336 NAKCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS 



resemblances to the peculiar style of ancient Mexican Art. Such 

 resemblances may be fanciful or accidental. To me at least they 

 were suggested by no preconceived theory of Mexican migration, as 

 investigations in another direction have inclined me to adopt ideas 

 even less suggestive of such than those generally set forth by 

 American ethnologists. But while the sculptured Babeen and Cla- 

 lam pipes cannot be compared to some of the more faithful imitations 

 of objects of nature from the mounds, they furnish very noticeable 

 proofs of imitative skill, and are well worthy of consideration as 

 specimens of modern native art, which, if found in the ancient 

 mounds, would have excited no less wonder and admiration than 

 many of the relics figured from among their disclosures. 



But there is another conclusion, of more general application, 

 suggested to me by these Babeen sculptures. They are deserving 

 of special consideration, from illustrating, in some respects, the just 

 method of inductive history, as derived from ancient relics. Struck 

 with the discrepancy which every careful investigator of the subject 

 must notice between the elaborate art of the finer sculptures, 

 and especially the pipe-heads of the mounds, and any other traces 

 of the skill and civilization of their builders, Mr. Haven assumes a 

 foreign origin for all such sculptures, while others have inferred from 

 them a native civilization in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, corres- 

 ponding in all respects to these isolated examples of art ; just as, 

 from a rude but graceful Greek vase, we can infer the taste of a 

 Oallicrates or a Phidias. But it is important to note, that while the 

 Babeen sculptor executes a piece of pipe-carving so elaborate and 

 ingenious as justly to excite our wonder and admiration, it furnishes 

 no test of his general progress in arts or civilization, for, on the con- 

 trary, he is ruder and more indifferent to the refinements of dress 

 and decoration than many Indian tribes who produce no such special 

 examples of ingenious skill. Some of the conclusions which such 

 facts suggest will, I suspect, be found applicable to not a few of the 

 deductions derived by European archaeologists from isolated examples 

 of primitive art. 



The pipe, however, which presents so many and characteristic 

 forms, among the Indian tribes of the far west, whatever may have 

 been its importance in ancient times, is no longer the special object 

 of sacred associations. It is to the pipe-stem that the modern 

 Indian attaches that superstitious veneration which among the 

 Mound Builders would appear to have pertained to the pipe itself. 

 The medicine pipe-stem is the palladium of the tribe, on which 



