INDIAN PIPES. 125 



modes of smoking among the Indians when Columbus planted 

 the banner of Spain in America. 



A writer in The Tobacco Plant has given a very interest- 

 ing description of Indian pipes in use among the natives of 

 both North and South America. He says : 



" In the tumuli or Indian grave mounds of the Ohio and 

 Scioto valleys, large quantities of pipes have been found, 

 bearing traces of Indian ingenuity. That their burial mounds 

 are of great antiquity, is proved by the fact that trees several 

 centuries old are to be found growing upon them. About 

 twenty-five years ago, two distinguished archeologists Squier 

 and Davis made extensive exploration of these mounds, the 

 results of which were published in an elaborate memoir by 

 the Smithsonian Institution. The mounds indicate that an 

 immense amount of labor has been expended upon them, as 

 the earthworks and mounds may be counted by thousands, 

 requiring either long time or an immense population ; and 

 there is much probability in the supposition of Sir John Lub- 

 bock that these parts of America w r ere once inhabited by a num- 

 erous and agricultural population. It may be asked, have the 

 races who erected these extensive mounds become extinct, or 

 do they exist in the poor uncivilized tribes of Indians whom 

 Europeans found inhabiting the river valleys of Ohio and 

 Illinois ? Many of these mounds are in the form of serpents 

 and symbolic figures, and were evidently related to the 

 sacrificial worship of the mound builders." 



Squier and Davis are of the opinion that : 



" The mound builders were inveterate smokers, if the great 

 numbers of pipes discovered in the 'mounds be admitted as 

 evidence of the fact. These constitute not only a numerous, 

 but a singularly interesting class of remains. In their con- 

 struction the skill of the maker seems to have been exhausted. 

 Their general form, which may be regarded as the primitive 

 form of the implement, is well exhibited in the accompany- 

 ing sketch. They are always carved from a single piece, and 

 consist of a flat carved bore of variable length and width, 

 with the bowl rising from the centre of the convex side. 

 From one of the ends, and communicating with the hollow 

 of the bowl, is drilled a small hole, which answers the pur- 

 pose of a tube ; the corresponding opposite division being 

 left for the manifest purpose of holding the implement to 

 the mouth. 



"The specimen here represented is finely carved from a 



