However much you may think you have known about the early use of shell hairpipes, the “singular” pivotal interaction of a trader to the Ponca Indians in 1880 and Ponca Chief White Eagle that led to the manufacture and trade of the cheaper and stronger bone hairpipe, clearly illustrates what can happen through trade when one culture listens to another.

John Ewers’ Conclusion

The introduction of glass and metal hairpipes among the Indians of the Eastern Woodlands by white traders in the colonial period illustrates the efforts of these traders to induce the Indians to accept substitutes for ornaments with which they had been familiar, both as accessories to costume and as articles of intertribal trade. Through trial and error the traders were attempting to provide at profit to themselves substitutes which would be acceptable to the Indians. Probably the glass ornaments offered by the French in the 17th century were too fragile and the silver ones supplied by the English in the 18th century were too expensive to gain widespread popularity among the Indians.

The invention of the shell hairpipe by New Jersey wampum makers prior to 1800 may have been motivated by the desire to produce a cheaper hairpipe which could be sold to Indians in greater numbers. It is not improbable that the inventor or inventors of the commercial shell hairpipe had knowledge of the earlier use of native-made conch-shell ornaments by the Woodland Indians. However, they made these ornaments from the lips, not the columns of shells. The early shell hair-pipe makers had had previous experience in working clamshells into wampum and they adopted the same tools employed in wampum making to the manufacture of hairpipes.

The efforts of the Campbell family of Pascack (now Park Ridge), N.J., to control the manufacture of shell hairpipes for the Indian trade, although not completely successful, must have had the effect of limiting the output of shell hairpipes in the first half of the 19th century, when the drilling of these ornaments was a laborious, hand-tooled operation. Through the great fur-trading companies of Canada and the United States, through independent traders, and through agents of the United States [p. 74] Government shell hairpipes were distributed widely, and in increasing numbers, among the Plains Indian tribes prior to 1850. Nevertheless, during this period the Plains Indians appear to have used hairpipes rather sparingly as ear pendants and hair ornaments and in necklaces.

The development of the elaborate breastplate, an ornament requiring large numbers of hairpipes, by the Indians appears to have coincided in time with the shift of hair-pipe manufacturing from a hand to a mechanized operation after 1850. Although the invention of the hair-pipe breastplate by the Comanche may have antedated the invention of the laborsaving, pipe-drilling machine by the Campbells, it is certain that the widespread use of hairpipe breastplates among the Indians followed the perfection of that machine and resultant increase in hair-pipe production.

The Hairpipe

For nearly 200 years, Europeans who traded with the Indians of the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains, referred to a tubular bead measuring 1-1/2″ inches or longer by the name of “hairpipe.” The origin of the name is obscure, and by itself fails to suggest the variety of ways in which Indians employed these long beads as articles of personal adornment. The name itself fails to suggest the variety of ways in which Indians used these long beads as articles of personal adornment. It appears probable that the trade hairpipe was a white man’s substitute for a type of long, cylindrical ornament which had its origin in prehistoric Indian culture.

This appears to be the only certain early historic reference to a method of wearing long, conch-shell beads by Indians. It appears logical that the name “hairpipe” consistently applied by traders to the long, hollow, cylindrical ornaments supplied to Indians of the Woodlands and Plains in later years was derived from the traders’ knowledge of Indian usage as hair ornaments of roughly similar-appearing articles of native manufacture.

Native American Prototypes of Trade Hairpipes

There is archeological evidence of Indian use of long, tubular beads of bone, shell, copper, and stone before the time of Columbus. Of these prehistoric ornaments, the long shell bead, made from the column of the marine conch, seems to have been employed most widely over an extended period of time in the intertribal trade of prehistoric peoples. Trade in these ornaments and/or the marine
shells from which they were made is strongly indicated by discoveries of these beads in archeological sites in the interior of thee Eastern Woodlands far removed from the seacoast where the marine conch was to be found.

