AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 547 



tation, smoking, and the attendant deliberations, and it was further said 

 to protect those who carried it as far as the borders of the country of 

 the people visited, though there are several references to exceptions to 

 this rule. 



If the pipe tendered was accepted peace was acknowledged, while if 

 the pipe was rejected it was war literally "to the knife." Warlike mes- 

 sages were accompanied by red pipes; peaceful messages were accom- 

 panied by pipes which were white or so colored for the occasion ; even 

 the feathers decorating the pipestem had their special and separate 

 significance, and strangers could tell from the shape of the pipe and 

 its decorations who the people were from whence it came, and the gen- 

 eral character of the mission before the messengers sjioke. The age 

 of the custom can not be stated with auy degree of certainty, though 

 the pipe was apj)arently used in feastiug and on solemn occasions from 

 an early period. The French adopted it as an emblem of peace about 

 1073, as we learn from Marquette, and later it was also employed by the 

 English, until eventually it became a prevalent custom throughout the 

 larger part of the continent, though the early English emblem in inter- 

 course with the natives appears to have been the collar of wampum, 

 which later became the wampum belt. There is reason to suppose that 

 the native offering of incense to Cortez and his followers was often a 

 tobacco offering of propitiation to creatures from another world, such 

 as was burned to propitiate their fetiches, for tobacco and other plants, 

 from a pre-Columbian era, have played an important part in the sacred 

 dances of the natives, and it may be doubted whether even now he 

 Indian does not connect the burning of herbs with the more mysterious 

 of the affairs of life. Eventually in all transactions between the whites 

 and natives a pipe was smoked ; even in social visits the Indian offered 

 his pipe as a welcome, as the Ifussian or the Arab does salt. Some 

 early references to smoking and other pipe customs are of more than 

 passing value in the studj- of American pipes. Those quoted are given 

 chronologically, beginning with Raleigh's expedition in 1580, when, 

 according to Stith, "Sir Walter sent upon this voyage a domestic of 

 his, one Mr. Thomas Harlot, and highly in his patron's intimacy. He 

 likewise tells of the great esteem and veneration in which the natives 

 held a plant, which grew spontaneously in the country, and was by 

 them called tippowoc, but it is now well known by the name of tobacco; 

 derived, it is said, from the island of Tobago, one of the Caribbees in 

 the West Indies, where it grew in vast quantities. The leaves of this 

 they cured and dried, and then being rubbed into a sort of beau and 

 dust they put it into earthen tubes and drew the smoke through the 

 mouth. They thought this plant of so great worth and value that even 

 the gods themselves were delighted with it. And therefore they some- 

 times made sacred fires and instead of a sacrifice threw in this dust, and 

 when they were caught in a tempest they would sprinkle it into the air 

 and water; ui^on all their new fishing nets they would cast some of it; 

 and when they had escaped any remarkable danger they would throw 

 some of this dust into the air, with strange distorted gestures, some- 

 times striking the earth with their feet in a kind of time and measure; 



