The calumet stem is made of wood, feathers, porcupine quills, yarn, sinew thread and leather string. The pipe bowl is made from stone.

Stem: the primary construction is from a single piece of carved wood with one end tapered, and the other not.

Feather fan attached to stem: quillwork on feathers uses a combination of wrapping and weaving (not shown in current image)

Bowl: carved from stone

The Stem: A series of patterns of porcupine quills and yarn are wrapped around smaller feathers. There are four of these wrapped patterns, with the two most external alternating black and white quills, and the two internal alternating green and orange quills. The black and white section closest to the bowl has red yarn wrapped at both ends holding down a feather. Six eagle feathers in a fan shape are attached to the stem.

Fan of feathers: There are two types of quillwork patterns observed. Quillwork that starts in the middle of feather stem to top, and quillwork that starts at the bottom. The quillwork patterning from the bottom starts with 8 alternating stripes of blue and black (4 blue, 4 black), followed by stripes of black, white, black, red, black. These are followed by a section of white quillwork with a pattern of 4 black squares and a white square in the middle, forming a cross pattern. There are 6 of these on each feather, followed by a section of black quills, a strip each of white, black, and red quills

Bowl: 3 carved stripes on one end of the bowl, with a slight "wing" on the same end.

The relative is listed as Ojibwa in the CMH records; it bears some resemblance to Cree and Sioux pipes made in the same time-range.

Archival records indicate that the pipe was first collected by Duke Karl Bernhard in 1825-1826. There are no known dates as to when the object was made. Considering the great number of sources of the Speyer collection, along with the amount of exchange, trading and purchasing which occurred over three generations of collecting, specific knowledge of the provenance of this relative is difficult to determine.

Arthur Speyer donated the pipe to the Museum, however, its first collector is likely to have been Duke Karl Bernhard of Saxen-Weimar-Eisenach when on his American tour of 1825-1826. Unfortunately, Bernhard makes no mention of how he acquired the pipe during his 1825-1826 travels in the Great Lakes region. In addition, Speyer did not release the details of the acquisition history of his objects.

Canadian Museum of History records and archives, including the Speyer Collector files.
CMC File #B798.f1 and #B798.f4

Exhibited in Deutschen Ledermuseum in 1969 with a number of other objects from Speyer's collection

There is a section on this object in the published work accompanying the exhibition.

Berhnard, Karl
1828 Travels through North America, during the years 1825 and 1826, Volumes 1-2. New York: G. & C. Carville

Speyer, Arthur and Benndorf, Helga
1969 Indianer Nordamerikas 1760-1860: Aus Der Sammlung Speyer. Offenbach, Germany: Deutschen Ledermuseum

William C Sturtevant
2001 “Documenting the Speyer collection,” in Studies in American Indian Art: A Memorial Tribute to Norman Feder, ed. Christian F. Feest (Location Unknown: European Review of Native Studies, 2001): 163-4.

Unknown Anishinaabe maker. "Camulet and pipe bowl" GRASAC ID 1195. Located in the Canadian Museum of History, catalogue number III-G-826 a,b.

This record was augmented by Shamina Vastani in January 2024.