306 EEPOKT of national museum, 1897. 



doubtless, by the available supply. Tlie first materials employed would 

 be reeds, hollow bones, or wood, wbicb, through a process of evolu- 

 tion, came in time eventually to be stone or earthenware. There is 

 undoubted evidence that iiipes throughout the continent were made in 

 many shapes, though it is probable that the most elaborate are the 

 most modern. An endless variety of leaves, twigs, bark, and even the 

 roots of plants have been smoked by American Indians, though sumac 

 and willow have been used by them to nearly as great an extent as 

 tobacco. At times other plants are smoked in preference to tobacco, or 

 as a prerequisite of some ceremonial dance or function. 



Excepting the tubular form, the shapes of early American pipes 

 differ greatly with the locality where they occur; those in contiguous 

 territory usually being similar. The geographical limits of a particular 

 pipe, with scarcely an exception, follow the lines of natural trade routes 

 and water courses, which are also, it is true, the lines of least resistance 

 in the distribution of population, because of the greater facility of 

 transportation. 



Notwithstanding the ancient foreign references to a habit apparently 

 quite analogous to the use of the tobacco pipe by the American savages, 

 Europeans do not appear to have smoked the pipe until tobacco was 

 carried abroad from America, for all early travelers to this continent 

 appear to have been astonished at the, to them, singular custom of 

 smoking, and they were convinced that the tobacco plant was possessed 

 of wonderful properties, and but few of them failed to refer to it with 

 surprise when they first came in contact with the natives of the 

 Northern Continent. 



Columbus on his first voyage mentions the people of Hispaniola as 

 smoking, though the reference appears to relate tt) something in the 

 nature of a cigar or cigarette rather than a tobacco pipe. Beginning 

 with the dawn of man's employment of tools, throughout all primitive 

 periods of history, and from the most distant parts of the earth's sur- 

 face, similar customs and implements are encountered which are impos- 

 sible of reconciliation one with another unless it be that similar 

 conditions produce like results. Among these the inhalation of smoke 

 is only one of many which might be enumerated. 



Tobacco was indigenous to the new continent, and the first reference 

 to its use, though not by name, was that reported to Columbus on his 

 first voyage by Kodrigo de Jerez of Agramonte and Luis de Torres, a 

 learned Jew, who were sent out in Hispaniola on November 2, 1402, 

 with letters to the Kahn of Cathay. De Torres could speak Chaldee, 

 Hebrew, and some Arabic, and was thought to be a valuable inter- 

 preter for those subjects of the (xrand Kahn whom Columbus should 

 encounter.^ 



These messengers, as referred to by the Marquis of Nadaillac, 

 quoting Columbus, "found a great number of Indians, men and women. 



' Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest in America, I, p, 124, New York, 1856. 



