Hairpipes and birds

I received this email today:

Morning Robert. Haven’t seen a blast since June. I look over P’s shoulder from time to time to read and look at your pic’s. Any reason why I’m not on the list anymore?

Curious minds

          W

I responded:

I have no idea. It is pretty random, will get you back on. Sorry.

all the best,

R

The truth is that I pick names to send the blast to randomly, there is no master list. Why? I guess that I do it by feel. I don't want to burn people out by constantly hitting them over the head with this and I can be so prolific that it can quickly descend into overkill.

I have conservative readers and liberal readers and if I am on a seriously political jag I may let up on the gas and miss a few partisans from time to time that I don't want to offend. Or I just forget.

Anyway the other reason is that I can't always remember who wants to keep receiving this and I figure that people can always follow or bookmark and just check in from time to time so as not to miss out on anything. Good chance you will see something new.

But W, rest assured you are back on the blue heron bus. Seven million views will be here before we know it at the viewership rate we are at, which is huge. Blowing up in Manchuria, I hear.

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I was down at Los Jilgueros walking today and I heard a kildeer. Sort of rare in these parts, I have never seen one down there.

I have seen them up at Waterwise in Bonsall.

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My brain has been quite active of late, throwing out bad puns and jokes with reckless abandon.

Soon to be playing at the Sapphire Lounge at a Ramada Inn located at a freeway offramp near you. 

Turnpike 23.

Anyway I was cracking wise with myself yesterday and came up with these:

My friend called and said that the doctor called and said he had prostrate cancer.

I told him not to take the news lying down.

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I need to buy a new bicycle tire pump but there's really no pressure.

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I'm at Grocery Outlet yesterday and the elderly lady behind me has a plastic box of baby spinach. "I can't buy that," I solemnly intoned. "To deprive them a chance to mature and live a long, healthy life." Checker tried to her best not to lose it, lady cracked up too.

It never stops. Unfortunately.

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I was supposed to go out shooting and stargazing with Kip tonight in the Anza Borrego but he wasn't feeling up to it.

He has the big telescope.

The draconids start tonight and there is a very slivery moon to capture.

Maybe next time. 

Not going out by myself to get lost again.

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I was looking at my photo outflow from 2022, so many great shots and excursions, I really have not been in a productive photo zone for so long.

Hurts really, have to find that muse again.

Been too busy with work.

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Stagecoach Sunday tomorrow at the Los Palomares House. 11 to 3.

Fallbrook Land Conservancy is the best group in Fallbrook.

I have to go to San Diego and pick up a Millard Sheets painting and will miss it but would like to be there.

They are auctioning off one of my photographs.

This one.

Go buy it really cheap, for a good cause.

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Here is one of the cool things I bought in New Mexico recently, a hairpipe necklace.

Red Cloud, Oglala

Hairpipe necklaces and breastplates were popular apparel among Native Americans from about 1878 to 1910. They started in the Southern Plains but eventually reached all the way west, though rarely ever east of the Mississippi with the exception of the Chippewa. There are even photographs of Pueblo natives wearing hairpipe pieces.

You often see them in old photographs of Native Americans.

Originally made of shell they eventually were made out of hollowed out bone.

Quannah Parker (Comanche) with hairpipe necklace

Mine has padre beads on top and has old American coins dangling from the bottom, many indian head, the newest dating from 1910.

The story of the hairpipe bead is that a trader named Joseph Sherburne introduced them to the Ponca Indians of Oklahoma and Nebraska in 1878. 

This was right after their own "Trail of tears."

This nation comprised the modern-day Ponca, Omaha, Kaw, Osage, and Quapaw peoples until the mid-17th century when the people sought to establish their nation west of the Mississippi River as a result of the Beaver Wars. By the end of the 18th century, the Ponca people had established themselves at the mouth of the Niobrara River near its confluence with the Missouri River, remaining there until 1877 when the United States forcibly removed the Ponca people from the Ponca Reservation in the Dakota Territory to the Indian Territory. This event, known as the Ponca Trail of Tears, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Ponca civilians and the splintering of the nation.

Pablino Diaz - Kiowa

He sold them corncob pipes. The natives threw away the cob and kept the pipes which they fashioned into these magnificent creations.

The natives loved them and traded them and soon a New York firm named S.A. Frost started making the hairpipes in bulk to keep up with the great demand.

While only men wore the breastplates, both men and women of the Sioux tribes wore the necklaces. And contrary to the Smithsonian author, there are many pictures extant of men from other tribes than the Sioux wearing the necklaces.

In contrast with the breastplate, which was always a man's ornament, the necklace of hair pipes continued to be worn by both men and women in the period 1880-1910. Of the tribes of Plains Indians known to have worn hair-pipe necklaces in earlier days, photographic sources illustrate their use by Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, Mandan, Oglala, Osage, and Sauk and Fox after 1880. Among all these tribes except the Oglala the necklace is shown as a woman's ornament.

From the Smithsonian:

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 Great White Father 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 costume 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.

They were also adopted as bandoliers, and slung over a shoulder, like in this picture from 1901 of a Yakima Indian.

Here is a long and beautiful necklace worn by a Teton Dakota woman in the 19th century.

My friend has one of these necklaces similar to mine with a Peace Medal hanging off the bottom. 

This is the first one I have ever owned. It is quite lovely.

I have been selling some wonderful Plains material. 

Try to stop by and check it out before it is all gone.