254 NABCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS 



with a red cross ivpon the doors, and ' Lord have mercy upon us !' 

 writ there ; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind 

 that, to my remembrance I ever saw. It put me in an ill conception 

 of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll- 

 tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension."* 

 The costly nature of the luxury has been assumed as furnishing 

 ample explanation alike of the minute size of the original tobacco 

 pipe,— which in all probability secured for it in later times its designa- 

 tion of "Elfin" or "Fairy Pipe." — and of the early substitution of 

 native pungent and fragrant herbs for the high priced foreign weed. 

 The circumstances, however, which render the rarer English literature 

 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries inaccessible here, have 

 furnished resources of another kind which may perhaps be thought 

 to account for this on other, and no less probable grounds. During 

 a visit to part of the Minnesota Territory,at the head of Lake Superior, 

 in 1855, it was my good fortune to fall in with a party of the Sault- 

 aux Indians, — as the Chippeways of the far west are most frequently 

 designated, — and to see them engage in their native dances, in foot- 

 races, and other sports, and among the rest : in the luxury of the 

 pipe. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the Indian carries his 

 pipe-stem in his hand, along with his bow, tomahawk, or other weapon, 

 while the pipe itself is kept in the tobacco pouch, generally formed 

 of the skin of some small animal, dressed with the fur, and hung at 

 his belt. But what struck me as most noticeable was that the 

 Indians in smokiig, did not exhale the smoke from the mouth, but 

 from the nostrils ; and this, Mr. Paul Kane assures me is the universal 

 custom of the Indians of the north west, among whom he has travell- 

 ed irom the Eed Eiver settlement to the shores of the Pacific. By 

 this means the narcotic effects of the tobacco are greatly increased, 

 in so much so that a single pipe of strong tobacco smoked by an 

 Indian in this manner, will frequently produce complete giddiness 

 and intoxication. The Indians accordingly make use of various 

 herbs to mix with and dilute the tobacco, such as the leaf of the 

 cranberry, and the inner bark of the red willow, to both of which 

 the Indian word kinikinik is generally applied, and the leaves of the 

 winterberry, which receives the name ofpahr/ezegun.f The cranberry 



* Pepy's Diary, 4th Edition. Vol. II.. p. 242. 



1 1 am informed by the Rev. Dr. O'Meara, the translator of the Bible in the Chippeway 

 tongue, that the literal significance of Icinikinilc is " he mixes." kinilcangun is " a mixture," 

 and the words are applied by the Indians not to the diluent alone, but to the tobacco and 

 diluents when mixed and prepared for use. So also pahgezegun is " anything mhed," and 

 may be rendered : something to mix with tobacco. 



