AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 415 



With leaves from a bowl or basket of tlie period of Laudoiiiere's visit to 

 that part of tlie territory tlieii called Florida, which covered an indef- 

 inite geographical area. The anthor of Kecherches Philosophiques 

 des Aniericaiiis refers to the custom of the Northern American Indians 

 making the women and slaves that are to be sacrificed on the death of 

 a chief take drugs. They use, he says, the leaves of tobacco broken 

 and made into paste, of which they form large balls, that those who are 

 to die are required to swallow. They make them drink a glass of 

 water, which in dissolving throws them into a comjdete delerium.' 



Bartram, setting out from Mobile in 1777 and arriving at Talusa, 

 speaks of the houses of the people being " decorated with various paint- 

 ings and sculptures, which I suppose to be hieroglyphic, and as an 

 historical and legendary of political and sacerdotal affairs; but they are 

 Extremely picturesijue, or caricature; as men in a variety of attitudes, 

 some ludicrous enougli, others having 

 some kind of animal, as those of a duck, 

 turkey, bear, fox, wolf, etc., and again, 

 those kind of creatures as having the 

 human head. These designs are not ill 

 executed, the outlines bold, free, and well 

 l^roportioned."- 



It must be remembered that Bartram 

 is speaking of a time two hundred and 

 thirty years subsequent to the period 

 when these Indians first had oi)portunity 

 to become tolerably familiar with iron 

 tools, though there yet remained even at 

 that date much of primitive culture. The 

 savage, made familiar with shar[) cutting 

 tools, quickly takes to carving as soon as some one suggests the idea of 

 design. With these natives iron was quite a common i)ossession at the 

 period of Bartram's visit, and the churches of the French and Spanish 

 had both familiarized the natives with the principles of carving. The 

 French and Spanish of the period Avere well skilled carvers and car- 

 penters, whom the Indians would not be slow to imitate. Though it is 

 not intended to question the fact tiiat rude carving may have been 

 executed by some of the Atlantic coast Indians at an early period, it 

 is suggested that there is little evidence that any of them carved in a 

 manner to justify more being snid of their work than that it was "not 

 ill executed,'' the known antiquities of the jMexicans being superior 

 examples of their date. 



Yerazzano, in his voyage along the coast of America in 1524, from 

 the thirty fourth degree of latitude to Newfoundland, probably refers 

 to the use of the tobacco pipe in some form in his allusion to the natives 

 who '4ive long and are seldom sick; and if they chance to fall sick at 



Fig 45. 



FLOEIDIAN SMOKING. 



After De Bry. Breyis Narratio. 



Recherches Philosophiques snr les Americains, II, p. 224. Paris, 1771. 

 ■ William Bartram, Travels through North aud South Carolina, p. 454, Dublin, 1793. 



