Carved in a particularly long, narrow format, this pipe includes nine figures, all perched upon or wrapped around the long stem of the pipe. The bowl of the pipe turns up between the heads of two figures at the wider end of the composition. The figure at that end is most likely a bear, its head incorporating the pipe bowl and its hands, feet, knees and elbows at the bottom of the composition below the pipe bowl. Behind the bear is a human figure crouched on its feet, with its hands grasping the pectoral fins of a whale that is facing him, the man’s tongue held in the whale’s mouth. Crouched on its haunches behind the whale, its forefeet on what would be the whale’s shoulders, is another bear. Behind the bear is a reclining man, his knees drawn up toward his chest, which is part of the stem of the pipe. Directly above the man’s head is the head of a raven, its tongue connected to the back of the crouching bear’s head. The raven’s wings are swept back along the pipestem. Right behind the raven is most likely a wolf, its ears folded down on its head and its four feet and big bushy tail curled into spiral forms. Lying on its back beneath the rear end of the wolf is a strange looking figure of unknown identity. It has paired ear-forms on the back of its head, and its front feet are wrapped around its protruding snout, its hind feet held up against the rump of the wolf. The last figure is a man, laying on his belly with arms arched up behind him with his hands touching the previous figure’s double ears. The man’s head is upright, facing away from the rest of the pipe, its mouth forming the opening at the end of the pipe stem. The use of formline embellishment on the pipe is minimal, but it exhibits an early style that helps to date the pipe to the 1840s.

Steven C. Brown

References: For a pipe of similarly elongated proportions see Leslie Drew and Douglas Wilson, Argillite: Art of the Haida (Vancouver: Hancock House, 1980), p. 260