AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 369 



1568, aud in the light of contemporary accounts there is little doubt 

 that many of his references to the natives using "perfumes" aud 

 "incense'' related to the practice of smoking tobacco or other plants. 

 It is not intended to deny that incense or perfume was used in the 

 temi)les of Mexico or among the natives upon occasion, but it is con- 

 tended that these terms, where used by the Spanish historians, referred 

 generally to what we now describe as smoking, rather than to what is 

 understood by the term perfuming or incensing. Upon several occasions 

 where these words are employed contemporaneous writers are so clear 

 in their references to tobacco smoking as to leave little room for doubt. 

 Spanish descriptions can be better appreciated when it is remembered 

 that the practices referred to were novel to the writers, and the only 

 thing to which they could liken it was the incense of the church, with 

 which they were all familiar. The Spanish references to the smoking 

 of tobacco are apparently confined to its employment by the great 

 "lords" after their dinners, though many of them point to the use 

 of tobacco in conjunction with other things, such as liquid amber, etc. 



It must not be forgotten that ceremony and the ceremonial observ- 

 ance of all serious events in life occupied a great part of the Mexicans' 

 time, and the same was the case with the aborigines to the north of 

 Mexico. It will be shown that tobacco was later the plant almost 

 invariably smoked at solemn and ceremonial councils with the whites 

 throughout the continent. In Mexico and to the northward for an 

 indefinite distance there appears always to have been a mixture of 

 herbs used in local ceremonies, as is yet the case in some of the Pueblo 

 dances, especially those of Moki. Juan de Grijalva, the discoverer of 

 Mexico, who died in 1527, according to Diaz, embraced the natives "in 

 token of peace, gave them strings of beads, and as it is customary to 

 make amicable presents in amicable treaties, they [the natives] came 

 with fish, fowl, and vessels with lighted coals to fumigate us with 

 incense;" aud at what is now St. Juan de Ulloa, he says, "upon our 

 entering [the temple] they came to us with their pots of incense, but 

 we could not endure it, being disgusted and grieved at the sight and 

 the horrid cruelty of their sacrifices." ' 



The ingredients of this "incense," if Clavigero be correct, were not 

 such as to recommend it to the favor of Europeans, and fortunately do 

 not appear to have survived to our time. He says : " The priests took 

 large quantities of poisonous insects, such as scorpions, spiders, and 

 worms, and sometimes even small serpents, burned them over the 

 stove of the temple, and beat their ashes into a mortar together with 

 the soot of the ocotl [a species of very aromatic pine], tobacco, the 

 herb ololimbqui, and some live insects."^ 



That this offering was identical with that of the pipe, so common on 

 the northern continent at the end of the last century, is shown by the 



'Diaz, True History of tlie Conquest of Mexico, i)p. 17, 20, London, 1800. 

 2 Clavigero, History of Mexico, II, p 44, Philadelphia, 1817. 

 NAT MTTS 97 L'4: 



