526 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



builders' art tlie fine Tennessee and southern pipes are not inferior to 

 the Ohio mound pipes.' 



The geographical distribution of mound pipes indicates two centers, 

 one near Chillicothe, Ohio; the other near Davenport, Towa, with some 

 in Illinois and few in Indiana, about Laporte, near the lower edge of 

 Lake Michigan. 



Colden's Five Nations (1747) indicates the existence of certain great 

 carries, then well known, between the headwaters of the Hudson 

 and Lake Champlain; Lake Erie and the headwaters of the Allegheny; 

 another from Lake Erie, by way of the Maumee, to the Wabash; 

 another from the Maumee to the headwaters of the St. Joseph and then 

 into Lake Michigan. The absence of mound pipes, or their scarcity, even 

 in Illinois and Indiana is merely negative testimony, but taking the 

 extremes of Chillicothe and Davenport, what would be the easiest route 

 from the former to the latter? To float down the Scioto to the Ohio 

 and down the Ohio to and up the Mississippi to Davenport, Iowa, would 

 take one through a country where this jjipe is not found, or so rarely 

 found as to negative the likelihood of this being the direction of travel. 

 This route would also be through a country where one would, during 

 the seventeenth century, more probably have encountered antagonistic 

 linguistic stocks than would have been the case had the route up the 

 Scioto, across to the head of the Maumee, from the Maumee across to 

 the St. Joseph been followed down to Lake Michigan, and from the 

 lake either by way of Oreen Bay to the Wisconsin, and down it or by 

 crossing the carry in the neighborhood of Chicago, and down the Fox 

 liiver into the Illinois, or to strike the Rock River and down it to the 

 Mississippi. This northern route and then westward, followed by any 

 of the waters indicated, would carry one through afltiliated tribes at 

 the early period of our history, and throughout this indicated territory 

 the mound pipe appears common. Again, if the mound pipes owe their 

 origin in anyway to white influences, the territory through which they 

 are found is within the area first reached by the French, who spread 

 over the interior waters, by way of the lakes, as a base from which the 

 St. Lawrence could be most easily reached. Admitting French influ- 

 ences as ati'ecting the style of the mound pipe, their not being found 

 along the shores of Erie and Ontario or on the St. Lawrence would 

 indicate strongly that the foreign influence was one indigenous to the 

 interior, which is easily explainable upon the theory that it was a sup- 

 ply made to meet a local demand. Were the mound pipes of great age 

 it is not likely that specimens would be found of catlinite, from which 

 some were made, if we may rely upon the records. The vast distance 

 from which it had to be brought, from the country of a people of dis- 

 tinct linguistic stock, would also indicate no great antiquity to its use, 

 but the material, we know, after the advent of the whites, became an 

 article of barter, chiefly, the writer believes, due to the spread of gen- 

 eral trade with the natives. 



'Antiquities of Teuuessee, ]>. 177 note, Cincimuiti, 1890. 



