146 The Soverane Herbe 



calumet ; rarely or never was it broken. The pipe of 

 peace, which has become an English idiom, dates its 

 institution, as we have seen, from the legendary period 

 of Indian history. All the early travellers in America 

 noted the custom. The Chevalier Montgomery, the 

 French Governor of Canada in 1645, confirmed 

 treaties with various Indian tribes by smoking the 

 pipe of peace. 



The pipe of war entailed no such ceremony. The 

 Indian brave, after scalping his enemy with his toma- 

 hawk, sat down and smoked a pipe out of the same 

 weapon. The back of the steel head is fashioned 

 into a pipe-bowl, and the reed handle, being hollow, 

 forms the stem. Thus the Indian warrior was provided 

 with weapon and pipe combined. By contact with 

 Western civilization and his own consequent degenera- 

 tion the smoking customs and primitive beliefs of 

 the Red Man are dying out. 



For the cult of pipe-smoking Europe and the world 

 are indebted to England, as she in turn acknowledges 

 herself the debtor of aboriginal America. In France 

 tobacco was first used as snuff, smoking coming from 

 England much later. The Spaniards, learning the 

 practice from the Caribees, smoked a tobacco-leaf 

 twisted up in an outer leaf of maize — the first 

 cigarette. This was the general custom in the West 

 Indian Islands, pipe-smoking being confined to the 

 mainland. Before the Spaniards explored the Con- 

 tinent they had acquired this manner of smoking, 

 and did not abandon it for the pipes used in Mexico 

 and South America. 



But the first English smokers graduated in the art 



