Hair-Pipe Necklace

When Europeans first arrived, Plains people wore pipe-shaped beads of shell, bird bone, or other materials in their hair. It may be for this reason that white travelers applied the term “hair pipes” to the pipe-shaped beads in such necklaces as this one. Natives eventually adopted ornaments made of European pipe-shaped beads, which, after about 1880, were machine-made from cow bones. Among the most spectacular of such ornaments are men’s breastplates and women’s necklaces that sometimes fell well below the knees.