GATSCHET — KAS. LEG. COMMENTARY. [77] 45 



ing. The words " vvhicli grows like wild fennel" were not ren- 

 dered in our Creek and Ilitchiti texts. 



Assi LuPuTSKi, or 'small leaves," abbr. dssi\ is the name for 

 the Ilex cassine (of. Black Drink), but here it is meant for a plant 

 also called the o/d man's tobacco^ isti atsiili pakpagi ; its leaves 

 were prepared as a ceremonial physic on the first day of the Kasi'- 

 hta and other busks, and distributed in the square on the last day ; 

 c.f. vol.i. 179. iSo. The impressive ceremonies enacted on the last 

 day show the high esteem in which the plant was held among the 

 Indians, and we must regard them as equivalent to a tobacco sacri- 

 Jice^ so prevalent among all Intlians, although here the seed and 

 there the smoke of the weed is the object of the sacrifice. To the 

 Creeks, however, the smoking of the pipe also was a religious cus- 

 tom ; for the first thing they did was to puff smoke from the great 

 pipe or calumet towards the sun. One instance of tobacco sacrifice, 

 taken from the Naktche customs, may give a general idea of this 

 rite among all other Indians. Among that people the Great Sun, 

 who was ihe chief and also the first among the priests (as we can 

 express it), appeared every morning at the door of his cabin, and, 

 turning toward the east, " howled three times," bowing down 

 to the earth. Then a calumet, used only for this purpose, was 

 brought to him, and he smoked, blowing the smoke first towards 

 the sun and then towards the other three quarters of the world. 

 Charlevoix, Letters, p. 315, and Le Petit, in Histor. Coll. of La., 

 iii., note to p. 142. 



The great variety of uses to which smoking-weeds, generally 

 called tobacco by the whites, were put by the Indians, easily 

 explain themselves by the variety of the weeds. The Northern 

 Indians used other plants than the Southern, those of the West 

 other than those of tlie East. The kinnikinik of the Algonkins 

 around Lake Superior, consisting of the bark of the red-willow 

 and of the leaves of (Jva ursi^ was well known throughout the 

 North, but probably differed somewhat from the petun cultivated 

 by the Hurons. The leaves smoked by Indians generally con- 

 sisted of a mixture of different leaves. The narcotic effects of 

 all these preparations differed among themselves, and were the 

 real cause of its sacrificial importance. Tobacco smoke was blown 

 at persons, to place them into a stupor, by conjurers of the West 



