■36 TOBACCO IN AMERICA. 



peculiar class of pipes, inlaid with lead. * * * The 

 Chinook and Puget Sound Indians, who evince little 

 taste in comparison with the tribes surrounding them, 

 in ornamenting their persons or their warlike and do- 

 mestic implements, commonly use wooden pipes. Some- 

 times these are elaborately carved, hut most frequently 

 they are rudely and hastily made for immediate use ; 

 and even among these remote tribes of the flat head 

 Indians, the common clay pipe of the fur trader begins 

 to supersede such native arts. 



" Among the Assinaboin Indians a material is used 

 in pipe manufacture altogether peculiar to them. It 

 is a fine marble, much too hard to admit of minute 

 carving, but taking a high polish. This is cut into 

 pipes of graceful form, and made so extremely thin, 

 as to be nearly transparent, so that when lighted the 

 glowing tobacco shines through, and presents a sin- 

 gular appearance when in use at night or in a dark 

 lodge. Another favourite material employed by the 

 Assinaboin Indians is a coarse species of jasper also 

 too hard to admit of elaborate ornamentation. This 

 also is cut into various simple but tasteful designs, 

 executed chiefly by the slow and laborious process of 

 rubbing it down with other stones. The choice of the 

 material for fashioning the favourite pipe, is by no 

 means invariably guided by the facilities which the 

 location of the tribe aifords. A suitable stone for such 

 a purpose will be picked up and carried hundreds of 

 miles. Mr. Kane informs me that, in coming down 

 the Athabaska River, when drawing near its source in 



