AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 585 



Fig. 187 from Puget Sound, collected by Lieut. Charles Wilkes, United 

 States i^avy, is a couibinatiou pipe of wood, bone, and tin, and shows 

 what variety there is at times in modern Indian art. It is a pipe appar- 

 ently orioinating on the Pacific coast, intended chietly to attract travel- 

 ers. It is 18 inches long and 4: inches high, representing, one might 

 almost say, a farm, houses, and garden. The chimney of the house is 

 composed of a tin cylinder, and at times a brass or copper cartridge is 

 made to answer the same purpose by perforating the side of the shell to 

 allow the smoke to escape into the stem. The sides of the h(mse and 

 part of the balance of the ornamentation consist of bone in thin plates 

 fastened to the wood of which the bulk of this pipe is made. The carv- 

 ing is decidedly characteristic of the locality from which it comes, though 

 the houses, gate, and trees indicate clearly how modern they are. In 

 the ijrow of a boat-shaped pipe in the U. S. National Museum collec- 

 tion from Puget Sound a disk-like depression has been cut, into which 

 a plate of mica is neatly fitted, and on another a crowing rooster is 

 figured. The inlaying of many of these i>ipes has been made more 



Fig. 187. 



PUGET SOIND riPE. 



Puget Sound. 



Cat. No. 2604, U.S.N.M. Collected by Chsrles Wilkes. 



eflPective by using the nacre of the abalone shell, which, with its bril- 

 liant green coloring, is most pleasing, especially when used for the eyes 

 of the monsters they adorn. These people carve at times most pic- 

 turesque and ludicrous figures from deer horns, sawed off at the point 

 where the horn enters the skull, taking every advantage of the shai^e 

 of the horn to add to the artistic eflFect of the pipes, and though the 

 totem posts have been so long known, with their quaint, rude figures, 

 one can but wonder to what extent the carving of these people has been 

 influenced by the Japanese, who have long been on the upper coast. 



Pipes made by the natives of Queen Charlotte Island and the shores 

 of British Columbia and the Tshimpshian tribes north of Vancouver 

 Island are usually composed of a black slate, representing various 

 animals, man included, and figures in singular postures are most attract- 

 ive, though modern, and carved with steel tools, with a fidelity suffi- 

 ciently accurate to enable one to recognize the animals intended, though 

 these pipes of slate appear to represent a manufacture which chiefly 

 aims to attract the tourist and curiosity seeker. 



Pipe bowls of the Chinook Indians^ according to Bancroft, were made 



