560 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



march from the village. He remarks that it is not customary to burn 

 or make slaves of ambassadors, though the Iroquois burned some of 

 those accompanying tlie Chevalier d'(3, whom the Comte de Frontenac 

 had sent to them, and would have burned him if he had not taken 

 refuge among the English. The law of nations, he says, is more 

 respected among the nations living in Louisiana along the borders of 

 the Mississippi, who observe the custom of the calumet, which the Iro- 

 quois have not, nor have the natives near Quebec and on the lower St. 

 Lawrence.' 



Lafltau lived many years among these people, from 1712 on. He 

 studied their character and was thoroughly acquainted with them, 

 though his reference is probably to the dance as a Siouan function 

 rather than that of other tribes, tlie pipe offering became common 

 eventually between the whites and natives throughout the country 

 and acted as a truce. Lafitau refers to the details of a religious dance 

 witnessed by Le Sieur de Leri among the Caribs about this period, 

 which appears to have been similar to the calumet dance of the Sioux. 

 "These Caribs," he says, "in advancing and jumping forward and 

 retreating, took a stick about 4 or 5 feet long, at the end of which they 

 had the dry herb petun, and lighted it, turning around and blowing 

 the smoke on all the other savages.'' ^ 



Lionel Wafer describes a most peculiar and unique method of smoking 

 in 1G80 that was indulged in by the natives of the Isthmus. The dried 

 tobacco leaves were "stripped from the stalk, and laying two or three 

 leaves upon one another they roll all up sideways in a long roll, yet 

 leaving a little hollow; round this they roll other leaves one after 

 another in the same manner, but close and hard, till the roll is as big 

 as one's wrist and 2 or 3 feet in length. Their way of smoking when 

 they are in company together is thus: A boy lights one end of a roll 

 and burns it to a coal, wetting the part next to it to keep it from wast- 

 ing too fast; the end so lighted he puts into his mouth, and blows the 

 smoke through the whole length of the roll into the face of every one 

 of the company or council, though there be two or three hundred of 

 them. Then they, sitting in their usual posture upon forms, make 

 with their hands held together a kind of funnel around their mouths 

 and noses; into this they receive the smoke as it is blown upon them, 

 snufling it up greedily and strongly, as long as ever they are able to 

 hold their breath, and seeming to bless themselves as it were with the 

 refreshment it gives them." ' 



To return however to the calumet. One of the early accounts of the 

 locality from whence the red pipestone was derived is recorded by Du 

 Pratz and vouched for by oflticers of the expedition made by Le 

 Bourgmont to the Padoucas, yet will likely be read with incredulity. 

 "That there was," he says, "a high bluff in which was a mass of red stone 

 flecked with white, like porphyry, with this difference, that this of which 



'J. F. Lafitau, Mccura des Sauvages Ameriqaius, II, p. 314. 

 ^Idem, II, p. 130, quoting Levi's Histoirede I'Amdrique. 



■'Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, p. 80, 

 Loudou, 1701. 



