142 The Soverane Herbe 



pledged their honour and friendship in draughts of 

 mead ; similarly the Indian pledged his faith and 

 amity in the smoke of the peace-pipe. And of the 

 two it cannot be denied that the latter is the more 

 poetic. 



The sacredness and significance of smoking appears, 

 however, not to have dwelt in the tobacco, for in its 

 absence red willow-bark and other herbs were used, 

 but in the pipe. Pipe-smoking from the beginning 

 has been and is a cult. The quarry, the C6teau des 

 Prairies, in Wisconsin, from the red-stone of which 

 the Indians largely fashioned their pipes, was sacred 

 ground, and stubbornly defended by them against 

 the invasion of the white man. To-day it is still 

 reserved to the Indians, and the Sioux, in whose 

 reservation it is, permit no white man to cut pipe- 

 stone there. The stone, known as catlinite, after 

 Catlin, the first white man who saw the place, is 

 of a red colour, resembling steatite, and is easily 

 worked, giving a fine polish. From the smoker's 

 point of view it makes a good pipe, smoking very 

 sweet and cool. Some pipes are found for two 

 smokers ; on both sides of the bowl there are open- 

 ings for the insertion of stems, and thus two people 

 could smoke the same pipe. 



To all Indians the quarry is sacred ground. The 

 Indian legend of the Flood says that when, many 

 centuries ago, a great deluge arose and destroyed all 

 peoples, the red-men of all tribes gathered together 

 at the C6teau des Prairies to escape the waters. The 

 Flood rose and rose, and gradually submerging them 

 all in a body, converted their flesh into the red-stone. 



