2009)

<i>What do think they smoked in those pipes? </i>

Indians didn't smoke marijuana.The plant wasn't native to the Americas.They did smoke tobacco.There was no tobacco in europe or asia until after Columbus.Spanish explorers adopted the habit and tobacco cultivation and use spread all over the world.Tobacco grew best here and it's cultivation and  profitable trade strongly encouraged  the English settlement of America.


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## southerntaco98 (Oct 4, 2009)

Naw they smoked weed in the pipes that y its a PEACE pipe. They prob had a garden wit the best pot ever and they had shrooms a peyota. that may be miss spelled. Dont think indians didnt get tore down.


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