RARE Ancient Native American Shaman’s Copperhead Snake Effigy Pipe withPetroglyphs
Ancient Art, Antiques, & Fine. RARE Native American Tube Style Stone Medicine Pipe. Ancient Copperhead Snake Effigy Pipe with Engraved Petroglyphs. Found Near Peachtree Mound in Murphy, North Carolina. If one truly understands the Medicine Pipe, then one comprehends the infinite Universe. For all is reflected in the Pipe. I certify that this ancient artifact was legally collected on private land with the owner’s permission near Murphy, North Carolina, during the late 1800s and has been in private collections since that time. It was a surface find and no caves, graves, or mounds were disturbed. This is an opportunity to legally own a stunning, ancient Native American pipe that is estimated to be at least 500-years-old and perhaps as old as 1,500-years-old. Item: Native American Copperhead Shaped, Tube Style Pipe. Find Location: Near Peachtree Mound, Murphy, North Carolina. Yuchi or Koasati People. Material: Carved & Drilled hard stone with petroglyphs. Length: 2.8 (73 mm). Width: 1.87 (48 mm). Weight: 1.9 oz. 11 (2.85 mm). Condition: Very good, museum quality with no repairs or restorations. This astonishingly beautiful yet compact medicine pipe is shaped like the head of a copperhead snakeas viewed from above. It has multiple soil abrasion scratches, some tiny dings. Providence/History: This stone pipe has a nice, authentic patina and was part of a larger, local family collection from near Murphy, North Carolina, for most of the 1900s. It is Guaranteed original and authentic. This remarkable and perhaps unique stone pipe shaped like the flared head of a Copperhead Snake came out of an early ceremonial mound called Peachtree Mound that is located near the town of Murphy, in southwestern North Carolina. This modified, tube style pipe in the shape of a Copperhead Snakes head measures 2.8 (73 mm) in length and is in very good, museum quality condition. It has several, small petroglyphs on the sides of the round pipe and on the protruding flared wings. It is made of a well-polished, high grade black stonea rarity in itselfthat is made even more unique because of the engraving. I have noticed that Shaman from various North American tribes often made their paraphernalia from black stones that may have held special powers for them. The inside of the bowl is adorned with vertical lines carved into the sides that are typical of pipes made to worship the Great Spirit; for as the smoke rose from the pipe, it carried the prayers of the tribe to the Great Spirit in the heavens. The copperhead snake has long been revered and worshipped by the Yuchi and the Koasati People of North Carolina. The copperheads ability to cast their skins, kill with their bite, and their ability to drive away evil spirits and heal the sick are well known. Shaman were able to maintain close spiritual links between themselves and the copperheads. The Shamans combination of this Copperhead effigy pipe and the power of smoke to heal were powerful tools in his paraphernalia to heal the sick with the help of the Spirit realm. Dreaming of the Snake, which is a power of the Earth, automatically included the Spirits of other animals that were essential in the curing right of the Shamans. Furthermore, each Shaman was believed to carry within him a number of Spirit Animalsmost commonly in the form of lizards and snakeswhich directed and guided his judgements. Decisions were made on the basis of advice supposedly received from such supernatural animal helpers. In addition, every Shaman boasted specific skills in the curing of certain types of illnesses and wore appropriate insignia to proclaim this fact to his tribe. Shaman who could treat snake bite often wore a fox skin, while an owl feather was the badge of a shaman capable of trailing an enemy at night. The Shaman/Medicine Man/Priest also believed that their appeals to the Spirits should be made to those forces that were responsible for causing harm or illness in the first place, since those forces would have the power to undo it. Therefore, it was not unusual for Snake to be invoked in cases of illness that were attributable to snakebite. Shaman/Priests were also thought to be able to use their powers to conduct rituals associated with Snakes to bring rain and fertility, as well as cure paralysis that was thought to be caused by Lightning, the messenger of Snake. Snake was thought to control other elements or Spirits over which the Snakes were believed to exercise control. The sacred mounds in southwestern North Carolina were first documented in 1567 by the Spanish explorer Capitan Juan Pardos chronicler, Licenciado Juan de la Bandera, who wrote about the tribes who inhabited this area during their 16. But it wasnt