Bark Canoe Lore: Pipe Smoking Rabbit Symbol

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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
From John McPhee's nonfiction book The Survival of the Bark Canoe: The Malecite Indian tribes

marked the bow of their canoes on one side with a lynx and the other side with the image of a

rabbit smoking a pipe. The rabbit represented the Malecite tribe's calmness in the face of their

enemies, the rabbit smoking its pipe in proximity of its arch enemy the lynx.

 

cobguy

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
3,742
15
That's pretty cool ... confident rabbit!
mrlogo_01.gif


 
May 31, 2012
4,295
34
Interesting stuff.
251662_008_800.jpg


http://nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/woodlands/251662.html
:
The motif showed up in a movie called The Edge too:

:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utJfhfjOasE

:

Anthony Hopkins’ character was Charles Morse.
He has an encyclopedic knowledge and demonstrates it in an early scene, when the lodge owner bets Charles five dollars he doesn’t know what is illustrated on the back of a wooden paddle. Charles, seeing the panther carved on the front of the paddle, offers the answer: “A rabbit smoking a pipe.”
The other characters are amazed at his acumen. When the lodge owner asks Charles whether he knows the significance of the illustration, Charles responds: “The rabbit is not afraid, because he knows he’s smarter than the panther.” This Indian proverb foreshadows the rest of the film's action. In the ending scene, Charles and the lodge owner revisit the proverb, which now has a life-changing meaning for Charles.
It's a good movie I thought.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Great images of the rabbit with its pipe, which the book does not include but only

describes. Also, the note on the movie with Anthony Hopkins, one of my favorite

actors. Just shake the tree here at Forums and all kinds of wonderful things fall out.

I copied the images and put them, hard copy, in my calendar/journal/archives.

 
May 31, 2012
4,295
34
5294.JPG

Picture of a Passamaquoddy woman (Susan Neptune) smoking a pipe,

taken during the Maine Centennial, June 28-July 5, 1920.

 

momeerphil

Might Stick Around
Oct 26, 2009
98
2
A young pipe carver in California uses a rabbit head as his logo, but his rabbit is not smoking a pipe.

 
Mar 30, 2014
2,853
78
wv
I measure my work productivity in pipes also. I try to smoke a pipe every hour at work.

Now that I think about it, I don't get much work done.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
I have to admit, the pipe smoking rabbit makes an unusual and worthy tattoo. I seriously considered

a tattoo back when it was mostly a military and Navy thing, not much middle class landlubber interest

at all. Maybe an anchor and a rose, but decided I couldn't live with one piece of art for years. Maybe

don't look so good on elderly men anyway. This design has a great story with it. My late wife was

1/8 Tuscarora, I believe -- beautiful high cheek bones and garnet eyes.

 
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