406 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



All available evidence tends to contradict tlie supposition that tlie 

 peoples of the West Indies or of South and Central America possessed 

 l^ipes, and the excavations among the graves and ruins of these peoples, 

 which have been quite extensive, have not disclosed a single specimen 

 so far as the writer has been able to discover. In the U. S. National 

 Museum there are w<mderfully rich collections of pottery and stone 

 implements from Porto Eico,the Bahama Islands, Mcaragua, Costa Rica, 

 and Chiriqui, yet none of them contain a single article which resembles 

 a pipe of any form. 



Conventional forms appear to govern the shapes of pipes in contigu- 

 ous territory through the whole northern continent, the tubular shape, 

 as befoie observed, being the only exception to the rule. The geograph- 

 ical distribution of the best-known types of pipes is so pronounced that 

 a specimen of any one of them may be assigned to its proper area with 

 little risk of mistake. 



The curing of tobacco appears seldom to have been referred to by 

 early writers, though Benzoni, according to H. Ling Roth, says : " When 

 the leaves are in season they pick them, tie them up in bundles and sus- 

 pend them near the fireplace until they are very dry, and when they wish 

 to use them they take a leaf of their grain (iftaize) and putting one of 

 the others into it they roll them round tight together; then they set fire 

 to one end and putting the other into the mouth they draw their breath 

 up through it and they retain it as long as they can, * * * and so 

 much do they fill themselves with this cruel smoke that they lose their 

 reason ; and some there are who take so much of it that they fall down 

 as if they were dead and remain the greater part of the day or night 

 stupefied."' The curing here described is not dissimilar to the present 

 approved method among tobacco cultivators. 



The Mexicans, in sending ambassadors, according to all of the Span- 

 ish writers of the sixteenth century, exhibit a custom strikingly like 

 those of the northern Indians in similar ceremonies. De Solis says: 

 " In the right hand they bore a large arrow with the feathers up on 

 high, and on the left arm a target made of shell. The intent of the 

 embassy was known by the feathers of the arrow, for the red denoted 

 war and the white denoted peace.'" 



Prescott says that "tobacco (in Mexican yetl), is derived from a Hay- 

 tien word, ' tabaco.'"^ There is too little known of how far the Mexicans 

 used tobacco for the assertion to be made that it " did not possess the 

 peculiar character attached to it by the North American Indians as an 

 indis])ensable accessory to treaties, the cementing of friendships, etc., 

 but was indulged in cliiefly by the sick as a pastime and for its stimu- 

 lating effect, and after dinner in the form of paper, reed, or maize-leaf 



' H. Ling Rotb, Tlie Aborigines of Hispaniola. Journal of the Anthropological Insti- 

 tute of Great Britain au<l Ireland, XVI, ]>. 259. 



-Thomas Townseud, History of the Conquest of Mexico, quoting Antonio de SolLs 

 (1610-1(586), p. 133, Loudon, 1721. 



3 Conquest of Mexico, I, p. 154, note. 



