412 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSKUM, 1897. 



consider nothing- more valuable than birds' feathers of <lifferent colors." ' 

 Yet neither he nor Laudoniere in 1564, in his second voyage, nor l>e 

 Gonrgues in i5<)7-(>8 appear to have referred to the pipe and tobacco 

 being used in Florida. These travels have all been described with con- 

 siderable minuteness, and had smoking been at that date a general 

 habit there would surely have been reference to it. Professor Jeffries 

 Wyman found no i)ipes in the shell heaps of the St. Johns River, 

 Florida, and thinks "that had they been used by the builders of these 

 heaps it is hardly possible, in the many excavations that have been 

 made and the laruc facilities offered by the undermining action of the 

 river, that some evidence of them should not have been detected."^ 



Mr. Frank Gushing, in the recent Florida excavations, where he made 

 a remarkably rich find of aboriginal remains in stone, shell, wood, and 

 pottery, sjjcaks of its being noticeable that there was an absence of 

 pipes. ' On the other hand, Mr. Clarence B, Moore, who has made exten- 

 sive investigations of the shell heaps of Florida, records that " at a depth 

 of G feet from the surface of Mulberry Mound was discovered a pipe of 

 earthenware complete in every part." He regards this as positive evi- 

 dence that the people who built the shell heaps were familiar with the 

 smoking habit.^ Mr. Moore considered this mound among the later of 

 the shell heaps. 



A summary of evidence, therefore, appears to indicate that i)rior to 

 the date of Alvarez and De Soto the smoking habit, if indulged in, 

 was employed as a religious rite and not as a pastime, but subsequent 

 to the Si)anish settlements along the coast smoking became general. 

 De Vaca refers to the shell heaps of the Gulf of Mexico, and says that 

 the natives "subsist for three months on these shellfish and drink very 

 bad water." ^ 



Among the vast deposits of shells on the Chesapeake Bay shores in 

 Maryland and Virginia, where thousands and tens of thousands of acres 

 in the aggregate are covered with shell village sites, the pipe is almost 

 the rarest object found. The shells of these heaps vary in depth up to 

 5 feet, yet the writer only knows of two primitive pipes ever being 

 found, while the English trade pi])e is not uncommon. These sliell 

 heaps wouhl be occupied during the warmer months when conditions 

 were such as to conceal a pipe dropped in the grass or uiulerbrush, and 

 one would sui)pose that they would be found as other objects are. The 

 burial customs, however, of these Indians are little understood, audit 

 is yet i)ossible that an investigation of their graves when found may 

 clear up our understanding of the subject. The writer inclines, there- 



' Historical Collections of Louisiana, Ft. 3, p. 207, Memoir Historicme des deruieis 

 Voyages atix Iiules, Lieus Ai)i)elo La Floi'ida (Xtmvelle Fraui'e). 



^Jeiil'ries Wyman, P^esb Water Shell Alonnds of St. .Johns River, Florida, p. 59, 

 Salem, 187."). 



'Letter from Tampa in Waahinjjton Post, February, ISilfi. 



■» Shell llea]).s of the St. .Tohn.s Iiivcr, Florida, American Naturalist, .Tnly, 1894, p. G23. 



■'^Charles Ran, I'rehistoric Fishing, p. 2Hi, referring to l)c Vaca. 



