AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 419 



"The Literary Gazette, September 11, 1819, page 588, says the Turks 

 use the phrase 'driiikinj;- tobacco.' 



"In Webster's Dictionary one detiuitiou of 'to drink,' is 'to inhale, to 

 smoke, as tobacco.' 



"In Miseries of Enforced jMarriage, V, page 0, by George Wilkins, 

 1607, appears the line 'Feed well, drink tobacco.' 



"In the Roaring (iirl, Middletou & Decker, 1611, one of the i^ersou- 

 ages says of some tobacco, ' This will serve to drink in my chamber.' 



"A reference in one of Donne's satires, I, page 87 (Donne flourished 

 1610-1020), IS as follows: 



Till one which did excel 



Th' Indians in diinkinj;- his toltaceo well. 



"That actual swallowing of the smoke was the mode in England at 

 the time mentioned is shown by several contemporary illustrations of 

 customs where the pipe is in the mouth or hand and the smoke is issu- 

 ing from the nostrils.'' ' 



The excesses to which Williams refers as existing in Europe in the 

 use of tobacco must have prevailed to an inordinate degree in the 

 plantations, for a statute was enacted in 1633 m that of Massachusetts 

 which provided that there must be no idleness "under penalty," and 

 especial reference was made to "common coasters, unpfttable fowlers, 

 and tobacco takers.'" 



In the account of Frobisher's second voyage, about 1577, to the coast 

 in the vicinity of Hudson Bay, there does not appear to be reference to 

 l)ipes and tobacco, although the implements and clothes of the natives 

 are referred to with some particularity. * 



If at that period the natives of Hudson Bay had no tobacco, which, 

 however, is at present uncertain, the first English traders would have 

 lost no opportunity to popularize its use in their journeys to the far 

 north, where they went in search ot food-tishes, as they did into the 

 interior In search of peltries. The earliest reference which the writer 

 has found to smoking among the Hudson Bay people is that of Henry 

 Ellis, who went in search of the ISorthwest passage in 1746-47, by 

 which time the habit had become general. He says : "These people have 

 a very extraordinary custom. It is that when the lathers and mothers 

 can no longer support themselves with their own labor they require 

 their children to strangle them; and according to them it is an act of 

 obedience on the part of the children, who ])erform the act as follows: 

 First they make a pit, which the old person enters; for some time they 

 converse with their children, at times they smoke a pipe, take a drink, etc. 



' Garrick Mallery, American Anthropologist. II, p. 141 



'^William B. Weedon, Economic and Social History of New England, Kil'O to 1789, 

 I, p. 83, Boston, 1891. 



'Master Dionese Settle, Second Voyage of Martin Frobisher, Hakluyt's \oyages, 

 III, Loudon, 1810; rei)riut of 1600 edition. 