until the early 1900s, when one of the main burial mounds in that area was largely destroyed first by archeologists and then later digging by farmers who picked up these artifacts while tilling their fields and plowing over the mounds. With many of the mounds destroyed, very little is currently known about the multicultural site of Peachtree Mound, which probably was occupied in succession by Yuchi, the ancestors of the Koasati People, the Kusa branch of the Creeks, Apalachee from northern Florida and a member town of the Cherokee Alliance. Along with the Great Spirit who created the Earth and Man, these early tribes in North Carolina worshiped the copperhead snake. In fact, Hiwassee is a Koasati or Highland Hitchiti word, which can either be translated as copperhead snake, small pit viper, or children of the pit viper. Cherokee oral tradition remembers that when they first entered this region, it was occupied by Muskogean who worshiped a serpent idol with ruby eyes, built large mounds, and lived in rectangular houses. Their neighbors and allies, the Yuchi , lived in round houses in round villages. The English called the Carolina Mountain Yuchi , the Roundtown People. The Peachtree Mound is a little-known, ancient Native American village site in the North Carolina Mountains that is near to the current town of Murphy, NC. This is near where this copperhead pipe was recovered in the late 1800s. According to experts, settlement at the convergence of the Peachtree Creek and the Hiwassee River in Cherokee County dates to the Archaic period 8000 to 1000 B. , with ongoing occupation continuing until historic times. Unfortunately, an unscientific exploration of the village site and mound in 1885 resulted in the removal of significant archeological material. The Peachtree Site had one of the few Hierarchal Period mounds in the North Carolina Mountains that has been excavated by professional archaeologists. In 1933, however, the Smithsonian Institution conducted a more careful excavation of the site, which investigators concluded was the ancient Cherokee village of Guasili. Numerous recorders of Hernando De Soto’s gold expedition to the area in 1540 mention Guasili, where they report they were graciously received and entertained. The Smithsonian team found nearly 250,000 pieces of pottery at the Peachtree Village site and discovered 68 burial sites, some enclosed in stone-lined graves. Indians built earthen mounds that were often used as burial sites. The Peachtree Mound, according to the Smithsonian report, was a multilevel ceremonial structure. At the base, a hard-packed floor was the foundation for a wood and stone building, covered by an earthen mound about 60 feet in diameter. A sand stratum separated the first mound from a larger mound which was built later and appeared to have undergone at least two major periods of construction. Evidence of superimposed floors indicated that the second mound supported three separate ceremonial structures. Earthen mounds like this are scattered all over the valley floors of the Blue Ridge Smoky Mountains all the way through the Mississippi River Valley regions, and they come in various sizes. The Kituwah village mound located just east of Bryson City in Swain County, North Carolina, some believe it to be 10,000 years old or possibly older. The Cherokee people call the area Kituwah “the mother town, ” site of their origins as a native people. Unfortunately, this work was done in an era when neither precise aerial photography nor radiocarbon dating was possible. Also, archaeologists of this era were primarily interested in obtaining trophy artifacts for their museum and benefactors in the Northeast, so little attention was given to the Native American village as a whole or its chronology. What archaeologists did find here at this site was a low and ancient man-made mound they believe dates to the Archaic period 8000 to 1000 B. So important was this find, that in 1933 a research team from the Smithsonian worked the dig uncovering nearly 250,000 pieces of pottery along with 68 burial sites enclosed in stone-lined graves. Early Native American’s constructed earth mounds for either burial or ceremonial purpose, the Smithsonian report concluded that this mound was a multi-level ceremonial structure. Some evidence at the site was inconclusive due to damage from an earlier dig in 1885, possibly treasure hunters or Indiana Jones amateurs. Sadly, most of the mounds were partially destroyed during the early 20. Century and farmers damaged what remained after the archaeologists left. However, the footprint of many of the ceremonial and burial mounds are still visible on color overhead satellite images or those taken in infrared. The Peachtree Mound is on private property not a public