506 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



The friendly offering- of the pipe is evidently an nncient cnstoiu, and 

 one referred to by many of the earliest visitors to the Atlantic Coast, 

 though in council the pipe does not appear to have been so prominent 

 an adjunct in the East as it was in the Valley of the Mississippi, where in 

 all functions between the French and the natives the calumet occupied 

 an important position. 



Pis. 124. 

 CALUMET DANCE. 

 , Tliird Annual lleport of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 276. 



Except by means of the rudest pictography the North American 

 native had no means of recording events. Some method became neces- 

 sary in tlieir dealings, particularly with the whites, to evidence engage- 

 ments on the one part and the other, whether affecting the tribe, as in 

 treaties, or between individuals, as in simple contracts, memory alone 

 being too unreliable without extraneous symbols. Among the English, 

 in their early dealings, the "wampum belt" or necklace, consisting 



