Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
December 28, 1809
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 45
Additional Source Text:
"Of the following tribes, Yankton, on the River La Moine -- Teton on the Mesuri 1200 miles up -- Sharone's 1400 miles up the Mesuri -- Dacoto's or Sue's."
Yankton, Teton, and Dacota (Dakota) are "Sioux" divisions, while Sharone may reference Cheyennes, their close allies and associates.
These artifacts appear on a long list of "Articles collected by Meriwether Lewis Esqr. and William Clark Esq. in their voyage and Journey of Discovery, up the Missouri to its source and to the Pacific Ocean, presented at different periods, through the president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson."
Notes:
Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) undertook their western Expedition in 1804-1806.
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, acquired fifteen pipes and calumets in 1899 from Moses Kimball's Boston Museum. Kimball and P. T. Barnum jointly purchased many of the Peale collections when they were sold about 1849. These four examples cannot be positively identified with any particular extant calumets, but the Sioux calumet may have been the one at the Peabody pictured here. It is a so-called "classic" calumet, or ceremonial pipe, with a round stem and a pendent eagle feather fan. The blue-green-painted stem is decorated with mallard duck scalps and five bundles of quill-wrapped thongs which alternate with orange-dyed horsehair. The feathers are decorated with white weasel fur. See Castle McLaughlin, Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis and Clark’s Indian Collection (Cambridge and Seattle, 2003), chap. 8 ("The Language of Pipes").
