SMOKING-PIPES OF STONE. 



By C. C. Abbott. 



From the general character and use of smoking-pipes and the proba- 

 bility that every Indian either fashioned his own or obtained it by special 

 barter — that is, not from a professional pipe-maker — it is not strange that 

 so little in common is seen in the ordinary stone and clay pipes found in the 

 Eastern States. In the region once occupied by the mysterious Mound- 

 builders there have occurred, in their numerous earth-structures, certain 

 pipes representing entire animals, or heads of animals and of men. These 

 are small, and generally have a thin, flat base, through which extends a 

 small perforation. This flat base, projecting more or less beyond the carved 

 object constituting the bowl of the pipe, was probably used as a mouth- 

 piece; but such a form, however, cannot be considered as exclusively Mound- 

 builders', and it is known that that people also had other pipes of widely 

 different pattern. In all these patterns of smoking-pipes there is either a 

 combination of bowl and stem carved from one piece of stone or so shaped 

 in clay ; or a bowl only, to which a stem of other material, as a hollow 

 reed, was attached. An extensive series of specimens, however, shows such 

 great variation in the two patterns that the opinion, elsewhere expressed,* 

 that a division might be made of stemmed and stemless bowls, is not war- 

 ranted. It is certain that but few pipes, however carved or otherwise 

 decorated, can be referred without doubt to a particular tribe of Indians or 

 section of our country. The small "animal" pipes of the Ohio Valley are 

 nearest to being peculiar to a certain people ; and next, the pipes from Dos 

 Pueblos and neighborhood, which are of quite a ixniform type, being cylin- 

 drical tubes, or, more properly, "of an elongated, conoidal shape." 



"Nature, vol. xiv, June, 167(5. 



125 



