An Exceptional Iroquois Bird Effigy Ladle

This stunningly large sculptural object is an eloquent example of an Iroquois feast ladle dating from the late 18th/early 19th century (circa 1780-1820). This would have been used for portioning food into individual bowls from a caldron or large serving bowl, particularly during celebratory or ceremonial feasts.

It is made from a maple burl whose swirls, knots and irregular grain resulted from stunted twig buds that failed to elongate into limbs so grew instead as a round protuberance from a tree trunk. This burl ladle has a burnished patina and edge wear along the right side of the scoop, both attesting to its many years of past use.

Front and back of the scoop portion of the ladle showing the burl grain, edge wear and patina.

There is archeological evidence that the earliest Woodlands peoples used eating and serving ladles made of shell and antler, and journals kept by Europeans during their first encounters with Native Americans in the 1600s documented that wooden ladles were commonly used for eating meat stews and cornmeal mush.

While every individual in a tribe had a personal eating ladle, only one feast ladle was needed per clan, so this larger form of effigy ladle is scarce indeed.* In a study of 701 ladles (with and without effigies) in the collection of the Rochester Museum and Science Center, Betty Colt Prisch (1982) notes that the ladles ranged in length from 2”-12”, with the vast majority being 4”-8” long individual eating ladles. Only a few examples of the larger feast ladles in the 12” size range are in the collection, which began being formed over 175 years ago by the museum's anthropologists.

This ladle is 13.5" long and 8.75" wide. The photo below showing it next to a personal eating ladle emphasizes the contrast in size, and thereby function, of the two ladles.

Another remarkable feature of this ladle is the carved raptor effigy forming the handle terminus. Unlike passerine birds that sit in a slightly horizontal perching position, raptors such as hawks, falcons and eagles have an upright sitting posture, as does this ladle's bird. Iroquois artists were extremely skilled at communicating the essence of an animal in simple representational form, as evidenced in this recognizable raptor carving.

The striated grain of the maple burl was also used to good effect to enhance the bird's vigor. While most Woodlands ladles were made of either ash or maple burl, those carved from maple tend to be more precise and refined because maple burl grain is tighter and more regular than ash burl grain. Despite its large scale, this ladle is delicately rendered, from the thin edges of its scoop, to its tapering handle, to its graceful raptor effigy.

In Prisch's study of Rochester Museum and Science Center Iroquois ladle collection, she notes that the "bird effigy appears fundamentally to be an Iroquois type," and that birds figure prominently in Iroquois power myths and legends, as well as in spiritual beliefs as representatives of the soul.

This raptor, or hawk, was most likely the totem of the clan that owned this ladle. In his 1945 monograph titled The Iroquois, anthropologist Frank Speck notes that effigy carving on a feast ladle can depict the clan totem, and that these "rate highly as examples of good taste in art.”

Of the Six Nations of Iroqouis peoples, this raptor effigy ladle is most likely Seneca. Several pieces of evidence point to this conclusion. The pioneering ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) wrote in his 1851 book League of the Iroquois, that each Iroquois Nation was subdivided into 3-5 major clans that followed a matriarchial lineage, meaning that children belonged to the clan of their mother and could not intermarry with other members of their clan. Each clan had its own totem - a guardian spirit that offered protection, power and wisdom. The Seneca had five clans (Bear, Wolf, Turtle, Snipe and Hawk), and was the only Iroquois tribe that Morgan documented as including a Hawk clan.

The burl ladle pictured below (in the Rochester Museum and Science Center's collection) was collected in 1846 and labeled "Seneca" on the bowl by Morgan himself. Its design is similar to our raptor effigy ladle, including the tapering handle which ends in a crook atop which the carved bird is perched.

Moreover, Prisch found that birds were the chosen effigy on 55% of the Seneca ladles she studied, whereas they appeared on only 20% of the ladles made by other Iroquois tribes.

In addition to its totemic meaning, the carved bird effigy had a practical function, with its perch serving as the portion of the handle that kept the ladle from slipping fully into a bowl or kettle. In an early study of Algonquin wooden utensils, the anthropologist Charles Willoughby notes "an interesting feature of many of the spoons and ladles is the recurved upper extremity of the handle which catches the edge of the bowl and prevents the immersion of the spoon in the food. In some instances the head of the bird or the full figure of a bird or quadruped is carved in relief at the top of the handle, the beak or tail of the effigy often serving as a hook."

Thus this ladle, like much Native American ethnographic material, merges quotidian utilitarianism with sublime craftsmanship and spiritual significance. It came to mid-coast Maine from the Iroquois homelands of western New York via an elderly man who grew up in that region and now lives in a retirement home here. His mother had been given the ladle as a gift, and it passed on to him when she died.

While the initials "C M" in stylistically early lettering are inscribed on the back of the handle, we are left to imagine the particular identities and personalities of the people during the past 200+ years who made, owned, used, cherished and passed along this compelling exemplar of Iroquois artisanship.

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* See this 2010 listing for one of the few Iroquois figural burl feast ladles that has sold at auction: http://www.cowanauctions.com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=85104

References

Judkins, Russell A. (ed.). (1987). Iroquois Studies: a guide to documentary and ethnographic resources from western New York and the Genesee Valley. Geneseo, NY: Dept. of Anthropology, State University of New York and the Geneseo Foundation.

Morgan, Lewis H. (1851). League of the Iroquois. Rochester, NY: Sage and Brothers.

Prisch, Betty C. (1982). Aspects of Change in Seneca Iroquois Ladles A.D. 1600-1900. Research Records No. 15. Rochester, NY: Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Speck, Frank G. (1945). The Iroquois. Bulletin 23. Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Institute of Science.

Willoughby, Charles C. (1908). Wooden Bowls of the Algonquin Indians. American Anthropologist, 10(3). Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, Harvard.