AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 365 



believe that the use of the pipe was often indicated by this exi>ression. 

 It must be remembered that smoking, by its general adoption among 

 the people, struck all early voyagers to America with astonishment, 

 though Si)anish, French, Englisli, and Dutch each in turn found won- 

 derful properties in the use of this " sacred herb," 

 or, as Everard calls it, "Embassadors' herb."^ 



Fig. 1 is an enlargement, after Oviedo, of 

 what is commonly referred to as the first illus- 

 tration of the American tobacco pipe, though 

 the first two editions of the work did not con- 

 tain it. The figure was evidently drawn from 

 a description of an instrument which is said to 

 have been used as a snuffing tube employed in 

 inhaling a preparation of the powder, i)arica. 

 This article, Oviedo says, was called a "tobago" 

 and it was evidently that which gave its name 

 "tobacco" to the plant. The only object of this 

 character which has come 

 under the observation of the 

 writer is a very perfect spec- 

 imen in the museum of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, 

 which is made from the 

 femur of a llama, and is 5 



inches long, with a width of li inches at the extrem- 

 ity of the bifurcation, the widest part of the bone. 

 This tube (fig. -J) is carefully i)olished, and decorated 

 on each side with geometric figures, the significance 

 of which are indecipherable, though the circles upon 

 the bifurcated end look as though intended to rej)re- 

 sent eyes. The figures are incised and most skillfully 

 executed with some sharj) implement. It was found 

 at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. 



The remarkable similarity of certain smoking cus- 

 toms in the most widely separated parts of the con- 

 tinent IS the strongest argument iu favor of the 

 antiquity of the habit, and there is little doubt that 

 the smoking of some plant m pipes or tubes has pre- 

 vailed very generally from a time long i)rior to the 

 coming of the Europeans on the continent of North 

 America. The most primitive pipe of all was a 

 straight tube, many of which have been found in abo- 

 riginal burial places, from Mexico to the Great Lakes, and from the At- 

 lantic to the Pacific oceans. The tube varies, it is true, in both length 

 and diameter, as well as in the material from which it is made; governed^ 



Fig. 1. 



A TOBACCO PIPE. 



Referred to bv 0\ie<lo. 



Fig. 2. 



SNUFFI.VO Tl'RE. 



Tiahuanaco. 



After Dr. Max Uhle, University 

 of Pennsylvania. Original in 

 University of Pennsylvania. 



'Everard, Panacea, or the Universal Medicine, p. 4, London, 1659. 