site. The natives in late prehistoric and early historic North America made and used many kinds of instruments for smoking diverse types of plant material, including hallucinogenic botanicals. Some groups and some villages seem to have produced larger quantities and more complex varieties of pipes than others with the current thoughts being that these particular bands of aborigines were more spiritual and ritualistically inclined. It is difficult to separate the pious and pompous existences that were so closely intertwined in the daily lives of these endemic ancient cultures, so today we generally just call them religious/ceremonial societies. We do know, according to the reports from 16. Century European visitors, that these indigenous people did indeed use and smoke native tobacco as well as many other medicinal/herbal/addictive and mind-altering plants such as salvia, passionflower, morning glory and, of course, flowers and leaves of the hemp plant, or as we normally call it today cannabis or marijuana. In the area that is now North Carolina, a venerable settlement of these ethnic folk did make many smoking implements in order to inhale the vaporous fumes from almost countless plants smoking implements such as this unusual square stem collared pipe. Ancient Native American rock art is divided into two basic categories: petroglyphs and pictographs. Both originally had some symbolic meaning, but as these early Native American people had no written language, so the symbols are more of a pictographic nature. Petroglyphs are carved (hammered, pecked, abraded, incised, or scratched) into the stone object and also include cupules (pits), scratches and grooves, like those seen on the flared sides of this pipe. On one sides of the pipe, there are several tiny petroglyphs that have been percussively pounded into the stone! It is Extremely RARE to find petroglyphs in ancient Native American pipes. With macro photos taken in direct sunlight and indoors, I hope you can faintly see images in the blackened stone; although, they are best viewed in person and under low magnification. Perhaps the most noticeable of the petroglyphs are the hour-glass shaped marks on the underside of the pipe that appear to resemble the markings on a copperhead snake! There are very faint incised marks made by a human hand that remain a mystery. These petroglyphs were likely made by the Yuchi shaman who made this sacred pipe and used it to communicate with the Great Spirit and other idols like the Copperhead Snake. It may have been used to with special herbs that were used by the shaman in healing or in communicating with the spirits. As images of human and animal figures are often found in shaman paraphernalia that is used by the shaman to communicate with the spirits in the astroplane during his/her trances. Each pipe maker captured his unique thoughts in his creation, and those making an effigy representation fashioned an image of a living beingone they very much admired and respected, as it could take hundreds of hours to fashion their work. Unknowingly, they gifted those creature representations to us, millenniums later, for study and admiration. In this writer’s humble estimation, these stone effigies are some of the premier artforms that prehistoric peoples gave us. Cherokee County Historical Museum. Norman Bancroft Hunt, Shamanism in North America, 2002. All photos taken indoors; and the stand, the dried moss in the pipe, and the ruler are not part of the sale, just there so you can better judge the size. Each object I sell is professionally researched and compared with similar objects in the collections of the finest museums in the world. When in doubt, I have worked with dozens of subject matter experts to determine the condition and authenticity of numerous antiquities and antiques. All sales are Final, unless I have seriously misrepresented this item! Please look at the macro photos carefully as they are part of the description. Member of the Authentic Artifact Collectors Association (AACA) & the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). The item “RARE Ancient Native American Shaman’s Copperhead Snake Effigy Pipe withPetroglyphs” is in sale since Friday, March 29, 2019. This item is in the category “Collectibles\Cultures & Ethnicities\Native American\ US\Pre-1600\Pipes”. The seller is “houghton-usa” and is located in Sequim, Washington. This item can be shipped to United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Australia.
- Find Location: North Carolina
- Modified Item: No
- Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
- Artisan: Unknown Shaman
- Provenance: Ownership History Available
- Origin: Near Peachtree Mound, Murphy, North Carolina
- Tribal Affiliation: Yuchi or the Koasati People