AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 5G1 



we speak is almost as soft as tufa. It is covered with anotlier stone 

 which has no jnerit. The natives who knew its worth endeavored to 

 cut it with blows from their arrows, and when pieces dropped into the 

 water, they found it by diving. When they got a piece large enough 

 from which to make a calumet, they made it by means of a knife and 

 awl. The stone works easily and resists a hot ftre." ' 



This description answers correctly the characteristics of catlinite and 

 its bed, which lies between layers of quartzite at Couteau des Prairies. 

 This red stone, often spoken of by early writers as a red marble, has a 

 brilliant color and is susceptible of a high polish, and there is evidence 

 in the primitive burials of a large area that from an early period there 

 was an extensive trade in it. Though there does not appear ever to 

 have been such distribution of other pipes as there was of those made of 

 clay such as were used by the English who, on July 0, 1742, in the meet- 

 inghouse in Philadelphia at a council held by Lieut. Governor George 

 Thomas and certain gentlemen with Onontogoes, Caiyoquos, Oneidas, 

 Senecas, Tuscaroros, Shawanoes, Canestogas, etc., gave away 1,000 to- 

 bacco pipes, 200 pounds of tobacco, and 100 tobacco tongs, this gift being 

 duplicated for the land on the east side of the Susquehanna Piver.-' 



The ceremony of intertribal smoking in the manner related is said 

 to have occurred during the governorship of the Hon. George Clinton 

 on July 8, 1751, between the Catawbas and the Six Nations in Albany, 

 New York. ''The Catawbas came down from their quarters singing, 

 with their colors pointed to the ground, and having lit their i)ipes, the 

 king and one more put them in the mouths of the chief sachems of the 

 Six Nations who smolvcd out of them. The chief sachem of the Senecas 

 lit a pipe and put it in the mouths of each of the Catawbas, who smoked 

 out of it and then he returned it among the Six Nations.* 



Woodrow Wilson gives a good description of the conditions existing 

 between the French and the English in 1751-1753: "The strength of 

 the French lay in their command of the water courses which flanked 

 the English colonies both north and west, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 to the mouths of the Mississippi. There were French posts at Niagara 

 and Crown Point on Lake Champlain, and English posts were at 

 Oswego and on the Hudson. The English were pressing toward the 

 western mountains and down into Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley; 

 quite three hundred traders went into Ohio every year. Du Quesne 

 established Pres(iue Isle in 1753. Washington, sent by Governor 

 Dinwiddie, met the French at Fort Le Boeuf, warning them to leave 

 the country, and returned January, 1751. The French established 

 Fort Du Quesne in 1751, Washington being defeated at Great Meadows. 

 Braddock made his campaign in 1V55 against Du Quesne and was 

 badly defeated." * 



Sir William Johnson at a meeting with the Six Nations on February 

 23, 175G, gave them the largest pipe in America, made on purpose, and 



' Histoire do la Louisiane, I, p. 32(5. 



■^Cadwallader Colden, History of the Five Nations, Pt. 2, p. 57, Londoii, 1717. 

 ^Documents Relating to the Colonial llistury of New York, VI,]). 724. 

 "I Woodrow Wilson, Colonel Washington, Harper's Magazine, March, 1896. 

 NAT MUS 97 30 



