AMERICA]Sr ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS 373 



Clavigero, an uuusually well-informed writer, who lived among the 

 natives of Mexico for tbirty-odd years, about the middle of the last eeu- 

 tury, referring to the early Mexican practice of smoking, says: "After 

 dining the lords used to compose themselves to sleep with the smoke of 

 tobacco. This plant was greatly in use among the Mexicans. Tliey 

 make various plasters with it. and took it not only in smoke at the 

 mouth, but also in snuff at the nose. In order to smoke it they jjut the 

 leaves, with the gum of liquid amber and other hot, warm, and odorifer- 

 ous herbs, into a little pipe of wood or reed, or some other more valuable 

 substance. They receive the smoke by sucking the pipe and shutting 

 the nostrils with the fingers, so that it might pass by the breath more 

 easily to ward the lungs. * * * But what ought to excite still greater 

 wonder is that, although the use of tobacco is now so common among 

 those natives who formerly despised it, it is now so rare among its 

 inventors that there are extremely few of the Indians of N"ew Spain 

 who take it in smoke, and none at all who use it in snuftV • 



The more closely the manners and customs of the Aztecs and other 

 natives of Mexico are studied the greater is found to be the similarity 

 between them and the northern Indians, the real difference being that 

 the Mexican has been described in glowing terms as possessing a well- 

 organized government, whereas the prosaic Indian has been represented 

 and treated very much as a savage, having no good qualities. Dr. J. 

 Walter Fewkes has found among the Moki Indians of New Mexico a 

 cigarette, which answers completely that described as being used by 

 the Mexicans. It is a small reed, not over 2^ inches long, into which 

 they pack tobacco; a band of some fabric is bound around it and sewed 

 into the reed, leaving a tiap hanging down by which to hold it. These 

 cigarettes are found in large numbers in the sacrificial caves in the 

 vicinity, and appear to be a survival of one of the most primitive of 

 smoking arrangements. The natives of Mexico are fond of a weed 

 called Mariguana (?), for mixing with the tobacco in their cigarettes, 

 which when it is smoked and inhaled by them is said to produce a 

 hilarious spirit in the smoker.^ 



A curious custom is related of the people of Yucatan. The children 

 at a particular period made offerings to certain animals, which in a 

 measure were cousidered as their sponsors through life. This offering 

 was "made of a certain gum of pleasant smell, called copal, which they 

 burn as an incense upon an altar. These animals were wild beasts, 

 which were supposed to have assumed responsibility for the children 

 who had been exposed in certain localities in their earliest infancy, 

 and were known by the tracks found near them in the morning after a 

 night of exposure."^ 



'Clavigero, History of Mexico, II, p. 263, translated from Italian by Charles 

 CuUen, Philadolphia, 1817. 



''St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 18, 1897. 



='John Harris. History of the Buccaneers of America, Voyaj^es and Travels, 11, p. 

 823, London, 1705. 



