AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 443 



beiug 10 inches long and 2 inches wide, weighing a little less than 4 

 pounds.^ 



While steatite appears to be the most common mineral employed in 

 making these pipes, chlorite and serpentine were also used at times. 

 An examination of the dimensions of bowls and pipes of the American 

 Indians demonstrates almost conclusively that the size of bowl and 

 stenj are in relative proportion through contiguous territory, with 

 scarcely an exception in any given type, though material and exterior 

 finish vary (considerably. Gen. A. L. Pridemore has a pipe of this type, 

 having upon it the head of an eagle, and another a duck, from Lee 

 County, Virginia, which he considers of Cherokee origin. Mr. A. F. 

 Berlin, of AUentown, Pennsylvania, has a white stone pipe, a surface 

 find, from Franklin Couut}^, jSTorth Carolina, in the shape of a duck, the 

 bowl of which is rectangular. The University of Pennsylvania has a 

 bird pipe catalogued from Georgia, and a specimen of this type in the 

 Douglass collection from Cumberland County, Kentucky, has engraved 

 upon its side the figures 1714. The wings, tails, and topknots of birds 

 in this type are usually highly conventionalized, and in only one instance 

 does the writer recall an effort having been made to rei^resent individual 

 feathers, and even in that case the work was quite rudely done. 



Pipes of this kind are of the most ponderous character of any Amer- 

 ican type known, and Strachey's description of the pipe would really 

 answer for this, and he does not exaggerate when he says the pipe of a 

 "Susquehannock Indian" was "three-quarters of a yard long, prettily 

 carved with a bird, a deare, or with some such device at the great end 

 sufficient to beat out the braynes of ahorse,"- though he has evidently 

 copied John Smith's earlier description, who asserted that these pipes 

 M'ere sufficient to beat out a man's brains.^ 



This pipe appears also to be the only one which satisfactorily answers 

 John Smith's description of having carvings at their great ends. 



USE OF PIPES AND TOBACCO BY THE WHITES. 



English and American authors usually give to Sir Walter Raleigh 

 the credit of introducing tobacco into Europe about the year 1586, 

 though it is highly probable the French had used it at an earlier date; 

 the Spanish certainly used it even earlier than the French. 



In 1585 Sir ilichard Grenville had command of the expedition of Sir 

 Walter Raleigh, consisting of seven sail, an account of which we have 

 from the pen of Ralph Lane, one of the captains of the fleet. In 158G 

 Sir Francis Drake also visited the colony of Virginia, from which time 

 the coast of the continent became familiar to European sailors. 



' Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 226. 



-William Stracbey, Mistorie of Travaille into Virginia, p. 40, 1612 (Hakluyt 

 Society). 



•'William Stitli, History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. (iS, 

 1747, Sabiu reprint, New York, 1865. 