The “Invention” of the Bone Hairpipe

About the year 1880, at a time when the demand for large numbers of hairpipes for use in making elaborate breastplates was increasing, the Plains Indians began to obtain a cheaper and much less fragile hairpipe than the shell one long in use. The peculiar circumstances of the origin of this substitute, the bone hairpipe, comprise an interesting chapter in the history of Indian use of hairpipes which is at the same time a noteworthy case history in invention.

While Ewers was stationed on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana in the early 1940s, both Frank Sherburne and his brother Joseph Sherburne, Browning merchants, independently told him of the role their father, the late Joseph H. Sherburne, had played in the “invention” of the bone hairpipe during his early days as a trader among the Ponca Indians.

Chief White Eagle wanted more pipestems in quantity.

Mr. Sherburne, wanting to please the White Eagle, wrote to S. A. Frost, in New York, from whom he had purchased glass beads and other articles for the Indian trade, explaining the problem and asking if it would be practical to furnish a quantity of long, tubular bone “beads.” Frost considered the matter and after he became convinced that the demand for this product was great enough to justify its perfection, set about having the bone articles made. However, there was a delay of more than a year before the new bone “beads” were ready for the market.

When the new bone hairpipe became available in quantity, Frost not only sold them to Mr. Sherburne, but also to many other traders on other reservations as well.

The Sherburne brothers had no knowledge of where or how the bone hairpipes were made. However, Mr. Otto supplied a valuable clue when he wrote Ewers that the bone stems of corncob pipes were furnished his firm by Armour & Co. of Chicago. Through the cooperation of J. V. Hurson of Armour & Co.’s Washington Office, Edward N. Wentworth, director of Armour’s Livestock Bureau in Chicago, was interested in the problem of the manufacture of the bone hairpipes.

In the absence of written records, he discussed the matter with long-time employees of the company, some of whom are now retired. He concluded that Armour & Co. definitely furnished the bone material from which the hairpipes were made, and that the raw material (bones) was supplied to Mr. Frost, of New York, in quantity. Mr. Wentworth stated that the bones from which hairpipes were made were the metacarpal or lower leg bones of cattle.

Shell Hairpipe Era Ends

No definite information is available regarding the process of manufacture of bone hairpipes. Power tools probably were used. They may have been drilled with a rotary-belt-powered drill and shaped on a lathe. Such methods of rapid manufacture of large numbers of bone hairpipes would have made it possible to offer them to Indians at a lower price than had been asked for shell hairpipes. It must have been the pressure of competition with this cheaper, stronger bone hairpipe that caused the New Jersey shell hair-pipe makers to discontinue operations in 1889, less than a decade after bone hairpipes began to reach the Indian country.

Uses of Hairpipes 1880-1910

In the period of general economic depression among the Plains Indians following the extermination of the buffalo, during which they subsisted largely upon Government rations, possession of an elaborate hair-pipe breastplate or necklace was a coveted symbol of greater-than-average prosperity among these proud people. Not only did the Indians wear these ornaments when they attended ceremonies and participated in traditional social dances on their own reservations, but they wore them when they dressed to visit the President and other government officials in Washington, when they took part in wildwest shows, such as the famous one organized by William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) in 1883, and when they appeared in full regalia at national, regional, state, and local exhibitions or fairs. The cessation of intertribal wars after the Plains Indians were settled on reservations was followed by a period of increased friendly contacts between neighboring tribes formerly hostile to one another. Visits back and forth among these Indians were accompanied by the exchange of gifts between members of different tribes. These conditions encouraged diffusion of hair-pipe breastplates and necklaces during the Reservation Period.

Hairpipe Today: Wide Variety of Materials

Hairpipes today are available in several materials besides Bone. Depending on your the craft project (and budget), and your greater or lesser need for historical authenticity, you can use the least expensive version (Plastic Hairpipe in white, red, blue or black), or buffalo or other varieties of horn.