Squirrel effigy pipe photograph

Made of light gray stone, this pipe in effigy (a likeness or representation) of a squirrel was excavated from Tremper Mound, a Hopewell culture site located five miles north of Portsmouth in Scioto County. The squirrel is shown sitting erect with its right forepaw visible. Since the stone is very badly deteriorated, no details of the face can be seen. The underside of the platform is extensively eroded; nearly 1/2 of length of mouthpiece perforation is visible. The effigy pipe measures approximately 1.5" x 3.5" x 1.25" (3.81 x 8.89 x 3.18 cm). This pipe is part of a large collection of pipes found at Tremper Mound. The pipes were carved of Ohio pipestone, a silica-based material that can be easily carved when freshly quarried from the hills east of the Scioto River. The pipes represent a variety of animals significant to the Hopewell, including owls, wolves, deer and beaver. Skilled Hopewell craftsmen carved the pipes with flint knives and some are embellished with pearls or copper. In Ohio, the Hopewell Indians (100 B.C.-A.D. 500) built burial mounds and large earthen enclosures in geometric shapes (circles, squares, and octagons) to mark the places where the people gathered periodically to participate in many social and ceremonial events. Some of these sites were quite large--the Newark Earthworks complex extends over a 4-square-mile area. The Hopewell people also maintained a large trade network extending as far as the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, the Florida coast and Appalachians, and northern Lake Superior