AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 407 



Cigarettes called pocyetl, smoking tobacco, or aeayetl, tobacco reed, the 

 leaf beinji' well mixed in a paste, etc."^ 



The habit of smoking was not sufticiently well known to Europeans 

 to be described by any uniform formula, tobacco itself being called by 

 many names and the pipe having as many more. The practice was, liow- 

 ever, apparently a common one, employed by the medicine man to draw 

 out or drive in pain. It nmy be said that for a century after its intro- 

 duction into Europe physicians prescribed it in a manner as foolishly 

 as did the Indians, for it was considered a specific for every known dis- 

 ease. The etllect produced on the iudividnal by smoking was to stupefy 

 or intoxicate to the point of insensibility, which was astonishing to the 

 Spanish; yet the Indian of the northwest still employs the pipe and 

 tobacco in much the same way as did the natives 

 who were first encountered by the Spanish invaders. 



In those parts of America where tobacco was not 

 used unless as snuff, or where the pipe did not occur, 

 the natives were in the habit of chewing maize or some 



other starchy substance 

 and making of it an in- 

 toxicating drink; and in 

 certain portions of South 

 America they use cocoa or 

 other means to produce in- 

 toxication or stupefaction. 

 Diaz says: "The city of 

 Cholula had an excellent manufacture of earthenware of three colors, 

 red, l)lack, and white, painted in different patterns, with which Mexico 

 and all the neighboring countries were supplied, as Castile is by those 

 of Talavera and Plasceucia."^ If pipes were made of pottery at that 

 time specimens should be numerous, but the museum of the city of 

 Mexico is said to contain not over half a dozen i)ipes having bowls to 

 them; and it may be added regarding these that little can be said 

 with certainty concerning their age or those who made them. 



Fig. 42 belongs to a type which, though in some of its features 

 resembles the modern pipe, is in others peculiar to Mexico. It is a 

 glossy light red pottery from the valley of Mexico, collected by the 

 Museo Nacional, Mexico, and contains a tempering of fine sand. It is 

 G inches long and 2i inches high, being perfectly flat on the base, which 

 is sufificienlly broad to support it in an upright position upon any smooth 

 surface, the bowl standing at an angle of about 15 degrees from the 

 perpendicular. The interior diameter of the bowl at the top is three- 

 fourths of an inch, which enlarges to seven-eighths of an inch at a point 

 corresponding to the greatest exterior diameter ; the base of the bowl 



Fiff. 42. 



MEXICAN POTTERY PIPE. 



Valley of Mexico. 



Oat. No. 27889, U.S.N.M. Collected by Museo Nacional, Mexico. 



' Cyrus Thomas, Mound Explorations, Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology, p. 687, quoting Banrroft's Native Race.s, II, p. 287. 

 '^Diaz, True History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 124, London, 1800. 



