44 PECKED, GROUND AND POLISHED STOXE. 



as telescopic instruments which the ancient inhabitants used for observing 

 the stars. This view, it appears, has been generally rejected. There is 

 more probability that the tubes, in part at least, were implements of the 

 medicine-men who employed them in their pretended cures of diseases. They 

 applied one end of the tube to the suffering part of the patient, and sucked 

 at the other end, in order to draw out, as it were, the morbid matter, 

 which they afterward feigned to eject with many gesticulations and contor 

 tions of the body. Coreal, who traveled in America from 1660 to 1697, 

 calls the tubes employed by the medicine-men of the Florida Indians &quot; a 

 kind of shepherd s flute&quot; (nne espece de chalumeaii) ?* They are referred to 

 by Venegas 25 and Baegert 26 as being in use among the Californians, and the 

 German traveler Kohl saw, as late as 1855, one of the above-mentioned cures 

 performed among the Ojibways of Lake Superior. In this instance, however, 

 the tube used by the medicine-man was a smooth hollow bone, probably of 

 the brant-goose. 2 &quot; 



The specimens in the Smithsonian collection chiefly consist of light-gray 

 steatite, of striped slate, or of chlorite. As a typical object (Fig. 175, Ten 

 nessee) the writer would mention a beautifully polished cylindrical tube, 



TUBES (i). 



measuring nearly six inches in length. The carefully drilled perforation has 

 at one end a diameter of about one-fourth of an inch, but it gradually expands 

 until it reaches at the opposite end a diameter of three-fourths of an inch. 

 The striae produced by the drilling process are distinctly visible. Another 

 specimen of a different (but not uncommon) type is encircled in the middle by 

 a raised ring, and expands toward the ends (Fig. 176, chlorite, Tennessee). 

 The large cavity is not drilled, but rather irregularly scooped out with a tool 

 from both sides, narrowing considerably toward the middle, where it has a 

 diameter of half an inch. 28 The Gosh-Utes of Western Utah use at the pres 

 ent day small pipes of somewhat similar shape, and hence it is not altogether 

 improbable, that the tubes of the type just mentioned were smoking utensils. 

 In fact, that character has been ascribed to various kinds of objects of tubular 

 shape. 



&quot;Coreal: Voyages aux Indes Occidentals, Amsterdam, 1722, Vol. I, p. 39. 



25 Venegas: History of California, London, 1759, Vol. I. p. 97. 



26 Baegert: Account of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Californian Peninsula, in Smithsonian Report 

 for 1864, p. 386. 



&quot;Kohl : Kitschi-Gami, oder Er/.iihlungen vom Obern See, Bremen, ISofi, Vol. I, p. 148. 



* 8 A very fine specimen of this class, nearly fourteen inches long, lately lias been deposited in the National 

 Museum. It was obtained near Knoxville, Tennessee. 



