ANCIENT CLAY PIPE. 



San Juan Eiver, New Mexico. 



Cat. No. 19791, U.S.N. M. Collected by Charles .^l.irich. 



AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND S^IOKIXG CUSTOMS. 381 



employed. At Tusayau, ISIew Mexico, as noted by Dr. Fewkes — and 

 his remarks would apply equally to North America generall}' — " Indiau 

 customs are handed down through long periods with but slight variations. 

 At Tusayan, native tobacco {Nicotiana aftenuata) was used in the cer- 

 emonies The Indians there smoke, however, the leaves of various 

 plants, as the^^ use various mixtures in their religious rites. The one 

 who controls the pipe must light it and baud it immediately to the 

 chief, friendly words being exchanged between the two. The chief 

 blows the smoke toward the four cardinal poiuts, upward and down- 

 ward over the altar. They beheve that the smoke is the cloud symbol- 

 ized by it. Tliey use the utmost care in making the mixture of tobacco 

 which is to serve for this sacred purpose, and the pipe must be lit with 



fire produced in the manner 

 prescribed by the rite. All 

 ceremonies commence with 

 this brotherly smoking."' 



Dr. Fewkes informed the 

 writer that the plants of which 

 Fig. 12. the mixture used in the pipe 



was composed were valued 

 largely according to the dis- 

 tance from which they came, 

 and a plant from Colorado, which he gave a Pueblo Indian in New 

 Mexico, was said to be good pipe medicine to smoke for that reason. 

 In ceremonial smoking, or, in fact, in any of the more serious functions, 

 the white man's manufactured tobacco was not considered valuable. 

 "The xochiocotzotl, commonly called liquidambar, is the liquid storax 

 of the Mexicans. It is a great tree, its leaves being similar to those of 

 the maple, white in one part and dark in the other, disposed in threes. 

 By an incision in the trunk they extract that precious resin called by 

 the Spaniards liquidambar, and the oil of the same name is still more 

 odorous and estimable. They also obtain liquidambiir from a decoction of 

 the branches, but it is inferior to that which is distilled from the trunk."^ 

 The Sia Indians are said to smoke a thin cigarette, lighted from a 

 long stick; the boys of the Sia were, however, never seen smoking.^ 



In the sixteen-soug snake dance of the Moki Indians, both before the 

 dance begins and after it is over, Dr. Fewkes found that the shape of 

 the pipe smoked had no significance; but the pipe which was employed 

 at the eud of the eighth song was invariably one of the old-fashioned 

 tubular conical pipes of the same character as those used by the ancient 

 inhabitants, as evidenced at Sikyatki. 

 Fig. 12, a pueblo pipe from the San Juan River, New Mexico, collected 



' Catalogue of the Hemenway Collection in the Historico American Exposition of 

 Madrid, p. 283, Report of the ColumbiaQ Historical Exposition, Madrid, 1802. 



^Clavigero, History of Mexico, I, p. 44, Philadelphia, 1817, translated by Charles 

 Cullen. 



•'Matilda C. Stevenson, The Sia, 11th Annual Report of the iJureau of Ethnology, 

 p. 105. 



