Elbow Pipe

An elbow pipe is a stone smoking pipe in which the bowl and a short stem socket meet at an angle, like a bent elbow. Some are V-shaped, with the bowl leaning obliquely away from the stem; others have the stem at a right angle to the bowl. The bowl often expands to a flaring lip. The pipe was smoked through a separate reed, cane or wooden stem pushed into the socket (Bell 1980).

Elbow pipes were roughed out by pecking, then ground and polished. Larger bowls were drilled with a cane and wet sand, which leaves a small central core that had to be broken out, and the stem hole was drilled to meet the bowl; drills sometimes broke through the side (Bell 1980). Fine-grained sandstone is the usual material, with limestone, siltstone, red shale, pipestone and steatite also used (Bell 1980; Applegate 2008; Texas Beyond History).

Bowls are often blackened inside from burning, as on Plains Village pipes from the Harrell site in the Texas Panhandle (Texas Beyond History). Broken pipes were smoothed and reused (Bell 1980). The key trait is a bowl and short stem socket set at an angle, made for a detachable stem.

Widespread across the eastern woodlands and Plains: Kentucky and the Ohio Valley, the Lower Mississippi Valley, Caddoan and Plains Village sites in Oklahoma, and the Texas Panhandle (Applegate 2008; Steponaitis et al. 2019; Bell 1980; Texas Beyond History).

Look for the short stem socket meant for a separate stem; self-stemmed pipes have a long stem drilled in the stone itself (Bell 1980). Platform pipes have a flat base with the stem hole through it, and tubular pipes have no separate bowl. Elbow pipes were also made of fired clay, so check the material. Regional relatives in Oklahoma include the Caddoan T-shaped pipe of the Arkansas River valley and a Fort Coffee phase form sometimes called a Wichita pipe (Bell 1980). At the Rogers site, one grave held two sandstone elbow pipes with a beaver platform pipe, showing the two forms overlapped (Applegate 2008).